Blackbird (13 page)

My mouth worked silently. I looked at him, without looking away, the way he was looking at me. Just
looking
at someone had never made feel this way before.

“What do I do? I mean, if I want to be your girlfriend. Um.”

I sounded like an idiot. I knew it even then.

“You don’t do anything. We hang out. Do stuff together.”

“Like what?”

“I can think of a few things.”

Chapter Eleven

Evelyn

“He can’t be in here,” Jennifer said coldly, scowling at me from her top bunk.

“He’s not staying. Besides, we can have guests until ten o’clock.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Victor smirked at her. “I guess this means I’m dropping you off.”

“Yes.”

“Classes don’t start until Monday. We should go out tomorrow.”

“Alright.”

Victor stood there, a wry smirk on his face. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I shifted from one foot to the other and worked my fingers, hoping he would give me some signal. His eyebrow rose and his smile widened a little, and then he put his hands on my shoulders, leaned down, and pressed his lips to mine.

I didn’t know what to
do
. Did I just stand there. I pushed back a little, turned my head. It was pleasurable when I felt his lips move against mine. It felt good. His lips tugged on my bottom lip as he pulled away, and my chest fluttered. I felt strangely excited, like I wanted to start bouncing on my heels. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and his fingers traced down the side of my neck and made me shiver. It was like a tickle, but different. I smiled dully.

It was my first kiss.

“I’ll be around,” he said, and squeezed my arm.

“Nice to meet you,” he nodded at Jennifer.

Vic strode out of the room. I rushed over and locked the door, went back to my new desk and sat in the old chair in a daze.

“He’s trouble,” Jennifer said in a cold voice, and rolled over to face the wall.

I gave her back a withering look, but she didn’t seem to notice. She ignored me completely as she tossed and turned, sat up, dug a book out of her bags and climbed back up with a little reading lamp.

“I get up early,” she said, seemingly to no one in particular.

“So do I. Lights out?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

I turned off the overhead light and climbed into bed. Her reading lamp lit the room softly for maybe an hour, then clicked off. I curled up tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. All I could think about was the way he touched me. It was just my arms, but no one ever really
touched
me. Then there was the kiss. I thought it was awkward, but I liked it. I wondered what it would be like to kiss the way they did in movies, open mouthed, writhing around, bodies pressed together in passionate heat. I pressed my legs together, too. I felt itchy, and hot even though the air conditioning made me shiver. I tucked up under my blanket and tried again to sleep, tried to clear my head and think about nothing. I should have fallen asleep easily. I was tired, I’d been awake all day, in the car and carrying things and unpacking. I had a full stomach.
 

Sleep stalked me for hours but never pounced. When I finally dozed off it must have been in the wee hours of the morning, and it was a fitful sleep. When my roommate made the slightest move or sound, I snapped awake. I’d never shared a room with a person before, and every movement made me think
intruder
.

I had a dream.

Everything was huge, like some torturous funhouse. Chairs were too high to climb, the carpet monstrously huge, scraping my tiny feet as I walked. I was in a strange place, a huge empty place. Sheets covered all the furnishings like ghosts, and there were light squares on the walls, specters of lost paintings. Boxes everywhere, a maze of them. There was something behind me, following me, stalking, moving closer. I looked over my shoulder and saw him. My father, gigantic and stooped, his head scraping the ceiling. His eyes burned with blue flames, like a gas stove, charred the skin around his too-big eye sockets. I screamed and ran and he chased after me on back-jointed legs, snapping a belt in his huge bony hands. The belt was made of strange pale leather, as wide as my hands and studded with gleaming metal points, wickedly sharp. I ran and ran and ran and called a name without remembering it.

All at once the world began shifting around me, jerking wildly, and I fell. In a dark corner I saw the figure of a woman, hunched and weeping, but she had no face, only a blank void where eyes and nose and mouth should be. She reached a hand for me in mute appeal, but her fingers were broken. The shaking grew worse, the world tumbling and turning around me, and I forgot I was being chased and he was
there
.

