Cuts Like a Knife (2 page)

She pressed her fingers to both sides of her head and squeezed her eyes shut. She was still walking backward, and I don't know why she didn't fall, but she didn't. It was just like being up on the railing. “I'm trying, I'm trying,” she said, and then she opened her eyes and gave me a big fake shrug. “Sorry, my psychic abilities aren't working at the moment.” She looked around.

“I think all the trees are screwing with the reception.”

“Yeah, ha, ha, ha,” I said. She was in a weird mood. Not weird in the way that I should have been worried. I've thought about that a lot too. She was just crazier than she usually was. And no, it wasn't like she'd taken something. That wasn't Mac's thing.

She waited for a red suv to go by, then shot across the street. I stopped at the curb, looked both ways, and when there were no cars coming, I walked over to her. She stood on the sidewalk shaking her head, but she didn't say anything for once. A lot of the time she called me Gramps because I always waited for the light, or if there were no walk lights, I waited until there weren't any cars coming, unlike Mac, who thought crossing the street was like running some kind of obstacle course.

Me, I still remembered, back in grade six, seeing Kevin Kessler get hit by a car that ignored the red lights and passed the school bus that we'd just gotten off. I was already on the other side of the street, and as I turned to say something to Kevin, the car hit him. He flew through the air, arms reaching like he was trying to grab on to something, his mouth open for a scream that never came out, and landed in the ditch to the left of me. I remember scrambling down the bank through the gravel and the weeds, screaming for someone to come help and trying not to puke, swiping at my face because I didn't want anyone to see me crying.

“Are you going to tell me where you're taking me?” I said as we headed along the sidewalk. I knew it wouldn't do any good to bug her. But I couldn't seem to help doing it anyway. We were going in the general direction of the university. Was that where we were headed? Mac? Not likely.

Mac acted like I hadn't said anything, which is what she always did when she didn't want to talk about stuff. Since she wasn't going to answer my questions, I just walked along beside her, sneaking little looks at her when I figured she wasn't paying any attention to me.

I liked looking at Mac. She didn't smile that often, but it made her look like some kind of hot supermodel when she did. And she had a great laugh. It made you want to know what was so damn funny when you heard it. Sometimes I tried to make her laugh just because the sound was so freakin' good.

“Why are you looking at me, Danny Boy?” she said all of a sudden.

Busted.

“What makes you think I want to look at your ugly self?” I said, bumping her hip with my own.

She just rolled her eyes and didn't say anything else.

At the corner we crossed over—there weren't any cars coming in either direction—and Mac headed up the hill. I'd pretty much given up on getting her to say anything about where we were headed or why, so I didn't ask again. I just walked beside her and made sure she didn't catch me checking her out again.

We ended up on a little side street about halfway up the hill, in front of a small green house. The yard was partly dug up, and the whole house was surrounded by portable chain-link fence, maybe six feet high.

Mac led me around to the backyard. “Where are you going?” I hissed as I scrambled over the rutted dirt and chewed-up grass that looked like it used to be a driveway. She dragged her fingers along the fence and then stopped so quickly I almost bumped into her. My foot slipped on the muddy ground, and I grabbed a skinny maple tree to keep from ending up on my ass in the dirt.

Mac pulled back a section of the fence like she was pulling back a pop-top and squeezed through the opening she'd made. She kept one hand on the wire, pushing it out so the opening was still there for me. “C'mon, Danny Boy,” she said impatiently.

“What are you doing? This is trespassing,” I said.

“No, it isn't,” she said. “Are you coming or not?” I could see the challenge in her dark eyes, and I knew if I didn't go, then she'd just take off for the house and leave me standing there like some kind of dork.

So what if I got arrested for trespassing? So what if I got a criminal record and didn't get a music scholarship to university and ended up having to wear a baby-blue tuxedo and play the piano at the Starbright Lounge in the Wayfarer Inn six nights a week for all the old ladies who smell like cough drops and the occasional little old man with his pants up under his armpits? It was better than having Mac think I was a wuss.

