If You Find Me(56)

My eyes fill, but he doesn’t let go.

“I was hoping we were more than that, but at least friends.” His hand drops to his side. “Either way, that’s not how you treat people who care about you. At least not where I come from. Was I wrong about you? I thought . . .”

I wait, until I can’t wait any longer. “What? Thought what?” “That you were different. That’s all.”

Right then, my heart breaks. It’s like it’s been waiting to break forever, and Ryan’s words crack it wide open.

“I am different,” I squeak as the tears slide down my cheeks. “That’s the problem.”

My life’s a tangle of past and present, like two separate puzzles with their pieces tumbled together. Nothing fits.

“No kissin’, ya hear? Touchins fine, but no kissin’. This ain’t romance; it’s b’ness,” Mama says, her words spit out like buckshot.

The man’s eyes glint. His face is already flushed. But they always listen to Mama.

He expects me to be afraid. His eyes register his disappointment when he sees I’m not. But it’s been this way as long as I can remember.

“Time rubs the shine off things,” Mama says later, when she finds me crying on the cot. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t like it.”

“We need ya’ pullin’ your weight around here, girl. No one wants to be the garbageman or the undertaker, but someone has ta do it.”

It’s a vicious circle, what a girl can get used to. And compartmentalize. That’s what the psychology textbook called it— “compartmentalization.” “Sexual desensitization.”

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

“The curse has come upon me,” cried

The Lady of Shalott.


[page]
Ryan reaches out a tentative hand and catches a tear as it glides off my chin.

I’ll always be different. I tried to tell him, that day in the courtyard. That picnic in the woods.

“I’m sorry for upsetting you or scaring you or whatever I did that day, CC. But don’t you know I’d know what a big deal it is? I can’t begin to imagine what you and your sister must’ve gone through. You could’ve trusted me, you know. I’d look out for you.”

For me? Or the girl in the woods? I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

“I get it, Ceec. I mean, literally, I get it.”

I wait, listening. I reckon it’s the biggest gift a human being can give to another. It’s what I should’ve done all along.

“I live with my mom. She’s a single mom . . .” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “My father went to prison on domestic-abuse charges. He knocked out my mom’s front teeth and broke my arm one night when I was seven. My mom was in the hospital for a week. All because we were out of beer.”

I listen with all I have.

“No one knows. Well, except for you, now.”

The color green. Bright green. Then it’s gone.

“I can’t believe you’re telling me this.”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it’s too late. I said it.

He reddens. “Why? You don’t want to hear about it?”

“No, of course I do.”

“What, then?”

“I’m just surprised, I guess. I thought—I mean, Delaney said—”

“What?”

I blush. “Delaney said you only liked me”—I fumble for the words—“because of my face.”

We look at each other, but I look harder. I need to know the truth.

“It’ll do, I guess,” he says, smiling—a real smile—for the first time tonight. “But I wouldn’t listen to everything Delaney says. Don’t you feel it, too?”

“Feel what?”

“The affinity.”

“ ‘Affinity’?”

“Kinship. Like parallel roads. A history. You and me.”

More pieces fall into place, thudding down soft as snow on snow, the memories resurrecting familiar bruises barely visible but still there.

“Ryan? Tell me.”

“You sure you want to know?”

I’m not. I nod anyway.

“I don’t know if I should.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know if it’s my place. My mother said—”

“Your mother? Ryan, please.”

“Okay, then. My mom and your mom were friends. You and I used to play together in my backyard. You really don’t remember? Not even the swings?”

Not until now. The cogs and wheels turn, and I swing into the past. I see a golden-haired boy, older than me, hanging on to the swing next to me. Looking back is like looking into the sun.

“I remember,” I croak. “It’s in flashes, but I remember.”

“Your mom went off her meds. She said it made the music sound furry. That’s what she told me, out in our backyard.”

“She meant her violin,” I offer.

“My mom said she’d gone off her meds before, but this time, she wouldn’t go back on them. My mom tried to help, but she couldn’t.”