“Dylan? It is nothing. He is just tutoring me in algebra,” I explain, because he is only my tutor, nothing more.
She gives me a tight-lipped smile. “What’s that costing you?” She flicks the ashes onto a bill that will not be paid.
“Nothing, Momma. He is doing it for free.” I pick up the folded clothes and put them back into the basket.
“Baby doll, ain’t nothing in this world is free. And men know that better than anybody. They are always wanting a reward.”
I stomp out of the kitchen, done with the conversation. She follows me she is not done, “Baby doll, I am just looking out for you.” She says behind me. I sigh. Mad at myself for snapping at her, she doesn’t know any better. And she thinks by telling me this she is protecting me. How can I be mad at her for that? All I want to do is to protect them. I drop the basket into the corner of the room and sit down on the bed. Everett lies on the floor, drawing a maze. She sits down next to him pulling him onto her lap. He struggles against her grasp, trying to get back to the maze he was drawing.
I drop to the brown-carpeted floor next to them and hand him his paper before there is a complete melt- down. “Momma, Dylan is not like that he…” He is sweet, funny, and a little uptight at times.” I laugh to myself, “He is different.” I elect.
She sighs, “You just be careful. Boys like him are only good for one thing. A broken heart.”
Chapter 11.
Confused
“I kissed Barbie!” I lean my back against the cold metal locker. I wanted to see what would happen, and whether it was all in my mind these feelings I was starting to feel. Each kiss opened up something inside me. Each carefully placed kiss was another firework going off in my chest.
“So, she is your girlfriend.” Third is digging in his locker.
“No she is not. She is my pretend girlfriend,” I correct him. Do I want more from her than that?
“I still don’t see the problem.” He pulls a book out from under his old gym clothes. Their smell insults me, a mix between old onions and cheese.
“You are gross, man, you know that? You’re supposed to wash those things when you are finished wearing them.” Third shrugs pushing the offending clothes back into the rubble of his locker.
“I am trying to see your dilemma, dude, but I don’t.” He slams his locker shut, a trapped gym sock hanging out the bottom of his locker. How can he not see it? I kissed Barbie. I might have some sort of feelings for her and I am not sure how I feel about Katie anymore. For so long Katie has been the one in my dreams, but now my dreams are filled with blond, crazy hair and huge, blue, alien eyes. She is in my head like a parasite.
“The girl is a train wreck and I don’t want her to screw things up with Katie.” We stop in front of his Math class, which just happens also to be Barbie’s.
She gives me a small smile as she slips past us into the class. “Did you see that?” I gesture to where Barbie just stood moments before, a faint smell of sugar lingering in the air.
“Dude, I think you are more screwed up than her. Look, you both know this is not real. The way I see it, you have two options. One is you bitch and moan about being with one of the hottest girls in school. The second is you enjoy it while you can. If the girl wants to kiss you, then hell, you kiss the shit out of her.” He claps me on the shoulder, “You are one lucky SOB.”
***
We are parked in the back of my grandfather’s old orchard. She talked me into leaving school during our free period. Leaving school is another sign that this girl has me completely screwed up. We sit on the tail gate of my truck. Her knees are pulled up to her chest. The long flowered skirt she wears fans out around her. She absently smoothes out the wrinkles in it. Her toes peek out. They are painted a bright green that reminds me of the color of new grass. Her hands and wrists are tattooed in blue ink, words and small swirls crawl up her arm. Weird. She is quiet. Not like the Barbie I am used to, the loud, boisterous, opinionated, stubborn, and completely infuriating. No, this Barbie is a quiet and withdrawn. I am going to regret asking, but I have to. “What’s wrong?” I set down the Math book. She is not listening to the lecture I was giving anyway. And she needs to be paying attention to how to solve equations by factoring if she wants to ace the upcoming test Gregor is giving.
