Don't Touch (31 page)

Baby steps.

“Keep it there,” Mandy says.

My heart's in a rush, but I'm still breathing. “It's uncomfortable,” I say. “But I'm okay.”

“Yeah, you are,” Peter says. “What are you thinking about?”

“It's so close. I feel like I'm asking for trouble.”

We stand still. I wait for the anxious wave to stop churning inside me as it tries to push me away from Peter.

“See, I can do it,” I say, “if I make myself. It's okay.”

“Now try touching his skin,” Mandy says.

My hand pulls back—a reflex I can't control.

“I've seen people touch you,” Peter says, “and you got upset, but nothing happened.”

“But I didn't choose it,” I say. “They touched me. And I still had to wash it off after.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asks.

“I've always been scared of lots of things.” Even thinking about it makes me feel off balance. “In middle school, when my parents were fighting, I was always afraid that my dad would leave, or that one of them would die—it didn't always make sense. This most recent stuff started with Dad. But it's bigger than that now. Just . . . I don't know . . . that the world's going to end?”

“Oh, only that!” Mandy laughs. “Well, if it's only that!”

I laugh too, because it's silly. I know it is. But that doesn't change how it feels.

“So, back to the not-touching plan . . . ,” Mandy says.

Mandy has us start with Nadia's exercise of keeping distance between us, never less than six feet.

“It's kind of like in middle school, when you have to dance with your arms stretched all the way out,” Peter says, and we hold our arms out and sway in time, not touching.

“You guys look like zombies,” Mandy says. “Arms down.” She pulls our focus back to work.

I speak my lines as Peter “enters” from the brick steps by the pool:

“To speak of horrors, he comes before me.”

Once Peter gets within six feet of me, I start walking backward. He circles around, and I maintain the distance.

Mandy reads Polonius's line, “Mad for thy love?”

“My lord, I do not know; but truly, I do fear it.”

“What said he?”

“He took me by the wrist and held me hard . . .”

“So mime the action,” Mandy says, and sticks her arm out straight to demonstrate, “as if he's pulling you.”

“. . . He falls to such perusal of my face as he would draw it.”

“It's like the mirror game,” Mandy says, “where you follow each other's actions. You do what she says in the air, Peter. And Caddie, follow him.”

Peter's a good actor, but when he starts waving his hand around in the air like he's petting my face, it looks more than a little silly.

“Here, you need to be closer,” Mandy says. “Step in, Peter.”

He does and sculpts the air close to my face. Mandy moves his hands closer, keeping only a couple of inches between my skin and their hands so I have to stay still. “Is this too much, Caddie? Am I freaking you out?”

“You are, but I think Ophelia is freaked out, so maybe that's okay.”

Peter won't touch me without asking, but Mandy might. Mandy might tap my cheek just to see how I react.

“Ophelia says, ‘Long stay'd he so,'” Mandy says. “So she just stands there. What's up with Ophelia while Hamlet's rubbing his hands all over her face? And he's barely got his clothes on.”

“She's scared,” I say, looking at Peter, “but it's exciting, too.”

Mandy nods.

“Here, close your eyes,” she says.

She says it with so much authority, I almost obey without thinking. “I don't want to,” I say.

Mandy cocks her head. She didn't ask me if I wanted to. I close my eyes.

“Here,” Mandy says. She whispers something to Peter, and then she says, “Caddie, Peter is going to touch your face.”

Already, I'm shaking. I open my eyes.

“Keep them closed,” Mandy says. “You want to be able to touch people without having panic attacks, right? You don't have to do anything. Just go on with the speech.”

This is more than a baby step. “I'm scared.”

“Yeah, I know, but so is Ophelia. You just said.”

If I let Peter touch me and I can stand it, maybe that will be the break I need. Take power away from the fear.

I speak.

