Innocence

Published by

D
REAMSPINNER
P
RESS

5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886  USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Innocence

© 2015 Suki Fleet.

Cover Art

© 2015 DWS Photography.

[email protected]

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

ISBN: 978-1-63216-560-2

Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-561-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014956614

First Edition March 2015

Printed in the United States of America

This paper meets the requirements of

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

answerphone — A telephone answering machine.

arsehole — Asshole.

bin bag — A garbage bag.

boot — The trunk of a car.

car park — Parking lot.

carrier bag — A large paper or plastic bag for carrying shopping.

cutting — A trench-like excavation.

e — Nickname for the drug ecstasy.

exhaust — The muffler on a car.

high-dependency ward — For hospital patients requiring a high level of medical treatment and supervision, but not ill enough for the ICU.

jumper — A sweater.

knackered — Tired, exhausted.

PC — (abbreviation) Police Constable.

pissing it down — Raining heavily.

rubbish — Trash.

St. Clare — Surname, pronounced “Sinclair.”

takeaway — Takeout.

J
UST
BEYOND
the bend in the river, there is a small, bare-ribbed boat tethered so deep in the undergrowth you can’t see it from the towpath. It’s just a rowing boat, the forgotten kind of boat that belongs to no one and rots neglected summer to summer, full of last autumn’s slimy black leaves and the earthy stench of decay. Sometimes when the water’s high, it floats listlessly out into the river, drifting with the current, tugging against the tether, which never lets it go.

One day I’m going to set it free, cut it loose. Maybe I’ll get in it, and we’ll drift together all the way to the sea.

But not without Jay.

I roll onto my back, away from the edge and the idea of freedom the dark water suggests. The deck of our small riverboat is sloped and uncomfortable, full of nailheads Dad refuses to let me grind smooth because he doesn’t want to risk rainwater leaking through the holes into the cabin below again, destroying more of what we can’t afford to replace. I would be careful, not like before, but I don’t think he wants to let me have my own way—that would be like giving in and he never gives in, even when he knows he’s wrong. I’m not that clumsy, incompetent kid anymore, but for someone who lives on an ever-flowing river, he has a surprisingly hard time dealing with change.

I’m no longer a kid at all. When I lie here with my head pushed up against the wheelhouse, my feet now touch the narrow vee of the bow, which they didn’t a few months ago. And I hate being tall. Being tall means I spend the majority of my time below deck hunched over, head bowed, ducking beams that appear out of nowhere. And apart from lying down on the overgrown riverbank we have tethered to, this is the only place I can lie out uncrimped. I can no longer remember sleeping anywhere my feet don’t dangle off the edge of, or anywhere I don’t wake up several times a night because my toes are cold and numb, the circulation cut off by the coarse edge of the hammock unevenly slung from the corners of our cabin. Sometimes I sleep with Jay, squashed up on his bunk with him, because then even if my toes are cold, my body is warm.

But it wasn’t cold feet that woke me tonight. Cold feet I could deal with.

Tomorrow we are heading up river to Arlow, a small town we haven’t been to since I was six and Jay was three or four. We’ve run out of supplies and our money for more is gone too. By supplies I mean
everything
—toothpaste, toilet roll, food, clean water tablets. Dad’s got some deal set up with Liam Bosco, an acquaintance of old, but he won’t tell me exactly what the deal involves or what my part in it might be. And I know I will have a part, because while Jay has a choice to either hide out on the boat every day or go to the local school, I’m of working age, and even though most of the time Dad doesn’t treat me like an adult, he does expect me to earn my keep.

I run my nails against the twisted wire rope that forms a loose rail around the deck, listening to the satisfactory
thrum
it makes. I get like this sometimes—my mind flicking forwards, my body tired but too full of something I can’t quite articulate, something that has me restless to be gone from here—it makes me want to run wild like the wind that hums through the electricity wires crisscrossing the countryside.

And rather than wake Jay up with my unsettled fidgeting, I come out here.

The moon is silvery bright and full, starkly illuminating our empty stretch of river. I stare up at its cold glow, imagining how it’s illuminating me, shining on me like a spotlight in an empty theater, a production that no one attends.

Moon bathing is what Jay calls it when I do this. He says that’s why I’m so pale. But he is just as pale as I am—it’s our Irish gypsy blood. Dad’s Romani. And we’re not dark like him. We get our hair color from our mother too, the both of us flaxen as fields of summer wheat.

Moon bathing sounds kind of innocent too. Pushing my pajama pants down around my thighs, exposing myself to the cool night air to slowly draw out my pleasure, is not. I don’t know what it is really, other than a breathless release. It’s not as though I even think about anything sexual.

Mostly I think about swimming, or how the water feels on my skin as I dive in and it opens its mouth and swallows me, or the rushing kiss of it between my legs as I jump in naked. Anything but my cool hand touching me.

I grip more firmly. A small sound escapes my mouth, and I bite my lip self-consciously. But I need not worry. There are no roads or houses for miles and miles, just the endless, narrow towpath mostly hidden by fat white heads of cow parsley, and the quick-growing, lethal nettles we make into soup. And, strangely, it is the thought of being watched that quickens my heart and threatens to drag me over the edge. I turn my head and stare into the dark of the wheelhouse, defiantly imagining what Dad would do if he caught me masturbating on the deck for all to see. His son the pervert—am I tempting fate? I don’t care. One of these days one of us is going to light the match, and right now
this
feels too good to stop.

Then, for a heart-crushing second, I’m sure I
do
see movement on the towpath…. I squeeze my eyes shut at the sudden shock of intensity that rushes through me, fast and heavy as an avalanche down a mountainside. I feel my muscles jerk, and then the uncontrollable pulse of fluid against my palm. For a moment I feel everything… then nothing…. I’m gone, floating, space-wide, suspended between heartbeats, the center of an echo.

Mostly, I don’t come so hard. And after, I don’t usually feel like the empty beach when the tide has gone out.

My hand shakes as I run it through the water to wash away all trace of my actions. Cold now, I stare at my reflection and wonder what it would be like to lie with someone like that, for someone else to be full of want and longing for me. I wonder if it would fill the hollow space that grows inside me, or if it would blow through me like a rushing wind, leaving me just as empty and alone as before.

Maybe this uncertainty is something I have to learn to live with.

Back in our cabin, I crawl into Jay’s cramped bunk, shoving his warm, sleepy body gently up against the wall, careful not to wake him too much, and curling myself against his back. The smell of him, earthy and warm and faintly sour, is so much like himself, I don’t mind. I shift his hair to the side, press my face into his neck, and fall asleep to the mismatched echoes of our heartbeats.

W
E
’
VE
BEEN
traveling on and off for twenty-four hours by the time our boat passes through the industrial fringe of Arlow. I take first shift at the wheel, tiredly slumping against the worn leather seat, my hand on the idling throttle, letting the boat drift a little and not maintaining the rigid straight line Dad insists on.

The new day lights up the dark water just enough for everything to retain its mystery. The shadows make the weeds looming and magnificent, the world full of secrets. I like it better like this. Around 7:00 a.m. I drag Jay upstairs to see it with me, mainly because I know he’ll sleepily rest his head on my shoulder and sitting with him warm and pressed against my side is better than sitting alone. But as usual he remains unimpressed with the world before the day is halfway gone and grumbles that he’s going back to bed.