by Beth Goobie
Jigger was the reason Skey had come back, but she kept running from any place she might come into contact with him, as if seeing him would be too much, just the sight of him would explode her into flames and she would be gone.
SAN WAS IN SKEY’S 10:30 calculus class. They sat together and emerged for lunch to find Pedro standing nearby in the hall, waiting for them.
“Heading out,” he said.
Fear flicked across Skey, delicate and forked as lightning. “I have an appointment at the Counseling office,” she said quickly.
“Skip it,” Pedro said. “This is more important.”
“I’m supposed to go,” Skey protested.
Pedro’s wiry body stiffened and the friendliness left his face. “I said skip it,” he snapped.
San leaned into Skey from behind, pushing her along. “C’mon Skey,” she purred. “Jigger wants to see you. We’re just along as chaperones.”
Instantly, Pedro splashed a grin across his face and became a different person. “Just as long as Jigger wants us,” he singsonged, unloading Skey’s books from her arms. Alarmed, she reached for them. “You want these?” he teased, walking backward in front of her. “Who’re you kidding? You can’t read.” His straight black hair threw off light, his dark eyes sparkled like the sequins on San’s cheek. Skey gave up on Ms. Renfrew and the Counseling office. She hadn’t really wanted to go anyway. She sure hadn’t asked for the goddamn appointment.
“Can I at least get my lunch?” she said plaintively.
“We’ll buy you lunch,” said Pedro. “We’re traveling in Jigger’s Cafe.”
Then they were running down the hall, barreling through a school entrance and across the student parking lot. It was fate, Skey realized, as they approached Jigger’s car. Destiny had intervened in order to open this particular car door, slip her into this particular front seat and lock her into place. Next, destiny slipped Pedro in beside her and scooped San into the backseat with Rosie and Balfour. Then Jigger put the car in gear, and they were off, radio blaring, air heavy with cigarette smoke. The car was old, mint condition, no bucket seats. With a grin, Pedro pressed Skey in against Jigger’s shoulder and hip. Jigger yelled a couple of comments to Balfour who let out a howl, his thin face cupping the long sound. On cue, Rosie giggled. Rosie, on the edge of pretty, always trying to make up for it.
Sliding some weed out of his wallet, Pedro lit up.
In the lockup, Skey had quit. The rules said no smoking, legal or illegal. Now she was sucking in the second-hand high like a promise—there was no rule about breathing it. But as Pedro moved the weed toward her lips, she pulled her head away.
“What’s this?” Pedro asked. “You gone clean on us, Skey?”
San leaned over the front seat and wrapped her arms around Skey’s neck, kissing her wetly on the cheek. There was the brief scrape of sequins as she pulled away, then lifted the weed out of Pedro’s hand and placed it between Skey’s lips. “Nah, Skey wouldn’t do that,” laughed San. “She wants to die young.”
Pressed against Jigger, Skey’s skin flickered with live wires. She inhaled, focusing on the smoke as it seared in, then out. With her second inhalation, Pedro gave her some room and San dropped back into the rear seat.
“Burger King?” Jigger hollered. “Or McDonald’s?”
“Burger King,” came the backseat chorus.
At the take-out window Jigger ordered a couple of burgers, Cokes and fries, then placed the bag in Skey’s lap and kicked everyone else out. As if it had been pre-planned, the others headed into the restaurant. “Pick you up in thirty,” Jigger yelled through the window and drove out of the lot.
Skey began to edge away, just a little.
“Where you going?” Jigger asked immediately, his voice running through her like touch.
“Nowhere.” The word locked deep in Skey’s throat, husky, slow.
Jigger turned down the radio. “Pardon?” he asked softly.
“Nowhere,” Skey whispered.
“Good.” He ran a hand over her left knee, stroking it, and Skey played with the Burger King bag, watching nothing as the car turned down a side street that opened onto a deserted park. Everyone home for lunch. Easing up to the curb, Jigger turned off the engine and left the radio on. Carefully Skey stubbed out her barely smoked weed. If she returned to the lockup looking like side effects, staff wouldn’t unlock the doors for her again for a very long time.