She leans her head on her knee and looks out into the orchard. The smells of peach blossoms mix with the smell that is her sweet sugar. It swims around me in the warm afternoon breeze. I am starting to love that smell. “Do you ever wish you could sprout wings and just fly away?” Okay, weird doesn’t begin to cover her. “Leaving everything and everyone behind?” She does not wait for me to answer. “Sometimes I think if I just start running, I will end up somewhere good, some place warm. That if I keep running, I will get to the ocean.”
I have no clue what she means or what she is talking about. Girls are so hard to understand, always talking in riddles. I know there is a hidden message somewhere in there. I want to figure it out. And I think she wants me to figure it out. “You want to go to the beach?” I ask. She looks at me and laughs around tears that start to fall. Shit. I hate it when girls cry. I get this weird feeling in my stomach. I just want to make her smile again.
“That’s what you got out of that?” She says, swinging her legs down so that her toes dangle in the grass. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, hot stuff. We girls are complicated creatures.” She wipes at a stray tear. No kidding.
“You are telling me,” I sigh. I lie back on the truck, my legs dangling next to hers. The sun warms my face.
“Tell me something that you want,” she suggests as she lies down next to me. I lift her hand and examine the designs on her wrist a small bird with a poem about being free.
“You know what I want. I want to be Katie’s boyfriend,” I say…or at least I used to.
She sighs, “No, something you want for yourself. Something you have never told anyone before.” She tilts her head to the sun. Her long neck glimmers against the sunlight.
“I have no secrets,” I lie. I have lots of secrets.
“Everyone has secrets,” she reads my mind.
“Not me I am an open book…except…no, never mind.”
She sits up on her elbows and looks down at me. For a moment, my breath catches in my throat. She really is beautiful. Her hair is glowing from the sun, giving her an angelic appearance. She bites at her pouty lips, and for a moment I think about kissing her again. “I wear Star Wars underwear.” I say trying to change the mood.
“What?” She wrinkles her nose at me.
“Yep, I have the whole collection, Luke Skywalker, Darth, the Storm Troopers. I even have ones with the Ewoks on them.”
She starts to laugh and I can breathe again. “Fine, don’t tell me.” She lies back down.
I know I am going to regret this but if it will keep a smile on her lips I will do just about anything. “I do have a secret place.” She looks over at me and the feeling of wanting to kiss her comes again.
“Like a secret hideout?” she asks.
“Better. Come on. I’ll show you.” I push the feelings away, hide them.
We speed down a dirt road, a tail of dust behind us. Her feet are up on my dashboard tapping to the music that blares out of my static-filled speakers. She bobs her head to the beat, mouthing the words.
“You like this song?” I ask, turning up the music.
“Yeah, it is my favorite,” she smiles dreamily.
“Go ahead and sing. I promise not to laugh.” I want to hear the sound of her voice. I shake my head to try to stop the intrusive thoughts.
She rolls her eyes, “Trust me you don’t want me singing out loud. I might sound like an angel when I speak, but when I sing…” she shivers.
I laugh. “Come on, you can’t be that bad.”
She shrugs, “Fine it is your ear drums.” She belts out with the radio. Holy crap. She is bad, like fingernails on the chalkboard bad.
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“Okay, okay. I think my ears are bleeding.” I grab at my ears.
She hits me in the arm. “I told you I was bad,” she laughs, and I laugh with her. I turn up the radio and we both sing as loud and out of tune as we can.
We pull up to an old abandoned barn. “This is it?” She asks skeptically.
“Yeah, isn’t it beautiful?” I shut off the engine. She squints as if she is trying to see it in a new light, to see the beauty I see. It is beautiful to me with all the peeling white paint and the boards that are barely hanging on. It is misunderstood. Where most would see a condemned building, I see the history, the stories that live within these walls. I open the door and jog over to her side to help her out. “You want to know my secret?” I ask. She nods. I am suddenly afraid of what she will think of me. I take her hand and pull her to the door. Tingling sensations sparks to life where her skin touches mine.
