"Look," I said. I muddled through my feelings. I scanned the area with paranoid hunter's eyes. "It's blood law. It's...that's not your fault."
Paul faltered. "All the same."
"No," I said. " 'Cause my dad killed your wife in the first place, didn't he? I'm the one who should be apologizing."
"No," Paul said, visibly uncomfortable. "No, you have nothing to apologize for."
"I have Dad's face," I said. "I know that hurts you."
Paul lifted his head. Paul smiled wanly. "I'm not sure you realize just how much."
Stupid face. I hated my face. I ducked my head, thinking to hide it.
"You and Cubby..." Paul trailed off. "I still can't believe it."
"Why not?" I asked, hesitating.
Paul's cheeks colored. "I just," he said. "I never thought that that Skyla was... Well, I suppose he didn't, either."
"Y'mean gay?" I blurted out.
Paul's color deepened. "Yes, I think that's the word."
"Does that bother you?" I asked, uncomfortable. "Sir?"
"No," Paul said. "He's my child. The young man he is today is the young man I raised. It would be hypocritical of me to disapprove of the way he turned out. It would be like...like the baker cursing the bread."
"If the bread came out burned," I said, "or it didn't taste right, it would make sense for the baker to curse it. 'Cause he worked hard on it."
"He did," Paul said. "But that's the thing. He worked on it. How can he blame somebody else for the way it turned out? Surely he doesn't think the bread decided to bake itself?"
"Are you saying you think you made Sky gay?" I asked, confused.
"No," Paul said. We made for a pair of idiots, he and I. "But I do like to think that the love Skylar feels for you...well, I'd like to think that I taught him how to love like that. That perhaps the way I raised him was what made him comfortable enough to share himself with you."
I was starting to feel embarrassed; not to mention hungry. Stupid bread analogies. "Yeah," I said. I tried to smile.
The beech tree north of the rope swings caught my eye, because one of the branches moved just slightly, even though there wasn't any wind. My throat tightened. Before I knew what I was doing I dragged Paul against me in a hug.
"What--" Paul coughed, winded.
The dart sailed behind his head. It landed soundly in the grass to my right. I scooped it up behind Paul's back, tucking it discreetly into my pocket. My fingers flared with a dull ache. What was that thing laced with? Stinging nettles? We had plenty of nettles around the reservation. It was how we'd gotten our name.
"Rafael," Paul said awkwardly. "I think you should let go of me."
I released him, not least of all because his feelings felt like melancholy, and absence, and I didn't want to feel them for my own. I wished I could have touched people without taking in their emotions. Paul stood up. I didn't look at him, but I said:
"You should go home. Uh--to see Sky."
Paul stared at me like I'd lost my mind. The more he stared, the more frantic I grew. I glanced at the beech tree, but it wasn't moving anymore. I glanced at Paul, my jaw taut.
"Rafael," Paul said. "Your hand--"
"Sky said he missed you," I lied, "so you should go see him."
Either Sky's dad was a really good dad, or else he was a huge dope. He could've been both. Whatever he was, he ambled down the dirt road without waiting to hear why. Sweaty and cold, I watched him. I even got up and followed him once he'd walked far enough that I could take to the trees without his noticing. I followed him until the forest stopped and I couldn't follow him anymore. But neither could Mary. Not unless she wanted to step out in the open.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Mary hissed.
She stepped out from behind a ponderosa pine, a reed blowgun over her shoulder. My fingers had started to blister. I stuck them in my mouth, my eyes watering with pain.
"Get over here," Mary said, her voice shaking with anger.
She grabbed my hand and dragged me all the way back to our house. She kicked open the front door and pulled me down the hall, into the bathroom; which didn't make a lot of sense to me, because there was a water pump right outside. She stuck my hand under the faucet, cold water hissing down my knuckles.
"You're insane," I rasped, my eyes blurry behind my glasses.
Mary stomped outside the bathroom. She came back in with baking soda and smeared it on my fingers. The ache dulled almost instantly. Mary shut the water off, livid, tense. Yeah, well, that made two of us.
"Why can't you ever just be normal?" I shouted at her.
"Why can't you ever just mind your own business?" she shouted back.
