Girl in Snow(63)

“I remember.”

Zap’s thumb wandered my arm, roving over goose bumps so softly I looked down to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t. His thumb was there, his nail clean and neatly cut, knuckle wrinkled in folds.

Zap had three chest hairs. I’d never noticed them before. His stomach was a slate, his torso a triangle. A trail of hesitant fuzz crept from the seam of his boxer shorts, painting a straight line to his belly button. For the first time, I recognized Zap for what he was: a man.

We both watched his hand crawl up my arm. The heat. The surface of his fingers slid up my shoulder and across my collarbone, into the hollow of my neck, up to the base of my skull until he was holding my jaw with gentle cupped hands that didn’t know where to go from there. His fingers shook. Small earthquakes.

I’d never touched someone like that. I explored his waistband, tentative. He pressed against my stomach with parts of his body I knew existed but had never considered. And then we were all hands, all motion, breathing too fast, not knowing how to move forward or back. I pulled my shirt over my head. Unclasped my bra. I stood there in my jeans and flip-flops, letting Zap see all the parts I could hardly bear to look at myself. The bathroom mirror taunted me, but I wouldn’t look, for fear I’d start crying. I reached into his shorts and held him, stiff and heavy, silk in my palm.

Zap stopped. He opened his mouth, like he couldn’t figure out how to push us back to a moment before all this, a moment before we were both unclothed in the bathroom and he was hard in cotton boxer shorts—he couldn’t figure out how to tell me he hadn’t meant for this to happen.

I hadn’t meant for this to happen, either. He never gave me the chance to say it.

“Jay,” he said. “We can’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t want to.”

That was enough.

For a long time following, I’d repeat these words to everyone I could, if only to wear them out, wring them of meaning. Take out the trash. I don’t want to. Ms. Dixon-Burns, why don’t you write the answer on the board? I don’t want to. Take your sister to school. I don’t want to. Talk to me, please, Jade, I’m only trying to understand you. I don’t want to.

And that night, before I stormed out the front door with my bra unhooked. Please, just put your clothes back on. I don’t want to. Don’t you understand? I don’t want that. I don’t. I don’t want to.





Cameron





Things Cameron Wondered as He Stood Outside The Hayeses’ House at 3:37 p.m.:

1. How do you know if you deserve the world’s sympathy?



In his memory, Lucinda stood at the Thorntons’ kitchen sink.

From Cameron’s spot behind the oak tree, Lucinda was framed in the oval pane. She watched her own reflection as she washed dishes, baby Ollie crawling across the kitchen floor, sucking a plastic block, while the old gray dog gnawed a slobbery toy in the corner. Lucinda wore a tight athletic shirt: her ribs curved out like a pair of wings sewn tactfully to a caterpillar’s body. Once, Cameron read that no two butterfly wings were the same, and this made him want to feel Lucinda’s unique contours.

The thought made Cameron hard against the zipper of his jeans. He reached down to adjust his erection, and his hand brushed against the lowest branch of the oak tree—the tree made a tinkling sound so loud, Cameron’s stomach burst with shock.

A set of wind chimes dangled from the branch he’d hit. They clanged together, deafening. Cameron tried to grab them, to drown out the song with his skin, but it was too late.

Lucinda pushed aside the red cherry-print curtain above the kitchen sink. She cupped her hands to the window and peered into the darkness. Cameron held so still. He imagined his bones were melting, then hardening again, that he was a figurine made of misshapen glass.

Lucinda’s face disappeared from the window, and Cameron counted to six before the sliding glass door suctioned open. Lucinda stepped barefoot onto the back porch, an hourglass silhouette with arms crossed tight against her torso.

“Hello?” she called.

Cameron shrank behind the oak tree, wishing he could sink right into the whittled bark. The metal wind chimes were cold in his hand, kissing one another noiselessly. Television chattered, numb in the background, as the light from the living room illuminated Lucinda’s form.

The space between Cameron and Lucinda was tense and palpable, a rope held taut. They could have walked it with bare feet. They didn’t. Instead, Lucinda turned and padded inside, suctioning the door shut behind her.

The crickets rubbed their legs together, screeching and yelling in their acoustic cricket language.



The Hayes family was holding a reception.

Cameron stood on the street and watched the pulsing crowd of black-clad bodies mulling around the Hayeses’ home. They pulled tinfoil off casserole dishes, wiping leaky eyes. He couldn’t see Lucinda’s family from the sidewalk; he guessed they were at the center of the crowd, wringing their hands, wishing to be alone with themselves but too afraid of the quiet to ask. Cameron wondered who would clean their house after everyone was done stomping through. An aunt, maybe, or a dependable cousin would vacuum around the Hayeses’ feet, sucking up the mud and slush the chattering mourners had dragged in.