Don't Touch (36 page)

“What?”

“Just hold out your hands.”

Ophelia's gloves have to go, fast, before I can think about it. I whip them off—all strip, no tease—toss them over my shoulder. They make barely a sound as they hit the flat behind me and drop down, a sigh.

I let my hands float over Peter's.

When I touched him earlier today, it was on impulse. This is a choice.

“You don't have to do this if you don't want to,” he says.

I shake my head. “I do have to, for me. I need to.”

We're as jumpy as if we were playing the hand-slapping game; the potential energy sizzles and sparks between us.

I lower my hands, touch my palms to Peter's, and the warmth of his touch rushes up, up my arms to my heart, to my cheeks, to the back of my neck, flooding me, but my nerves still have me shaking.

Closing my eyes makes the moment a little less real, but it still feels like falling. Any second, I'll break, fly apart, but I keep my hands pressed against his. I'm still breathing, so what's the point of this tension and fear? “What's the point?” I whisper out loud.

“We're friends,” Peter says, and he sounds so concerned. “We don't have to be more than that. I'm happy to have you here being my friend.”

“I don't mean what's the point of us . . . I mean what's the point of being scared?”

There's no sense in looking for the end. Endings are simple. Beginnings are hard.

Peter's eyes hold me up, pull me in close, and make me forget to hold tight. I lift my hand to his cheek, feel the tickle of stubble at his jaw, and he exhales sharply. His breath plays at my wrist, and that pulls me closer. Peter wraps his hands around the back of my ribs, not to pull, but to keep me from losing my balance.

I don't fall into Peter. I leap. Our lips touch and they touch and keep touching, as if kissing is how we breathe now. People talk about “coming up for air,” and I always thought kissing would feel like that, like a struggle to breathe. But that's wrong. I've been holding my breath for months. Kissing Peter is breathing.

When it's finally enough, not forever and ever, but for this one moment, we are silent and still in the dark for a long time. We float there.

“Hey,” Peter says, in a whisper. “The world didn't end.”

“No,” I say. “No, it didn't.”

When Peter and I finally emerge, the theater is empty. We hold hands and walk side by side up the red-carpet aisle, and with the crowds gone, the theater feels like it always has—like a sacred place where people come to tell stories and ask questions.

While we were kissing, all the people spilled into the lobby to drink punch and eat pastries.

When we join them, the crowd applauds, and Mandy claps her hands together so fast I'm afraid she'll catch fire. She runs up to us. “It's official. We're going to Bard!” She hugs us both and then takes us each by an arm and shakes us, making an adoring growl.

Peter asks how badly damaged Drew's ego is, and I leave them to join Mom and Jordan by the punch bowl. Jordan's eyes are still red but angry, too. “You going to be okay?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Probably not.”

“We're here for Caddie,” Mom says. “Let's not forget that.”

“You were good in your play,” Jordan says.

“It's all right to be sad,” I say. “I was sad.”

“I feel so stupid for thinking he was coming,” Jordan says, shredding his napkin to pieces.

I reach out and ruffle his hair, and he actually cringes from the surprise of it. “Don't say that. You're not stupid,” I say. My touch isn't magic. It doesn't make it all better, but Jordan sets his lips into a tight line that's almost a smile.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Congratulations on the Mountain Bard Festival,” Mom says. “Maybe Dad can come see that,” but I shake my head.

She starts to apologize for him again, but I tell her to stop. Part of what hurt so bad when he left were all the excuses I made for him, the belief I had in him, the expectation that under the right circumstances, he would be different, better. But he won't ever be different.

Whether or not I forgive him, I have to accept that.

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Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

—OPHELIA, HAMLET (IV.V.37)

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.

—HAMLET'S LETTER TO OPHELIA, HAMLET (II.II.125-28)

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Being with Peter is easy. Easier than not being with Peter ever was.

Mom and Jordan continue to love him. The Sunday after
Hamlet
, he went with me to Mom's show at the Goblet. We held hands by the punch bowl. He introduced himself to Mom's friends as my boyfriend. Mom beamed at us all night, and when Peter said her work reminded him of Sally Mann's, she cried.

I met Peter's mom and stepdad. His mom was polite but shy. His stepdad was a joker, more like a big kid than a dad. They let us go down to the basement where Peter lives without even a warning to behave ourselves. That first day it was raining, and Peter's room needs a sump pump to keep it from flooding. We lay on his bed and listened to the spatter of the rain, the hiss and gurgle of the pump, and pretended we were kissing underwater.

We spend lots of time together, but not too much. I need time with Mandy and Livia, and if Peter spends too much time with me, Drew gets grouchy. Sometimes we go out as one big group. We've even tried hanging out as a foursome with Mandy and Drew. They make fun of each other nonstop, and sometimes that gets ugly, but mostly they're friends.

In a month, in a year, we might fight, we might lose what we've found. An infinity of bad possibilities hang in the balance, waiting to hurt us. But not tonight.

Tonight, we dance.

It's our one night at Bard, the night of the party, and the music's already going when we get there. The room is so dark, it's impossible to make out faces more than a few feet ahead. Lights with pink and purple gels catch people from the side, making them glow but distorting them too. Way off in the distance a band plays on a raised platform, lit by lights that change color and spin. Disco balls send silver haloes dancing around the walls.