The birds were back, flying up her throat and shrieking in her head. What was going to happen now? Would Jigger tell her it was over, everything was over, he could no longer love her after she had done what she had done?
For a long moment they both sat staring straight ahead, watching the emptiness of the park, the bare stripped trees. Then Jigger’s arm went around Skey, and a hand cupped her face. She had one brief glimpse of his blue eyes before he began kissing her mouth gently, again and again. Small cries of loneliness came out of her the way they always did. Setting the Burger King bag on the floor, he pulled her in close, kissing and touching. This was the way she had dreamed it would happen, lying awake nights in the lockup, rolling in her bed, moving slowly against the mattress. Imagining, imagining.
Jigger didn’t say much, just the sounds he made sometimes in his throat, and her name, the way he whispered it to her. Finally, he pressed his face into her hair, and they let their breathing slow. In that moment she remembered every bit of his skin, the way it used to move against hers, the way it had been hers. Pulling back his face, Jigger looked at her. First her mouth—for a long time, he looked at her mouth. Then her nose. His eyes moved up to her forehead, over her hair. Then he let their eyes meet, let her look at him.
He was taller, his shoulders a little broader, but otherwise the same—blond, tanned, mouth wide and full, the familiar grin lines to one side. Everything exactly as she had dreamed it—his face, his smile, his voice. Reaching out, Skey traced his lips. Real, he was not a dream. Waves of relief flooded her. Jigger wanted her, he wanted her. Finally, she had found that lost part of herself, here with him.
Reaching for her wrist, Jigger slid up her sleeve and ran a finger over one of the scars. Still a deep red, the scar tissue was puckered in a broad angry mark. Briefly, under his touch, Skey saw the scar open into the original wound, releasing a surge of blood down her arm. Then the blood disappeared and she was back in the present tense.
“It was a long summer,” Jigger said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was.”
Gently, Jigger pulled her sleeve back down. Then he touched and touched her face, claiming her, taking them back to the couple they were before everything bad happened. It’s like it never was, she thought in a wash of incredible joy. It never happened and now it’s over.
“Hungry?” Jigger asked softly. “Let’s eat.”
CHAPTER THREE
THAT NIGHT SHE WAS trapped in the tunnel of light. Just as in the tunnel of dark, she had to feel her way along these walls by touch, listening for any change in sound that might mean a meeting place and stopping every now and then to trace designs carved into the wall. In the tunnel of light, it was also impossible to see, but it was much worse than the tunnel of dark. Here, she had to feel her way forward with her eyes closed against an intensity of light so extreme that every detail was lost in the glare. Even with her eyes closed, the inside of her body felt completely lit up, her brain a circle of grinding light. Her whole body cried out for relief, some darkness to balance the light.
She had never heard another person in this system of tunnels. It had always been a place of aloneness, and it remained so. Though she had gone to sleep with the rock in her hand, it didn’t bring the boy into this dream. Tonight the carvings all seemed to be slashes in the tunnel wall, knife wounds that burned under her touch. She moved onward, alone and alone.
She woke with the headache that always followed the dream of light, the whites of her eyes a faint pink. Terry was working the morning shift and gave Skey’s eyeballs a few suspicious glances. So did some of
the girls.
“I thought you said we’d share,” Ann grumbled at the breakfast table.
“I’m not on anything,” said Skey.
“Yeah, sure,” snorted Ann.
“Skey, can I talk to you?” Terry called from the office.
Skey dragged her feet. She had already received a lecture for missing yesterday’s noon hour meeting in the Counseling office. But she had made it back to the lockup by 4:30, so the staff hadn’t been too hard on her. Jigger had driven her, and there had been time to park briefly down the street. He had said he would pick her up at the bus stop this morning.
“Come into my office,” Terry quipped.
Skey walked into the mind-reading trap. “I’ll go see Ms. Renfrew today, I promise,” she said quickly, sitting down.
“Yeah yeah,” said Terry. Skey shot her a quick glance. Terry grinned, but Skey couldn’t make it to a smile. A pause followed as they sat opposite one another, lit by the fluorescent lighting that seemed to work double-time in the office, while the rest of the unit relaxed in relative shadow. Closing her eyes, Skey found herself in the tunnel of light from her dream, still vivid and burning in her head. With a grimace, she opened her eyes.
