Stealing Heaven

by Elizabeth Scott

  “It’s not a big deal. It just feels strange. Is there any coffee?”

  “Just started a pot. While you’re waiting, you can have some cough syrup.” I wave the bottle at her.

  “Ugh. If I say no, are you going to dump it into my coffee?”

  “What do you think?”

  Mom sighs. “Fine. I’ll take some.”

  “Now?”

  “Honestly, Danielle.”

  “Just take it. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get it.”

  Mom pours some syrup into the little dosage cup and takes it. She grimaces, then hands the whole thing back to me. “What you had to go through to get it?”

  I open my mouth to tell her about Greg but all that comes out is, “It’s a long story. A long, boring story.”

  “Well, then I definitely want to hear it.”

  “Funny. Going now. Don’t forget to take more of this.” I pick up the bottle, look at the label. “Every four hours, okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Mom says, and I know that means I’ll come back to find the bottle exactly as full as it is right now. I sigh, lean over, and kiss her cheek.

  “I’ll see you later.”

  She waves at me over one shoulder, already turned away and watching the coffeemaker, just waiting for that first cup to brew. I leave and drive back to the grocery store. For my “date.” With a cop.

  I park pretty far away—it’s bad enough he’s seen the car once already—and walk to the store. Greg’s there, and his car isn’t what I figured a cop’s noncop car would be like. For one thing, it’s a station wagon. For another, the back bumper is covered with stickers, all for bands I’ve never heard of. Cops always drive horribly practical sedans or huge pickup trucks/SUVs, and they never have bumper stickers. At least not like these.

  “This is your car?”

  “Uh oh, jumping straight into questions. This can’t be good. You don’t like it?”

  “No, it’s actually—it’s just not what I thought you would drive.”

  He laughs. “You know what? I figured you’d take one look and say it matches my hair or something.”

  I look over at him. “Well, now that you mention it…”

  He grins and I grin back. I tell myself I’m only doing that because I have to. I mean, someone smiles at you, you’re supposed to smile back. The fact that I want to isn’t important.

  “Ready to go?”

  I nod, and get in the car. I’ve never been in a station wagon before, or at least not one like this, with its bumper stickers and signs of its owner’s personality everywhere.

  I’ve also never been on a date.

  Or gone somewhere voluntarily with a cop.

  “You okay?” he says. “You seem a little worried. I know the car doesn’t look like much, but it runs really well.”

  I nod again, and notice I’m twisting my hands together in my lap, like I’m nervous. Which I am, but I know better than to show it. Why did I agree to this again?

  He glances at me, gaze lingering on my arms for a moment—I force myself to still my hands—and then starts the car.

  “See?” he says, grinning, and I know exactly why I agreed to this.

  I want to be here.

  “So, what happened?” he asks as we pull out of the parking lot.

  “With what?”

  “Your arm. You’ve got a wicked scar.”

  “What?” I clear my throat, thinking of the dog that bit me. Of why the dog bit me. Of just why I really shouldn’t have agreed to this, no matter how much I want to be here. “You—you want to know what happened to my arm?”

  “Well, yeah. If you want to talk about it, that is. I mean, I’m pretty sure I know what happened but…”

  He knows? How could he know? Unless—I look over at him. Does he know who I am? Who I really am?

  “It’s okay,” he says, his voice gentle. “I understand.”

  He holds his right arm out toward me. At first I don’t see anything but then I look closer, see a series of faint thin white lines crossing his wrist.

  “Oh. You got bit by a dog too?”

  “I—wait. You got bit by a dog?”

  “Yeah, a poodle. And before you laugh…” I look over at him. He’s not laughing. In fact, he looks kind of stunned.

  I look at his arm again. I look at him.

  I look at him, and I understand what happened.

  I met a girl worth three quarters of a billion dollars at a party once. She had the saddest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met and a row of white lines on her wrists, scars so thick her skin was just a faint tinge under them.

  “You—” I don’t quite know what to say. I mean, I do—you tried to kill yourself—but his expression is this weird mix of pain and embarrassment and what looks like a kind of angry fear, and what I end up saying is, “You have them on your other arm too.”

  He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move, but then he slowly nods. Yes. When he does, I lean over and touch my fingers to his wrist because I know how it feels to have to live with something you wish wasn’t true.

  “I was fifteen,” he says quietly. “It happened just after my dad died. He was driving home, pulled over to help what he thought was someone with a flat tire, and got shot.”

  “Shot?”

  “Yeah. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The thing is, the last time I saw him we’d fought. He’d found drugs in my room and went crazy, said all the things cops do—‘Drugs kill, you don’t know what I see’—all that stuff. I told him he was full of shit; I hated that he was a cop, hated what everyone thought it meant about him, about me—it was like it defined all of us. I told him that, he died, and I thought…”

  He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I kept thinking about what I’d said to him, about what he’d said to me. So, the day after the funeral, I took all the drugs I had and then opened a package of razor blades. I don’t even remember doing it, I was so gone. Dad’s partner found me. He’d come over to see how Mom was doing, came back to my room to talk to me. I was so fucked up I didn’t do a very good job, just hacked my skin up, mostly, and so he patched me up, had a doctor friend of his come over and check on me later so I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. So Mom wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital.”