I'm shaky, but not entirely in a bad way. My nerve endings tingle and twitch like they're waking up after a long sleep. Peter shuffles on the grass. His hand hovers close to my face—the air trembles with its nearness—and his lips approach mine. His breath troubles the air I breathe, but he doesn't touch me.

I lean in, oh so slightly, and inhale. His breath is warmer than the air and crisp. Smelling lightly of sharp mint and salt, it reminds me of the ocean right before a storm.

I catch myself leaning and straighten to finish my line. But I get it, what Mandy whispered. She told Peter
not
to touch me.

I wanted him to.

“That was amazing,” Mandy says, when I open my eyes. “That's what I want. Just like that.”

“I couldn't see what Peter was doing.”

“He's so close to you but not touching, and you were so keyed up. It's amazing to watch.”

“Okay, but now that I know Peter's not going to touch me, how am I supposed to repeat that?”

“I don't know,” Mandy says, smiling. “I guess you'll have to act.”

“Oh, right! Acting!”

“Don't you think you could get to that place?” Mandy says. “Where you're not sure what's going to happen—”

“I do,” I say.

“—and you're afraid he's going to touch you?”

“Yes.”

And afraid that he won't.

“Excellent,” Mandy says. “Let's run the whole thing a couple more times, and then I'll feel good to show it.”

When we're finished, Mandy invites us to stay. The sun's already slipping, but for November, it's balmy. We can sit by the pool.

“I invited Drew to come over later, but we can all hang out,” she says. “I'd
really
like it if you stayed.” She sends me a meaningful look. After I ditched the gloves, she told me I inspired her. That if I could quit something, she could too: Drew.

When Peter goes inside for a minute, I ask, “Are you going to do it?”

She plays with a strand of her pink hair. “I hope I can. I think it would be good for me, to prove that I'm strong enough.”

I want to squeeze her hand. With the gloves, I would have. Instead, I tap my hand to my heart and say, “You've got super strength, Mandy. I have no doubts.”

Peter returns with an armful of sodas, and we shift topics fast. Drew's still Peter's best friend.

There's only a little sun left, when I get an idea. “How's the camera on your phone?”

I tell them what I'm thinking . . . I still have to take a self-portrait for Nadia where she can see Ophelia in me and me in Ophelia. And the time I felt most like Ophelia, there's no question. It was on the edge of Mandy's pool, on the very edge of falling in.

“Well, it's actually warm today,” Mandy says.

“I'm not going in.”

“Promise?” she says, and she pulls out her phone. “Where do you want me?”

“I think at the side there is good.” I kick off my shoes.

“Is Peter ready to play lifeguard?” Mandy asks.

Peter moves to the edge of the pool and pulls off his boots.

“You don't need to do that,” I say.

“You don't know what it's like to walk around in wet boots.”

“I won't go in. I promise. And anyway, I can swim.”

“When you choose to,” Mandy says.

I've earned their distrust, but I still wince.

The metal railing of the diving board ladder is warm from the sun, the board, too, and my feet have no trouble on the gritty surface. The board bounces, but that's nothing. That's normal.

I walk to the edge.

I have stood here a gazillion times, but it still feels scary. Even though there's no way to get hurt. The slightest breeze teases me. The fact of my clothes, that I'm not dressed for swimming, reminds me this is not a normal moment on a diving board.

I stretch out my arms, lift my face to the sky. “How does that look?”

“It's cool,” Mandy says, “but I don't feel like you're about to go in.”

“Do I need to step closer to the edge?”

“Maybe. Try it.”

“Please don't,” Peter says.

“I'm all right.”

His eyes are worried and fierce.

I'm trying,
I tell him with my eyes.
I'll try harder.

And for a second I feel just like Ophelia. Standing at the edge of a diving board doesn't scare me. I know I can swim. Standing at the edge of Peter does.

He's as afraid as I am—afraid of falling for a girl who might drown.

“I took one,” Mandy says, “when you were looking at Peter. It's pretty badass.”

At my request, she snaps a few more with my feet hanging over the edge, with my arms out like angel wings, ones where I look like I'm singing.

