Hurricane Kiss

by Deborah Blumenthal

  And that’s it.

  I can’t bear it anymore. “God,” I whisper, pressing my mouth over hers. I kiss her hard, helpless to stop myself. All the emotion, all the need, all the frustration I kept hidden for over a year now, explodes inside me.

  “River,” she whispers, nearly breathless.

  I tighten my arms around her, kissing her deeper, my hot skin against hers, pressing her under me where I want to keep her, our legs tangled, making up for all the lost time.

  In case we don’t have much left.

  JILLIAN

  I didn’t expect this. Not now. My hands cradle his face and then I let go, meeting the pressure of his lips on mine, his tongue in rhythm with mine, our bodies skin to skin carrying me to a place I’ve never been before. I reach up and grab his hair, pulling at it, pressing myself against him. I trace the planes of his face, his cheeks, his chin, his neck, and his chest, but it’s not enough. I want to crawl inside him. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, ever. I don’t want this to end. He leans away and takes my hand, squeezing it in his, bringing it up to his lips, kissing each finger, then the inside of my hand and wrist. The feel of his lips on my skin makes me dizzy. He leans away abruptly, pressing his forehead against mine.

  “I did look for you,” he says, short of breath.

  “What?”

  “At the picnic, I did look for you. I waited. I wanted to kiss you from the first day I saw you. I finally had an excuse.”

  I kiss his forehead and his eyes. Tears well up. He’s crying, then sobbing.

  “Goddamn,” he says.

  “What is it?”

  He looks away, trying to stop, working at blinking back the tears.

  “I’m so broken now. I can’t be who you want me to.”

  “Who do you think I want you to be?”

  “Normal.”

  “What’s normal?”

  “A guy with a brain who has a life ahead of him.” He stops, trying to catch his breath. “Not someone who has nightmares and wakes up in a sweat. I’m so messed up now, and I don’t know if that will ever change.”

  “Don’t say that. You went through hell, River.”

  “I’m still there. I want to run away from myself, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Just keep kissing me. We’ll figure it out.”

  Chapter 29

  RIVER

  I lose track of time. Her head is against my chest, my arms locked around her. I want to crush her against me. She shifts and I tighten my hold.

  “What I wouldn’t do for real food. Filet mignon, fries, a wedge with blue cheese dressing, and key lime pie,” she says.

  “Sshhh.”

  “Have you ever been this hungry?”

  Yes. The memories flow back and everything darkens. Me lying in bed at night, everything inside me aching from being sick and hungry. I exhale, that’s all.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, her expression changing to one of pity, which I don’t need. “Let’s go back to the kitchen, maybe there’s something, anything we missed.”

  “I looked,” I insist.

  “Let’s look again.”

  We wade through the water in the dark corridors until we get to the cafeteria, then go through the back to the kitchen. I start opening doors and cabinets, expecting mice or rats to jump out at me. But there are no mice and nothing to eat except jumbo-sized cans of vegetables. I open the refrigerator and slam it shut.

  “Wait,” she says. She ducks down on her knees in the water, pushing aside containers of warm, spoiled yogurt and cottage cheese. “Yes!” She slides out a brick of American cheese.

  “How did I miss that?”

  I take my knife and cut open the plastic, then slice a thick piece for her and another one me. “I never thought food could taste this good.”

  “More,” she holds out her hand.

  I haven’t been this hungry since juvie. My shoulder burns worse than ever and fury rises up in me.

  All I can think of is Briggs. I do want to kill him, I wish I had. It’s all his fault. Everything is, and I can’t live with it destroying me up anymore. I can’t live with covering it up.

  I focus on Jillian’s face, her lips, the way her mouth moves. I’m hungry for her. I wanted her for so long, but I pretended I didn’t because it didn’t make sense—not when she lived next door to me. But none of that matters anymore. I kiss her again and again and it pushes the memories away, at least for a while.

  She eases away slightly. “There’s a freezer,” she says. “But it’s locked.”

  I lift the lock and study it.

  “There’s no way,” she says.

  “No?” I search around the kitchen and find an empty soda can. I stick my knife into it, cutting out a section.

  “What are you doing?”

  I fold it so it’s shaped like the letter M with one pointy end in the middle, then slide the sharp point into the lock and pull it open at the same time. “Done.”

  “How did you know how to do that?”

  “Being locked up was good for a few things.” I dig through the freezer once I get it open. “Hamburger, pork loin, chicken.”

  “Could already be getting wormy,” she says.

  Just that word. I slam down the lid. I’d rather starve.

  We gorge ourselves on cheese and then walk the corridors. It’s like being inside a cave with the sound of rushing water and the whoosh of the blowing wind outside.

  She’s quiet. I know what’s coming. It’s a girl thing, the way they get when they want to talk about everything. They hit you with a million questions because they can’t stand not knowing.