You’ve been difficult, you little slut. Take off your dress and wake up.

Wake up.

“Wake up,” Jennifer snapped at me, not gently but not angrily, either.

My head came up from the pillow. I was covered head to toe in cold, acid sweat. The light outside was still bruised from dawn, and cut lines on the tile floor through the blinds. Jennifer quickly drew her hand back from my shoulder as I curled up in a ball, twisted up in my blankets, and lay there panting.

She crouched next to the bed.

“You started shouting in your sleep. I don’t understand what you were saying.”

“Oh. Sorry. I had a bad dream.”

She gave me a cryptic nod. “Can you stay in the bed for a second?”

I nodded, and she gracefully slipped back up into the top bunk. I heard her shift around, the bed jerked, and she came down in a crouch, dressed in sweatclothes, and slipped on a pair of running shoes.

No one I’ve ever met exercised as much as she did. She was either studying, sleeping, or running or, later, riding a bicycle. She seemed to live on granola bars and cold oatmeal.

While Jennifer was out running, I went to the showers for the first time. It made me nervous, but there was plenty of privacy, a big curtain for each stall and room to change in front of the shower itself.

After that I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I took my schedule and went to the book store. I came back with two armloads of plastic bags, the handles cutting into my fingers, and neatly stacked the books on the little shelf on my desk. For the next hour or so, I started reading a microeconomics textbook, tapping my foot on the tiles. There was a tap at my window, a soft sound on the glass, then another, and another. I looked over and saw Victor peering through the glass at me, grinning.

My room was on the second floor.

I threw up the sash.

“What are you doing?”

“Let me in.”

I fumbled with the screen, lifted it up. The windows were very large. I jumped out of the way as Victor clambered inside. He was barefoot, his shoes hanging from his belt, tied by their laces. He wiped sweat off his forehead with his hand, then scooped me up in his arms. He literally lifted me off the floor as he pulled me against him, and kissed me. This time I touched him back, putting my hands on his sides, just above his hips. The muscles bunched and tightened under his skin as he moved. The kiss was like a mouthful of warm honey, and left me breathless and shaking. He put his arms around me.

“What are you up to?”

“Reading,” I said, glancing at the book.

“What is that?”

“
Principles of Microeconomics, Third Edition.”

“You’re reading a
textbook?”

“What?”

He grinned at me. “I didn’t think you were that boring.”

“I’m not boring.” I sighed. “The book is boring.”

“You’ll have time to read that later. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here.”

Jennifer picked that moment to come back. She walked in, gathered up her robe and toiletry bag, and left, all while scowling at Victor.

“I think she’s starting to like me.”

“I don’t think she likes you at all.”

He sighed. “One day you will understand this. We earth humans call it ‘humor’.”

“Oh. You were being sarcastic.”

“Yeah. She has a key, right? Come on.”

I locked up and followed him outside.
 
He parked in the overflow, tucking the Firebird into a corner space so the car in the next spot over was far enough away to swing the wide door open. As always, he opened mine first before getting in himself. I unlocked his door for him.

“So where are we going?”

“You have anything in mind?”

“Not really,” I said. “I don’t know what to do if I’m not studying.”

“You know, they have a drive-in down here.”

“A drive-in theater? It’s what, ten in the morning? It won’t be dark for hours.”

“Hours and hours,” said Victor. “We’ll just have to find something to do until then. I have an idea. Have you ever been to the beach?”

“No.”

“Let’s go. It’s only about an hour drive. If you obey all traffic control devices and posted speed limits.”

The way he said it strongly implied he didn’t plan on it.

“Okay.”

I’ve never seen any of this before. I stared out the windows as he drove. The whole place was so
flat
. I could see for miles and miles, the distance obscured only by trees here and there, or buildings. It wasn’t like home, where the rode rose and fell. I expected the ocean to be something like the river. Living in Philadelphia, my idea of the coastline was the Delaware river. A few times I glanced over at the instrument cluster, and felt my stomach drop when I realized we were topping ninety miles an hour. Except for a few gentle curves, the road was mostly straight. Victor slowed dramatically when a sign appeared warning of the end of the expressway, and the traffic grew heavier. He turned off past a car dealership, and the car rumbled over an iron bridge over a narrow canal.

