“Oh ... ” I don’t know what to say. Tom’s body tightens next to me and Jim bounces away and into the Riverside.
The moment Jim’s gone, Tom says, voice rough, “Who gave you a ride home?”
“Um ... ” I move my Snoopy shoes a little further away from Tom, towards the Citgo gas station. “Eddie Caron.”
He reacts just like I thought he would. His cheek twitches. His lips tighten. “Belle, what were you thinking?”
“It was pouring out.”
“It. Was. Eddie. Caron,” he groans. “Belle, do you remember what he did to you?”
“No. I forgot.”
My voice sounds as snarky as I feel.
Tom shakes his head at me and looks away, starts ripping up duct tape, his motions fierce. “I can’t believe you got in a truck with him.”
“It was fine. It was raining, I’d crashed,” I say. I breathe in deep, touch Tom’s arm with my hand. My touch makes him jerk. “I don’t think he’s all evil-bad bad. I think he just screwed up.”
Tom grabs my hand in his. A piece of duct tape gets lost in the movement and sticks to both of us. One end clings to the back of my hand; the middle part wraps itself against Tom’s finger. Tom does not try to move it. He wills my eyes to his. I can feel it, all this will power coming out of him and I bristle, but I look. His voice comes out the color of duct tape. “You’re always thinking everyone is good, Belle. Not all people are good.”
I pull away. The duct tape rips at my skin, arguing. “You’re being an ass.”
“You’re being stupid.”
“Whatever.”
“Shawn’s right,” he says, hard and mean.
My hands go to my hips. “Right about what?”
His cheek twitches, pulses really.
“Right about what?” my voice is all demanding but I don’t care.
“That you don’t know who you are. You’re the most reluctant ‘popular’ person in the universe. And you try to ignore it, but you are. You are popular. Then you’re all anti-label and then you put everyone in categories: Mimi is evil. Dylan is a good, gay man. Eddie is okay. Emmie is the perfect best friend. Your mom is naïve. Jim is whacked. It’s like you make that all they are. You ignore everything that contradicts your image of people.” Tom slams out these words, hard, like they’re baseballs coming right in the center of the strike zone, right over home plate. He smacks me out of the park.
I bullet into myself because even though I am mad, mad, mad, I know this is true. At least a little bit. My heart flinches. I don’t want to hear this, not now, not from him. He’s supposed to care about me, not shove me down, not now, not when there are problems going on, major problems.
“So, I’m wrong about you? You’re really not a good boyfriend. You’re really a combative ass.”
“I deserve that.”
“Yep, you do.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off. He grabs my wrist.
“I currently hate you,” I say, and my words come out soft and weak.
His fingers let go. “I know. But I don’t hate you, Belle.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
I can’t swallow. There’s a gulp caught in my throat but I get the words out. “You think I’m pathetic, shallow and pathetic.”
The Citgo station waits on the corner lot, abandoned because it’s Sunday. There are just a couple tanks for gas, a door for the body shop. It’s filthy and oil stains the pavement.
My feet, with a will of their own, start taking me over there. Tom grabs my arm again.
“Why didn’t you call me when it was raining?” he says. “Why didn’t you call?”
I keep walking away. “I don’t know.”
He strides right next to me. “It’s okay to need people, Belle, you know? It’s okay if you have to call me or something. Even if I’m at practice. It’s okay. You don’t have to be so afraid of needing me all the time.”
I stop walking. “What do you know about need?”
No answer.
No answer.
“A lot,” he says and then bites the corner of his lip and the grip on my arm eases up.
We face each other, standing right outside Main Street Citgo, which fortunately is closed. Still, a tourist in a Florida car drives in, right over the line that dings to tell the attendant that someone needs service. Only there is no attendant. There is nobody to help them check their oil, fill their tank with gas.
Tom turns his head to talk to the gray-haired man with the perfectly creased khaki pants and a pink shirt too bright to ever let him pass as a Mainer.
The guy barks at him. “You work here or you flirt here?”
Tom gets one of his shit-eating grins; that’s what Shawn calls them. “It’s closed on Sundays.”
“I just need some gas,” the old man says, tapping the nozzle on the pump.
“Sir, I don’t work here.”
The old man stops tapping, glares at Tom, shakes his head. “Can’t even help out an old man. Kids these days.”
He slams back into his sedan. Tom yells after him, “There’s an Irving Main Way up on High Street. Just turn left.”
The man motors out of the parking lot. He turns right.
“No one listens to me,” Tom says, smiling. Then he frowns again, remembering what it is we were doing, which is, of course, fighting.
“I’m not afraid to need people,” I say trying to finish the discussion, but even I can recognize the weakness in my voice.
Tom’s hand reaches up to my face and there’s still duct tape hanging off it. “Belle, you are. You’re afraid we’ll leave you if you’re not perfect, like your dad or like Dylan.”
“That has nothing to do with this.” I grab his hand, pull it down level and rip off the tape. He doesn’t even flinch.
A seagull screams over us.
“The river’s over there,” I tell it, pointing down Main Street towards the Hale and Hamlin building and the little bridge.
