When We Were Animals(69)

My heart beat hard in my chest, and I leaned down into his window to confront him—but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the car at all. He had just left his scent behind—dry leather and cigarettes and sweat.

I stood suddenly and looked around me. The street was quiet. The night breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. A dog barked in the distance.

He could have been anywhere—hidden behind the trunk of any tree, around the corner of any of these peaceful houses.

I shivered, and I could feel his eyes—as though they had gotten under my clothes somehow and were skittering around on my skin.

I was being hunted.

*



I got a D on my geometry test. Mr. Ludlow took me aside. He was a little round man with dandruff on the shoulders of his jacket. His voice was high and gentle, and he frequently spoke of trips he took with his wife to quaint towns with antique stores and tours of houses that belonged to historical figures. Even though he orbited my life only at a great distance, I liked him.

When he spoke to me, he was kindly and solicitous, saying he didn’t believe that this grade reflected who I really was as a student. He knew I was better than a D. He asked me whether I was having any problems at home. I wondered if he knew his colleague Miss Simons was eating dinner at my house twice a week. I said no, that I was just tired. I explained that I deserved the grade and didn’t blame him for it—because he seemed sad that he had had to write the letter D on my exam. I told him he was a very good teacher and that I would try to do better next time.

He said, “I’ll make you a deal. You don’t tell anyone, and I’ll let you take a makeup next week. I don’t want your grade to suffer because of some aberrant exam. What do you say?”

I told him thank you.

“Trust me,” he said. “I know exactly the kind of kid you are. You’re the kind of kid who doesn’t get Ds on exams.”

They wouldn’t allow me to fall. I plunged downward hard and fast, and they swooped down and fetched me back up before I hit the ground.

Mr. Ludlow said he knew who I was. He would not let me be anyone else.

*



It was later that same day that Mr. Hunter wanted to talk to me as well. He let class out twenty minutes early and asked me to stay behind. I did not move from my desk, and when the room was empty he came and stood over me.

He had been distracted since our last conversation. I could smell his breath again. He was just a drunk with odd notions—that was all.

“Lumen,” he said, “I want to apologize.”

I was stubborn and did not meet his eyes.

“My father’s not a liar,” I said.

“No, he’s not.”

“She never went breach.”

“No, she didn’t.”

I accused him with my eyes.

“Then why did you say it?”

At that moment, he looked away again, which made me not trust him. And instead of answering my question, he said this: “You know something? I knew you a long time ago. When you were just born. I mean, I didn’t know you—I knew of you. When your mother—when she died, everybody in town brought your father gifts for you. I did, too. I remember I brought you a giraffe. It was purple.”

He smiled in memory.

“I have to go,” I said and stood.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said as I moved toward the door. “I would never—”

But I didn’t want to hear it. None of it made any sense to me, and I trusted no one. But here was one thing: I still had that purple giraffe, its fur pale and ratted, its plastic eyes scuffed dull, packed away in a box in my closet because I had thought that I was finished with my childhood.

*



That afternoon, on my bedroom floor, Peter wanted to move me to the bed so we could have sex.

I shook my head.

“We can stay here if you want,” I said.

“Here? On the floor?”

And during, I said, “Make me hush.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Put your hand here,” and I gestured at my neck.

He caressed my neck with his hand. But he didn’t get it. He was too gentle.

“Harder,” I said. But he was embarrassed, and the whole thing became awkward.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “You’re nice.”

And that night, after I had said good night to my father and climbed the stairs and opened the door to my bedroom, I found Blackhat Roy standing there.

I came close to screaming, but I stopped myself, doubling over and swaying instinctively back from the doorway. But my father was shutting off the lights downstairs, so I lurched into the room and shut myself in there with Roy.

My stomach felt like I had swallowed needles. What was he there for? To kill me, maybe, or rape me, or cut me with a knife? He was an atrocity in this place, where all the safest parts of my identity were hidden.

But he didn’t even turn when I came in. He leaned against one of my bookcases, a book open in his hands.

“How did you get in here?”

“Window,” he said casually.

“It’s the second floor.”

He just shrugged.

I saw the book in his hand was my old paperback copy of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. “Did you read all these?” he asked.