Bronwyn would never forget the day Dante Lo Presti had walked into her life. She volunteered twice a week for One Voice, an organization that provided readers for the blind. And guess where you-know-who wound up doing his hundred hours of community service? Dante had been assigned to take her place with old Mr Goodman, who in addition to being blind had Alzheimer’s and occasionally got this idea people were stealing from him. The week before, he’d accused her of making off with his toothbrush, of all things. She wasn’t alone. Bernie Goodman had fired two other volunteers before her.
So there she was waiting for her replacement to arrive, and in walked this guy, who on a scale often had to be at least an eleven and a half. With his leather jacket and motorcycle boots, his bad boy smile and bedroom eyes, looking like a fasten-your-seat-belt Disney World ride. When Dante asked offhandedly if she’d like to hook up with him later on down at Murphy’s, she hadn’t hesitated to climb on board.
The trouble was, Dante wasn’t exactly PG-rated. For one thing, he was eighteen, though just barely. As far as her father was concerned, that made him some kind of sex-crazed pervert. It didn’t help either that Dante looked at least three years older, with permanent five o’clock shadow and grease under his fingernails from working at Stan’s Auto. If only Dad would get to know him, he’d discover that underneath it all Dante was really sweet. But how was that going to happen when Dad had forbidden her to see him?
So she sneaked out with Dante every chance she got. She felt terrible about lying to her father, but he’d left her no choice. And in a sense he
had
gotten his way. Between school and both their jobs and all the stupid gyrations she had to go through, pretending she’d made plans with one of her friends when she was really meeting Dante, they hardly saw each other.
They made up for it by talking on the phone, sometimes long into the night when Dad was working late. She’d lie on her bed in the dark with the receiver pressed to her ear and a pillow squashed against her belly to keep it from tumbling at the sound of his deep, throaty voice. She’d never felt this way with another boy: hot one minute, cold the next. Scared of where her own body seemed to be taking her.
She knew Dante felt the same way. Why else would he put up with their not being able to see each other more often? But liking her was one thing, committing a crime on her behalf something else altogether. He might get angry when she asked. He might even break up with her.
Her heart crumpled at the thought. She didn’t know what she’d do if that happened. Curl up and die probably. Or join the army, as Maxie planned on doing after graduation.
Quickly, before she could weaken, Bronwyn dialed Dante’s number. He shared an apartment with two guys famous for ignoring call waiting—Maxie’s theory was that Troy and Mike were heavy into phone sex—and now she prayed for someone to pick up.
Finally the line clicked. ‘Yo.’
It was Dante. She’d recognize that voice coming at her from under a jacked-up car with the air compressor blasting. Her heart began to pound, a reflex as automatic as a dog wagging its tail. It was an effort to speak normally.
‘Hey. It’s me, Bron. I was just wondering, you doing anything tomorrow after work?’
‘You got something in mind?’ Oh, that throaty rumble. Maxie had groaned that she must be made of asbestos to have resisted going all the way with a guy that sexy. And Bronwyn couldn’t think of a single good reason why she shouldn’t.
Just because
didn’t count as an excuse, according to Maxie.
‘I thought maybe we could go for a drive or something,’ she answered lightly. Her heart was banging so hard it might have been the thump of Rufus’s tail against the floor.
There was a pause. She could hear the TV muttering in the background. Then Dante said, ‘I’ll see if I can get off a little early. The usual spot?’ It was a sore point that they couldn’t meet out in the open, but so far he’d been cool about it.
‘Yeah, sure. Around four, okay?’
It wasn’t until she hung up that Bronwyn let out her breath. She felt cold, too, though it had to be eighty degrees in here. Minutes later, driving over to Maxie’s in her father’s beat-up Chevy Blazer, she was still shivering.
The following afternoon she didn’t get off work until nearly a quarter past four, thanks to an elderly woman who couldn’t make up her mind between cherry vanilla and toffee crunch. Letting herself out the door, Bronwyn prayed that Dante would still be waiting when she got there.
He was. Right where they always met, in the little alley behind the movie theater. Slouched up against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette. Six feet of tanned muscle clad in tight Levi’s and an even tighter tank top. A pair of Ray-Bans was pushed up into his dark curls, and on the chiseled biceps of one arm a tattoo stood out, the Chinese symbol for
chai.