  He blows out a deep breath. “I’ve—I’ve never told anyone about it before. I just…I thought you—”

  “My father’s gone too. Not dead, but he might as well be. So I—I know I don’t understand, not really. But I do know what it’s like to lose someone. I know how much it hurts when you don’t get to say good-bye the way you wish you could have.”

  He nods. “You know what I remember most? Not the funeral, not even the moment when the doctor came in and told us Dad was gone. I remember what Mom said to me when I woke up afterward, how she checked my wrists and then said, ‘I want to tell you a story.’ She told me about Dad’s first case. He found a thirteen-year-old dead from an overdose—no witnesses, no nothing, just a dead kid. They couldn’t even find someone to claim the body. He told her about it when he got home and she said all the stuff people say, that it’s so sad, so terrible. She asked him how he could handle knowing things like that would happen over and over again, how he could deal with the world being like that. And he said, ‘Maybe I think the world can be different.’ She said she thought I’d know what he meant.”

  “Do you think he’s right?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think that yeah, maybe. Other times…other times I’m not so sure. I think things aren’t as simple as he thought—he was a cop cop, you know? Everything was either right or wrong for him, nothing in between. But he wanted to make things better, and that—that’s something I can believe in. I just wish I’d seen it earlier. Before he was gone.”

  “I think…I think sometimes that’s how it is. Sometimes people have to go before you—before you get stuff. Before you can really get it.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “It sucks that they
have to go in order for it to happen, though.”

  “But at least then you know,” I say, and now I’m thinking of my father. “I mean, sometimes a person sticks around but might as well be gone, you know? They’re there, but when you’re with them what you get is so close to nothing it might as well be that.”

  “It could change, though. You’ve got that.”

  “Right, because when the first thing they ask is how long you’ll be around, it just means they’re afraid or something. It’s such crap. It’s just…it’s all they can give. All they’re willing to give. But the worst part is that you can’t help thinking ‘maybe’ even though it’s stupid and then, when they finally do go, you feel so hurt and…”

  I trail off, and look out the window. I haven’t said this much about my father ever. Not even to Mom.

  “I—”

  “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for me,” I say, angry with him for bringing up stuff I don’t like thinking about. Angry at myself for being so drawn to him. “‘Sorry’ is bullshit and it’s always followed by more bullshit.”

  “You’re right.”

  I look over at him, surprised.

  “You are,” he says. “It’s all I heard after Dad died. Everyone was sorry, so sorry. After a couple of weeks, I never wanted to hear the word again. Things…well, things suck sometimes. And sometimes you can fix it. And sometimes you can’t. It’s just the way it is.”

  “Do you miss your dad?”

  “Yeah. You?” He looks over at me, his crazy hair shining in the sun, and the understanding in his eyes makes my own sting a little.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I miss him.”

  There’s a crowd of people waiting to get on the ferry, and as Greg and I join them I get elbowed by someone swinging around a video camera. Greg catches my arm when I stumble and suddenly we’re standing very close to each other.

  “Hey,” he says, “you okay?” and for a second—just a second only, I swear—I wish he’d kiss me.

  That scares me. It scares me a lot.

  “I’m fine.” I take a step back, putting some distance between us. “Do you think they’ll actually let us on the boat soon, or will we have to stand here and stare at it for an hour or something?”

  “Two hours. Three at the most.”

  “Oh, okay then,” I say, and someone behind us yells, “Hey, I just heard they won’t be letting us on the boat for three hours!” We grin at each other.

  They do let us on the ferry eventually, and Greg and I end up standing out on the deck. It’s loud: the slap of the ocean against the boat, the sound of the engine, the wind blowing all around us. We stand by the railing together, in silence, and it’s not weird or anything. It’s nice. Comfortable.

  “We’re almost there,” he says after a while, leaning toward me. “This is my favorite part—the whole place just sort of suddenly comes into view.”

  I look out at the ocean. He’s right. The island is a speck at first and then a larger one and then suddenly it’s a place and I can see grass and homes and narrow winding roads.

  “It’s…” It’s alone, one small island in the middle of the sea, and yet it doesn’t look lonely. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  “I know,” he says. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

  I nod and look over at him. He’s looking back at me, a little smile on his face.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “So? I smile all the time. Not like some people.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What do you think I’m saying?”

  “I think you’re a pain in the ass.”

  “There we go,” he says. “I knew I could do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make you smile.”

  “I’m not smiling,” I tell him. But I am. I can feel it.

  15

  When we leave the ferry we walk up to what Greg tells me is “the town.” It’s nothing but stores and an amazing view.

  “You want to look at anything?” he asks, pointing at the stores.

  “Hell, no.” I know a racket when I see one and I’m sure this “town” makes a fortune from people who run around buying things simply because they had to ride on a boat to get here.

