I don’t even know who I am.
“You been in there a long time,” Mike yells, banging on the door.
“I’ll be right out,” I say.
“There are other people living in this house,” he mutters from behind the wood.
My face doesn’t look like his. My face doesn’t look like my blue-sock-wearing father’s either. My face looks stupid with lip gloss on it. It will be dark at the game, no one will notice.
“My first date,” I say out loud to myself and then smack my leg. What a cornball I can be. It’s humiliating. It’s like that song I have to sing in South Pacific, about being as corny as Kansas in August.
Mike waits in the hall, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“What do you mean?”
His breath smells like Scotch. He looks me up and down, not the way a father would, but the way one of those nasty lecherous men in bad movies do, the kind of men who pull the teenage girl into their car and lock the doors. He notices my nice clothes and lip gloss. I think of newspaper headlines: Merrimack Girl Slain By Mother’s Live-in Lover.
“What you all dressed up for?” he asks, hunkering down his shoulders, taking up all the space in the hall. I feel little all of a sudden, really little.
“I’m going to a game.”
“You aren’t going to any game.” His eyebrows raise up looking for the moon.
“Yes, I am.”
“You don’t care about sports. You’re just going to look at the boys.”
“No, I’m not. I am going to watch the game.”
“I know what teenage girls go to games for and it’s not to watch the sport.”
He scratches his nose. My cowboy boot twitches, wanting to stomp.
“So what?” My sister comes to the doorframe of the spare bedroom. She’s been listening. Her bruise has changed color. It’s darker. Her makeup doesn’t hide it. “Big deal if she wants to look at boys.”
“She can’t,” Mike says, turning to her. And she gets his eyes like a snake’s, like the holes in a gun barrel.
I don’t want him to confront Jessica, not after Brian and the hitting and everything. The last thing I want is for her to confront another idiot man, so I say, “I have a date.”
“See?” Mike says, turning back to me. “A date.”
“Really?” Jessica says. “No way. Your first one?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Want me to help you with your makeup?” She looks me over.
“You don’t wear makeup,” I say.
“I used to,” she says, taking my face in her hand. “Show me what you have.”
I do a little cat leap and head back towards the bathroom. Mike crowds the hall. He blocks my way.
“You aren’t going,” Mike says and smiles. He picks at the dirt under his fingernails.
“What?” My trigger finger itches.
He stands up straight. He is a tall man, Mr. Wayne, a tall man like you and he takes up all the space in the house suddenly and says all cold and slow, “I said you are not going.”
“Like hell I’m not going.”
“You aren’t going. And don’t you use that crap language on me.”
Jessica and I look at each other. I wonder where my mother is when I need her.
My voice turns frozen and hard and mean, stronger than a voice I’ve ever had before, and I’m not quite sure where it comes from. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Yes, I can,” he says.
And like a third grader I taunt back. “No, you can’t.”
“I’m your father,” he says, right in front of Jessica, “and you had better listen to me, girl.”
“What? What are you talking—” Jessica starts to say, but I drown her out.
“That’s crap,” I yell and with two hands push against his stomach—because I’m so short I miss his freaking chest. He sways a little ’cause he’s a drunk bastard. I run towards my room instead of the bathroom. I’ve caught him off guard for a second. He barrels after me. His feet sound loud, like tornado thunder. He chases me. He grabs my shirt. I keep running. It rips. His hand whacks the back of my head. Pain explodes. I plummet to the floor. He grabs my boot, yanks me back towards him. Jessica screams in the background. I don’t know what she’s saying. Maybe it’s not words. Maybe it’s just screams. That’s how it is in my head: just screams.
My hands grab at the carpet in the hall. It’s no good. I think about Paolo and parkour. Try to plan. I twist onto my back and kick up at him as hard as I can. I kick and yell. He takes my head and slams it into the ground. Jessica’s face, twisted and yelling, is suddenly right there and she’s hitting him with her fists, making words: “Leave her alone. Leave her alone.”
“Get off me,” he roars, and he loosens up on my ankle enough so that I can get out from under the weight of him, and it’s enough, and I’m up on my feet and running.
Something growls behind me. For a second I think there’s got to be a grizzly in the hall with us, but it’s him. It’s this foul drunk man, my mother’s man.
I scramble into my bedroom. I slam the door, but not before I see his face, two wild eyes glaring at me. I push my bureau in front of the door. I’ve only run down the hall, but I pant and feel as if I’ve been running all afternoon.
Oh, I know, I should go out there and give him the what for. I should go out there and say, “Listen, fella, let me tell you a thing or two.” But I don’t. I don’t. I leave my poor sister out there with him, wondering about what he said, facing him alone, maybe. But there’s no noise now. No noise at all except the distant yammering of the TV set.
I know he’s outside my door, breathing, listening the way he does. I can’t hear my sister at all. I have to be brave. I push the bureau away from my door and reach for the doorknob, but I can’t turn it.
“Listen, fella … ” I start to say, but I can’t keep it up. I shake too much, and I just keep thinking of my step-uncle, the one from California, and what he did.
