Whisper to Me(44)

AWKWARD.

“Well I guess I’ll …” Your voice trailed off as you turned and walked to the truck. I half followed you, half walked with you. I needed to get to the street anyhow.

“Beckoning?” I said eventually.

You flushed. “Uh … yeah.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that word out loud before,” I said.

You said nothing.

DOUBLE AWKWARD.

What I meant, of course, given the pretty obvious hint you had just dropped was: What happened to your mom? Oh God, I’m so sorry. I lost mine too. I’m so, so sorry.

I didn’t mean to come across like such an *******.

We were standing by the pickup now, not precisely standing together and not precisely separate either; the sun was bright in my eyes. I was conscious of your chest under your shirt. You rocked on your heels. Your eyes caught the sun and flashed. “I should—” you started.

“How did you get that job anyway?” I blurted out.

“Excuse me?”

“The plush. How come you’re not gutting shrimp?” I knew that my dad had not been kidding about that.

You raised your hands in a beats me gesture and leaned against the pickup. “Guy named Bill does the orientation,” you said. “He took us down under the shrimp restaurant, in among the pillars of the pier. He explained the job—said it was ten hours a day, in a kitchen topping out at eighty degrees, literally just pulling **** out of prawns all day long. Maybe a short break to fry them, then back to it. He said we were going to be sweating, that we’d lose twenty pounds easy over the summer.”

“Sounds great.”

“Yeah. Then he said: put your hands up if you don’t think that sounds like fun. If you’d rather do something else.”

“And you did?”

“I did. After a moment anyway. The others, I think they figured it was a trick question, like they’d get fired. I thought that was a possibility too, but I came here to work the boardwalk, not broil in a kitchen. I thought, What do I have to lose? So I put my hand up and Bill said—he’s a really big guy, Bill, a bull of a guy, but kind—anyway, Bill said, ‘Can you drive a car? Have you got your license?’ ” You indicated the pickup. “And I said yes, and here I am.”

“Delivering stuffed toys.”

“Beats unstuffing prawns.”

“True.”

Another pause.

“You should come see the warehouse sometime,” you said. “It’s crazy. Plush animals stacked to the ceiling.”

“Hmm,” I said, in that polite way people do when they know it’s not a real offer. I was trying to work out if you were flirting with me. I didn’t have a lot of experience with boys. Still don’t. Maybe you were wondering the same thing; I have no idea.

But you were not to be deterred. “No, really,” you said. “I’ll drive you one day. When I’m off. Monday?”

“Um. Okay.”

You smiled and beamed out some of the sunshine that had gotten trapped in your skin. “You look good,” you said. Then you blushed, your cheeks going red. I thought that was awesome. I don’t think I had ever seen anyone blush before. “I mean … you look better.” You closed your eyes and sighed. “God, that’s worse.”

“It’s okay.”

“What I mean is, you looked kind of sick before. Now you look better.” You clapped a hand to your head. “Ugh. Now it’s like I’m prying. I mean, I don’t know what the deal was with you and it doesn’t matter. I’m going, before I screw anything else up.”

You unlocked the pickup and started to open the door.

“Thanks,” I said. “Really.”

You stopped, and smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“What’s the book?”

“Metamorphoses,” you said. “Ovid.” You held it up—an old Penguin classic.

“Ah. ‘My mind is moved to sing of forms changed into new bodies. ’ ”

You nodded. “I was … this is going to sound so lame.”

“Try me.”

“I was getting kind of into the metaphysical poets, you know? Donne, Marvell. Then Jane at the library said I should read Ovid, that it was sort of the source of so much stuff. The metaphysicals, Shakespeare.”

“T.S. Eliot.”

“Yes! Totally.”

Your smile lifted the dimples to your cheeks, but I frowned. It was your mentioning Jane, and the memory of how she had sold me out, ratted on me to my dad, and started all the trouble. “You know Jane?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. I go to the library all the time. Get books to read on my breaks at the plush warehouse. I kind of make a throne of stuffed toys and sit in there with a book. And Jane—she’s amazing, isn’t she? So smart.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And beautiful. She’s one of those girls, she doesn’t know how beautiful she is. I always thought that was crap. The beautiful girls I’ve met, they always know it. But then I came here.”

I felt some structure move inside my stomach, like there was a part of my anatomy mounted on a gimbal I hadn’t even known about, able to revolve. Of course you would be attracted to Jane. Why wouldn’t you? She was super intelligent and interesting, and hot, with her dyed hair and her tattoos and her ironic T-shirts.