How to Save a Life(19)

“They both need a good ass-kicking.” I said with a smirk. “Just my casual observation.”

Evan smiled wanly, and pushed off from the wall to tread water. “It’ll be better after graduation. When I get away from here.”

“You’re leaving?”

“The second the ceremony’s over.”

“Oh.” I brushed a dead leaf off the lounger. “Cool.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t know. I turn eighteen in a few weeks. I think Gerry is going to cut me loose “Gerry?”

“My mother’s cousin. My guardian.”

“He’d do that? Just kick you out?

“Yeah. He stepped up for six years but now he’s done.”

Evan’s brows furrowed. “What will you do?”

I shrugged. “I’ve saved up some money. I’ll be fine. Get a job. Get a place, I guess.” I coughed. “I’ll be fine.”

A short silence fell, waiting.

“What about you?” I asked. “Where will you go? You mentioned the Grand Canyon the other night.”

“The Grand Canyon, definitely,” Evan said. His arms moved to keep him afloat. “Lake Powell that’s near there. I want a cabin around lake. I figure I could work at some local mechanic shop. I don’t want to do that forever, but it’s a start until I get my EMT training done.”

“You want to be an EMT?”

“A firefighter. I want to be a firefighter. You have to have EMT training.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Dangerous work, isn’t it? Putting out raging infernos, hauling people out of burning buildings?” I quirked a smile. “Rescuing cats out of trees.”

Evan burst out with a short laugh, and I swear to God, I felt it in my chest.

In my heart.

“All that stuff,” he said. “I like to help people.”

“I could see you being a firefighter.”

“Yeah?”

God, could I. I pictured Evan’s tall frame garbed in the heavy bulk a firefighter’s uniform. You had to be strong just to wear it. The fantasy bloomed: Evan’s handsome face covered in soot and sweat as raging fire burned behind him. He carried a small child and placed her in the arms of her grateful mother…

What is wrong with me?

Evan Salinger had infiltrated my brain. I was trying to keep him out and he kept seeping in.

“What about you?” he asked. “You said you’d get a job but what about your poetry?”

My eyebrows shot up. “How did you know I wrote poetry?”

“I sacrificed a lamb on the altar of Ba’al and a vision came to me.” He laughed at my slack-jawed expression. “I read that ‘zine? Mo Vay Goo? The one with the grainy Xerox of Moby Dick on the cover?”

“Oh. Right.”

His laughter died. “I get it. I know what they say about me.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him about his stint at Woodside, his breakdown in class, about how he thought he knew things from dreaming them. And I could see he was bracing himself for it.

Don’t do that to him, I thought. Evan had been ground up in the rumor mill long enough. No more Freakshow talk. I decided to talk to him.

“You read Mo Vay Goo?” I asked. “I thought people filed it in the circular bin six nanoseconds after Marnie handed it out.”

Evan moved to the pool’s edge again. “I usually read it, though I haven’t been all that impressed until your introduction issue. Your poem was good.”

“Thanks.”

“Really good,” he said. “Is that what you want to do? Be a poet? I mean, as a career?”

“Not a lot of money in poetry. Any money, really.”

“Teaching?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not big on standing in front of people and talking. Besides, to become a teacher I’d have to go to college. Gerry moved us around so much, my grades are shit. I can’t get a scholarship and I’m not too keen on spending the rest of my life in debt up to my eyeballs. I’ll probably get some restaurant job and write on the side.” I glanced down at my hands. “I know that’s not very ambitious…”

Evan rested his chin on his forearms, watching me. “I’d like to read more of your poetry someday. If you don’t mind, I mean.”

“You would?”

“I would.”

I imagined Evan reading my collection. The poems I wrote in the darkest part of the night with ghosts whispering in my ear. “They’re not exactly light reading.”

“Are they about your scar?” he asked quietly.

“Some. They say to write what you know.”

Evan nodded and I could hear the unasked question.

“Car accident,” I said automatically. “When I was thirteen. Killed my mother and my uncle, and I…got cut. On a window. I mean… Anyway that’s how I got the scar.”

I looked away. I’d lied those words a hundred times and the words always rolled right off my tongue. But with Evan, it felt wrong. Like I was insulting his intelligence.

“It must’ve been hard to lose family like that,” he said.

And hell if I nearly told him he was only half right, and my uncle wasn’t anyone to be mourned. I wanted to spill my goddamn guts to Evan, and tell him the truth about my scar. He was putting crack after crack in the seal I tried to keep so airtight. I kept my mouth shut.