Then I think of the way Mike O’Donnell looked at me. Their eyes were the same, that predator look.
I hear him walk away. One footstep. Another.
He is not my father. I refuse to let him be my father. That’s it.
That’s it.
That’s all there is to it.
But I cannot stop shaking.
One Man Dead in Bar Fight.
One Girl Wimps Out in her Room.
Lights from a car shine into my window, and I hope that it’s Paolo and his brother out there waiting to pick me up and not Brian, not Mike O’Donnell trying to trick me. Working quick, I shove my camera and sleeping stuff in my backpack. It’s risky, but I open the window, pop the screen out, and jump into the dead stalks of tulips and run for the top of the driveway. Behind me, I hear Mike return to the hall outside my room, swearing and banging on the door, and behind him I can hear the higher voice of my sister yelling, yelling, yelling for him to stop.
Grizzly bears don’t stop, not once they’ve tasted blood. They growl and rip things apart and bat you around like you’ve asked for more.
You aren’t supposed to cry on the first date you have with a guy who likes you, maybe. I mean maybe he likes you, but you can’t be sure. How can you be sure? You can’t be sure of anything, ever, not even about who your father is, or who’ll protect you, or that your sister will get married and be happy and not have her husband beat her up, or that your best friend is one person and not somebody else. You can’t be sure of anything, except maybe that you’re not supposed to cry on your first date with a boy who is cute, cute, cute.
People pack the car. Paolo’s brother drives in the front seat with another guy by the window and two girls between them.
They l
augh over their shoulders when I look in with big eyes and they say, “We’re using the same seat belt.”
“Oh, good,” I say like I’m some sort of seat-belt cop. My head pounds. My hair must be a mess. I run my hands through it. My hands shake and get caught in a tangle. I rip through it. My eyes flash up towards the house. What if he follows me? Nothing moves.
In the back seat, Sasha and two other boys and Paolo smile at me.
Paolo gets out of the car, all gentlemanly. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Sasha says. “You okay?”
“Sure,” I say, trying to figure out where I’m going to sit and slugging on my coat, hoping no one’s seen the rip in my shirt. “Just ran down the driveway.”
Paolo smiles at me and says, “It’s kind of squished in there. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Where should I sit?”
He shrugs and looks apologetic. “On my lap?”
“You’re so little, Lily. You’re the lightest. Do you mind?” Sasha asks. She smiles. “Little Lily. Little Lily.”
“Oh,” I say, mostly just to get her to stop singing my name like that. “Okay.”
Paolo sits back down. I take a big breath and get on his lap, leaning forward. My bottom rests on his knees. The roof of the car meets the top of my head.
“You okay?” he shifts underneath me. His breath pulls in all sharp.
“Sure,” I say. “Are you?”
“Yeah. You don’t have a seat belt,” he says.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not safe,” he insists.
“Somebody’s going all parental,” Sasha sings.
We ignore her because sometimes she needs to be ignored.
“I could hold onto you,” he says as his brother pulls a sharp right out of the driveway and laughs. All four people in the front seat turn around to look at me. I smile, but I want to roll my eyes. I wonder if anyone saw me climb out the window. God, my head hurts something fierce.
Paolo’s hands grab my waist the way a boy’s hands touch you when you dance with them, sort of firm, but cautious. I like the way his fingers feel and try to suck my stomach in.
“That’s why there are so many of us in this car,” Sasha says. “So they have an excuse to get us to sit on their laps.”
“Not so,” says the boy she perches on.
“You know it,” she laughs and leans back pretending to smoosh him. He pretends he can’t breathe.
We drive along for a while, everyone talking and laughing except for me. The lights of other cars flash into ours and illuminate everyone’s faces for a moment: beautiful faces of people who know who they are, all of them hooting and singing along with the radio. Paolo talks too, but I just sit on his lap, shoulder smashed against the cold, smooth pane of the window, wondering where I’m going to go after the game, wondering if I could ask Sasha if I could sleep over at her house and if I’d have to tell her why. I imagine telling her about my mother, about Mike, and know I can’t tell her any more right now. Sasha isn’t of that world. I don’t want to be her charity case, her mission.
Maybe I could call Nicole, but I can’t because we’re fighting. Outside everything looks lonely.
“Lily?” Paolo says.
“What?”
“Are you there?”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking.” I smile. My back rests against his chest. “It requires a lot of effort.”
That’s true, because just keeping my head up seems to make it throb.
Paolo’s brother yells, “Sasha asked you to sing us a song.”
I jerk my head so that I can see Sasha. I glare. “A song?”
“Please,” Sasha says, making puppy dog eyes. “I’m tired of the radio.”
“You’re kidding,” I say, shifting on Paolo’s lap so that I lean back more solidly into him. He’s so warm. I turn my head, look into his eyes. They flash with the headlights going by, and there is no mean grizzly in there.
“No, sing for us,” Paolo says, and he lets go of my waist with his hands and instead just wraps both arms around me. I’m caught, but I don’t mind. I see Mike O’Donnell’s face. I remember the smell of his breath. What would he think if he saw this?
