This Raging Light (10 page)

Weird,
she muttered back then, stroking her giant belly as she explained.

I sift through some boxes of clothes, some moldy books, some canvases that just about dissolve in my hands. Spiders do crawl around, and some other unidentifiable bugs. They don't scare me.

I get to what I'm after pretty quickly. I carry the yellow plastic boxes down the stairs, flip off the lights again, and then sit on the floor and open them. Paintbrushes of all widths, hundreds of tubes of oil paint, pencils of every kind, pens upon pens upon pens.

I take the paints out of the drawers in the boxes, lay them on the floor, line them up by color until I have a rainbow around me. My skin sizzles, my mouth a little dry. I open a tube, test it. Oil comes out first, but then a little squiggle of a gloaming blue spreads across my fingertips, and I rub them together. They tingle.

I drive myself to work these days,
since Eden isn't trying to hide out at my house anymore. I haven't talked to her in weeks. The arm that used to save me my seat in English is now an elbow and a hand that shields Eden's face from mine, telling me to stay away. I sit in the back mostly, since I'm always only right on time after dropping off Wren. She's ignoring me at lunch, too, face all in a book held straight up so I can only see her black, chewed-up nails and her pissed-off red hair. I've taken to sitting outside the front of the building on my own, staring at an uninteresting sky while eating an uninteresting sandwich. That has never happened before. Not ever. My chest is cavernous, emptied of her. My personality too. Empty. I don't know who started the not-talking thing and I don't know how to end it, so I don't do anything about it. I endure instead.

Digby keeps showing up nights, though, parks the Beast right in front of the house where Janie could drive by and see it anytime. He doesn't seem to care, so I don't say anything. And Elaine? I never ask about her, but I guess she knows where he is all the time. He will deal with his mom if it comes up, he says, and I believe he can, will. Something about him gives me faith, even though I know that Janie Jones would go psycho bananas if she knew what was going on around here. That lady would choke my mom herself. She's the kind of mother who would lift a car above her head for her kids, and I know she would at least wrestle a badger for me.

“Honey, I'm home,” I say to Digby when I get in from work. He is lying on the couch doing something with his phone. I plop myself down next to him, still sweaty and smelly and too tired to care. “Where's Wren?”

“She fell asleep in front of the TV upstairs.”

“By herself?”

“I sat on the stairs so I'd be right there if she needed me, but yeah.”

“That's a miracle.” It really is. “Thank you.”

“Don't sweat it.” He sits up. “You must be tired.”

“No.” I don't want him to leave yet.

I close my eyes, though, can't help it, but it's not from sleepiness. It's because he's kind and generous and gives for free. He can't be real. My bellybutton is grateful. Even my knees are grateful for everything he's doing for me.

He's staring at me. I feel him through my lids. I open my eyes and really look at him, force myself not to shy away. I am not expecting him to be contemplating me like he's trying to get to the bottom of a really long math equation. A wave of pain rushes over his face. I catch it as it zaps his eyes, his mouth, as it tackles his insides and his stomach twitches under his shirt. I know that pain like I know his loping ways.

I expect him to get up like he usually does, start packing his bag, but he doesn't.

“Your yard looks nice,” he says.

“So they tell me,” I say.

Touch me. Kiss me. I'm yours. Yours.

I know he won't, though. He would not cheat.

I like his shoes. Vans. His long feet.

“Nothing else has happened, right?” he asks. “Any revelations about who's doing all of this?”

“Can we not talk about that, maybe?” I don't want to talk sad, because if I start, everything will push in.

“Okay.” He puts his phone in his pocket. “Do you want me to go?”

No. I want you to stay forever, you major bleeding moron.
“Don't you need to?”

“I have a little while,” he says.

I pull off my shoes, grab a blanket and throw it across my lap.

“I'm smelly.”

“A little. But it's a good smell. Makes me kind of hungry for delicious burritos of every flavor.” He rubs his perfect belly and grins. “So, was your night good?”