“Headache?” asked Terry, watching, assessing.
“I guess,” said Skey. “A bit.”
“School jitters?” said Terry.
Skey almost laughed. School Jiggers, she wanted to say. For a moment she felt him pressed against her, the way he had yesterday afternoon in the car before she had gotten out. If she could just explain to Terry what it meant to feel his hands again, the way everything in her ran toward his touch. But if she tried, staff would probably stop her from seeing him. Adults were always suspicious of teenagers touching each other. Skey gripped the arms of her chair and focused on Terry’s slight mustache. Why didn’t the woman wax?
“Did your mother call you last night?” asked Terry.
“No,” said Skey.
“First day of school,” said Terry, surprised, “and she didn’t call to see how it went?”
“I don’t know if she knew the exact day.” Skey’s headache was definitely getting worse, coming at her in sharp white bursts. “Can I go now?” she asked.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” said Terry, “and I’ll let you out.”
Skey stood to walk out the door.
“Skey,” said Terry. “One more thing. What color are you feeling today?”
“Radioactive,” said Skey. Walking to her room, she closed her door.
JIGGER’S CAR WAS IDLING at the bus stop. From half a block away, Skey could see him slapping the steering wheel. Quick sharp slaps. “I thought you said 8:15,” he snapped as she opened the door.
“There’s a new girl in the unit,” Skey said, getting in. “She has problems with mornings. She yells and throws things a lot. It’s her hobby. The staff had to hold her down, and I couldn’t get anyone to unlock the door and let me out. Sorry.”
For a second Jigger stared, then lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like a real party.”
Something twisted in Skey’s throat. “No,” she said, without thinking. “It isn’t. It’s a dungeon of shit and puke. The rooms are huge as loneliness, no matter how many girls are there. The music’s always playing louder than you can think. The girls spend their time thinking about everything they’re missing, and half the time someone’s screaming. They’re a bunch of losers in there, Jigger. A bunch of losers.”
The words left her in a hot rush and she was suddenly exhausted, sitting with her head back and her eyes closed. When she opened them again, Jigger was staring straight ahead, one thumb rubbing the steering wheel.
“I’m not like them,” she muttered quickly. “I’m not.”
“Of course you’re not.” Jigger’s voice pushed up into a bright artificial cheeriness. “You’ll be out of there in no time, and then I’ll take you to some real parties.” He smiled at her, crinkling his eyes at the corners as if he really meant it. “All right?”
It was some kind of deal, Skey realized, staring at him. Jigger was offering this grin to her as a contract. We won’t pay any attention to the shit, he was telling her, and the shit will go away. When we’re together, no shit.
She pulled a tight smile over her lips and said, “Just a short stay at the Holiday Inn.”
A brief coldness came and went in Jigger’s eyes, but he kept grinning and she kept smiling. Contract smiled, deal closed.
“You got it,” Jigger said.
THE GUY SITTING behind Skey in homeroom kept shifting in his desk as if he had spiders crawling up his legs. The way he jitterbugged all over his seat, spinning his pen and whispering to himself, made her want to swat him. Without warning, his loony spiders began to desert him and crawl all over her. Skey turned in her seat and glared.
“What’s your problem?” she hissed.
“Huh?” The guy glanced at her and froze. Skey assessed him in one fell swoop: pale skin, freckles, thick red hair. Very green eyes. Licking his lips, he began to spin his pen. Skey reached out and put a stop to the Bic.
“What’s your problem?” she repeated coldly. She knew what hers was—if he didn’t stop fooling around, she was going to explode.
He blinked several times. “I dunno.”
Skey kept hold of his gaze. This guy wasn’t Jigger, he wasn’t a Dragon. He was one of the low-level termites of this school, and she could run him with her little finger. That much was established. “Well,” she said in an icy drop-dead tone. “Do you think you could keep quiet for a couple of minutes?”
Across the aisle, another guy hunched over a notebook, working on a sketch that was probably obscene. “Ooo, Lick,” he said. “Beautiful’s talking to you.”
Lick licked his lips again. “Yeah, I know,” he muttered.