“Uh, I don’t know,” I say.
Other people say “come on,” and I go to Sasha, “You have to sing with me.”
“What should we sing?” Sasha asks. No one knows. All sorts of songs are suggested, but no one knows all the lyrics to any, except for Christmas carols and South Pacific, but I’m so sick of those. Everything inside me shakes, trying to keep control, keep it normal and real. Paolo’s arms tighten. I think he sniffs my hair. Nicole says that when guys sniff your hair it gets them all excited.
“‘O Holy Night,’” I announce. “That’s the hardest to sing.”
We start in, and pretty soon everyone croaks it out in false opera voices, trilling every note above high C. Everyone laughs, all thrilled with themselves for being so stupid and silly and irreverent, and no one notices that I stop singing or that tears stroll down my cheeks.
But Paolo notices. He pulls me in closer and turns me sideways, so my back is to the others and I’m staring out the window. He keeps singing, really loudly and pretty darn badly, covering me, covering for me, and then he does the best thing. He puts a hand on the side of my face and keeps it there, even when a tear rolls down and hits his thumb. He doesn’t move.
I have always wondered what it’s like to be on an honest-to-God date. I have seen it from the outside, watched people feed each other McDonald’s French fries, put their hands in the back pockets of each other’s jeans, huddle up under a blanket to watch a game.
Now that’s me.
We huddle under a big Princeton blanket that Sasha brought with her. It’s got a tiger on it because that’s Princeton’s mascot. Her mother went there, I guess.
My mother didn’t go anywhere, not even secretarial school. I can’t imagine not going to college, just working at Sully’s or something.
I snuggle in between Sasha and Paolo. He puts his arm around me and keeps shooting me protective looks mixed with smiles. I can smell Sasha’s bubble gum. She keeps popping it. She’s given me a couple of aspirin and a hairbrush and I don’t feel so bad anymore.
“You okay?” she asked me when I popped the aspirin in the bathroom. She handed me her comb.
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “My mother has a rotten boyfriend.”
She nodded. “My mother had a boyfriend who was a nurse. He stole OxyContin from the hospital and got fired.”
My mouth dropped open and I stared at perfect Sasha Sandeman. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
So with my head better and Sasha human, I lean close to Paolo who smells good, like Old Spice, the same way my stepdad used to smell. I lean against him and close my eyes.
Life can be good, Mr. Wayne. In little snippets, it can be good.
Sasha even tells a John Wayne joke about this little old lady who goes to the store and wants to buy the cheapest toilet paper possible. She jumps up as she tells it, all ham, all stand-up comic.
“So the guy tells her, ‘I’ve got three brands: Charmin, Angel Soft, and the least expensive is a no-name.’ The lady takes that and comes back the next day, stomps up to the clerk and says, ‘Young man, I’ve got a name for your no-name toilet paper.’ ‘What’s that?’ he asks. ‘John Wayne,’ she says, ‘’cause it’s rough, it’s tough, and it don’t take no shit.’” Sasha smiles and bows as I laugh. Sorry, but it’s a good joke and laughing is like swallowing hot chocolate on a cold day. I forget about things for a second.
I’m still laughing when Sasha mutters, “Oh God.”
Her eyes go all big and she looks at me. Life can also be bad.
“What.”
She moves her head to point.
Nicole teeters to our right, standing in front of the bandstand, leaning against the fence that keeps people from falling down into the field, or jumping onto the field if there’s a bad call.
“What is she wearing?” Sasha says, not in a mean way really, more in the stunned way of a mother who can’t understand tongue piercings.
What Nicole’s wearing is a micro skirt with bright red tights, even though it’s freezing out. She also has on those heels that make you look like you’re a runway model or a hooker, those super-high kind. She looks absolutely ridiculous. Her legs remind me of the tiny bones of a bird.
The worst part, the absolute worst part, is that her hand is in the back pocket of Travis Poppins’ super-sized jeans. She has settled. She has given up, given in, gone out with Travis because she’s so afraid of being alone. My stomach buckles into itself and for a second I think that Nicole is just like my mother. I push the thought away and just stare at her hand in Travis’ pocket. Nicole’s evil brother is on Travis Poppins’ other side.
“She knows you’re here,” Sasha says and then her face gets a soft look. “I just saw her looking over at you.”
From the way Sasha says it, I can guess that Nicole was really closer to glaring than to looking.
I’ve told Sasha all about my fight with Nicole, which is probably not a good thing. Right after I did, it I felt like I was betraying Nicole a little bit. No, betraying her a lot.
“I’m going to say hi,” I tell her.
Sasha gives me big eyes. “Oh, Lily.”
“I have to,” I say, because I feel so bad for this Nicole, this Nicole who wanted to be cool so bad and now she’s given up. Maybe this is something I can fix.
Sasha looks at Stuart Silsby, who’s sitting right behind us, eavesdropping and trying to get close enough to Sasha to smell her hair without being obvious. He pounds his chest with his fist two times and intones, “Be brave, little one.”