  “Okay, that wasn’t even a question,” Greg says. “We’re definitely getting out of here.” He starts walking, heading away from the stores and up a narrow road. I watch him for a second, just sort of…caught, I guess, by how easy it is to talk to him, to hang out with him.

  “You coming?” he asks, looking back at me, and then he grins. “Or are you checking out my ass?”

  I roll my eyes and walk up to him. “Please. You don’t have an ass.”

  “I knew you were checking it out! And I do so have—” He twists, looking back over his shoulder. “Well, okay, maybe not in these pants. But I do, really, I swear. And it’s actually quite—”

  “I so don’t need to hear the rest of that sentence,” I say, and start walking. He laughs and catches up to me.

  We walk for a while. The road gets narrower and hillier. It’s amazingly quiet. All I can hear is the ocean, the wind, and the occasional car, most of which are some kind of tourist taxi.

  At first we also get passed by a lot of people on bicycles, but they start to thin out as we keep walking, and by the time we’ve walked up our fifth hill all I hear is the ocean and the wind and our footsteps.

  “So where are we going?” I ask.

  “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll see?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “You’ll like it. Trust me.”

  I freeze. Trust. I hate that word. It doesn’t mean a thing and I stop walking, all the misgivings I had about being here, about him, coming back. I should have known better than this.

  “I’m not real good with trust.”

  “What? You?” he says, and looks back at me, eyebrows raised and a grin creasing his face. “I never would have guessed.”

  I should have known better than this, and the thing is…I do. I do know better. I should never have agreed to this, never should have thought I could go on a date with anyone, much less a cop. It was stupid to come here with him, and I should just get out of it now.

  “You know what? This was a bad idea.”

  His grins fades. “What?”

  “You heard me. This was a bad idea and I…why did you even bring me here?”

  He’s silent for a moment. “I wanted to.”

  “What?” Of all the things I thought he might say, that wasn’t one of them. He wanted to bring me here.

  I want to believe him. I want to so much it scares me, and I take a step back, away from him.

  “Okay,” he says. “I’m just going to walk—” He points off into the distance, and I can sort of make out a path. “If you want to come, that would be great, because the view is amazing and I think you’ll like it. If not…well, there’s a ferry that leaves in half an hour.”

  He fishes in his pockets, pulls out a ticket, and then holds it out toward me.

  “And if I go?” I say. Here’s where there will be a catch. Where something bad will happen. I know it will. It has to. It always does.

  “You go. I won’t be able to drive you anywhere when you get back, obviously, since I’ll be…”—he points over at the path again—“but if you ask them to call a taxi for you when you board, they will.”

  I wait, but he doesn’t say anything else.

  “I don’t understand what you want from me,” I finally say.

  “Yeah, I get that.” He hands me the ticket, his fingers brushing against mine. “I don’t want anything from you.”

  I stare at him. “Everyone wants something.”

  He shoves a hand through his hair. “Well, okay. I wanted to bring you here, like I said. And I wouldn’t mind showing you the view. So I guess I do want something after all. I want to spend time with you. But not if you don’t want to. So…” He turns away
from me, walks up the road.

  I watch him go and then look down at the ferry ticket in my hand.

  When I’m halfway down the last hill we walked up, I turn around. I expect to see him behind me, but he’s not there.

  I don’t get it. There has to be something more going on than him just wanting to spend time with me. Nothing can be that simple.

  Can it?

  I walk back up the hill, sure he’ll appear now, but he doesn’t. I reach the path and look down it. It’s long and winding. I can see the sea from here but I can’t see where the path ends. I can’t see Greg either. I hesitate for a second, and then I start walking.

  I find out why I couldn’t see where the path ends when I’m about halfway down it. It basically disappears, looping back into the rock that makes up the island. I’m walking along a narrow ledge that looks like it will drop off into nothing when I round the next corner. Should I go on? I take a cautious step forward, then another, and then I bump into something. Someone.

  “I guess I should have told you the path just kind of ends,” Greg says. He’s sitting down, looking out at the ocean.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He looks up at me. “Shouldn’t that be my question?”

  It should, but I’m afraid to answer it. I turn away, staring out at the sea, and my breath catches.

  I’ve seen the ocean up close before. It’s nothing special, or so I’ve always thought. But this…it’s not just a long dull blue-gray line stretching out toward the horizon. This is different. There’s water everywhere, crashing noisily over rocks just a few feet below us, churning and rolling and alive. It’s terrible and beautiful at the same time.

  “Wow.” I sit down on the ledge next to him. Now that I’m closer the water is even more mesmerizing; twisting and turning, fighting like it wants to get away from the rocks and then turning back, rushing toward them.

  “Yeah,” he says. “The first time I came here, I thought the whole place was—well, like it is in town. I was pissed I’d come out here because if I want to see expensive crap I can do that anytime and don’t have to sit on a boat for an hour first. But then I walked around, and past all the crap are places like this. And they’re everywhere, all over the island. This was the first one I found, though, and sometimes I come back just to sit and watch the ocean. I like it.”