Connection (Le Garde) (19 page)

* * *

I didn’t want to wait until Sunday to apologize, but I wanted to do it face-to-face and I didn’t know how else we could be alone. I got to the house early and pulled in a box of new appliances and battery-powered devices.

I waited on the grass again and I felt Anna before I saw her. I sat up and saw her a distance away. I met her halfway again. She wore her church clothes—a dark blue skirt and this cream-colored blouse that made everything about her look perfect—and she gave me an uneasy smile.

“
Everything okay?” I asked.

She stared at the road as we walked to the house. I knew it was about Jordan, and my stomach sunk. “I.
 
.
 
.” She took a deep breath. “Well, on Thursday, Jordan told me he thought—the word he used was
knew
—I was sleeping with you. He said if I didn’t do his Composition homework, he’d tell Steven.”

I stopped in my tracks, swearing.

She crossed her arms. “I told him it wasn’t true, of course, and he could go screw himself. I told Steven what Jordan was going to say. I did tell him we were friends again, and that I was tutoring you.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me?”

“
I.
 
.
 
.I don’t know.
 
.
 
.” She looked at me hesitantly. “I was worried you wouldn’t show up.”

I sighed and put my hands on her shoulders. “I’ll never choose him over you again. I’m sorry I didn’t stick up for you last year. I was a shitty friend. A shitty person in general. I’m really sorry, Anna.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and I felt a wave of gratitude from her. She stepped closer to me, giving me a hug, and I wrapped my arms around her. I avoided skin as I placed my hands on her back, and I closed my eyes, inhaling the scent of her perfume. “It means a lot to hear that from you,” she said. Her throat vibrated against my chest.

“
I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier,” I said. “I guess I thought it would just go away, that we could ignore it ever happened.”

Anna didn’t say anything for a moment, and I tentatively touched her hair. No electric current shot through us, so I twirled a curl around my finger. I didn’t want this hug to end. Her arms were wrapped around my torso, her hands on my back, her ear resting near my collarbone.

“
I can hear your heart,” she said quietly. She pulled away too soon, smiling at me. “You ready for some more fun?”

I nodded, and we finished the walk to the house. “What did Steven say?” I asked.

“
He was kind of suspicious at first.
 
.
 
.he asked why Jordan would think that, and I said because I was tutoring you and you stuck up for me when Jordan called me a slut at Blackie’s, so Jordan jumped to conclusions.”

“
How do you know that’s what happened?” I asked.

“
I guessed from your emotions.” Anna stepped into the house. “What do you have in that box today? I brought an old gameboy.”

She was great at changing the subject, and this time, I let her.

12. des bisous (kisses)

Anna

I loved the feeling of the electric current running through my body. I loved how the two of us were growing in our power, able to harness it and control it. Mostly able to. We ruined a few appliances and shattered a couple light bulbs, but mostly, it was fascinating to know that we were the ones giving these small machines power. We were the ones lighting up the old house. We were the ones running the old CD walkman that Allie used.

I thought about what Kristina and Drew said, how it could take a whole year for us to be able to touch each other without using our power. We could touch each other for a few minutes before we couldn’t restrain the current anymore, but out here in the old house, we were hundreds of feet away from active power sources.
If we were to touch each other at school again or my house, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Another power outage? I didn’t want to find out. But I did want to be able to use the power without touching Aaron. If I was honest, I wanted to touch him without having to worry about what might happen.

We spent two hours at the house on Sunday after he apologized, experimenting, practicing, reveling in our new abilities. We tried to go upstairs, but the fifth step had simply collapsed into the ground, making the top half of the steps a mess of wood and probably a breeding ground for hundreds of termites.

I reluctantly looked at my watch. “It’s nearly one o’clock. My mom will be expecting me at home.”

“
All right,” Aaron said, looking up from the CD player. “You want a ride? You don’t want to get your church clothes all sweaty.”

I laughed. “I already did on the way here.” I paused, grabbing Aaron’s remote control car and sticking it in the box he’d brought in. “I think I might tell my mom. Today in Sunday School, the teacher was talking about respecting your parents.”

Aaron grinned. “You still go to Sunday School?”

“
It’s not just for kids,” I said in defense. “They have a teen class. And even if I didn’t want to go, my mom would make me.”

“
I just don’t know how you can sit through it.”

He’d been to church a few times with me when we were twelve, but he thought the Episcopalian service was too boring. He tried to tell me otherwise, but by that point, I could pick up when he was lying to me. He preferred going to the nondenominational church down the street that let the kids run around in the gym during the sermon and gave out tons of free candy.

I shrugged. “I’ve gone there all my life. I’m used to it. You ever go to that place down the street from our house? Cornerstone or whatever it was called?”

“
Not really,” Aaron said. “Last summer, we went to some wilderness camp. That’s where I first met Sam.”

Laughing, I said, “Oh, right. I can’t imagine Sam at a wilderness camp.”

Aaron tossed Allie’s CD player in the box. “It was pretty funny, actually. You ready?”

We drove back into town as I flipped through radio stations. I settled on Aaron’s favorite classic rock station. Anything was better than the CD that had been in Allie’s discman: a collection of pop songs sung by a kid’s choir. It was a nice day for the end of March, so I rolled the window down halfway and closed my eyes as the air washed over my face and through my hair. I felt Aaron thinking about me and my looks. A lot of the times I could tell when he was checking me out—the boobs I barely kept under control, the hips from my mom—but a few times over the last week or so, like now, there was nothing sexual about his thoughts when he was looking at me. Just this bundle of admiration and affection that made me warm all over.