  “River …”

  “What?”

  “You have to tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  She looks at me, exasperated. “What happened to you. Why you got thrown out of school. Why they locked you up. I know you want to get it out.”

  “What I went through for the past year was different than anything you know about.”

  “Does that change it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you’re torturing yourself.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I knew you before, River.”

  JILLIAN

  What is he thinking? Why did he freak out before?

  “River?”

  “What?”

  “At night, while you were sleeping …”

  “Yeah?”

  “There was so much lightning, the whole gym lit up.”

  “So?”

  I grab his arm. “I saw … your back. The scar.”

  He squeezes his eyes shut.

  “Did you get beaten up in prison? Is that where the scar is from?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Then how did you get it?”

  I hear a sharp intake of breath.

  “From Briggs.”

  “Wait, what? Briggs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He beat the shit out of me one day … no, actually, two.”

  My insides seize up. “Why?”

  But before he can answer there’s a series of explosions, like firecrackers going off in the stairwell.

  Another tree. It must have hit some electrical wires. We see it through one of the windows that miraculously is still unbroken. It’s an old tree, probably a hundred years old. It was yanked out by its roots, and it’s leaning against the back wall of the building. I don’t know how it didn’t knock the wall down.

  It looks like everything at ground level is airborne. Sacks of garbage, plastic recycling cans, giant grills, lawn chairs, flower pots, wicker chairs, all of it flying like we’re watching some crazy kids’ movie.

  It�
��s got to die down, but when? We go back to the first floor, wading our way through water a foot high. We end up in front of Briggs’s office again, I realize.

  “What happened?” I try the doorknob. It’s open now. River follows me in.

  “I tried to quit the team.” He goes to a shelf near the window and picks up the football on the floor. “That was what started everything.”

  “Why?”

  “It was sucking up my life.”

  “Why couldn’t you quit?”

  “Why? Because Briggs wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “But other players had left.”

  “Other players weren’t me,” he says, squeezing the football. “He saw something in me. He invested in me. He thoughts of me as …” He pauses, searching for the right word. “His prodigy or something. Like I was this nonentity who he turned into a star athlete. He really believed he made me. That I belonged to him, and if I wanted to leave I was a traitor. But he was right about something,” River says. “Without me, the team didn’t have a shot.”

  “Is that why he beat you up?” He looks up at me, then looks away. “You have to tell me. Now.”

  He leans up against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest.

  “Practice ended late,” he says, staring off, his voice in a monotone. “I was exhausted. It had to be ninety-five out and I was in a sweat, so I decided to shower. I thought everyone had gone home, but after I got into the shower room, I heard voices outside. I waited, not making a sound. Something didn’t sound right. Something about the tone of the voices. I was quiet. I didn’t turn on the water.

  “I leaned close to the wall and knew right away who it was. Ryan and Briggs. Ryan had screwed up that day. He must have been tired because he’d worked so many nights. His parents are divorced. He lives with his sick dad, and they’re broke because of the medical bills. Ryan has to basically support them by doing odd jobs whenever he has free time.”

  “What happened?”

  “Practice was lousy. He was out of it. It was like he wasn’t even there because he was so sleep deprived, so he screwed up and Briggs, as usual, took it personally.”

  I wait.

  “You can’t tell anyone this, you have to swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “Ryan’s gay. Not that I care, but Ryan does. He pretends to go out with girls, to like them, but it’s bullshit. At night he goes out, he sees different guys, but he doesn’t want anyone to know. If his dad found out, he’d go ape shit, so he refuses to come out.”

  “So?”

  “Briggs must have known, because he’s probably gay too, and he has a way of playing on everyone’s weakness to get what he wants out of them. So he’s always picking on Ryan, trying to provoke him.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Briggs started yelling at Ryan. He’d gone after him before, but never like this. He was calling him a fucking fairy and a useless faggot and that was just the beginning. I was standing there, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even for Briggs, it was over the top.”

  I hold my breath.

  River stops and shakes his head, as though he’s not sure if he wants to go on. Finally he exhales. “He started slamming Ryan against the locker. I heard the metal door shaking from the impact. Ryan was groaning, but he didn’t do anything, nothing. It was like he was too friggin’ scared to fight back even though Briggs was attacking him. Ryan could have stopped him, or at least tried, but he took it, like he was dead.”

  “That’s so awful.”

  “A minute later, Ryan started screaming, and that was it. I ran out of the shower room to go help him. Briggs had him down over the bench and he was ripping Ryan’s shirt off …”

  River stops, his face distorted as it all comes back to him again. Neither one of us says anything. I’m holding my stomach, feeling sick.

  “‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I screamed at Briggs. I threw myself at him, but he’s huge, like a wall of muscle, and he came at me, throwing me down. I was on the floor and he started kicking me. When I couldn’t get up, he stopped and looked at both of us.

