Frannie and Tru (17 page)

Ever since that first band practice in the basement, a tension had been building. I'd been flattered by P.J.'s staring, and then I'd spent all this time avoiding him, to the point that I was sitting here. Alone. In a bathroom.

I just wanted something to happen. I wanted to kiss somebody.

More than that, I wanted—for once—to feel bold and unafraid.

Back at the campsite, I found Tru sitting on a log, alone. I was filled with Bud Light and resolve.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

He came to stand next to me and started ticking people off on his fingers. “Kylie, Rachel, and Jeremy went to look for a Windbreaker that Kylie left at the beach on the other side of the island—good luck with that. Pretty sure it's blown to Timbuktu. I think Winston is sleeping in the tent. Not a big drinker, that one. Couple of beers knocked him out. Kieran and Sparrow walked off that way somewhere to dispose of the empty cans, or so they said. Scandalous!”

He paused then, crossing his arms and cocking his head. “So let's see. Who am I missing?”

I stood there and would not answer.

“Oh, right,” he said. “Devon and P.J. Well, P.J. went back that way, to the car. His bag and some other stuff were still in the trunk,” Tru said, pointing west. “Devon went down the beach.” He pointed south.

Right then, all I wanted was for it to be over. I wanted to kiss P.J. and have it be done. I cleared my throat, but still sounded shrill and squeaky. “I should probably go to the car. I had a couple of things in there, too.”

I started to move in that direction. Tru's arm shot out and blocked me.

“
P.J.?
P.J., Frannie? I mean, c'mon.”

I stood there, behind his arm, unmoving. I said nothing.

“If I were you,” he said, “I'd go for Devon.”

I hoped the darkness hid my face. “Devon doesn't like me like that.”

But even as I said it, I knew that it wasn't true.

Maybe P.J. had been more obvious about it, especially in the beginning, but Devon had been flirting with me, too. I knew he had. And Devon . . . Devon was the one I liked.

So what the hell was wrong with me?

Why was I talking myself into running after someone I didn't even want? At the beginning of the summer, when I was at my lowest, I'd spent nights dreaming of my perfect imaginary boyfriend on the basketball team, but when real, live Devon arrived in my life, and
actually showed interest in me,
I was—what? Too scared to see it?

No, that wasn't quite it. Not scared but intimidated. Intimidated for so many different reasons. Because he was shorter than me, because he was cooler than me, because he was black. All of that caused some great mass of confusion that had been blocking out everything else—that he loved my band name, that he could command an entire stage, that every time I saw him I could barely keep myself from staring at his perfect face.

With P.J., it would have been easy. I knew how he felt and that he felt more than I did. There would have been so little at stake. If I backed out at the last minute, if I was a terrible kisser, it would have been embarrassing, but I would live.

With Devon, I knew it wouldn't be that easy. With Devon, I was putting myself on the line.

I covered my face with my hands and tried desperately to think. I was standing in the middle of an island, in the middle a windstorm, my arrogant ass of a cousin standing there and blocking my way, making things so much harder.

Because now there was only one person I could imagine running after.

Tru sighed loudly.

“Listen, it's up to you.”

He moved his arm and took a step back, hands raised in a posture of surrender.

I was angry, not at him exactly, but still, I glared at him because it gave me something to glare at. I kicked the dirt at my feet.

“You were really rude to me when I first told you about Jeremy. And now look at you two!”

I stomped off like an angry child. I stomped to the south. To the beach. To Devon.

The more quickly I moved, the easier it was not to think.

I jogged down the path, my flashlight glowing dimly. On both sides, I caught glimpses of people taking cover in struggling tents. Leaves conspired overhead with an eerie rustling. My old fear of the dark returned, and I hurried faster now, almost running, the beach coming into view, awash in moonlight.

I burst from the greenery onto the sand and ran right into Devon.

Bouncing off each other, the two of us laughed and made confused, overlapping apologies. He had dropped his flashlight, and
I stepped back, flaring mine around until we found it. He picked it up but didn't turn it on. I kept mine trained on the ground. Standing there in the shadow of the trees, it was too dark to see his face. Sand still blew hard against our skin, and it crept around my feet, too, as the ocean hissed in the distance, an inky blackness stretching on forever. We stood there together on the edge of the world.

I swallowed hard.

“I guess . . . Were you going back?”

Those were my words, but the tone in my voice said something else. It said
Don't go back, stay here, stay with me
,
and I knew in that moment that I had laid the truth before him.

