Our Crooked Hearts(2)

With a blunt suddenness she raised her arms, conductor style with their palms held flat. We flinched, both of us, because it seemed like something was supposed to happen. When nothing did Nate tried to laugh. It came out dry.

She dropped into a crouch. Eyes turned in our direction, feeling along the ground until her fingers found a fallen branch, thick and a few feet long. Hefting it, she stood. Nate cursed, shoving his phone into his pocket, and the girl stopped mid-stride. With its light gone she could see us, too.

“Ivy, let’s go,” Nate growled.

“Ivy.”

The girl repeated my name. The word in her mouth was heatless, heavy. I squinted at her, confirming she was a stranger.

“What’s wrong with you? Come on!” Nate yanked my arm hard enough that my shoulder burned. Then he was stumbling away, swearing at every tree branch that swiped him, every divot in the ground.

Over my tank top I wore a washed-thin button-up from Community Thrift. I slipped free of it and tossed it in her direction before following him.

“Thank you, Ivy,” she said, when I was almost too far to hear.

When I reached the road Nate was back in the driver’s seat. He drummed his hands on the wheel. “Get in!”

I was cranked up and weirded out and scared enough to listen. The music restarted when he turned the key and we both reached to slap it off, then snatched our hands back as if any contact might burn.

I didn’t speak till we were out of the trees. “That girl. Did you hear the way she said my name?”

He shrugged, barely.

“Did she know me?” I persisted. I didn’t think I’d forget meeting a girl who looked like that, the colors of a lemon sucked dry.

“How am I supposed to know?” Nate asked sullenly.

I pulled the mirror down to inspect my lip and cursed softly. Already it stuck out like the peeled half of a stone fruit.

We drove the rest of the way in sticky silence. When Nate stopped at the end of my drive, I reached for the passenger door. He locked it.

I reared to face him. “What?”

He flicked the dome light on and sucked in through his teeth. “Oh, man, that looks bad. Look, I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m awesome. Let me out.”

“Okay, but—” He swallowed. “What are you gonna tell your mom?”

I gaped at him. Cigarette behind his ear, peeping at me through those eyelashes that made older women smile and say, What a waste, on a boy. I started, helplessly, to laugh.

His posture went rigid. “What’s so funny?”

“You. You’re scared of my mom, aren’t you?”

“So what?” he spat. “You’re scared of her, too.”

I turned away, face burning. When I flipped the lock again, he relocked it. “Nate! Let me. The fuck. Out.”

Someone banged their fist on the driver’s side window.

Nate jumped, eyes going wide. I think he expected to see my mother out there. But it was my neighbor, Billy Paxton.

I peered up at him. Billy lived across the street from me, but we’d never really talked. Especially following a painful incident back in junior high, memories of which still had the power to make me stop what I was doing and wince. He’d been at the party Nate and I came from, and I’d pretended not to see him.

Nate rolled the window down, touching behind his ear to make sure he hadn’t dropped his cigarette. “What do you want, man?”

Billy ignored him. “Ivy, you okay?”

I leaned around Nate to see him better. “Uh, yeah? I’m fine.”

He put a hand to his mouth. There was a stripe of white paint over his forearm. “Did he do that to you?”

“Are you for real?” Nate squawked.

I felt, suddenly, like I might cry. It was the pain, I told myself. The adrenaline, fizzing away. “No, no. It was a … car thing. I’m good.”

Billy watched me a little longer. He was too tall for it, bent practically in half to see into the car. “Okay. I’ll be right there.” He pointed at his porch. “Just so you know.”

“Thank you for your service,” Nate said sarcastically, but not until Billy was up the drive.

I wrenched the door open, slammed it behind me, and turned. “We’re broken up.”

“No shit,” Nate said, and gunned it down the street.

I lingered on the curb. My lip was throbbing, my body pounding with exhaustion, but it was laced with the feather-light euphoria of being free.

Billy cleared his throat. He was perched tensely on his porch, still watching me. Embarrassed, I lifted a hand.

“Sorry about that,” I told him.

“Sorry for what?”

He said it quietly enough that I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear. I almost let it pass. Maybe it was the pain in my mouth—needling, insistent—that made me turn.

“I’m sorry you thought you had to step in,” I said, more sharply than I intended.

Billy stared at me. Then he stood, shaking his head. “Won’t happen again,” he said, and disappeared into his house.

My eye went to the darkened second-story windows. One of them lit up a minute later and I looked away, regret and bottom-shelf vodka muddling queasily in my stomach. Time to get in bed, I figured. Before my night found one more way to go to shit.