“Sure they can. It’s called something else. Something complicated. But it’s the same thing.”
“Well. Duh.” She knew that, of course she did. Oral sex. “Going down. It’s called going down. And I’ll take your word for it.”
“You never...did it?”
She’s blown him dozens of times by now, so she knows that’s not what he means. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody ever offered,” Janelle says, for the first time realizing how annoyed she’d been by that.
“I’ll do it,” Gabe says.
They’ve never, no matter how high or drunk they’ve been, ever talked about the things they do together that make them not just friends. They somehow just...do it.
Now everything inside her tightens and tenses. “No.”
“Why not? It’ll make you feel so good. And it’s your birthday. And soon you’re leaving. You’re going to go away.”
“You’re going away, too,” she says. “Aren’t you?”
Gabe snorts soft laughter. “Hell, yes. As far away as I can go. Never coming back.”
“We’ll never see each other again,” Janelle says.
“That’s why I’m going to do this for you now.”
“No,” she repeats, not sure why she’s so adamant about it.
Somehow, he’s moved her on the bed, he’s leaning over her. His mouth moves along her throat. Lower.
Lower.
It’s not her first orgasm—Janelle’s known that pleasure since she discovered the joys of the detachable shower head at age thirteen. It’s not her first with a boy, or even her first with Gabe. But this...this is...too much. His mouth on her, kissing her down there when he has yet to kiss her mouth. Everything spirals up and up and then down so hard she can’t breathe.
She can’t breathe.
She can’t look at him when it’s over. This is also different from the other times, when they finished what they’d been doing and she went home. Now she can’t move, can’t sit up. Something’s changed, and she doesn’t know exactly what.
Janelle manages to force herself upright. Off the bed. She finds her clothes. Gabe’s eyes are closed; he’s breathing low and slow. Sleeping? She hopes to sneak away, if her legs will even hold her, if she can get through the window and across the alley into her own room without falling.
She finds her clothes. She opens the window. His voice stops her.
“Hey, wait.”
The high’s worn off, leaving her wide-eyed but no longer hungry for cake. She turns to face him. Gabe’s sitting, hair tousled. He pulls something from beneath his pillow and stands.
“I got you something for your birthday. I mean...a real something.”
The box is the size of her palm, inexpertly wrapped in plain brown paper without a ribbon. She pulls the tape free, takes off the paper. She lifts the lid. Inside, on a bed of flat cotton, is a small Blessed Virgin charm on a silver chain.
It’s beautiful.
She lifts it from the package, the silver chain threading through her fingers. She looks at him. “It’s the one from the thrift store.”
“You liked it,” Gabe says.
He listened to her. More than that, he heard her. She hands him the necklace and turns, lifting her hair. “Put it on me.”
He does. For a guy with such big hands, he’s surprisingly delicate. He smooths the chain against the back of her neck, and Janelle tenses, eyes closing, waiting for him to kiss her there, too. But he doesn’t.
She doesn’t tell him she likes it, though she does. He doesn’t ask. When she turns to face him, he’s already backing away, his expression hard to read.
“Gabe,” she says, thinking of all the things she could say, but doesn’t or won’t or can’t. She settles for the simplest, though it’s also the most important. “I love it.”
THIRTY-FIVE
IT WASN’T THE first time the chain on this necklace had broken. This time, it snagged on a button as Janelle pulled her shirt over her head. The medallion slid over her skin and got stuck in her bra, but the chain slithered farther while she fumbled to grab it. She missed and let out a soft curse as the chain hit the floor in a long silver coil. The clasp was fine, she saw when she bent to pick it up, but a few links had broken.
It was senseless to cry over something she’d broken before, so easily fixed, but somehow the tears rose, anyway, and Janelle found herself on her hands and knees with her palm clapped over her mouth to press back the sobs. She’d worn this necklace for years, thinking every day of the boy who’d given it to her, but she’d worn it for more years not thinking of him at all. It had become habit.
She touched the place at the base of her throat where the medallion always rested. It felt naked. Her fingertips pressed, pressed against the hollow, then to the left along the curve of her collarbone, and to the right. Somehow she’d stopped crying and hadn’t noticed, though her face still felt hot and her eyes swollen.