“You’ve seriously never been here?”

I shook my head.

“No trips to Jersey, either? No Cape May, no Atlantic City?”

“No.”

“Wow. I came down here with Mom all the time. She liked to shop at the outlets. When Dad was alive we came here every weekend in the summer.”

There it was.

The land just… ended. Victor pulled into a slanted parking space and I stepped out of the car. The air smelled salty and was strangely cool when the breeze picked up, even if the sun was hot on my skin. Victor slipped a pocket full of quarters into the parking meter and came to my side.

“You’re going to burn up,” he said, taking my arm. “Come on.”

The air conditioning was blasting in the shop. Gooseflesh rose on my arms as Victor led me through the store. He grabbed a floppy straw hat off a rack, a big pair of sunglasses, and a bottle of sun screen. Outside, I put on the hat and glasses. It was a relief not to have to squint. Victor kept the sunscreen. He squirted a generous helping on his hand and seized my arm, rubbing it into my skin. I tried to shake loose, but he was insistent. He did my
 
other arm, and then crouched and smeared it on my legs. I yelped as his hand came up between my thighs. Victor grinned and dabbed a spot of it on the tip of my nose. I scowled at him but he grinned and smeared the stuff on his own arms, tossed the bottle, still half full, into a trash can and pulled me to him by the waist. I grabbed my hat on the brim to keep him from knocking it off.

My anger melted away when his lips met mine.

People were
seeing
us. I felt naked, and for some reason that made me press against him, and he put his arms around my waist.

He took my hand and walked me down the sidewalk to see the ocean for the first time.

I stopped at the edge of the boardwalk and just stared, gaping like a fool. It was
huge
. I’d never seen anything so big. The wind was strong, and the waves were surging, whitecaps forming as the water rolled in and fell back, rolled in and fell back with a tremendous roar that came from everywhere at once. It was so
blue
. I walked across the boards and leaned on the railing.

“Too bad you don’t have a bathing suit. We could go for a swim.”
 

“In
that?”

“What, are you scared?”

“Yes.”

I was terrified of drowning. I had no idea how to swim, either. I’d never even been in a pool. The idea of diving into that deep dark water rooted me to the spot, terrified.

Victor’s arms slid around me from behind.

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“I can’t swim.”

“We’ll have to fix that, sometime.”

“What about sharks?”

“I don’t think anybody has ever been attacked here.”

“Maybe another day,” I said, my voice trailing off.

“What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah, Victor leaned on the rail. He wasn’t looking at the ocean at all. “Beautiful. I guess you’ve never been to Funland.”

“Fun…land?”

“Yeah, come on.”

He took my hand and pulled me along with him. The sea breeze whipped around my legs and chilled me, even as the sun beat down, so I was shivering and sweating at the same time. The light was hot on my skin, and Victor’s hand was warm. We walked past a dozen little shops, full of candy and toys and food. Ahead was this Funland place he mentioned, a small amusement park that covered a whole block. We walked past some carnival games. Blinking lights and chimes and music assaulted my ears. It was more than I could take. I almost clung to Victor, clasping his hand in mine. He bought a ream of little tickets at a booth, after we stood in line for a good five minutes.

“They’ll close next weekend,” he said.

“Forever?”

“Nah, for the season. It gets too cold, I guess. Come on. You need to try the frogs.”

I wasn’t sure what ‘the frogs’ meant until he led me over to a broad artificial pond. Fake lily pads floated around in circles, carrying cups shaped like flowers. A dollar bought three battered rubber frogs. The object of the game was to use a little catapult to hurl the frogs into the cups. It worked by bashing it with a hammer, which he handed to me. I did my best to line up the catapult with the moving cup and bashed it with the hammer.