Sign Here(47)

“We’ll call you Felix,” Cal said.

I looked at her.

“It was the name of my first pet.”

I couldn’t imagine when she could’ve had a pet; a puppy wouldn’t have exactly fit in around the barracks. But now was not the time to mention that.

“I thought you were the one in charge?” Felix asked, looking at me.

Cal laughed again.





SILAS





EVEN NOW, WHEN SILAS remembered Sarah Kelly, he remembered her tongue first. In high school, she was the only girl he knew with a tongue ring. She said she got it pierced in New York City, in a dentist’s chair on the sidewalk on Saint Mark’s Place. But everyone took what Sarah Kelly said with a grain of salt. She played with the tongue ring constantly. If she was concentrating, she would push the ball end out her pursed lips and roll it back and forth like a lighthouse beam, the fake diamond catching in the classroom’s fluorescent lights.

“You know why she got that tongue ring, don’t you?” his friends jeered each time she walked by. After weeks of this routine, Sarah stopped walking and turned around. The friend who said it hooted; the rest quickly looked away. But she locked eyes with Silas.

She held out her hand like a peace sign but palm inward, and gave one exaggerated lick in the air between her two fingers, from the knuckles up.

They didn’t give her shit after that. But they did start inviting her out.

It was impossible not to be a little in love with everyone at seventeen. Desire grew on everything—every skin particle, every foggy car window; in the beat of every song and the fabric of every strap against a girl’s collarbone. Silas was in love with the whole world back then. He was ravenous, quenchless. Each touch increased his appetite, until his whole body became nothing but lips between teeth.

Later, he loved to watch Sarah’s tongue ring when she put her mouth on him, the way it glistened in low light. Like she was a conduit for electricity, and he alone could provide the current. With her mouth on him, he felt powerful.

He hadn’t felt that way in a long, long time.

The truth was, the moment Ruth walked into their kitchen the first day Mickey brought her home, Silas thought of Sarah. The long auburn hair that looked like it belonged to hot earth, the strong eye contact. A confidence, a smirking fierceness Silas had never forgotten. But he had never expected to hear Sarah’s name in Ruth’s mouth, same hair spilling around tanned shoulders, same wicked little test in the eyes. Not there, in that clearing.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yelled again, kicking forest debris, feeling large.

“Dad, I—” Sean started.

“Mickey, how dare you?”

Mickey looked at him with such terror, he thought for a second that he could smile and say he was kidding. But his blood was pumping louder and louder: it seemed to want her fear, to feed on it.

“How dare you do this to your uncle Philip, to me! Do you have any idea—”

“Mr. Harrison, it was my—”

“Ruth, I’m not talking to you. You are not a part of this family.”

“Dad,” Mickey said, her voice small.

“Get up.” He walked around the circle and grabbed her by the sleeve of her sweatshirt, jerking her upward. “Get the fuck up!”

“Dad—” Sean said again, reaching for him. Or for her.

“Don’t touch me,” Silas growled, and Sean’s hand retreated. Silas shoved Mickey between the shoulder blades, pushing her toward the path. Sean and Ruth lined up behind him, punished ducklings.

The walk back to the house was silent except for crunching leaves and the slap of flip-flops. Silas kept the hood of Mickey’s sweatshirt in his fist, leading her like a dog on a leash. When they got to the porch, he tightened his grip.

“You two, go upstairs. And be quiet; it’s the middle of the night.”

Sean and Ruth both bowed their heads and walked through the door into the dark inside. Once Silas and Mickey were alone, he pulled her around to look at him.

“I have never been so disappointed in you in my whole life. I know you have a friend here, but that does not give you permission to exploit this family’s worst moments. You have no idea— Jesus. How dare you?”

“Sean was there too.”

Silas laughed in the way that is nothing like a laugh. The kind of laugh that comes from the darkest part of the gut.

“I expect this kind of bullshit from Sean. Not you, Michaela.”

He let go of her hood and pushed his hands through his hair.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. You’re right; I was trying to impress Ruth, and I let it get away from me.”

He turned his back to her.

“Just go. I can’t even look at you right now.”

“Dad—”

“Don’t tell your mother. You don’t even know—this would kill her.”

Mickey stood there for a moment, but then he heard her open the screen door, and hold it carefully so it wouldn’t slam shut.

Silas’s heart was too loud for him to go to bed. He paced the driveway for a few passes, thinking maybe he would take the bike out to cool off, but instead he struck out back across the lawn. He needed to check the clearing, see if they left any candles burning. That would be the last thing they needed, he thought as he trudged—a forest fire.