I opened my eyes and glanced over at Aaron, catching his gaze on me. He looked away, grinning.

“
Eyes on the road, Mr. Bender,” I said, smiling.

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my purse to find Kristina calling. “It’s Kristina,” I told Aaron before answering. “Hello?”

“
Hey, Anna,” Kristina said. “How’s it going?”

“
Good,” I said. “Um, how are you?”

“
I’m tired of the rain in San Francisco! But hey, Drew and I are going to be in town on Tuesday for a college fair. Want to meet and talk about your application to Stanford?”

I smiled excitedly at Aaron. “Yeah, sure. That’d be great.”

“
Okay, what time’s good for you?”

While I talked to both Aaron and Kristina, we decided to meet after school on Tuesday at a coffee shop in town. I hung up the phone and was pleased to think of spending three afternoons in a row with Aaron. I think he felt it, too, and he turned up the music, and we sang along to Police songs the whole way home.

* * *

In Yearbook on Tuesday, Steven and I took cameras and went around campus to take pictures. Ms. Friars let someone leave every few days with that excuse. There would be a ton of pictures in the yearbook of third period classes.

Steven and I went to the track field and took pictures of the PE classes in session. They went inside after their run, though, probably because it was kind of chilly. I couldn’t wait for it to warm up again. We sat in the stands for a while, though, looking through the funny pictures we’d gotten of the freshman. We talked about our freshman years. I’d hardly noticed Steven back then. He was just a cute sophomore on the lacrosse team. Of course, when he’d been a freshman, I’d been in eighth grade with braces.

“
I feel like we haven’t talked much since Spring Break,” Steven said, looking out over the field.

I frowned, waves of familiar guilt washing over me. “Yeah, I know.
 
.
 
.I’ve been kind of busy getting back into school and all.”

“
It’s not.
 
.
 
.because of what happened at Matt’s, is it?” Steven asked.

My face grew warm. The last night we’d been in San Francisco, we’d stayed up in the living room while everyone else went to sleep. We’d ended up making out on the couch for a while. A long while. I’d thought about it nearly every day since we’d got back home, replaying the feel of his fingers on my stomach, his lips on my neck, his body pushing against mine. I shook my head. “No, it’s not. I feel like that was just.
 
.
 
.a lucky chance. You know, a vacation from real life, what with my mom and.
 
.
 
.”

Aaron. Now that I was friends with Aaron again, he took up a lot of my time and my thoughts. It was like I was living two lives: one with Steven, another with Aaron. I felt like I was cheating on Steven even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t. But I was lying to him about things.

Steven took my hand. “Well, cool. I didn’t know if.
 
.
 
.I don’t know, I freaked you out or something.”

I smiled. “You’re probably the only person in the whole school who thinks I could get freaked out about making out.”

He kissed my knuckles, his eyes boring into me. “You’re probably the only person who could make me feel the way I did that night.”

My face grew hotter, as well as other parts of my body. He leaned in and kissed me on the lips. I took my fingers from his and wrapped my arms around his neck. His hands went to my waist, pulling on my hips. I moved closer, and he tugged on my belt loops. Before I really knew what I was doing, I climbed into his lap, straddling him, all the while keeping our mouths together.

The cold air hit my back as his hands found their way to my skin, but the rest of my body was hot, like I was on fire.

This is what I wanted to do with Aaron.

I broke away from Steven, startled by my own thoughts. He set his forehead against mine, and his hands moved to my thighs, massaging them.

I didn’t want to do this with Aaron. I wanted to do it with
Steven
. Steven, my boyfriend, who’d been so supportive this year, who was strong and smart and funny.

I kissed him again, desperately this time. I couldn’t be normal with Aaron. I couldn’t do this with Aaron, no matter how much I may have wanted to—which I
didn’t.
We were freaks when we were together. We had electrical currents running through our bodies whenever we touched. Steven was normal. Steven was safe.

And at that moment, it still felt like electricity was running through my body. I felt alive, and wherever Steven’s hands and lips went, my skin tingled. I wanted to be closer to him, I wanted to be part of him, like I was with Aaron—

Dammit, why did I keep thinking of him? I wasn’t a part of Aaron. I was his friend. That was it.

I broke away again, panting. Steven led his lips down my jaw to my neck.

“
Steven,” I whispered, and his fingers pressed against the small of my back in response. “Steven, we should probably go inside.”

Steven stilled, and he lightly kissed my neck one last time, sending shivers down my body. “Right. Someone might see us.” His voice came out gruff.

“
Right,” I said, untangling my hands from his hair. It stuck up all over, and I tried to smooth it down. “And I don’t need—”

As if on cue, I heard a voice behind us. I sprang off of Steven faster than you could say
PDA
. Jordan stood on the track field, smirking at us. Vickie stood next to him, one of Carmen’s old friends. They were going out now. It made me want to puke.

“
Putting on quite the show,” Jordan said.

“
Fuck off, you perv,” Steven said as he stood up.

Jordan held his hands up. “Oh, Mr. Lacrosse is a Tough Guy.” Vickie tittered, bobbing her blonde hair.