“Close your eyes,” I tell her. I leave her standing there while I open the heavy, water-logged wood doors. “Keep your eyes closed.” I guide her through the doors, my hands on her bare shoulders. “Okay. Open them.” She opens her eyes, blinking letting her eyes adjust to the dim light.
We stand in the middle of the run down barn, the dirt floor crushing beneath our feet. Light streams in through the cracks in the boards, dancing off small particles of dust. “It is beautiful,” she gasps. She is in awe, turning around taking in the beauty. I go over to the corner of the barn to my secret. I tug at an army-green, moth-eaten tarp that covers the boxes I was searching for.
“Are you ready to learn my dirty secret?” I tease her. She comes and stands behind me. My stomach drops.
“Is it that you cut up innocent high school girls who annoy you into tiny pieces and store them in those boxes?” She teases.
“No, I keep them over there.” I point to an old, rusting freezer. I pull the remains of the tarp off the boxes, revealing their contents. One of the boxes is filled with old photographs. The other is filled with cameras.
“What is this?” she asks, picking up a yellowing photo of my grandmother when she was young. It is my favorite picture of her. In it, she sits on a beach in Florida wearing an old-fashioned bikini. My granddad is in the background doing a muscle-man pose. It was their honeymoon.
“My grandmother,” I say looking down at the photo. She looks up at me. She is beautiful.
“She is so beautiful. She has the same dark eyes as you do, Dylan.” It is true, both my mother and I share those same dark eyes.
“My grandmother loved photography.” I start to tell her why I brought her here. “She was always looking through the lens of her camera.” I start shuffling through the photos, pulling out one of me in a bathtub when I was three. It is easier not to look at her when I tell her. “Like I said, she always had a camera.”
She takes the incriminating picture out of my hand. “Is that is you? Cute buns,” She winks.
My cheeks heat up.
“So what is the secret?” she asks.
How do I tell her that I want to be a photographer more than anything. That when I look through the lens, I see a story too. I want to tell those stories to the world, but I am afraid and embarrassed of what others will think of me. I wish I didn’t care. But I do. “I love photography.” I throw my hands into the air. I feel a weight that has been sitting on my chest lift with the confession. “I wish I could have a camera attached to my face.” I continue with my confession. I pick up a vintage 35 mm camera and look through the lens.
“So, why don’t you?” she asks. Like it is just that simple. I bring her into focus. She is so clear. She knows what she wants and doesn’t care what anyone says. She can be herself and for that I am jealous of her. I snap a picture of her. The film is probably so old that it will not develop. But I want to know her story. Behind the camera, I am not afraid. She strikes a pose, hands on her hips.
“What? Just take pictures?” I ask. She looks over her shoulder. Click.
“Yeah, what is stopping you?” Click.
“It is hard enough just being me without adding the title of weird, creepy guy, who takes pictures to it.” Click.
She takes her hair out of the messy knot on top of her head and shakes out her hair. Click. She is stunning. I don’t think I have met anyone as beautiful as her. Katie is beautiful, too, but it is different with Barbie. It is like she has this glow that she radiates and you can’t help but want to be close to her.
“So you are not doing something you love, because of a label you are afraid you might get?” Click.
I cringe. That is exactly why. “Yeah…” Click.
“You should never let what people think of you make up your mind about what you want to do.” Click. “I will never let them box me in” She says in a defiant and convincing voice.
I believe that she will never let anyone box her in. She is strong and I wish I was like her. Click.
“I don’t care what they think of me.” She tells me for what seems like the millionth time since meeting me. So why is it only now that her words are starting to mean something to me? Click. She spins and the light dances off her skin. I snap another picture of her. I wish I didn’t care what people thought of me. I wish I could be more like her, but I care. I drop the camera to my side, and sigh. She takes the camera and starts snapping pictures of the ceiling. Click.
“That is really sad,” she says. Click. I know. It is more than sad, more like pathetic. And like that, I am ten years old again. Filled with hatred. I am on my knees holding my broken glasses in my hands. “What a fag!” one of the boys taunts behind me. “Come on, loser want to play?” A ball hits me in my side. “I wish it was that simple,” I say. Click.