Janelle took the chain and medallion and put them carefully in her jewelry box. She’d never been one for expensive jewelry. The Virgin Mary nestled between a set of silver bangle bracelets and a few pairs of novelty earrings Bennett had bought for her from the school’s Christmas bazaars over the years. Santa, Rudolph, Frosty. They made her ears sore, but she could never throw them away. She closed the lid of the box, letting her fingers rest there for a moment or two, thinking about the night Gabe had given her the necklace.
What it had meant then.
It should mean nothing now.
Janelle washed her face and finished changing her clothes—it was past seven, time for lounging pants and an oversize sweatshirt. Comfy clothes. She had nobody to impress.
Downstairs, she found Bennett at the dining table with Andy, both bent over math homework. Nan was in the recliner with her feet up, switching channels at random and pausing no more than a few seconds on each program. She looked up when Janelle came in.
“Ready?”
“Yep. Let me go grab a few boxes.”
Nan smiled and twisted a little in the chair. “Benny, are you finished with your homework?”
“Almost, Nan.”
“He’s doing really great.” Andy smiled at Janelle. “What are you doing?”
“Sorting more of Nan’s pictures. Hey, Andy, I could use a hand with some of the boxes. Could you—” He was up and out of his chair before she could finish the sentence.
“Sure, yeah. Finish that work, man. I’ll check it when I come back.” Andy rubbed his hands together, straightening the curled fingers of his right hand. To Janelle, he said, “Anything you need.”
The back room had a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves against one wall. A couple dozen shoe boxes without lids, each stuffed to bulging with packs of photos, lined a few of the shelves. Nan had albums, too, the kind with magnetic pages, each labeled with the year and with hand-scribbled notes of who, what, where and when in the margins. They were all shoved haphazardly into the cabinet in the living room. They’d be easier to sort, so Janelle had started with the years’ worth of snapshots that had been shoved away without any rhyme or reason, while Nan was still here to help her decipher the faces in each picture.
“Can you help me get those down?” She pointed to the top corner, the one she’d be able to reach only if she stood on something.
Andy was a good five or six inches taller and could easily reach the boxes, but could use only one hand to grab. “Sorry,” he said as he handed her one at a time.
“For what?” Janelle stacked the boxes in her arms as he passed them to her.
“For being slow.”
She laughed. “It’s fine. I appreciate the help.”
Andy gave her one of those brilliant grins, not paying close enough attention to what he was doing. The box he grabbed tore as he pulled it, the cardboard rotten with age. Half of it came away in his hand. An avalanche of paper envelopes filled with pictures cascaded off the shelf, onto Andy’s head, his shoulders, onto Janelle’s stacked boxes. Onto the floor.
“Look out!” he cried, too late.
Janelle managed not to juggle the boxes in her hands into another waterfall of photos. “Oops.”
“Sorry, sorry!” Andy shook his head and went to his knees. “God, I’m so stupid. What a freaking idiot. I’m sorry.”
Janelle set the three boxes in her arms carefully on the floor next to the pile that had fallen. “Hey.”
He didn’t appear to hear her. Andy scooped up the pictures on the floor, the ones in his good hand piling neatly while the ones in his bad hand fluttered and skittered out of his grasp. Janelle put her hand over his to stop the frantic fumbling. Andy quieted.
“Hey,” she repeated. “Chill out, dude.”
He smiled tentatively. “I don’t want to ruin your grandma’s pictures.”
“They’re fine.” Janelle patted his hand. “The boxes are old. Don’t worry about it.”
She was holding his hand, she realized. The bad one. She didn’t let go, not right away—that would’ve been more awkward than this. She turned it over in hers and ran her thumb along his fingers, one by one, feeling the resistance that wanted to keep them curled against his palm.
“Does it hurt?” Gently, Janelle let go of his hand.
Andy pulled it close. “No. Not really. Nothing hurts except sometimes my head. I get headaches. Bad ones. They used to mean I was probably going to have a fit, but the pills I take helped that a lot.”
“A... Oh. A seizure? You had seizures.” Without thinking, Janelle pushed the hair away from his eyes. Dark hair, except for that white section.
Andy looked at her seriously. Too seriously. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.” Janelle bit the inside of her cheek, her old habit, to keep from saying more. There weren’t words for what had happened back then, or her part in it. Nothing could change it, especially not regret.
