You Will Know Me(76)

“You come near my daughter again, I’ll break your neck.”



That tiki party, again.

Always telescoping back to that night, months ago.

An evening of heat and pleasures for all of them. For everyone.

Everyone with their stolen moments, playful ones.

Teddy, Kirsten, and Bobby V. flicking bottle caps for cash in the back alley. Molly and Jim Chu making out like teenagers.

She’d seen Eric with his hand on the small of Gwen Weaver’s back.

So what had been wrong about dancing with Ryan?

And enjoying it, the feeling, the sureness with which she could feel his heart beating behind the laundry-worn cotton of his shirt.

It wasn’t like Hailey said, none of it.

Pulling over, she picked up her phone. Clicked.

The BelStars Facebook page shimmered. Finger to screen, she scrolled through all the pictures, every meet, pool party, pancake breakfast. And, yes, the tiki party.

The flare of the torches, Teddy limboing with Molly Chu, Devon beaming under a blaze of paper lanterns, under Eric’s proud gaze.

Now that everyone had a camera in the palm of their hand, there were photos of everything. There were photos even when you thought no one else was there. Like the blurred one of the dance floor, Becca Plonski and Jim Chu leading some kind of conga line.

Crouching over the phone, pushing her face close, she spotted Ryan and a woman in the background. In the hall by the restrooms. Such a grin on the woman’s face. No, on her own face.

Oh, yes, that.

She might not have remembered, ever, but for the photograph.

But still, such a small thing.

She had just been waiting for the restroom. And Ryan had been sneaking a smoke, the back door propped open. She hadn’t even known he smoked, but everyone was smoking that night.

Can I have one? she’d asked, which meant she was drunk. She hadn’t smoked in twenty years.

He’d smiled, nodded.

It was so meaningless, she’d mostly forgotten all about it.

She didn’t remember how they’d started talking about the book in his pocket, the one with the soft cover, pages curled. But suddenly it was in Katie’s hand.

Then he told her the same thing he’d told her before, about never reading as a kid and reading now, and how he loved the book so much and he didn’t know why.

It made her sad, a little, that he didn’t remember telling her before.

Let me show you, he said, moving close behind her, leaning over her, cracking the book’s many-cracked spine, forcing its pages open. They smelled like smoke.

So much taller, his forearm thrust in front of her, nearly grazing her collarbone, or beneath it.

And she thought there could be nothing more private than the inside of the forearm, the tenderest of skin, the push and throb of one blue vein.

The way it arrowed to the soft center of his half-open palm.

Resting her fingers on that skin, helping him keep the book open, she watched as he turned to the most dog-eared page, its corner folded down.

She leaned close. It was dark, the hall was dark, the light covered with old kitchen grease like Vaseline gave everything a glow.

On the page was a line drawing of a tombstone (But I don’t just like it because there’s pictures, he’d said, winking) with words printed on it. They said:

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

What does it mean? she asked.

But he just kept grinning, his arms turned out, open, the book splayed.

Like your heart, inside out, splayed.

Like he was saying, I’m giving you something. I’m giving you this.

But instead he said, Your hands are hot.

And she realized she was still touching both his arms, her fingertips resting on them, and she should have been embarrassed but wasn’t and didn’t know why.

But it was just a moment. It was just a moment. That was all.

And no one saw.

(Could Devon have seen?)

Later, as she was leaving, she spotted him one more time. He’d found Devon’s lei in the parking lot. She wanted to take it, but her arms were full of party favors.

I know, he said.

Nearly slipping on the glassy pavement, he draped it over Katie’s head.



Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

That was it, she realized now. She hadn’t put it together before, the contexts so distinct. The same words Katie had seen in Devon’s diary a month later. Like you write a boy’s favorite song lyric. The kind of thing you do in the first heat of infatuation. Or love. Or something.



“Drew,” she said into the phone. “I’m heading home now. I’ll be there in less than a minute.”

There was a noise on his end, like a seashell.

She remembered Drew explaining it to her once, that you’re not just hearing air. Part of what you’re hearing is yourself.

“Your blood even,” he’d said. “You’re hearing your own blood.”

I’m hearing my blood, she thought now.

“Drew, are you there? What’s all the noise? Are you outside?”

“Yeah,” his voice came, “I can see you.”

“What?” Her foot on the brakes, her eyes searched the road frantically.

“I can see you by the tall trees.”

And there he was, tramping up the low hill in front of her, his hood pulled tight, phone against his pink-thick face.