Going Underground (12 page)

I think I'm smiling, and I'm pretty sure it's real and not just a cover for feeling weird and uncomfortable. “I didn't get into music heavy until I was fourteen, when I got in trouble. When all the bad stuff in my life happened.”

That stuff I'm still not explaining.
The smile starts feeling stiff on my lips.

But Livia doesn't react like I'm thinking she should. She scrolls through my mega-gig iPod menu and says, “You're kidding. You collected all this stuff in three years?”

“Marvin's gifted me a lot of songs and my parents give me music credits for my birthday and Christmas. I thought music was fun but no big thing until I really needed it to calm down my thoughts.”

“I wish it would work for me like it does for you,” Livia says. “Sometimes I want to shut everything off, but sometimes I want to let all my feelings out, too, you know? And they just won't come.”

“I had to go through hundreds of songs before I found the ones that started speaking to me the way I wanted them to. Kinda had to match my mood and stuff.”

She doesn't look any more hopeful that music might work for her, so I try again. “What's your strongest feeling right now?”

Livia stares at me with her dark fairy eyes, and her face is so close to mine I think I can feel the heat coming off her skin, and I have to keep saying stuff to myself over and over again,
Not now
,
it's not right, it's not fair
. When that slips in my head a little, I try,
She's in mourning for her sister. She's sorting things out. Don't be a dick and try to kiss her
.

Her voice is nothing but a whisper when she says, “Sad.” She blinks. Tears slip down her cheeks, and something burns in my gut when I see them. Her fists clench in her lap, and she starts to shake. “Pissed. God! I can't tell which one I feel more. Sometimes I think I'm going completely insane.”

Keep hands to yourself. Keep hands to yourself. Keep hands to yourself.

I know I need to do something, offer her some kind of comfort that's not pervy or bad or wrong, so I cue up one of my shorter mixes:

“I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You”—Alan Parsons Project

“Bird on a Wire”—Leonard Cohen

“Losing Faith”—Audrey Auld

“Ohio”—Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“Broken and Ugly”—Beth Hart

“The Ocean”—The Bravery

“Streets of Philadelphia”—the Bettye LaVette version

“I'll Follow You into the Dark”—Death Cab for Cutie

Livia takes the iPod from me and looks at the mix. “I've never heard of most of these.”

“Old and new—some covers.” I wait for her to put in an earbud and hope the expression on my face is supportive instead of worried that she'll think the songs are lame.

Livia puts in the second bud, closes her eyes and listens. After a few minutes, she leans into me, and I slip my arm around her and just hold her.

“This is working,” she says after a while. Then, “This is nice.”

How can I argue with that?

I drift away with her, imagining each word in each song. I'm not even paying attention when she turns toward me, but I definitely notice when she kisses me for the first time.

I notice everything from the minty taste on her lips to how soft they are, and the way the music vibrates on her cheeks and mine, even though I can't totally hear it. She's breathing and I'm breathing, and it's so right now, and so real.

Livia.

I touch her hair.

Livia.

Softer than feathers. Softer than air.

I don't ever want her to stop. I don't ever want the kiss to stop.

More than anything, I don't ever want us to stop.

Three Years Ago: Vanishing

The man who drove Marvin and me to the police station was Detective Henning. He wasn't wearing a uniform, just jeans and a white shirt. He looked like he was about as old as my dad, same color hair but less of it, and he probably works out. A lot.

The place where he brought us, it doesn't look like police stations on television, and I'm in a holding cell, and Mom's right outside, and I feel like something heavy's standing on my chest.

One of Marvin's favorite songs keeps running through my head. “Bank Job” by Barenaked Ladies. It's about a bunch of guys who try to rob a bank but screw everything up because when they get there, the bank lobby's all full of nuns, and they can't make themselves pull guns on nuns.

That would be my luck.

But, I'd never rob a bank even without nuns, or do anything even close to robbing a bank, so why is this happening to me? What did I do?

Mom's sitting outside the bars in a folding chair one of the detectives found for her. There's nothing in the cell but a desk and the folding chair—and us.