Uncle Gabe wasn't home, but Rosa was. Rosa peeked into the bathroom after us before deciding sibling spats were above her pay grade. She closed the door to give us privacy.
"Uncle Gabe swore you wouldn't go through with it," I began. My voice bounced off the unpainted wooden door. "But you--"
"You talked to Uncle Gabriel about this?" Mary asked.
I hated the bathroom; it was too small. Any closed space was too small for me. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. "So what?"
Mary slapped her hands against the sink, laughing artificially. "I told you I'm always last!"
"What are you talking about?" I demanded.
"Get out," Mary snapped.
"Gimme your blowgun," I said.
"Get out!" Mary said.
She wrestled the door open, thrusting me through it. I stumbled. I grabbed Mary by the arm and pulled her after me. I really just wanted her blowgun, but instead I got her feelings, a putrefying rage, a despondence so absolute it rang like the empty aisles of a cathedral, feeding her shadowy aura. She yanked her arm away from my hand, and I saw the needle marks on her broken veins; and before I knew it my eyes were hot, like I was going to cry for real.
"What the hell happened to you?" I begged.
Mary looked at me like she would understand me. But she didn't. She couldn't. It was empty, that look, and lost, and accusatory. It hadn't changed at all since she was eight years old and climbed into the walrus tank at the aquarium.
"You used to be my best friend," I said.
"You gonna tell Uncle Gabriel on me again?" Mary asked distantly. "You know he can't do anything about it, right?"
It was blood law. It was sanctioned.
"Please stop," I begged again. My voice was high and pathetic and my throat closed up, my heart real fast, my stomach real cold. "Please stop. Please don't hurt Sky. Please don't make me--"
"Make you what?"
Make me choose, I didn't say. It sounded stupid even in my head.
Mary was always in my head. Mary laughed jarringly. "Don't even act like you would choose me."
This was insane. I was going to throw up.
"I hate this place," Mary said, sinking gracefully to her knees. "I always knew I would die here."
4
Sal Paradise
Mary's episode left me in such a funk I stopped hanging out with my friends after school. Didn't stop 'em from coming looking for me.
"Are you doing the laundry?" Annie asked, nonplussed.
I was sitting underneath the southern oak, hanging wet clothes from the lowest branches. I snarled at Annie, but she didn't care. She watched me like a spectator, which I guessed she was. Would'a served her right if I'd gone to her house and watched her mop the floors or something.
"For starters," Annie said, "if you dry them that way they're liable to wrinkle. Go inside and get clothespins."
I said, "I don't know what those are."
"Please tell me you're joking."
We gathered the damp clothes in our arms. Annie made me walk with her to her house. A clothesline hung out back beside a tree swing, Annie's brother Joseph standing on the tire, revolving in dizzying circles. Annie swiped the clothes from my arms and chucked them up onto the taut line. She tugged the linens here and there, smoothing them until they evened out per
fectly. She picked up a basket of technicolor plasticky-things on the ground.
"You're much taller than me," Annie said temperately. "As your sister so helpfully pointed out."
I think she wanted me to clip the pins on the line myself. Only problem was I didn't know how. I picked Annie up by the waist and held her above my head. She let out an indignant cry, surprised. She said, "I wasn't aware we were auditioning for the Nutcracker!"
"That sounds painful," I said, surly.
When Annie was finished pinning my clothes I let her down. She huffed at me, blowing a strand of cherrywood hair free from her eyes.
"Where is your sister, anyway?" Annie asked.
I hesitated. "What do you mean?"
Annie was nothing if not patient. "I assume she's at the hospital right now?"
"Yeah," I said, kicking the dead leaves on the ground. "Wish she wasn't."
"Oh?" Annie said.
"If we took her to the shaman, he could heal her," I said.
"Perhaps hospitals are a kind of shaman, too."
"Yeah."
"Do you know how long she's staying on the reserve?" Annie asked.
Until Paul's dead, I didn't say. I shook my head.
"And doesn't she worry about the way she dresses?" Annie asked.
"How d'you mean?"
"All those skulls and chains. Surely she's going to scare the children around here."
"Don't think she cares about that," I said.