The gull lands on the roof of the Grand Auditorium.
Squeezing Tom’s hand I say, “Nobody listens to me either.”
“That’s probably why we’re together, huh?”
“Yeah, probably.”
I move closer to him, pulled by my pelvis it seems. My hips have better ideas than I do. Swallowing, I get up my nerve. This is a safer topic. This is a safer way to get back on track. So I say, “I don’t mean to pressure you about sex.”
His hands grab my hips. “You aren’t pressuring me.”
“Promise?”
His lips find mind, touch, linger, break away. “Promise. I just don’t want to be like my mom and dad, you know.”
Or Emmie and Shawn.
He keeps talking. “My mom gave up everything, you know, because … ”
My hand cusps his cheek. “Because she was pregnant with you.”
Someone blares their horn. It’s Crash, who finally got his driver’s license. He’s sticking his head out of his new Saab. It’s red. I love his car even though it’s much better environmentally to drive a hybrid.
He yells at us, “Get a room and invite me over!”
Tom flips him the finger, but keeps me close with his other hand.
“That’s embarrassing,” I say, leaning my head into his chest. “People are going to church and we’re making out in the Citgo lot.”
“We do need to find a room,” Tom murmurs into my ear. “When’s your mom leaving?”
“Tuesday,” I say into his chest that smells like trees and wood and man and …
Ack.
It is not a good idea to smell hot boys’ chests in public. The backs of my knees wiggle.
“Tell me that you need me, Belle,” he says.<
br />
I pull away, examine his face, those lines of jaw and cheek. “Why?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. His lips are smooth and not too wet, but not dry. They are perfect when they move. I wish that I could make a song like Tom’s lips. “Just say it.”
“I need you,” I say, but I don’t want to mean it. Not at all.
But the truth is, I do. I do need him and I can’t even tell him why. And the bigger truth is Tom needs me to need him. I do not know what that means, but it means something, something more than words or duct tape rings or lines of hickeys down your chest.
Tom has to work most of the morning so he brings me home after breakfast. Em doesn’t get off from Dairy Joy until noon, so I take a ride on my bike, do my homework and then make a list about why giving seniors homework in the last week of May is stupid.
The list is also stupid so I leave it on my computer, along with my mostly finished paper of didacticism and decide to work on some songs.
I wait.
I think the word: Baby.
I curl up in a little ball and try to figure out what to do, try to figure out how to be the best friend I can be. But I don’t know. I don’t know the actions I’m supposed to take. I don’t know anything.
Em insists we still go afternoon kayaking with Tom and Shawn just like we planned.
“I am not telling him now, okay?” she glares at me.
“Okay.”
I do not ask why.
She sort of tells me anyway. “I just want today to be nice, okay? One more nice day.”
The river agrees, sparkles blue, thank God. In the winter it’s a rodent-colored river, drab and almost metallic, dangerous looking and cold. Tom’s dad bought two tandem kayaks a few years ago.
“All part of his pledge to never be a fat cop,” Tom explains as we unclip the kayaks from the dock. I slide in first, in the front and he gets the back so he can steer. Em and Shawn clamber into the other one and we’re off.
Tom’s mom waves to us from the window and then she goes farther inside. She is ghost-like. I cringe because it’s like I’m flash-forwarding to Em.
“She wishes she was going out,” Tom says.
This doesn’t help my stomach, which sinks into my hips or something. Still, I nod. I wonder what it’s like to be Tom’s mother, constantly watching her men going out there, having adventures. I wonder what it’s like to be the one left behind, waving goodbye. I won’t let that happen to Em, no matter what. It will not happen to Em.
We glide and slice through the water, our paddles pushing us along. With kayaking it’s almost like a push-up movement when you paddle, unlike canoeing where you dip and dive into the water.
It’s peaceful. The smell of sun-warmed skin mixes with salt and pine.
An osprey circles over us looking for fish in the water.
I think about my new package of condoms, all closed up tightly in my purse. It feels like some sort of Christmas present, like some kind of unexpected surprise. I am so ridiculous. I pull the paddle through the water. I pull the other side.
The osprey screeches and normally I love osprey and their soaring circles, the dark Vs that pattern their wings. Today, though, it makes me think of babies crying, angry mothers in Wal-Mart. I sneak a look at Em. Her face is still so white, so blank.
Tom and I paddle in tandem. Our strokes are in unison and the only way we can do that is by him watching me, matching my paddling stroke for stroke, which if I think about it is a really sexual thing. So I do not think about it because I am in a kayak, because of what’s in Em’s belly. I shiver even though the sun is warm.
The osprey dives into the water, a football-field length ahead of us. One quick splash and he’s gone.
I stop paddling for a second, wait for him to surface.
The osprey reappears, his beak empty.
“Lucky fish,” Tom mutters and we start forward again, past a swirling eddy, almost up to Em and Shawn.
The osprey retreats to the sky, begins circling again.
Shawn’s paddle clanks against Em’s. They are hopelessly out of synch. She grunts at him and shakes her fist so her paddle is lopsided and flailing. She grabs on again, leans back, bending herself backwards on the kayak. Shawn leans his giant trunk forward to give her a kiss, but they can’t quite reach.