Life. As in
real
life, not the ridiculously sheltered existence she led.
As always, there was that little beat before he spotted her in which she wondered,
What does he see in me?
Dante had been on his own since he was sixteen. He drank (though no longer got wasted). He smoked. And though he’d only alluded to it, she was sure he’d slept with
lots
of women. She, on the other hand, drank nothing stronger than root beer, and the closest she’d gotten to having sex was the one time she’d let her old boyfriend, Chris Bartolo, sort of accidentally on purpose rub up against her until he came.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ Bronwyn was out of breath from running the whole way. ‘There was this stupid woman—oh, never mind. You been waiting long?’
Dante tossed his cigarette to the ground, pulling away from the wall with a fluid movement that made her think of a cat burglar. ‘Ten minutes or so, no big deal.’ He shrugged, crushing the smoldering butt with the heel of his motorcycle boot. ‘Stan the Man let me off early, like I asked.’
‘That was nice of him.’
Dante’s full mouth curled in a sneer. ‘Yeah? Well, he owes me, the prick. I still haven’t gotten paid for last month’s overtime. Serve him right if I quit.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Yeah, and what would I do for money?’ Dante was looking at her in a way she didn’t like. Sort of squinting at her, half amused, as if it were just the sort of suggestion a girl like her
would
make. ‘This town, every high school dropout with two semesters of shop under his belt would be lining up to take my place.’
‘You’re right. Forget I said anything.’ What a jerk she was! Not everyone scooped ice cream to earn extra money for college; some people had to work for a
living.
Dante arched his back, working a hand down the front pocket of his jeans, where his cigarettes were stuffed. As he did so, his tank top pulled free, and Bronwyn caught a glimpse of his flat brown belly with its trail of dark hair that disappeared down into his waistband. She felt a sudden queer lightness in her stomach, as if she were on a roller coaster climbing that first hill.
He lit a cigarette and took a hard pull. As they made their way out of the alley, careful to check both ways before exiting onto North Main, he said, ‘I still might quit one of these days, who knows? Maybe it’s time to move on, get out of this two-bit cowshit town.’
She clamped down on a flutter of panic, asking casually, ‘So what’s keeping you?’
He flashed her a cocky grin that went right through her like a warm scoop through ice cream. ‘Nothing. Not a thing.’ But his tone of voice, and the way he was looking at her, made it sound like a caress. ‘Anywhere special you want to go?’ She followed his gaze to the dragonfly green Camaro parked behind Hook, Line & Sinker.
Usually they headed out to the creek, or the trails along Windy Ridge, where you could hike for miles without running into anyone. But those spots were risky in another way, so secluded that one thing usually led to another. Before they knew it, they’d be lying on a sand spit, or in a bed of pine needles, with half their clothes off. Today she didn’t want that. Today was for taking care of important business.
‘How about the cemetery? We haven’t been there in a while.’
The one she was referring to was the old Lutheran cemetery, eight or nine miles outside town. The church had been washed away in a flood some years back and hardly anyone went there anymore, dead or alive. With its deserted paths and huge old shade trees, it was the perfect place to walk about undisturbed.
Or to talk of things you didn’t want overheard.
The queer lightness in her stomach intensified.
It’s not too late to back out,
a voice whispered.
Nobody’s got a gun to your head.
Then she thought of her sister
…
and of Noelle’s mother. No, she couldn’t afford to chicken out. It was like that poster on the wall of Mr Melnick’s classroom:
Carpe diem.
Seize the day.
Before it seizes you,
she added silently as she ducked into the Camaro.
Minutes later they were cruising down Route 30 with the windows rolled down and her long hair fluttering like a banner in the breeze. She sneaked a glance at Dante, who was concentrating on the road, twin sparks of sunlight reflected in the curved lenses of his Ray-Bans. Smoke drifted sideways from the cigarette tucked between the first two fingers of his hand. If he were to get caught breaking into Robert’s office, she thought, who would believe it hadn’t been his idea? Dante would wind up behind bars while
she
got off with a suspended sentence.
But without him she’d be screwed. The kind of stuff she knew about only from watching TV, Dante was familiar with firsthand. Like how to hot-wire a car… or pick a lock. With no burglar alarm to trip them up, an office closed for the night would be a piece of cake for someone like him.