He said nothing, just shifted his body toward me, closing the gap, three inches, two inches, one . . . The wind whipped around like it was wrapping us up, and now we were as close as two people could be without touching, so close that I went dizzy with closeness, my mouth so near to his I might have been breathing in the air he was breathing out. My mind flew back to biology class, thinking how this would make me a plant, a flower in the ground, just waiting for someone to come along and exhale. To feed my core. To give me life.

Breathe, little plant, breathe.

That was the very best moment, when his lips had not touched mine but I knew they would and all I could think was,
Oh!

Oh!

Oh!

First there was just the softness of his mouth crushing my breath, cutting me off from everything but this, everything but him. Then he dropped his flashlight, I dropped mine, and his tongue was moving in. It was like some desperate creature had invaded my body. I didn't like the feeling, it was so much wetter than I'd thought it would be, and weirder. I tried to move my own tongue but couldn't will it far enough to make it past his lips. Instead, I stayed locked in place, his tongue seeking, both our lips tussling. Fighting almost.

Movies and books and love songs had taught me that this would be different. I expected to be utterly lost in the moment, but it wasn't that way at all. I couldn't stop thinking about what he was thinking about. I had never been more conscious of my body, of myself. I wondered if he thought I was flat and scrawny,
and I wondered if he could tell I'd never done this. I wondered how many other girls he'd kissed, and I wondered if he'd ever kissed another white girl, and then I wondered if that was a terrible thing to think about.

I could feel myself tensing against the strangeness of it all, but then he moved one arm gently on my neck, and one arm around my waist, and he was pulling me closer, and this I liked. This felt romantic. I realized my arms were hanging limply at my sides, and so I moved them to mirror his, one on his neck and one around to his back. As I touched him, I fell in love with his cotton T-shirt, how incredibly thin it seemed. Just below that was his skin, and just below that were his ribs, caging and protecting his heart, his lungs.

Through it all, the wind did not relent.

His lips parted from mine, the two of us taking a moment to breathe. He touched my hair and seemed relaxed. That made me more nervous than ever. His arms loosened, releasing our embrace, and I felt some small relief, that there was air between us and I could remember myself, secure my footing.

Next to me, Devon sighed.

“P.J. is going to kill me.”

The words buzzed in the air around us, and right then, all I could think of was Tru. I wanted to find him and tell him that both these boys liked me, to say how amazing that seemed. He would have laughed in my face, I was sure, but still—even as Devon delicately took my hand, what I wanted was my cousin, my friend. I wanted him to hear the story of this kiss. I wanted to
relive this moment with him, this moment that wasn't even over.

Our flashlights were still at our feet, as we hid away in the darkness, but next to me, I could tell that Devon was shuffling his feet. Now he seemed nervous, too.

“I, uh . . . Pretend I didn't say that. I shouldn't have said that because I don't even know. I mean, we haven't actually talked about it, about you . . . I just kind of got a vibe that, you know . . . Yeah. I'm going to stop talking now.”

I laughed, pulling my hand from his to cover my face. He started to move toward me again, but then we heard Sparrow's voice, calling Devon's name through the trees.

“Ignore her,” he whispered, pulling me closer, and in that moment I forgot about everyone else except for him. Something started pulsing inside me—a second heart that was pounding, pounding, pounding, and part of me wanted us to fall down together in the sand. The other part of me was so terrified about what came next that I needed to be anywhere but here. I searched for my voice and felt my lips chapped and burning, abused.

“Maybe,” I whispered, “maybe we should go back? She's probably worried?”

I felt Devon pulling away from me, and for a second I thought he was mad or annoyed, but then he took another step back, toward a patch of moonlight. I could see that his mouth was open as he stared at something off in the distance.

He took my elbow softly and turned me around. “Frannie,” he said, “look.”

I turned toward the night-dark water, and there in front of the
ocean were horses. A herd of beautiful horses. Finally, we'd found them, and they didn't look real. They looked like mythic creatures, powerful but graceful, too, pawing at the ground, snapping their necks. They huffed against the wind, backs to the sea, hot coats pressed together. I tried to count them, but they blended together, legs meshing with legs to make a swarm.

“Wait here,” Devon said. “I have to get everybody. Wait here.”

I was so distracted by the kiss, the storm, the horses, that I said nothing, didn't even nod. But just as he was turning to leave, he paused, reached out, and placed his fingers on my arm. He said my name, and I turned toward him, hair flying in the breeze, still speechless.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asked.