  “‘Nothing happened,’ he said. ‘Anyone opens his mouth you’ll both lose your scholarships and get thrown out of school. I’ll ruin you for life.’ That was it. Then he walked out.”

  “What did Ryan do?”

  “He was on the floor sobbing and then he started vomiting, throwing his guts up. ‘We have to go to the cops,’ I kept saying. ‘He can’t get away with this.’ But Ryan refused.

  “‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘The scholarship is my only way out. If I lose that I have nothing.’ He begged me over and over to just forget it, at least for now. He said if it came out he’d kill himself.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I couldn’t do anything. He was my friend; I was caught. I felt sorry for him. I had to live with it, but the guilt nearly killed me. I felt like a liar and a traitor, but I had to keep quiet or it would have backfired on him. He got it worse than anyone, so I couldn’t say anything. I went home and threw my guts up too. The next day I decided I was quitting the team.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I wrote Briggs an email that night.”

  “And then what?”

  “I sent it that morning. I decided to put it in writing because coming face to face with him wouldn’t work. I took the time to get the wording right. I wanted out, only I didn’t say it that way. I knew somebody else might see it, so I said I couldn’t handle the demands of the team, and that after the upcoming game I was leaving. I knew that he demanded a hundred percent of us and I wasn’t able to give that anymore, so it was only fair to drop out so someone else could take my place.”

  River leans back against the windowsill. He rubs his eyes, and then stares out ahead of him, as if he’s reliving it.

  “I couldn’t tell from the way he acted at practice whether he had gotten the email. It felt weird because he didn’t treat me differently than the other guys. We warmed up, we went through some plays, and he acted the way he always did, even though he got pissed at Mark McClane at one point for running over to his backpack to check his phone, so he ripped it out of McClane’s hand and threw it across the field. It was the kind of stuff he always pulled, and it didn’t surprise any of us. You didn’t do things like that around Briggs. He had a hair-trigger temper, and he didn’t give two shits about breaking the phone you worked six months to pay for. He took it personally, like you were saying that the rest of your life was more important than being on the field, more important than him.”

  “Then what?”

  “After practice we all went back to the locker room to shower and get our stuff. The other guys were leaving, but Briggs looked at me and told me to wait.”

  “Where was Ryan?”

  “He didn’t come in that day. Briggs told him to stay home for a couple of days and get back to himself. A couple of days, can you imagine?

  “I was standing by my locker, waiting. Finally all the others guys walked out and we were alone. He walked over behind me and slammed my locker door closed. I turned around and we were face to face. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me. He didn’t say a word.

  “‘You got the email?’ I finally blurted out. Briggs just stared, not answering, which made me more nervous, so I started talking to fill the silence.

  “‘It’s just a personal thing,’ I said, feeling like I had to defend myself, even though he knew I could never be on the team after what he did to Ryan, and then how he went at me. And then Briggs moved in closer.

  “‘A personal thing?’ he said. I nodded. He said, ‘You don’t join a team and then abandon it.’

  “I said I was sorry. But for Briggs, saying sorry was bullshit.”

  RIVER

  I know I’m just telling the story to Jillian, but it comes back at me so
hard it’s like I’m reliving it.

  “You’re sorry?” Briggs had said, acting surprised. “What are you sorry for?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t sorry for anything. I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone. All I was sorry for was playing football and ever meeting him.

  Like an asshole, I said, “I want to write plays,” as if I had to give him an explanation. Before I knew what was happening, he turned me around and slammed me against the locker, pressing a baseball bat against the back of my neck.

  “You are not quitting the team,” he said through his gritted teeth. “Do you hear me? You are going to finish out the year and come back next year, and you are going to keep us in first place because that’s what you’re here for. That’s why you exist.” Those were his exact words. That’s why you exist.

  I winced from the impact, not knowing what to do. My first instinct was to fight him, to kill him, but something told me to freeze so he’d get off me.

  “Did you hear me?” he said.

  “I heard you,” I said. Then he threw me to the ground, took his belt off and hit me with it. I wasn’t wearing a shirt and the buckle slit my back open. I nearly blacked out.

  “Sir,” he said.

  Then before he left the locker room he said, “You will stay on the team and play better than you ever have in your life because if you don’t I will ruin you and your friend, Ryan. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t answer, and he swung his belt at me again.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  JILLIAN

  River stops. I don’t know if I can breathe.

  “Now you know where the scar came from,” he says. “I got twenty stitches at the emergency room. They asked me what happened … I said I got mugged and they told me to file a police report. I knew they suspected something, but I got out of there fast.”

  I want to say something, anything, to comfort him, to ease the pain, but I can’t. “Did you tell anyone?”

  He looks away before he answers, as if he’s going over it in his head. He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then he shakes his head.