"I suppose she doesn't, does she?"
"Do we have to talk about her?" I asked.
"Oh, well I--" Annie drew off, flustered. "No, of course not."
I said goodbye and walked home, again in a dismal mood. I hadn't told Uncle Gabriel about Mary's attempt on Paul. If I told him, he was going to punish her, and it was going to be a lot worse than drug rehab. Maybe he'd send her away from the rez. Maybe it would be better for everyone if she left the rez; but I couldn't stand the thought of her in trouble. I didn't like not knowing where she was, or who she was with, or whether she was safe. Most of all--and it was cowardly of me--I didn't like her feeling betrayed. It scared me. It scared me that I might be willing to endanger another person jus to earn my sister's approval. It made me wonder what I would have done if my father were still alive, and only I knew his true nature.
When I was west of the water well I stopped walking. I looked at the ground beneath my hiking boots, my breath trapped in my chest. A bed of fallen leaves cloaked the soil. Blots of red jumped out at me, like hot cinders, fat and fanning; and honey yellow; and Harvest Moon orange, and mysterious purple-black, triangular and veined. The breeze picked up; the leaves picked up. They spiraled into the sky, brushing against the spiky needles on the pine trees. They drifted down to earth again when the wind calmed. The sun moved through the shivering oaks and elms, igniting the branches in shades of fire.
"Mom," I said.
My mother was so beautiful.
Later that afternoon I spent my time following Paul around the rez, probably the most tedious task I could think of, but multiplied by a thousand. It didn't help matters that he only ever visited boring places: Cyrus At Dawn's house, Mr. Red Clay's house, and the sinkhole, for some reason, but only to stand and stare at it before heading home. Yeah, alright, weirdo. I knew for a fact Paul wasn't a hunter, because although he looked around at the trees, like he thought someone might be standing behind them, he never thought to look down, else he might have seen me lying flat on my belly, spitting out leaves. I don't know whether Mary followed Paul, too, but if she did, she didn't make her move that day. She didn't make her move that night, either. When I went home I found her downing a handful of sleeping pills. She locked herself in her bedroom and didn't open the door again. I knew from experience she was out for the count.
I set up a trap outside her door anyway. I hated myself for it. I planted a stack of books in the hall, so that if she tried to sneak out of the house in the dark she'd knock 'em over and I'd hear it. I tucked myself into my own bed, although normally I preferred sleeping outdoors. I put my glasses on the nighttable and watched Sky's lights stretch sleepily across the ceiling.
You suck.
It was Mary's voice. She might've been asleep, but her voice had a home in the back of my skull.
"You're messed up," I said in response.
Bite me.
I shut my eyes, trying to sleep. I opened them again. When Mary and I were little we used to dream together. Before Mom would put us to bed we'd stay up talking about where we wanted to go in our sleep; and when we closed our eyes, we went there. I know that sounds crazy, but anyone can do it if they try. Now that Mary was home, I decided to try again.
I squeezed my eyes shut, sinking into the mattress. I held my body very still. First I thought about my feet moving; then my ankles; then my knees. I didn't actually move them, though. I imagined my fingers twitching, my wrists rotating, my elbows and my neck. My body tingled and itched, a cold heaviness hanging over me. I watched the colors swimming behind my eyes.
Five minutes in and the sound shut off in my ears. My eyes rolled back in my head. The violent reds and blacks behind my eyelids sucked me into them, battering me. I gritted my teeth. The colors snapped away. Soft green spread out underneath my feet, stitching together in blades of wet grass. Thin blue sunlight came down through a canopy of low trees. Crumbling stones stacked themselves up slowly, neatly, in a low wall, rolling open in a train to the far north.
I guess the Weird Dreaming thing only works if you talk it out beforehand, because when I walked through the glade I didn't see Mary anywhere. I did see cotton candy, though. Big clouds of the stuff floated on the silver sky, fluffy, pink and blue and dotted with those dark spots where the sugar collects. I reached up; and a cotton candy cone fell helpfully into my hand. It melted in my mouth when I bit into it. A second later I spat out a mouthful of BB pellets. Dreams are bizarre.