“Uh-uh.” I shake my head. “You,” I say.

“What?”

“Talk about you. You always ask about me and don't say a thing about yourself. It's kind of totally unfair.”

His cheeks brighten, redden again. It's cute.

He shrugs.

“Not good enough,” I say. “I think you're an avoider and a deflector. So tell about you.”

“Not like you answer my questions either.”

“See? Avoider,” I say.

“You know everything about me,” he says.

“Definitely not everything.”

I want to make him blush all day.

“Favorite food,” I say. “Start with that.”

“Really?”

“Favorite food,” I repeat.

He bites at his own lip. The top one. “I like salad.”

“Salad?”

“Yes,” he says, like he's admitting he wears girls' underwear on occasion. “I like salad. Fresh field greens, okay?” He's grinning that grin I love.

“But that's so unmeaty.”

“I know,” he says, “I think that's the point. My mom is always making a ton of food, right? Mega meat and potatoes. Pasta and roast and chickens and—I don't know. It's a lot of bulk and carnage.”

I lean forward, pull my toes out from under me. “Digby Jones, are you a secret vegetarian?”

He turns a little to the side so we're facing each other more, kicks off his shoes, puts his feet up onto the couch. They are mere millimeters from mine. “I like that you can do so much with things that come out of the earth. But you know I like my steak, too. As long as it's in Philly.”

“Well, anyway, it makes a weird kind of sense.”

“In what way?”

“I don't know. You seem . . .” I choose my words carefully. “You seem too sensitive for meat.”

His hand jumps toward me for a second, then backs down.

“Do you want to know my favorite food?” I ask.

“Nope. I know it.”

“You do?”

“Yep. Well, I mean, I know what it was.”

“Well?”

“Bell peppers.”

My body stutters. When we were younger, while everyone chomped on chips and drank Kool-Aid, I always went for bell peppers. I don't know why. Something about the crisp, the juice, the simplicity. I haven't had one in so long, though. I haven't just sat down with a plateful of pepper slices and let the clean taste of them freshen me up.

“Paying attention, Digby Jones,” I say.

He breaks eye contact.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.” He takes off his hat, holds it between his hands on his lap. “I like it when you say my name.” The tiniest wrinkles tickle at the sides of his eyes. “So are peppers still your favorite food?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I don't even know
that
.”

He totally rolls his eyes.

“What?”

“Everything is so dramatic with you lately.
My mom left me with my little sister. Some guardian angel brings me stuff. I work in a restaurant and have to actually talk to people.
” He gives my feet a little smack.
“Wah, I have even lost track of my favorite food.”

Coming from anyone else, it would be mean-spirited. From him, it is somehow not.

“Are you finished?” I say.

Shakes his head, eyes all on me again. Mischief.
“Wah,”
he says,
“I am so beautiful. Wah.”
He slows down.
“I am smart, I am competent, I am making the impossible possible.”
Barely audible.
“I am amazing.”

“Amazing,” I repeat, but I am saying it about him.

“Yes, amazing. You did a crazy thing that night, with your dad.”

I start to protest.

“I know you don't like to talk about it, but you jumped on—what?—a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man and wrestled him off of your mom. I mean, that was really . . . amazing.”

“It wasn't like that,” I say.

“What was it like, then?”

“I don't know. He didn't fight me. He let go of her as soon as I touched him. It was like he didn't know what he was doing for a minute, like there was something else controlling him.”

“Temporary insanity.”

“I guess not so temporary.”

“And you haven't seen him?”

“No,” I say. “He wouldn't see any of us. Mom tried a bunch of times, and then finally . . .” And then I say it out loud. “He disappeared too. He's not at the clinic. My mom found out right before she left. I don't know where either of them are. It's like they evaporated.”

He rubs my foot some, shakes his head. “I don't know how anybody leaves you, either of you. But especially you. I don't get it.”

His hand is still resting on my foot. I am a giant foot, his hand a magical giant hand, and it is all over me. Breath. Less. Whole body warm and throbby.