I don't like the bars. They look too big. Too thick. Too forever. I'm being stupid, yeah, but I
really
don't like the bars, or being inside them. I never thought about how that would feel, because I never planned to be in jail or worried about doing something and going to jail, but here I am, and here are the bars.

The cell smells like piss and bleach and pine cleanser. It's enough to make my eyes water, but that's not why my eyes are watering. I'm sitting on the cell's cot, huddling against the bars, where I can hold Mom's hand, and the metal feels cold on my face and shoulder.

Every few minutes, Mom checks to see what's happening.

Stupid, and a big, big baby.

Holding Mom's hand definitely makes me feel like a dork, but I try to convince myself I'm doing it more for her than for me.

“Marvin didn't steal any cookies,” I tell her, not sure what else to say, but talking helps me breathe a little better. “And we didn't try to leave the gym, or get in any fights—nothing. We were just talking.”

Mom squeezes my hand. “Whatever it is, we'll get it sorted out.”

She sounds confident, but the corners of her eyes are wet like mine, and her jawline looks way tight, like it does when she's about to ask my father if they can “go somewhere private to discuss this.”

I wish I had Marvin's iPod. I wish I had an iPod of my own. I could pick out some music and share the earbuds with Mom, and maybe we could both stay calm.

“How's that parrot?” I ask Mom, still fishing for something to talk about.

Her look of surprise would make a funny poster, but she says, “Lonely, I think. When you're not there, the bird sort of droops, you know?”

The bars pinch against my skin, and I wonder if the parrot likes the bars on its cage any better.

Probably not.

“When I get home, I'll try to take it out some.”

Mom blinks at me like she's not really sure I said that. I could make a few more posters from her face. She doesn't answer me. Maybe she's afraid if she says anything, I'll take back my offer to be nice to the bird.

A little while later, Mom goes out to check on things, then comes back in to tell me, “They're through with Cory, but she and her parents are waiting until after the officers have questioned you.”

She sits down and grabs my hand, and I let her squeeze my fingers, but I really want to scream,
Why am I having to sit in a cell? Why is nobody else in a cell? Why did that man in charge of the detectives pick me out
?

Mom can't answer any of those questions. You'd think I'd be able to answer them, that if I'm sitting in a jail cell, I'd have a clue what illegal awful thing I did. Can somebody go to jail and never know why? Is that possible?

I notice my breathing is shallow, so I cough to make myself stop.

“Denise is here for Marvin, but I left your dad out there to keep her calm,” Mom adds.

“That's good.” Marvin's mom has a major temper if she thinks somebody's bothering Marvin. This situation would qualify. Definitely.

A little later, Mom goes out and in again. This time when she sits down, she says, “The officers won't let us talk about it, but I heard one of the detectives tell a social worker that the coaches called, that it was ‘mandatory reporting.' Do you know what that means?”

Should I be feeling even more dread now?
Mandatory reporting
sounds like something nasty and awful. “No. Am I supposed to know?”

Mom shakes her head, runs her hand across her chin, then faces me, talking very, very calmly, like Dad does when he's trying to calm down an animal. “If an adult thinks a child has been abused or hurt, or is at risk of being abused or hurt, that adult has a legal obligation to call the police or human services—to be sure the child's protected.”

And all I can think is,
What does that have to do with cookies?
And,
I really should have been nicer to that parrot, because it sucks to be in a cage and not know when you're getting out
.

Mom's expression turns terrified, but she's trying to control it. “Del, have you been hurt by anyone?”

“No, ma'am.”
I'll be nicer to the parrot, God, I promise. Please. I didn't know about the cage thing
. I need to stop blinking and half crying, or Mom won't believe what I'm saying. “Nobody's done anything to me, I promise. I would have told you.”

Mom relaxes, then gets tense all over again. “Has Cory been hurt? Any of your friends?”

“No.” The “Bank Job” song's going off in my brain again, louder this time, and I keep seeing nuns in a bank with their hands up, and a bunch of guys with ski masks and guns just standing there with their mouths open. Maybe one of them should have a parrot on his shoulder. “Not that I know of.”

Mom settles into her chair and rubs the back of my fingers. “What were you talking about before the police came?”