“So, you gonna ask her out?” asked the other guy.
Lick flowered into a rose pink and dropped his eyes. He reached for the Bic, but Skey kept her grip on it.
Your name is Lick? she thought. You are such a loser.
Lick gave the other guy a sideways glance. “Isn’t she going out with Genghis Khan?” he asked. “I need my balls, man.”
The other guy began a high ongoing giggle, and a tiny smile crept into a corner of Skey’s mouth. This fidgetty scarecrow, this bundle of nerves, this low-level loser had actually said something interesting. “Lick,” she commanded, pulling the pen from under his fingers.
“Huh?” Surprised, he looked straight at her, and she saw intelligent life in his eyes. And nerves ready to blow.
“Give me your arm,” she said. When he didn’t move, she pulled his left arm flat across the desk and slid up his sleeve. More giggles from the pornographer across the aisle. Uncapping the pen, Skey scribbled on Lick’s binder to make sure it worked. It looked frequently masticated.
“Too bad it’s not magic marker,” she said. Then she wrote SKEY SAYS I MUST BE QUIET IN CLASS along the inside of Lick’s forearm. His muscles tensed and he trembled several times as she wrote. The boy was in shock. When she finished, Skey patted his arm softly.
“There, there,” she said.
The pornographer gave Skey’s inscription a quick glance. “You been told, Lick,” he said.
Lick read his arm about twenty-five times. As the bell rang, Skey handed him his pen. Very briefly, his green eyes met hers.
“I will never wash this arm,” he said. “You will have to do it for me.”
MS. RENFREW WAS not pleased. Frowning over bifocals and a very large nose, she said, “I didn’t appreciate my time being wasted yesterday.”
Grim. Ms. Renfrew was grim. Her words were tomb-stones. A conversation with this woman was a stroll through a cemetery, each phrase appearing on yet another granite slab: Skey Mitchell, flunked out at sixteen. Skey Mitchell, locked up at sixteen. Skey Mitchell, dead at sixteen.
“Ms. Mitchell,” demanded the grim Ms. Renfrew. “Could I have your attention please?”
“Huh?” Pulling herself o
ut of the cemetery, Skey focused on Ms. Renfrew’s nose. It was so huge. A lot of breathing went on there. “I’m sorry, Ms. Renfrew,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to forget you yesterday. It was my first day back and I got talking to some friends.”
Ms. Renfrew did not look impressed. Reaching to one side, she pulled a large stack of books to the center of her desk. “Well, Skey,” she said, “I’ve arranged for some lunch-hour tutoring to help you catch up. You will meet with your tutor on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at twelve o’clock sharp.”
Skey’s mouth dropped. Ms. Renfrew nodded grimly.
“We thought we’d leave you Tuesday and Thursday lunch hours to socialize,” she said. “Your tutor is Tammy Nanji. I’ve gone over the catch-up work with her. She’s a grade ahead of you and an excellent student, so she won’t have any problems with it.”
Skey waved a hand vaguely, trying to break through her shock. “I can’t,” she managed.
“Pardon?” asked Ms. Renfrew.
“I can’t,” Skey stammered again. “Not three lunch hours.” Jigger would be so mad. “Maybe one?” she suggested weakly.
“Skey.” Ms. Renfrew leaned forward dramatically. “I realize this is a difficult time for you, but you need to focus on your studies. This will help you get through it. You’re a bright girl, you did well in junior high. Unfortunately, high school seems to have been another story.”
“I can’t,” Skey stammered again. “Not three.”
“How about you work that out with Tammy?” said Ms. Renfrew. “She’s waiting in the lobby. I’ll call her in.”
Walking to the door, Ms. Renfrew opened it and beckoned. “Skey Mitchell,” she said cheerily, “I’d like you to meet Tammy Nanji. Tammy, this is Skey.”
Skey’s neck went ramrod stiff, and she sat staring at the stack of books Ms. Renfrew had left on the desk. She knew she had to focus on something mundane, because all around her the office walls were taking on a harsh white glow. Large gashes were appearing in them. The walls were beginning to bleed, everywhere there was bleeding.
“Skey?” called a voice.
