Kissing Midnight (12 page)

“Like…you said your mom was in Mexico with family. Are you from there?”

“No. Both my parents are, but I was born here.”

“Only child?”

“Brother,” I say, careful to avoid a verb that would put Enrique in the past tense. I’m not ready to tell Dev about Enrique, but not telling him feels weird, too—dishonest, somehow, because I know now he’s imagining I have a brother somewhere.

Dev nods and slurps in a noodle. “So is your brother younger? Or are your parents empty-nesting it now?”

The nest is emptier than you can imagine
, I think, but I can’t bring myself to talk about Enrique.

So I move on to the next-largest wound. “My parents actually aren’t together anymore.”

Dev pauses, lowering his chopstickful of noodles. “Good thing or bad?”

I shrug and look up at the electric stars. “It’s for the best, really. My dad was always gone a lot anyways. He did trainings in Spanish for businesses— mostly safety trainings for construction companies. Sort of a teacher, translator, cultural liaison thing. He traveled all over the country.”

“And let me guess, absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder?”

I give him a watery smile. “Well, not of my mom, anyways.”

He shakes his head. “Bastard.”

“Yeah.” I push the noodles around with my chopstick. “I mean, I still love him, but I haven’t seen him in a while. I think he always had women in the places he went for work, and I think my mom always knew it, but then it got more serious and she had to confront him…”

Dev shakes his head. “That sucks, Saint.”

You have no idea
, I want to say. But compared to all that has happened since, my parents’ divorce is nothing. It was just the beginning, the thing that set everything in motion.

But I can’t tell him that. I can’t say
my brother killed himself because he thought my father didn’t love us.
I can’t tell him my mother could barely get off of the couch after he died. And I certainly can’t tell him the rest of it.

Not that Dev wouldn’t listen. He is looking at me with such sympathy and understanding in his bright blue eyes, I almost want to tell him everything. I feel suddenly sorry I thought he was a player like my dad. “So,” he says, “why aren’t you going to Mexico for Christmas?”

Because my mom went there to get away from me. Because she needs a break from me. Because I’m not supposed to be that far from my psychiatric care.
“I just felt like staying here. You know, to help Delia.”

Dev nods, and I feel like I’m lying—at least by omission.
I say I hate secrets
, I think,
but my life is one big secret.

But of course, that’s exactly why I hate them.

“I have to stay on campus,” I say, “Because my mom sold her house.” It feels weird to call it her house when it used to be our home, but when she sold it I didn’t get a say. I was in the hospital and, at the time, no one knew if I would get out.

Dev nods understandingly. “Too many memories in that house, huh?”

More than you know.
“The ironic thing is, I originally wanted to go to school here to be close to home—”

“And then home moved away from you.”

“Exactly.”

We both sit in silence for a minute, just looking up at the stars. Dev sips his beer. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, my parents
should
have gotten a divorce.”

“Why?” I say, relieved to be talking about somebody else. ‘What’s wrong with your parents?”

He holds up his almost empty bottle. “This.”

I cringe. “Which one? Your mom or your dad?”

“Both, really. My mom drinks more, but my dad handles it worse.” He’s gazing at some middle point in the darkness, like he’s watching a scene play out. Then he takes a quick swig of beer, like he’s washing it all away. “Doesn’t affect me much anymore. I haven’t lived at home for a while now.”

I look at him, surprised. “But I thought you were only a first year, like me.”

He shrugs. “I am, but I graduated early. Took a year off to travel around. Figure myself out a little.”

I look at him in the dim light, seeing him in a different way: the kid who worked his ass off to graduate early and get away from home. I can imagine him doing his homework at the dining room table while his mom lies passed out on the couch. He must be smart to have graduated early. Smart and determined. “So what did you figure out about yourself?”

He laughs. “Mainly that I don’t want to be them.”

I pick up my full beer bottle. “To not repeating the cycle.”