“Nothing. We were all asleep.” The bars make me want to bang my head against them until they bend.
I'm sorry, parrot
.

Out Mom goes, and when she comes back in, it's, “They let Marvin go home. He's okay. Your dad's staying with Cory and her folks for now because Cory's upset.”

My breath comes out fast, but easier now. Good. Marvin's gone home. Good. I didn't lie to him about everything being okay. Good. Good.

But Cory—I wish I could see her.

Maybe I'll get questioned soon, and we can leave, and I'll see Cory and talk to Marvin, and everything really will be okay.

Keep breathing.

Yeah, that's it.

Breathing in and out.

I'll be out.

I'll be out of the bars. I'll be home. And I'll go play with that parrot.

Nothing needs to live in a cell.

If I Ever Tried to Pull a Bank Job, There Would Be Nuns

(“I Wish It Would Rain Down”—Phil Collins. Not really on the rain part, because it makes graves messy, but the song is great.)

“You've got a
what
?” Marvin slams shut the copy of
War and Peace
he's been trying to read just to be able to tell everybody he did it. He drops the brick-sized book in the dirt.

The graveyard's cool and quiet except for the sudden rasp of his breathing and the music pumping into my left ear from the single earbud I left in place. Before Phil Collins can sing to me about why he wishes it would rain, Marvin gets in my face beside a half-dug grave and yanks the bud out of my ear. “A
date
? What the hell? Is she your girlfriend now? Are you actually stupid enough to have a girlfriend?”

I drop my shovel into the grave so it doesn't get used as a weapon. “We haven't really talked about that part.”

She just kissed me, and I kissed her, and she's been back every night this week, and we keep kissing.

Thinking about touching her makes me feel hot inside and out. Thinking about touching her makes me stop thinking about everything else in the universe. My body feels alive and … right. Like it's working. Like I want it to work even though I know I shouldn't let it, not with my history, not with everything hanging over my head.

I'm not some sex maniac, Kaison, you dickhead from hell.

Am I?

It's one thing, wanting a knockout girl just because she's pretty—that's normal. It happens to all guys. It happens to me. But it's another thing to let myself actually want a specific girl, a real human being flesh-and-blood girl, not some fantasy or memory. Everything feels stronger and more powerful, and I could almost get drunk from the sensations.

I'm not a freak. I'm not
.

“I'm allowed to have a girlfriend.” I try to sound confident to Marvin, but I'm probably sucking at that. “She's seventeen. I'm seventeen. It'll—”

“Don't!” Marvin's yelling and his cheeks go crimson. “Don't friggin' tell me it'll be okay.”

For a split second, I see him skinnier and smaller and crying at Good-bye Night. It wasn't okay then. How can I tell him anything'll be okay now? I consider another few weak, stupid phrases like,
it just happened
, and
she came after me
—but Marvin's red in the face and snorting like a horse when he turns his back on me and scrubs his hand through his hair.

I'm shaking inside and probably red in the face, too, and all of a sudden I don't feel so strong or alive. I don't feel any sense of excitement about Livia or anything else. I don't know if I'm pissed or scared or both.

“Are you sure she's seventeen?” he asks, blowing out more air. It rises like fog in the cool air.

“Yes.” I cram my hands in my pockets so I don't start making fists at my best friend.

“Did you see her license?”

“No. But I believe her.”

“You're a total idiot.” He turns. Looks at me. I'm glad he's a few yards off now, because he's so red he's nuclear. “This is it. You're screwed. You're going to get busted again, somehow, someway, for something. Aren't you even scared of that?”

My fingers dig into my pockets and my legs, and my face gets as hot as his looks. “Yes.”

He waits. I can tell he's trying to calm down, keep himself together. Then, “Have you told her?”

“Yes. No.” I kick some dirt. “Sort of.”

Marvin shakes his head. “You're an asshole, man.”

“Yeah.” I don't shrug, which is some kind of miracle. “I'm telling you about her. I thought if I did, I'd get the guts to talk to her about my past.”

It's not like I haven't tried. It's not like it's easy
.

The red fades out of Marvin's face, and he's looking sad and worried instead of mad. “I'm not going through all this crap again, Del. Not for you, not for anybody.”