I like being able to step into this flood of swirling bodies, not minding if one or two of them brush against me. The music is its own kind of flood, sucking us in at the door, while the dark promises there won't be consequences for anything that happens in this space. That's a lie, but a nice one.

“All right, ladies,” Hank says. “Who wants to dance?”

Livia smiles and holds out her hand. He tugs it so she spins into him, her green skirt flaring. When she hits his chest, he dips her with all the brooding swagger of a black-and-white movie star. It's hard to tell how much is from the lights, and how much is from Hank, but Livia's cheeks are flushed, her smile silly.

He starts up a swing step and leads her deeper into the churning dancers.

April turns to Drew—Nadia brought her along to reward her assistance—and says, “Don't let the gay boy show you up. Dance with me.”

“She doesn't waste any time,” Mandy mutters to me, and I nod.

Drew looks intimidated but willing. April yanks him, and he stumbles, bumping into a couple of kids from another school. “Sorry, so sorry,” he says. “Forced dancing happening here.”

He allows April to drag him after Hank and Livia, shooting one last desperate look at us.

Mandy turns in a sulky circle. “I don't see any cute, straight boys,” she says.

“Thanks,” says Oscar.

She sticks out her chin. “I will dance with you if you promise that your hands will stay at ten and two.” She indicates her shoulder and her hand.

Oscar bobs his head up and down with great enthusiasm. “Promise.” He takes Mandy's hand and follows her as she weaves her way through spinning bodies.

“We've been abandoned,” I say to Peter. “Should we dance?”

“Not unless you want your toes to get flattened.”

“I'll risk it.”

“Look who's brave.” Peter holds out his hand.

We walk past the pocket of light at the entrance and slip into the swimmy darkness, scoop out a space where we can slow dance even though the music's fast.

The urge to say something tickles my tongue, the same way the energy between us tickles my skin, telling me to pull him close. “I feel so good here with you. I didn't know I could feel like this,” I say, and we kiss.

“I didn't either,” Peter says, close to my ear. “You were right. I was afraid, a little bit, of falling for you.” He meets my eyes. “I thought . . . I don't know what I thought. Now it seems silly.” He winds his hand in my hair.

This morning, after the short drive from Birmingham, we did Mandy's scene on a spindly stage in a rehearsal room. It wasn't as grand as I'd imagined, performing at Bard, but we transformed that stage into Denmark. The scene was for Mandy, and Drew committed himself to every second. He scared me a little. Peter and I did the scene as directed, no touch, but there was so much fire between us, a fleet of twirlers tossing sparkler batons marched between our lips. The audience gave us a standing ovation.

After that, we did a series of scenes on the Festival stage, including “Get thee to a nunnery,” and that was almost too grand, overwhelming. The heat from a hundred stage lights spilled down on us, blinded us, so we could barely make out the box seats and balcony. Past the light, hundreds of judging eyes waited to swallow us up, but we focused on each other, and we must have done well, because at the banquet they gave out awards, and we won more than once. We all sat at long tables. Peter played with my hand while they called out the names. They called his name twice and Mandy's and mine at one point, too. Mandy had to get up to take a trophy. Peter stood and brought one back for all of us and a scholarship certificate for himself. I didn't have to stand up, but Nadia reached across the table when they called my name and squeezed my hand.

In the downtime between our performance and the banquet, Peter and I watched another school do some scenes from
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
We laughed at the fairies' costumes, but they were supposed to be funny, so that was okay. Peter played with my fingers while the lovers fought. We kissed a lot there in the dark. We were supposed to be learning by watching other schools perform. I learned that Peter has a scar on the scoop of skin between his finger and his thumb, that his fingers twitch when someone yells onstage, that the skin on the inside of his wrist is as soft and as warm as his lips.

I like touching him there.

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TK

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PHOTO BY EVAN HANOVER

RACHEL M. WILSON
is a graduate of Northwestern University and received her MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from Alabama, she now lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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Hi, friend.

I love you for reading Caddie's story.
Don't Touch
is Caddie's story, not my own, but it did have its spark in experience.

I wrote this book for anyone who's felt the kind of fear that keeps us from pursuing what we love or that separates us from other people. Most of us feel that at some point, right? But for readers who might be dealing with an anxiety disorder or other mental illness, there are a few more words I'd like to share.

Here goes . . .

My own fun OCD symptoms started at age ten. My parents saw the raw skin on my hands and took me to the doctor. I didn't want attention on my problems and did
not
want to talk about them, so I hid my symptoms for four more years.

By eighth grade, my inner landscape was a minefield, every thought dangerous. I feared that I was going crazy, that I might completely lose myself. I don't remember telling my parents this. I remember locking myself in a bathroom, knowing it would scare them. That was the only way I knew how to ask for help, but it worked.

And when I finally did get help, things changed for the better—quickly. I don't want to suggest that everything got better all at once. I needed medicine, and it took a while to find the right one. Even after my symptoms went away, fear and shame lingered. It took me years to feel okay about what had happened in my brain. This brain that allowed me to write a novel—that lets me teach and perform and fall in love and consume too much reality TV—has a few quirks. That's part of me.