She snaps a picture of me. Click, click, click. I reach for the camera, but she dodges out of my reach and continues to click away. I sit down and sigh. The old weight settles back in my chest again. She snaps another picture before coming behind me. She puts her arms over my shoulders and holds the camera out and snaps a picture of us. “Say cheese,” Click. The smell of spun sugar fills me and I lean toward her to smell it again. Click.
“Cotton candy.” I breathe it in, holding onto her. “You smell like cotton candy,” I say. Click. I can’t stop myself. The overwhelming feeling to kiss her is so strong. I lean in and my lips brush hers. She waits, testing me to see what my next move will be. I wait, watching for her next move. We are in a standoff. Waiting, her mouth lingers next to mine. I move my hand up her arm. Her eyes are on mine. A shudder travels down her body and I am alive with the feel of her. Gripping her arm, I guide her around so she is sitting in my lap. She is watching me with those entrancing eyes. Beautiful. I trace the outline of her sitting in my lap with trembling fingers. I want to take another picture of her like this. I want to remember the vulnerability that I created within her. She tilts her head back, exposing her neck. Like a moth to a flame, I bring my mouth to that golden skin. She lets a moan escape as I explore the feel of her.
Chapter 12.
Falling
“Pop quiz.” The class groans in unison. “What? I want to see how my students are doing. If that is so wrong, I don’t want to be right.” Gregor chuckles at his attempt at humor.
The Goth girl to my left passes me the stack of papers. “I think his main purpose is to see how much of a living hell he can make of our lives,” She mutters under her breath.
“I think he stays up late getting his kicks from new ways to torture his students,” I banter back.
“I heard that. I expect a hundred from you, Miss Starr.”
Now I groan. If he is expecting me to make a good grade, he is in for some disappointment. It is not that I don’t try to pay attention to what Dylan is trying to teach me. It is just that the numbers start blending together and my head aches with the thought of numbers and letters together. Whoever invented algebra was a tool, letters and numbers mixed together is just plain confusing. Besides, I have more fun watching Dylan trying to teach
me than actually learning the stuff.
Dylan gets this goofy grin when he talks about numbers. He gets so excited when I pretend to get what he is saying. He gets even more excited when he thinks I am making a connection. I have never seen someone get that excited over numbers. Well, except maybe Gregor. I like watching the way Dylan writes, the weird way he fists the pen as he writes the lyrics of a math problem down. How his brown hair falls in his eyes. The way his lean muscles flex when he stretches…Tap, tap. “You should be putting answers on this page, Miss Starr!” Gregor taps his red pen on my paper. He just can’t wait to start marking down our grades and commenting about how wrong we are with that red pen of his. I can practically see the excitement leaping off him. I try to pull any bit of information that I can remember from Dylan and get to work.
“Shit a D.” The girl next to me crumples her quiz and tosses it to the front of the room. It misses the trash can, exposing the offending red mark to whoever comes by and decides to be nosy. “What did you get?” she asks, biting on to the end of her pen.
I reach over and try to stuff the paper in my bag before she sees it. Too late. She snatches the paper out of my hand. “Hey,” I snatch it back and stuff it into my bag.
“B.” Her jaw drops.
“Plus,” I add with just the small hint of pride.
“Half the class flunked! How did you pass?” Her brown eyes turn into tiny accusing slits.
“Tutor,” I offer.
“That’s all because of that boy you are getting tutored by.”
How did she know that? I guess it is not news that we are a “thing.”
“Let him tutor me.” Her black-painted lips spread into a sly smile. “I bet he can get me a B.”
“Um, no thanks,” I say.
“I guess not, I can’t pay him like you can.” She stands up, stuffing the rest of her things into a backpack that is barely hanging on. Safety pins hold pieces of it together. My cheeks burn as I remember the kiss from last night. It was so gentle. I run my fingers across my lips, still feeling his kiss lingering on them. How does Dylan Knight fit into my screwed up life?