“I don't blame you.” I try to sound calm, but
mad
probably sums me up. I'm just not sure who I'm pissed at. “I don't want you to go through anything. I thought you and Lee Ann—that you were ready, too.”

“I am ready. I've been ready.” Marvin throws up both hands, like he's pleading to me or God even though neither of us is listening. “Don't you get it? I'm not taking the chance. When I'm legally an adult, and she's legally an adult, and nobody has the right to say anything to us about anything—that's the right time. Not now.”

Yeah, I know the rules. They aren't my rules, but I'm breaking them. I look past him, into the nearby woods. The trees look empty and scraggly without their leaves. “I thought I couldn't care about anybody again, you know? Livia's making stuff different. It's not all bad.”

This takes Marvin a few seconds to process. He walks toward me a few steps, then stops and shakes his head. “You mean—you thought you couldn't be interested? Like
that
? In sex? Why? Your parts aren't broken or defective or anything.”

I can't stop looking at the trees. “Seemed like they were, except here and there—you know, wet dreams and everyday stuff. I stay away from magazines and movies, I'm not allowed on porn sites, I listen to music, I work hard, and that keeps everything under control. It was enough. Until I met her.”

He breathes for half a minute, then tries, “Un-meet her.”

“I can't do that. I don't want to.”

“Then you're stupid.” He sighs. Messes up his hair again. “Man, I saw how you were with her, how you look at her and stuff, but I thought you had yourself under control. Do your parents know? Does Branson know?”

“Sort of.”

He glances at me, more joking than glaring. “Like she sort of knows about your past?”

My face twitches. My whole body twitches. I look all the way away from him, at the gray fall sky and the few gray clouds gathering over the graveyard.

“I'm sorry,” Marvin mutters, and when I do look at him again, I can tell he wants to go back to being easy, but he's not quite getting there, and I don't think I've ever seen that happen before.

It makes me go cold inside. “You're right about everything. I've got to talk to Livia. I keep trying, and either I clam up or she stops me. It's like she doesn't want to know any more than I want to tell her.”

He gazes at me straight on, eyes a little wide. “Sooo, she likes you. As in, really likes you.”

“I don't know.” I stare at the woods a little longer. “I guess so, yeah. But that could change when she finds out everything about me.”

Some of Marvin's easiness comes back, sliding over his features like paint on a canvas—or like a mask of who-cares pulled on top of an I-care-about-everything-too-much face. I see him younger again, all about food and sports and music, then crying and scared to death.

I'm not that guy anymore.

He told me that not too long ago. I didn't really listen.

The chill inside me chases away all the heat in my face as I wonder who Marvin is now—and, selfishly, where that leaves me.

“Maybe it won't change.” Marvin sounds sort of hopeful. “But you should find out. Like, yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“Soon as the moment's right. Promise?”

The shrug comes because I can't stop it, but I say, “I swear.”

The rest of the day, I try to talk myself into having a more serious conversation with Livia, and I try to talk myself out of thinking about what it feels like to kiss her.

Her lips taste like mint from toothpaste or gum, or sometimes like cherries or grapes from her lip gloss. She's soft when I hold her, with curves where my hands rest, and when I touch her I think stupid caveman things like,
mine
and
totally mine
—oh yeah, and
all mine
.

Five seconds, and my whole body's humming. I go half-man, half-machine, and my thoughts go straight to touching her more, to how far I want to go, how far she might want to go, and damn, I start to hurt. No amount of music or hard work will fix this. My body's a beast. A beast that's been held back too long.

But she's
not
mine. Not really. I know that. Livia's not even a little bit mine, but guy brain seems to think by itself whenever I get around her.

“You're a thousand miles in the clouds today.” Harper pushes half a peanut-butter sandwich across his junk-cluttered counter, knocking me out of my Livia daydream.

I take the sandwich and help myself to a big bite. Apple jelly. My favorite. Food's a sucky substitute for sex, but it'll have to do.

“That girl's been coming around. I've seen you with her.” Harper raises both hands when he sees my expression. “No, no, don't go worrying I'm gonna say you can't see her here. I know you ain't got nowhere else to have a life. Hell, I'm the one who told you to find out her name.”