“I owe you,” he says as the osprey dives again.
Tom and I pass them and stop. We have to keep stopping and let them get ahead because they are such horrible paddlers.
“Teamwork,” Tom taunts. Both Em and Shawn glare at him. Tom splashes them with his paddle. They try to splash us back, but we’re too quick and strong. Tom knows the currents, knows how to slice through the river.
“Poop head!” Em yells.
Tom laughs. “Did she just call me a poop head?”
“Yep,” I tell him.
Em isn’t done yet. “Tom! You going to wear a duct tape tuxedo to the prom?”
“Do not give him ideas,” I say. She is being so brave. I can be brave, too.
“You could have a matching gown,” Shawn laughs. “You could make it inside out and just stick to each other the whole night.”
“Good suggestion,” Tom says.
The osprey emerges, a fish in its beak. He struggles back to the air, heavied down by his prize. It’s funny how what he needs makes him heavier, how it keeps him from his graceful-wing flights.
“You know what I want,” Shawn says, stretching and reaching his paddle high above his head. “I want it to stay like this forever, you know. Just us, floating around.”
“What about change?” Em asks as I unpop my water bottle and slug some down. If I thought she’d notice, I’d shoot her a “shut up” look, because Shawn is right this time and she knows it. She has to know it; she just also has to challenge everything.
Shawn dips his paddle straight into the water. The tides take us closer to the bay even without us working at all. “Change is good and everything, and I’m excited about college and freedom and life and all that shit, but … I don’t know. This is so good right now. Here with you guys.”
He shrugs an apology.
Tom lifts his paddle high above his head. “To friends!” he yells.
We all lift up our paddles, touch Tom’s yellow blade tip with our own.
“To friends!”
Our voices echo down the river. Shawn yells the loudest. It’s so incredibly corny but also, somehow, incredibly good here under the sun with the blue sky and the water.
Tom pulls back his paddle and smacks into all of ours. “To freedom!”
We echo him, but my voice is softer. So is Em’s. Shawn and Tom smile big and bold, but … Em and me … our faces are a little different.
What exactly does freedom mean? Whatever it means, Em will not be free again. And probably not Shawn either.
Our kayaks rock from our movement but we do not tip over. We stay afloat, heading down the river to the wide open sea.
We pull in at our picnic place, a tiny patch of sand with big rocks near Newbury Neck. This patch of rocky sand is what we Mainers call a beach. As soon as we haul the kayaks in far enough so that they won’t float off, Em and Shawn start arguing again. This time it’s about war. I bury my toes in the sand and sit down next to Tom.
“At least they aren’t arguing about canned peas this time. Remember? ‘Are they grosser than canned spinach or not?’” Tom whispers to me.
His breath cools itself against my hot skin. I wiggle closer to him, one inch, another, until our stretched-out legs touch. I dip my fingers into the sand, shifting through it, looking for sea glass, trying not to think about what Em needs.
Emily continues on. “How can I support all soldiers when not all soldiers are good?”
“Because they’re at war!” Shawn
throws up his hands, looks at us with pleading eyes.
“But some of them are bad. Some torture people in prison. Some massacre others.”
Shawn’s hands come back down. “Jesus, Em. You know, Belle’s dad died in a war.”
Em looks at me. Her voice quiets. “I know.”
My hands find something in the sand that’s bigger than a tiny granule. I pull it out.
“I found some plate,” I tell everyone. It’s blue and white, a piece of an old plate, just about the size of my pinky finger. There’s a tiny picture of a house on it. You can just see half of it, a roof and a window. I hand it to Tom.
He examines it and hands it back. “Cool.”
He tilts his head, wondering about things, I guess. When I don’t say anything he yanks some duct tape off his shoe and starts fiddling with it, folding it, ripping it.
The river and sea have washed the jaggedness away from the plate. The edges aren’t sharp anymore. “I hate the war. I don’t hate the troops as a whole. You should never hate any group as a whole, isn’t that the point? That people are individuals. Like sand. I mean every single grain of sand is different, different colors, textures, but it’s all sand.”
“She is such a poet,” Em announces.
I give her the finger. She tosses sand at me. It only makes it to my feet.
“Commie, you are too cute,” Tom says and kisses me on the top of the head while I pocket the plate.
Em takes a picture. Then for a long time nobody says anything. Tom stops with his duct tape long enough to pass a Gatorade bottle to Shawn. Shawn hauls some in. He swallows hard. He shakes his head and glares at Em. He cannot let it end.
“They’re fighting for you,” he says.
Em’s voice raises to seagull pitch. “They’re fighting for oil, for the president, for American imperialism, not for me!”
“They don’t have a choice,” Shawn says. He slams another gulp down his throat and whips up to stand over all of us. “They’re signed up. They have a duty.”
Tom glances at me. A muscle in his cheek twitches. Then he grabs Shawn’s ankle. “Settle down, Bubba.”
Shawn stops, stares down at Tom lounging on the beach. Shawn looms over us, so big. A second passes. Another. “Who the hell is Bubba?”