His voice and his touch were gentle, and part of me wanted to say yes, but the other part of me just needed a little space. Time to recover.

“I'll stay here,” I told him.

Then he was gone and it was just me there on the beach, watching the horses with a fast heart. I looked up for the first time all night to see the sky, unobstructed by the endless grid of lights that mapped out the city. The stars were thick here, thicker than I could ever remember. I stood there, spun mad by the wind and almost wishing that no one would come, that I could just be alone.

I moved in slow steps toward the herd, and as I got closer, their figures became clear. They lost that edge of magic, looking earthy and strong. I counted seven of them.

When I was about twenty yards away, I sank down to sit and
watch. Two of them turned their heads toward me. I looked back, but nothing seemed to pass between us. I didn't even know if they saw me.

Time moved strangely, quietly. After some undetermined minutes, I heard a soft noise. Sparrow and Kieran were settling into the sand at my right, and in the moonlight I could see that their fingers were lightly entwined. Behind them, Kylie and Rachel were kneeling down to watch, too, and next to them, Devon and P.J. Together we whispered and pointed, shielding our eyes from the flying sand with hands and hoodies, talking about how beautiful the horses were. For a while we just sat there in silence.

Eventually Tru and Jeremy appeared, walking over very slowly from somewhere down the beach. When they reached us, they didn't sit. They were inches from each other but didn't touch, didn't hold hands, even though all of us knew, even though none of us cared.

Seeing them together, a pair of shadows, the tension between them palpable, I understood, just a little more deeply, how lonely it would be to live like that.

Next to me, Devon was sitting cross-legged like a child in class. I looked at him and smiled. Just when I was starting to feel perfect and relaxed and wonderful, we heard the sound of the bullhorn, the rangers coming through. We jumped up, some of us still clinging to beers and cigarettes, and we agreed to go back separate ways.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and was surprised to see that it was Tru.

“I've got Frannie.”

And so it was just the two of us. Together again. He led us away from everyone, away from the horses, away from the path back to camp, just taking me down the beach into darkness. Into nowhere.

“So,” he said, “what happened?”

Embarrassed, I remembered storming away from him.

“I . . . I kissed Devon.”

“
You
kissed
him
?”

He sounded proud, and I almost didn't correct him.

“Okay,” I said after a few beats. “He kissed me.”

He chuckled at that as we kept walking.

“Why does he like me?” I asked.

“You're having a confidence crisis now? You just made out with him!”

“I know, but . . . I don't understand why he likes me.”

We kept walking, Tru looking out toward the water.

“Look, this isn't meant to be harsh, just honest. But, yeah, on the surface he might seem a little out of your league. I mean, I attribute that to his age and confidence, so don't get all bent out of shape about it. But so what? He likes you. You're tall and thin and have lots of shiny red hair. I'm sure you know on some level how appealing that is. Plus none of these kids really know you. Quiet equals mysterious. Or something.”

I tried to digest all that, but it was too much. I didn't want to think about any of it right now. Besides, I wanted to know about Tru.

“So,” I said, “are you going to tell me what happened with you?”

He stopped dead in his tracks.

“I just realized something, Frannie. It's not the red hair. It's the science thing. He's one of these weird guys who wants to date his mother.”

He tried not to laugh, failed completely, and I started punching him hard in the shoulder with both fists. I pounded and pounded, squealing angrily at him until he danced away, crying out that he was joking.

“Now you
have
to tell me what happened with you,” I demanded. “You owe me.”

He ambled along, staring straight up at the stars, hands in his pockets, making me wait a bit before he answered.

“I kissed him.” He said it nonchalantly, never breaking stride.

We walked for a while in silence, but then the wind kicked up a fierce howl, forcing us to stop. Tru leaned into the gale, shirt, shorts, and hair whipping behind him. I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and waited for it to subside, to tame back down to the standard madness of the day. When it did, we kept going.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Well, Frannie, I don't know. I don't think that we can hope for much else tonight. This is not exactly a night for romance. More like the scene of a disaster movie.”

Then he stopped and looked at me. “Do you feel like running? I feel like running.”

On one side, the ocean crashed. On the other, the wind in the
trees made a papery music. Before us, the beach was a long, lustrous stretch of black.

“Yes.” I said. “Devil take the hindmost.”

And so we ran, fast and hard, sand kicking everywhere. We ran until my lungs burned and my legs ached. We ran from nothing. We ran for our lives.