“Merry Christmas Eve.” We clink our bottles. Dev downs the last of his beer, and I decide to open mine after all, taking a tentative sip and grimacing as I remember I don’t like the taste. For a long minute, we just sit in silence. Then Dev says, “What do you want to do in the future? I mean, if you don’t want to be your mom, then what?”

I lie back and rest my head on my rolled-up jacket.

Dev shuts the takeout container and puts it back in the cooler. He lies back beside me, picks up the remote and pushes a button. Above us, the sky seems to move as the light shifts, forming different constellations, cycling through the year as we watch. I recognize a few of the constellations that rise and fall: Orion, Cassiopeia, the big bear. “I’m not sure what I want,” I say, and for once I’m telling the whole truth. I’ve spent so long just trying to survive the moment, I don’t know what I want the future to be.

“Well,” he says, “have you declared a major?”

“Psychology.” I feel a little embarrassed admitting it, like it’s somehow too close to home.

He turns to me curiously. “Psych, huh? You going to analyze me? Tell me what makes me tick?”

I turn my head to look him in the eye. Our faces are only inches apart now. If either of us shifted even slightly, the gap would close. I study his eyes as the stars cycle above us on repeat, the years flashing past, one after another. Fake starlight dapples his hair. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure what makes you tick.”
I’m not even sure why you’re here with me
.

“Good,” he says. “It’s better that way.” He smiles, trying to make a joke out of his words, but it doesn’t match the seriousness in his eyes. Maybe he does think he’ll become his father, the pattern playing over and over again like the cycle of the sky.

“What do you want to do?” I whisper.

His eyes flick from my eyes to my lips and back—just a momentary glance, but it’s enough. “What?” he says. “Right now?”

I know if I say
yes, now
he will say
kiss you.
And I want to. I’m surprised by how much I want to. I can feel that
yes
all the way down to my core, but I’m too afraid to say it. “In the future.”

He turns his head to look back at the stars, and I feel relieved and disappointed all at once. “I just want to live,” he says. “That’s all I ever want. To live, no matter what it takes.”

He says it so quietly, he might as well be talking to himself, but the desire in his voice, the hunger to be alive, speaks to me deep down. Not everybody feels that way. My brother didn’t. There have been days when I didn’t feel like living either. I want to drink that feeling in.

On impulse, I turn and kiss his cheek.

He tenses, caught of guard by my—
boldness
, I think.
He said be bold
— but then he turns his head and his lips meet mine like flame meets a fuse, sending trail of heat down my body. I kiss him deeper and he rises to meet me, rolling toward me until he is above me, his chest against mine, the warm weight of his body pressing me into the soft blanket beneath us. Dev is a good kisser. Even without much basis of comparison, I know that. He kisses me hungrily. I can feel the tension of his body against mine, the press of his breath. For a long time, we stay lost in the kiss, letting the world spin around us like the fake stars over head. I can tell he has made out like this a million times before, but I haven’t. This isn’t my first kiss, but it’s the first one that has really held the promise of more. It’s delicious and frustrating and overwhelming.

I need to come up for air. Gently, I push Dev away and try to make the room stop spinning.

He rolls onto his back, smiling up at the ceiling. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Wow.”

For a minute we just lie there, breathing hard. Dev’s hand finds mine in the dark, fingers entwining between us. With his other hand, he picks up the remote and presses a new button. Above us, the sky bursts into a meteor shower, dozens of silver streaks flashing across the domed ceiling.

I gasp like a kid at a fireworks show. “Shooting stars!”

“What do you wish?”

At first nothing at all comes to mind. With the memory of the kiss still exploding through my body like stars across the sky, I feel like my wish has been granted. At least, the only wish that could actually come true.

But I can’t say that. I’m too shy. “You first,” I say. “What do you wish for?”

He smiles at me in the dark. “I know exactly what I want.”

“So tell me.”

His smile is mysterious. “I’ll tell you later.”

I smack him on the shoulder. “No fair!”

“First tell me yours.”

I pout at the ceiling. “Does it matter what we wish? The stars aren’t real. Will the wish even come true?”