“What are you doing?” Who is this boy I've known for most of always, and why is he everything?

He smiles, and I swear, I swear his eyes are wet. “I don't know.” He does not take his hand from my foot.

I crawl. I fold myself over myself and I crawl over to him, annihilate all rational thought, everything that is telling me to stop, that what I am doing is wrong. I pause when I get close.

Then his hand is on the base of my back and pulling me onto his lap. I rub against his slippery jock jacket, take his hat from his hands and let it drop. I run my fingers down the white stripes on his chest. Wimpy shallow breaths escape my lungs.

The air that comes out of him is sweet, and I take it. The tips of his fingers push. I hope my air tastes as sweet to him. The very edges of our lips touch, and shock after shock zaps me. My eyes are open and staring at his closed lids, and then they snap open and we are so close that he is a blurry Cyclops. I am sucked into his single eye.

“Lucille.” He whispers it like a supplication.

We kiss for real then, and I don't implode or dissolve or fall all to pieces like I thought I would. I expand into deliciousness instead. We sink into each other. His lips are soft and his body is hard and grasping, and after we test each other's mouths for a minute, it's like we are the hungriest people on earth and someone has just served us to each other for dinner, for dessert. We're steak and mashed potatoes with a side of gravy, and chocolate molten lava cake with whipped cream and raspberry sauce. We are decadent. No. He is a crisp, fresh, cool piece of pepper going down. Perfect, like I said.

Which is when his phone vibrates on my leg and I jump back. It goes and goes and goes. His face says he knows it's Elaine calling. He doesn't answer. He doesn't move at all. It vibrates forever before it finally stops. Another few seconds go by, and then it vibrates again. She left a message. What did it say?

Maybe
Hi, it's me. I love you, Digby. I miss you. Where are you? Call me when you get this.
I can almost hear her voice. What would she do if she knew her trustworthy boyfriend was all over another girl, and if she knew it was me? How would that make her feel?

I scoot all the way back, lean myself against the couch's arm. He looks like he has just lost something. He will run away now. He will leave and never come back.

He pulls on one of my sweaty toes.

“Lucille, I—”

“Wah,”
I say,
“I am gorgeous. Wah, I have outrageous physical prowess. Wah, I have a beautiful girlfriend.”
I pause, try to get myself even.

His voice is salty, like I stole everything sweet out of him. “I'm confused, Lucille. This ridiculous girl I have known forever is what?” He rests his head in his hands, stares at the floor. “Is she interested in me? Is she curious? This girl is incredible. Her eyes, Lucille, you should see her eyes.” I have to hold on, literally grip the couch under me, to keep from sliding myself back onto his lap. I don't even know this person I am with him.

His phone buzz buzzes. A text this time.

“Don't you need to get that?”

“No,” he says. “It'll be all right.” Snaps out of whatever we were in. I am jolted. After a minute, he says, “So what's going on with you and my sister?”

“I don't know.” Why is he asking me about this now?

“You're not talking, right?”

“Not really.”

“You threw her out,” he says. “She was trying to help.”

“I threw you out too,” I say. “You're here.”

“But—”

“But what?”

“I couldn't help but come back.”

“But she could,” I say, trying not to think too hard about what he just said.

“Well, you should talk to her. I think her feelings are really hurt.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, “I don't have time for all the feelings. I'm just trying to get by.” It's only when I say it that I realize how fragile I am, how pissed off at Eden, how I don't think it's fair that she should have her feelings hurt when I am dealing with everything I'm dealing with.

“I have something.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Give me just a second.” He quick types something that I assume is a text to Elaine while I try not to feel the sting of it, and then puts the earbuds on me. It softens me up that he does that, even though Elaine lurks between the notes. “You're going to like it.”

The music isn't like anything I've ever heard, not my usual for sure, but I like it enough to close my eyes. When it's over, he has his hat on, his backpack on his shoulders.