“Livia,” I try to say around the peanut butter in case he doesn't remember. It comes out sounding like
liver
.

“Fred,” Fred corrects from her travel cage on Harper's counter. She's glaring from me to my sandwich, so I slide her a little bit of crust. She picks it up with her delicate little toes and eats it.

Harper clears his throat. “Yeah. Livia. Whatever. You just—you know how to keep your nose clean, right?”

“It's not against the rules for me to have a girlfriend. I need to see her identification to make sure she's really seventeen, though.”

“That'd be hard, carding a chick just to be sure it's legal to kiss her.”

I don't like him calling Livia a chick or mentioning kissing her. Guy brain. I might as well beat my chest like Tarzan and go swinging through the trees. Probably bust my face on some big pine branch. This is crazy.

Harper's looking squirmy, and before I know it, he pops out with, “And you know about rubbers, I'm guessing. If you need money for some, I can front you some of your paycheck.”

Oh God. I literally choke trying to swallow the peanut butter, coughing twice; Fred coughs three times for good measure, then says, “Excuse me!”

“It's not like that,” I tell Harper when I can breathe again.

But it is.

No, it's not.

Christ, hold on, hold on, don't lose it.

I take a long, slow breath, trying to wheeze all the tension out of my body.

It's like that, but I won't let it go where it's not supposed to go, because I'm not some depraved sex maniac. Take that, Kaison, wherever you are. Asshole.

“Thanks,” I add as my mind settles down enough to realize Harper was trying to help.

Harper gets himself a beer, sees me looking at it, and frowns. “Something else on your mind?”

Way to stay calm and guard your expression. Good job, Del
.

But he did ask, so I take the opening. “You doing okay? Physically, I mean?” I point to the beer. “It's none of my business how much you drink, but I've been worrying maybe it was making you a little sick.”

“It does.” He shrugs like I always do, then drinks. “I used to go to AA. Probably should go back.”

He doesn't say anything else, but his expression does.
Butt out, Del
. I butt out.

“Thanks for the sandwich, Harper.”

“You bought the peanut butter.”

“Fred,” Fred says, and I take her out of Harper's kitchen and head off to work.

“I never thought graveyards could be so peaceful,” Livia says. She's stretched out on a quilt with her bare feet in my lap, and the setting sun paints the fall sky gold and red and purple. I rub her toes so they stay warm, and because she seems to love having her feet rubbed.

Del Hartwick, full-service gravedigger.

Every time I run my fingers along her skin, it feels electric. Supercharged. I think about stretching out on top of her, kissing her deep, then deeper, and finding out how far we want to take this.

Can't.

Yes, I could.

Won't.

It's hard.

I'm not a freak. I won't be a freak.

“I did college applications today,” she says, staring at the sunset, her arms folded under her head. “I hate that. I mean, I want to go to college, but I just don't know if I want to go the day after high school. What are you going to do?”

“Probably work awhile.” Was that a lie? Definitely an omission. I hold her right foot carefully in my hands and get a second's worth of relief as all the desire drains out of me. “Look, the truth is, I probably can't go anytime soon. My folks don't have a lot of money left for college, and I can't get scholarships, and most colleges probably won't take me because of that trouble I got in.”

She tenses so fast, so much I literally feel it in her toes. Her dark eyes meet mine for a second. “That doesn't seem fair.”

“Livia—”

She wiggles her foot to interrupt me, then goes back to staring at the sky. “I should take my applications more seriously. They're my way out of this town, out of life with my parents. I've always thought I wanted to study art or creative writing. That's probably stupid, though.”

“Nothing about you is stupid.”

“I don't know. I kind of suck at geometry, even when my mom helps me with the problems.”

From the corner of the blanket, in her travel cage wrapped around the bottom with a small blanket to block the breeze, Fred starts whistling a tune. It's soft, hard to make out, but I think it might be “America the Beautiful.”

I start rubbing Livia's feet again, noticing how delicate her ankles are, and how fast my body gets tight all over again, wanting more. Needing more. Stuff I can't have. Stuff I probably shouldn't even want, but I really, really do.