“Aha!” He aims the remote at the ceiling again. “Abracadabra!”

The meteor shower fades and goes black. Then, slowly, a circular skylight in the ceiling above us spirals open and through it I can see a patch of the real night sky. The stars look fainter and smaller, but all the more beautiful for being real, as if the night has taken off her mask and shown us her true face.

“Wish,” he says.

I shut my eyes. I don’t know what to wish. There are so many things I want, and most of them I can’t have. Nothing will bring Enrique back.

Focus on the future
, I tell myself. It’s almost New Year’s Eve. The start of a new cycle. I think about what Dev said.
I wish to really live.

I open my eyes. Dev is smiling at me. “Did you wish?”

I nod.

“Good.” He reaches into the cooler beside him and grabs out a fortune cookie. “Now gaze into your future and see if your wish will come true.”

I unwrap the crinkling plastic, snap the fortune cookie in half and toss half to Dev, who catches it in his mouth, crunching loudly. Then I tug out the tiny slip of paper.

But even as I turn the fortune over, the feeling is coming over me: that cold, prickling feeling. Time seems to slow down.
No
, I think,
not now, not here.
The slip of paper rattles in my trembling hand, but I can’t stop myself from looking.

The words are hand written in blood red ink.
“Bold, be bold, but not too bold…”

Suddenly I remember where I’ve seen them before: carved above the door in my dream.

I drop the fortune and the cookie at the same time. The cookie smashes on the floor, and the fortune flutters down after it. The room seems to be getting darker, the blackness closing in around me like a circular skylight spiraling shut.

“Saintly?” Dev’s forehead creases with concern. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.” I struggle to pull myself together. “The fortune…”

He scoops up the little slip of paper and smoothes it flat. He grins as he reads it. “I like it. Which reminds me, I was going to tell you my wish.” He takes my hand and looks me in the eye. “Saintly, I wish you would go out with me again. We don’t have to break into anywhere or sneak around. You can decide what we do. I just want to get to know you better, okay? Tell me we can hang out again.”

Dev’s hand is warm and strong in mine. I feel the room grow more solid around me at his touch. My mind lightens, like a cloud has lifted. Cautiously, I look at the fortune in his hand.

“Happiness lies ahead.”

That’s all it says.

It was all in your mind
, I tell myself.
The things you imagine aren’t real.

What
is
real is this: the warmth of Dev’s leg against mine, the expectant look in his blue eyes. I thought he was just one more complication, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe Dev is just what I need after all.

“Yes,” I say, “I’d love to.”

Saintly

“What time is it, Mr. Fox?” The little girl’s voice rings out in the chilly air. She’s one of a long line of little girls standing on the far end of the darkening meadow. They are all in pastel party dresses, like they’re getting ready for an Easter egg hunt. The first fireflies rise around them like sparks from some hidden flame, but the girls don’t seem to notice. They are all focused intently on the far end of the meadow, where a young man in a dark suit stands facing away from them, towards the ragged black hem of the woods. His face is hidden in his hands.

“One o’clock,” he says.

They each take one step forward. Some stretch their legs so they almost leap. Others tip-toe so they hardly move.

A second girl speaks. “What time is it, Mr. Fox?”

“Six o’clock.” There’s a smile in his tone.

They move forward six paces, some boldly, some as if they wish they could go back.

There’s a tremble in the third girl’s voice. “What time is it Mr. Fox?”

“Eight o’clock.”

Eight paces, then freeze. One little girl is very close, a girl with curls the color of copper, dressed in a long brown dress. She stands behind him, her face grim with determination, her shadow, long in the twilight, like the straight black hand of a clock.

“What time is it, Mr. Fox?”

“Midnight!”
He spins around. The girls scatter like birds, screaming with laughter.

But the copper-haired girl is too close. He catches her around the waist and hoists her like a doll. She thrashes wildly, her hair flying, small fists pounding his chest, but he’s much too strong. He holds her effortlessly, and I can hear him laughing as he steps out of the shadows. I’m about to see his face…