Chapter Three

I squeezed through the hole in the fence. The back of my sweatshirt got caught for a moment, but I twisted loose and stood up, bending the wire back in place so anyone walking by probably wouldn't notice the gap.

Mac had already picked her way across what was left of the lawn to the rear of the little house. She was doing something at the back door. Oh sure, why not add breaking and entering to trespassing while we were at it? If I was going to have a criminal record, it might as well be a long one.

She got the door open and jammed something into her pocket just as I got to her. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You have a key to that door?”

She looked back over her shoulder at me. “Standardized testing was wrong,” she said. “The boy does have a few brain cells left.” Then she went in, and I followed her.

We were standing in a small hallway at the back of the house. To my right there was a bathroom. I could see a tub, a toilet, a sink in a white cabinet, and some kind of blue tile with flowers on the wall. On the other side, a narrow set of steps led upstairs.

I glared at Mac. “Stop screwing with me,” I said. “Whose house is this?”

She was already on her way up the stairs. They were covered in faded gold-colored carpet. “It's mine,” she said over her shoulder.

I scrambled up after her. “What do you mean it's yours? How can you have a house?”

She stopped, turned around and leaned forward just a little, so her face was pretty close to mine. “It's mine,” she repeated. Then she went the rest of the way up, two steps at a time.

When I got to the top, Mac was in the room to the left. There were only two rooms up there. One took up the left side of the space, and one took up the other side. There wasn't really as much room as you'd think on that floor, because the roof was slanted and it was like standing in a big triangle in a way.

I stopped in the doorway. Mac was in the center of the room, which had been painted pale purple. “So you dragged me over here just so I could see this old house that you'd like to have?”

She shook her head. “I take it back,” she said. “There are no functioning brain cells left after all.” Then she walked over to me and smacked the top of my head with her hand. “Hello! Is anything working in there?”

I twisted away from her. “Oh yeah, you're really funny, Mac,” I said.

She dropped her hand to my shoulder and gave me a small smile. “I brought you here to see this.” She gestured to the room. “This is my room.”

And then I got it. I don't know why I'd been so slow before. Mac used to live with her grandmother. I didn't know what had happened to her mother or her father, because she wouldn't talk about them ever. I figured they were probably dead.

About six months ago, her grandmother had a stroke and died in the hospital. Mac had had to go live with her uncle, and because of the spazoid way they work out who goes to what school, she ended up having to switch over to Riverview. I didn't even know what her uncle's real name was, because all she ever called him was The Asshole.

I can remember her walking into homeroom that first morning with Mrs. Robinson, the guidance counselor, and there was just something about the way she stood there, like she didn't care that we were all sneaking looks at her, that made me know I was going to be her friend if she'd let me.

I followed Mac into the bedroom. It was empty except for an air mattress against the end wall with a pillow and a couple of blankets folded all neatly on top. Pretty clear that Mac had been sleeping here some of the time. Or maybe more like a lot of the time.

But the one thing that I saw right away—that I couldn't stop looking at—was the slanted ceiling. It was painted the same pale purple color as the walls, but it was covered with writing, covered, side to side, top to bottom. The whole thing was Mac's small, cramped lettering. I moved closer and started reading bits and pieces. It was all poems and song lyrics, a bunch of stuff I'd never seen before. I was pretty damn sure that Mac had written all of it herself, not copied someone else's stuff.

And it was good. I'm pretty fair at writing music, if you don't count this stupid comp project. But I suck at writing the words. All I can ever come up with is dumb rhymes like “moon” and “June” or “same” and “lame.” But Mac was good. No, Mac was great. My fingers were actually itching because I wanted my guitar or a piano so I could start figuring out the notes to go behind the words.

“Jesus, Mac,” I whispered. “These are good.”