A short while later he pulled to a stop where the dirt road to the cemetery ended in shady turnabout. A few dozen yards to their left stood a tumbledown wooden shed chained shut with a rusty padlock, all that was left of the old church grounds. Beyond, an overgrown path sloped up to the cluster of headstones on the hill.
She started to get out of the car, But Dante stopped her. ‘Wait.’
He pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them onto the dashboard. Then he leaned over to kiss her. Slow and sweet and thrilling. She felt herself plunge down the roller coaster’s first hill. When Dante kissed, it wasn’t like other guys, as if he were somehow asking for permission. He simply took what he wanted … in a way that made her want it, too.
His lips parted, the tip of his tongue lazily exploring her mouth. He smelled faintly of nicotine, and though she minded that he smoked, for some reason the scent of it excited her when they were kissing. Maybe because it made him seem more dangerous somehow. She shuddered with pleasure as he smoothed a hand up the back of her neck, pushing his fingers up under her hair to knead her scalp gently. When he began to circle her jaw lightly with his thumb, she felt herself grow faint.
Tentatively at first, then with growing boldness, Bronwyn opened her mouth to let her tongue meet his, working a hand up under his tank top to stroke his back where his spine ran in a crease between the thick slabs of muscle on either side. Her palm stuck to his moist skin. He smelled of sweat and grease and the pink soap in a jar on the grubby sink at Stan’s Auto. She imagined him stripped naked, rinsing off in the shower, and the queer sensation in her belly grew stronger, leaving her barely able to breathe.
The hand resting on her thigh reminded her of the time Dante had unzipped her jeans and pushed his hand down inside her panties. She’d been embarrassed by how wet she was. When he slid a finger into her, she’d grown rigid, afraid to move, to wriggle even, feeling herself on the verge of something truly embarrassing, like at night, when she stroked herself to climax under the covers.
Now he was reaching under her T-shirt instead, unhooking her bra. Bronwyn moaned softly, not self-conscious about her small breasts as she’d been with other boys. Dante cupped them reverently, his calloused fingertips tingling against her sunburned flesh.
‘Your skin feels hot,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘I fell asleep sunbathing on the dock.’
‘Too bad I wasn’t there to wake you up.’
‘Oh, yeah? I’d have been risking something a lot worse than a sunburn, believe me,’ she said with a low laugh, nibbling on his ear.
Nevertheless, the thought of her father left her uneasy.
What Dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him,
she told herself. But this time it wasn’t working; the guilt wasn’t going away. Because
she
knew. And in a strange way it
was
hurting him. They weren’t as close as they used to be, for one thing. Once upon a time she could tell her father anything. Now they only talked about stupid everyday stuff.
Bronwyn abruptly drew back. ‘Mind if we take a walk?’ she asked. ‘It’s getting a little warm in here. I could use some air.’
Dante let go of her at once, but she sensed his frustration. Once, when she asked why he never gave her a hard time like other guys, he just shrugged and said that was the difference between men and boys. Now, though, she thought she saw a faint look of disgust cross his face. Was he getting tired of this?
However patient, a
man
assumes you’ll eventually sleep with him.
‘Whatever.’ His voice was tight.
He leaned across her to flip open her door, and she was suddenly seized with panic, fearing he would take off with a squeal of tires the instant she stepped outside. When he climbed out after her, she felt almost light-headed with relief.
Side by side they picked their way up the weed-choked path toward the graveyard. The trees formed a ragged canopy overhead, and the grass beneath was littered with twigs and acorns that crackled and skittered away under their feet. The only sound was the chirping of birds accompanied by the far-off rustle of the creek.
Farther up the hill, headstones began to appear. Many of them were moss-grown and tilted askew, their inscriptions barely legible. Bending to run her thumb over a lichen-crusted marker, Bronwyn felt a strange peace settle over her. She loved cemeteries, especially old ones. Did that make her weird? Probably. But there was such a sense of connectedness to it all. Of belonging. Even the names on the headstones were as familiar as those of people she might pass in the street. Adolfo Terrazini, 1934–1978: He had to be related to her art teacher, Mr Terrazini. And over there, the one that read:
Patience Whittaker 1920–1921, She Trod Lightly on This Earth Who Walks with Angels Now.
That could be none other than Maxie’s grandmother’s firstborn, who’d died in infancy.