Hooves sounded behind me, soft and clomping over wet terrain. I turned around. A solid white antelope cantered delicately between the low trees, ghostly antlers curved like scimitar blades. I let go of the cotton candy cone and it floated into the sky. I knitted my eyebrows together. I started after the antelope, careful not to frighten it.
"Hey," I said, reaching for his tufted tail.
He never turned around to look at me. He never broke into a run. If this weren't a dream he would have taken off so fast I'd be eating his dust. My fingers grazed the hairs on his tail. I felt them as if they were real, threads of silk tickling my knuckles.
"Rafael!"
I jumped awake, darkness filling my eyes. A crash echoed in my ears. Uncle Gabriel was yelling outside my bedroom door.
"Rafael!" Uncle Gabriel shouted, irate. "Please put your books away!"
I guessed my trap had backfired. Or worked, if you want to be technical.
The next morning Rosa made peach and cherry sorbet for breakfast. Yeah, as if I'd needed any more reason to love that woman. We sat down in the kitchen and ate together, the guy on the radio droning about a parade downtown. I was halfway through breakfast when Rosa put her hand on my shoulder, interrupting me. I felt her emotions before I felt her fingers, well-meaning and shy.
"I would like to teach you to drive," Rosa said.
"Drive?" I repeated stupidly. I looked around the kitchen for confirmation. Mary wasn't awake yet.
"A car," Rosa specified.
I didn't like cars. They were giant and dirty and they smelled weird. But I found myself saying: "Okay," and digging my spoon into my sorbet. Rosa was the kind of woman you didn't want to disappoint.
Uncle Gabriel hobbled into the room, wincing. "I think I sprained my ankle."
"Sorry," I said through my teeth, mortified.
"Let me see," said Rosa, who was the best nurse on the rez, and I ain't biased.
Rosa knelt on the floor and rolled Uncle Gabriel's pants leg back. A second later she diagnosed him with a mild case of being a crybaby. She told me we could leave in a few minut
es, because she'd written a note to Mr. Red Clay excusing me from school. Maybe this driving stuff wasn't so bad after all. I grabbed my jacket, and she did the same, and we left the house and headed south. We didn't need the jackets after all. Yesterday it was chilly out. Today it was eighty-five degrees.
"Here," Rosa said.
We stopped in the parking lot off the hospital. She unlocked the doors to Uncle Gabriel's monstrous SUV. When she didn't climb in the front seat, I realized I was supposed to.
"Does this mean I'm like Sal Paradise?" I asked.
Rosa gave me a puzzled look.
"Never mind," I said.
My heart was hammering when I got in the car. I sat and pulled the door shut, locking my seatbelt. Rosa slid her door shut, too. It felt weird to sit in the driver's seat, like I'd usurped Uncle Gabriel's throne. My knees kept hitting the bottom of the dashboard. Rosa leaned over and showed me how to adjust the mirrors. I scowled at my reflection, my hair unbrushed. It wasn't really me I was scowling at. It was my dad's face. The hell did he think he was staring at?
"Put the engine on," Rosa said.
"How?" I said.
She pointed at the ignition. Oh, yeah. I turned the key.
"And this is the gear stick," Rosa said. "See?"
Rosa spent the next few minutes showing me how to use the lever-whatsit-thing. Why were there so many gears? Why did the car have to be stopped if I wanted to use them? She went as slowly as she could--for Rosa, like molasses--but all the instructions piled up, confusing me.
"Put your foot on the brake," Rosa said.
"The what?" I asked.
"The pedal on the left," Rosa said.
I stepped on it.
"Now put it in reverse," Rosa said.
I pulled on the lever-whatsit-thing. We inched forward.
"Reverse," Rosa said quickly.
"I'm trying," I said, just as quickly.
Rosa grabbed the lever and yanked it. The car rolled backward. My stomach lurched.
Pulling out of the parking spot was easy enough, I guess. Alright, no it wasn't. I threw the steering wheel with both arms, sweat pooling on the back of my neck. It was when Rosa made me put the car in drive that the real trouble started. The car vaulted forward like a javelin, the steering wheel flying out of my hands. Rosa grabbed my wrist in her hand, panicking.