But Mandy is right. The one where I'm looking at Peter—that's the one.

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Just as the sun is setting, Drew shows up pissed. I actually think Drew likes me, but he hasn't loved sharing Mandy's attention with me—or with Nadia.

“You didn't tell me you guys were all getting together,” he says.

“We were rehearsing,” says Peter. “We would have called you, but we figured you'd be bored.”

That's a blatant lie, but it soothes the savage beast. Drew actually snorts, like an animal blowing off steam. “I would have been bored. I'm so sick of this. Polonius is the lamest character in Shakespeare.”

“It could be fun,” Mandy says. “If you'd let Polonius be funny—”

“See, and I don't need your opinion about everything.”

Mandy pulls herself up straighter, and I swear the air between them crackles. “I would give you my opinion, Drew, whether I was AD or not. Just like I ask your opinion on things that matter to me. You don't have to take it, but you should respect me enough to at least listen.”

“Respect you?” Drew says. “You make it sound like you're my teacher or something.”

“Next you're going to say, ‘You're not the boss of me.'”

Peter moves closer to my side. “We should let you guys have some alone time.”

“No!” Mandy whines. “Please stay! He's making things tense. Before you got here, Drew, we were having a good time.”

“So you want me to leave?”

Mandy doesn't answer right away. She looks to me, quirks her mouth to the side. Maybe she's ready.

“Don't fight,” Peter says. “Or do, but work it out. We'll go.”

“No, stay,” Drew says. Maybe he realizes that Mandy's less likely to can him in public. “You guys can entertain each other, can't you, if we go talk?”

Peter chooses to ignore the suggestive way Drew talks about us “entertaining” each other, so I do too. Drew holds out his hand to Mandy. She takes it, so easily, and lets him lead her up the hill toward the ridge.

Without talking about it, Peter and I walk over to the trampoline. Peter heaves himself up, but I hesitate.

“I won't bite,” he says.

There's something about hoisting yourself onto a trampoline. It's one of those few things that's always too big for you. It makes me feel like a little kid. There's plenty of room between Peter and me, and I sit cross-legged beside him, hands folded in my lap.

He tilts his head and studies my hands. “Before I knew what the gloves were for, I kind of liked them. They made you look like a superhero,” he says.

“They made me feel a little bit like one, too, but I think it takes more than gloves.”

Peter lies back, propped up on his elbows.

“No, because so many superheroes hold their power in their hands—if you touch people, maybe you steal their power, or maybe you freeze them to death or give them electric shock.”

I'm laughing. It's stupid, but I'm laughing.

“I can't do any of those things.”

“Have you tried?”

“No.”

“What do you think might happen? Aside from the world ending?” He rolls onto his side toward me, getting into it. “Hey, that's another way you're like a superhero! You're super paranoid about the end of the world!”

“It's coming, Peter, it's coming soon,” I say in my best doomsday voice, and curl up on my side facing him. I wonder aloud, “Why would anybody want to be a superhero?”

“I don't know, to fight evil?”

“Okay, I'll be fighting evil while everybody else around me is making out and having boyfriends.”

We go quiet. Peter shifts to rest the side of his face on his arm. His slightest move makes me wobble.

“This isn't a superpower,” I say. “It's more like a super weakness.”

“Well, every superhero's got her Kryptonite.”

“I hate Kryptonite.”

“No, Kryptonite's great. See, if Superman didn't have Kryptonite, he'd be perfect. He'd be too good for the world to sustain.”

“Whatever.”

“No, seriously, think how bad it would be for self-esteem. We'd all be comparing ourselves to that guy—that
super
guy. How annoying would that be? You want to be perfect?”

“Yes.”

“You want to be annoying like Superman?”

“Yes.”

“No, you don't.”

He reaches for my ribs.

“Owww! Don't!”

Peter pulls back sharply and rolls flat on his back, facing up to the darkening sky.