She didn't say anything, and I walked back and forth for at least ten minutes reading what was written up there on the ceiling. Some of it was above my head, and it was getting dark, so I couldn't see it very well. Finally I looked at her. She was sitting on the air mattress, her back against the wall. “You've got all this stuff written down, right?” I said.

She pointed at the slanted ceiling above my head. “Yeah, there,” she said.

“No, I mean on paper or on a memory stick or something.”

She shook her head.

I pulled a hand back through my hair. “Okay, so first what we have to do is go get a couple of notebooks and some pens. I can start at one end, and you can start at the other. We could do it in two or three days.”

“They're tearing this place down tomorrow morning,” Mac said softly.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Okay. So we'll go get Alex and Ren, and we'll just stay here all night if we have to.” I looked around, and it hit me that there was probably no electricity connected anymore if the house was going to be torn down in the morning. I reached over and flipped the light switch.

Nothing.

“All right, copying it all down's not going to work because we can't see to do it.” I held out my hands and shook my fingers. They still had that itchy, tingling feeling. Then I remembered that I had my phone in my pocket. “Jesus, I'm so stupid,” I said. I pulled out the phone. “I think there's enough light that I can just take pictures of everything.” I stepped back and snapped a shot of one small square of the ceiling. I looked at the picture. No. I was too far away to make out the writing in the image.

“I'm going to have to get closer,” I said. I held the phone just a few inches away from the purple paint.

Mac grabbed my arm. “No,” she said.

“Are you crazy?” I asked, shaking off her hand. “You can't let this get destroyed. It's good! I mean it.”

“Tomorrow it'll be gone, Daniel,” she said with a small smile. “There's nothing anybody can do. Let it go. I have.”

I looked around. “I don't get it, Mac. Whose house is this now? I mean I know it used to be your grandmother's, right?”

“Mine,” she said, letting go of me. “At least it was.”

I held out both hands. “I don't understand.”

She looked up at all the words scrawled on the ceiling. “Gram left the house to me. She left everything she had to me—not that there was very much. The thing is, The Asshole is in charge of it all.” She shrugged. “He decided it would be better to sell the house and save the money for my education. There wasn't anything I could do—can do. My grandmother's gone. By tomorrow this house will be gone. Everything will be gone. It's too late.”

“Too late?” I said. “That's just—”

I didn't get to finish the sentence, because she put one hand on each side of my face and kissed me full on the lips.

Chapter Four

“Jesus, Mac,” I managed to mumble before her warm tongue was in my mouth and I pretty much couldn't think about anything else.

She pulled me over to the mattress by the end wall, and the entire time her mouth was so warm and the blood was pounding in my ears and I couldn't get my breath. I couldn't think beyond the fact that Mac, who I was totally crazy about, had her tongue in my mouth, doing things that I'd only imagined her doing but never really thought she ever would.

She moved her hands slowly over my back under my shirt, and everywhere she touched my skin, it felt like her fingers were still there when she moved them. I pulled her even tighter to me with one hand, and slid the other into her hair. Even though I'd kissed a bunch of girls, it was like I'd never kissed anyone before.

We sank down onto the mattress on our knees like some cheesy movie love scene. Mac's hand came around my body, and she started pulling down the zipper of my hoodie, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew where she was going, and oh shit, did I want to go there. I'd dreamed of going there from pretty much the first time I saw her, and it took willpower I didn't know I even had to pull my mouth off of hers, swallow a couple of times and whisper hoarsely, “Are you sure?”

She smiled at me. The most beautiful smile I ever remember seeing, and all she said was, “Yes.”

I studied her face for a moment, and I couldn't see anything that made me think that she didn't want to, or that she was afraid or even that deep down inside she thought I was gross. Of course, I didn't want to see that either.

“I have a…you know,” I mumbled, feeling my face get hot. I didn't want her to think I was the kind of guy who carried protection everywhere because I was always looking for someone to jump.