When We Were Animals(18)

“She looks like you,” Peter said.

“Does she?” I was pleased. “I think we have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why she died.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I know it’s morbid, but I think that sometimes. Maybe she had to die because we were so alike that the world couldn’t tolerate both of us in it.”

“That’s…” he said, looking uncomfortable. “That’s a really weird thing to say, Lumen.”

But it didn’t seem weird to me at all, and I was hurt by his response.

“Anyway,” I said.

We were quiet for a moment. Then he said:

“So what do you have in common? I mean, other than your looks.”

“Well, she didn’t go breach—and I’m not going to, either.”


He looked at me sideways with suspicious eyes.

“It happens,” I went on. “Not very often, but it does happen. My father says she was all lit up—he says she carried the daylight with her. The moon, it couldn’t have any effect.”

“I never heard of that.”

“Well, it’s true—whether you’ve heard of it or not. Some people just aren’t the same as other people.”

“Hm.” I could tell he still didn’t believe me. “And how come you think you won’t go breach, either?”

“We have the same blood. It stands to reason. Plus I can just tell.”

“But your father, he went breach.”

“Yes.”

“So you could be like him.”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I can just tell.”

It is always a young girl’s dream to have a boy believe in her most colorful fantasies. You paint landscapes with your humble heart, then you seek to populate them with boys who will understand.

But then he underwent a quick change—as though he were brushing off the topic altogether. He clambered around so that he was on his hands and knees in front of me. I sat with my own knees pulled up protectively to my chest.

“Let me see,” he said.

“See what?”

But he didn’t answer. He was looking at my eyes, examining them. He moved his head from side to side, as though to get multiple angles on the subject of my eyes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Shh.”

He kept looking, then he seemed to spot something—as though he had discovered a minuscule village somewhere in the core of my retina.

“Huh,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re right. Daylight.”

That’s when he kissed me. At first I held my breath, unsure about what I should do. Then when I finally breathed, I wondered if I should keep my eyes open or closed. His eyes were closed, so I closed mine. That’s when my other senses took over. I could smell his skin and that boy shampoo that smells like mowed grass. He pushed himself against me, and I touched his arm with my hand—squeezed his arm as if it were mine, as if our bodies were forfeit to each other’s—and then my hand was even on his neck, where there were little hairs, and I was allowed to touch them. I heard a tiny voice, like that of a squeak-mouse, and then I realized it was my own voice, and I thought how beautiful that sometimes your body knows what to do on its own.

At that time, I had a way of thinking of myself as a castle or a tower, something with many spiraling cobblestone steps that became secrets in themselves, winding around each other like visual illusions. The pleasure was in the climbing, the intricate architectures of thought and purpose. But it was on a rare occasion such as this when I could feel something else, something beneath the foundation of the tower, a rumbling in the earth itself that shook to delightful danger all those lattices of cold, cerebral mortar.

*



I had lost track of time in the attic, and when we climbed down the ladder I was surprised to see that a pale, dry dusk had infiltrated the house while we weren’t looking.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“What?”

“Prayer Moon. It’s the first night.”

Peter went to the window and gazed up at the sky.

“It’s still early enough,” he said. “I don’t live that far away. I can make it.”

“No, you can’t. The moon’s up.”

“But look—it’s quiet. I can make it. They wouldn’t bother with me much anyway.”

But my father, arriving home, wouldn’t hear of it. He called Peter’s mother and told her he would stay in our house for the night. There was plenty of room—such a big house for just my father and me. The couch in the upstairs den folded out into a bed, and I got sheets from the linen closet and made it up.

It was the first time there had been a boy sleeping in the house, and I wanted to assure my father that nothing untoward would happen. I found him in the kitchen while Peter was watching TV in the den.

“I told Peter he shouldn’t come out of the den after ten o’clock,” I said. “You can check on us if you want. Any time you feel like it.”

My father grinned in confusion and shook his head.

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said. “I trust you, little Lumen.”

That was nice to hear, but at the same time I had recently grown irritated by the idea that I was so invariably trustworthy. Hadn’t I just spent the afternoon in the attic kissing, of all people, Peter Meechum? Hadn’t I kissed right through sunset?