“Hey, look,” Andy said. “It’s you.”
There were sure to be a bunch of pictures of her in these boxes, but the one he showed her was from her senior year. “Oh. God. The hair.”
Every time she saw it, she wanted to cringe and laugh at the same time. The clothes, the hair, the makeup. Who had she been? Who had she been trying to be?
“I think you looked pretty.” Andy tapped the picture, taken in Nan’s backyard sometime in the fall. Janelle was posed under the apple tree, staring at the camera as if she meant to bite it, not smile for it. He pointed off to the side. “There’s me. And Mikey.”
They were a blur, running through their yard, caught by the camera. They weren’t identical twins, but Janelle couldn’t have told them apart in the photo. She didn’t have to, because Andy ran his finger along one of the figures.
“I wonder what we were doing.”
She remembered that day, Nan insisting on the picture. The stickiness of sweat trickling down Janelle’s back because she’d been stupid and dressed as if it were fifty degrees outside, not in the Indian Summer seventies. She’d spent an hour on her hair and makeup, all for a silly snapshot.
“You were playing football.” Janelle took the picture and studied it. There in the corner, another blur, just the tiniest sliver. “With Gabe.”
“Did I... Did we know you then?”
She smiled. “Yes. A little. You got to know me better later.”
Much better.
Much later.
“I wish I remembered.”
“Me, too, honey.” She patted his arm and tucked the picture back among the others, gathering them into a pile. There was no box to put them in, so she grabbed an empty laundry basket from the closet and dumped them inside. The other boxes went on top.
“I could get more down,” Andy offered. “There’s room in the basket.”
“I don’t think we’ll even get through these tonight. This is enough. Thanks.”
He was still staring at her. Awkwardly, she hefted the laundry basket and waited for him to move out of the way. He didn’t at first, not until she made a shooing motion with the basket. She felt his gaze on her the entire way down the hall toward the family room.
Bennett had already put away his math homework by the time they got there, and set out a bowl of cookies and glasses for milk. Nan looked up from the recliner, blinking sleepily. She settled the remote into the knitted holder attached to the chair’s arm and started to her feet.
“Hold on, hold on, Mrs. Decker.” Andy pushed past Janelle to help Nan up. He did it easily, despite his own disability. He steadied her gently with his good hand and helped her to the table, where he pulled out her chair. “There you go.”
“Thanks, honey,” Nan said. “Ooh, cookies. Bennett, did you do this?”
“I like cookies,” Bennett said with a grin. “With milk.”
“Pour me a glass, honey, and let’s get started. Janelle, grab my glasses.” Nan tapped the table as Andy moved toward the back door. “Where are you going, Andy?”
“Oh...I thought I’d better go home.”
Nan shook her head. “You can stay, help us sort these pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found a few more of you and your brothers in here. I’d like you to have them, if we do.”
Janelle already knew there was at least one, of course, but was a little surprised to think there could be more. Andy looked surprised, too. He put a hesitant hand on the back of a chair.
“Really?”
“Of course. Absolutely.” Nan nodded. “Sit down.”
People didn’t argue with Nan when she spoke in that voice, and Andy was no exception. He sat. Janelle got out the archival safe marker she’d ordered online, and brought in a bunch of sandwich bags and rubber bands from the kitchen. They all helped themselves to cookies and milk and got started.
It went far slower than Janelle had thought it would. She could easily and quickly sort the pictures into piles if she knew for sure who was in them—piles for uncles, cousins, family friends. Photos of landscapes and buildings, and any that were out of focus, she set aside. But there were many pictures of people Janelle didn’t know, and those she gave to Nan, who studied each one for several minutes apiece.
Most of them had a story. This person had said this or done that, just before the camera clicked. Nan remembered most of their names and the places, and Janelle wrote the information carefully on the backs of the pictures with the pen that wouldn’t ruin them, and put them into their piles according to how Nan categorized them.
“Mom, you look hilarious,” Bennett said over and over, having a laughing fit each time he pulled another picture of her out of the pile. It didn’t matter if it was one of her in the height of eighties fashion as a kid, or in her goth phase. He laughed and laughed.