Don't Touch (32 page)

“I'm sorry.”

“No, I'm sorry.”

“I didn't even think about it.”

“No, I know.”

“That was stupid, Caddie.”

“
I'm
sorry. It's dumb.”

“I thought clothes were okay.”

“Yeah, that's mostly it. I don't like not having control. If I choose to touch you on the edge of your sleeve“—I do it, to show I can—”you might suddenly move, but I'm paying attention. I trust myself to react in time. If you touch me—”

“Who knows
what
I might do?” He's being playful, but there's an edge to it. If our places were reversed, I'd feel rejected, maybe even offended, that he didn't trust me.

“God, Peter, I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

He exhales, long and slow . . . “You know I would like to.”

Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it.

“Touch you.” He says it. “If it didn't freak you out so much, I would really like to touch you.”

The first emerging stars are pinpricks, so far away. They don't care what's going on down here on a stupid trampoline between a boy and a girl who can't touch.

“You know I would never hurt you,” he says. “Not on purpose.”

“No, I know. Not on purpose . . . Peter . . .”

“Don't say that you're sorry, okay? I didn't say that to make you feel bad. I really didn't. The last thing I want is for you to feel bad.” He turns to his side to face me again. “I just want you to know.”

Peter's gaze draws me out of myself and into the space between him and me. Underneath us, the trampoline rises and sinks with our breath.

“I like you,” I tell him.

He smiles. “I like you.”

I nod and roll away. I can't look him in the eyes anymore. It's too much. My heart's full of him.

We lie shoulder to shoulder, no more than an inch of air between us. We lift our hands over our heads as high as they can reach, and even though they're still several inches apart, it almost looks like they're touching.

“So if not being able to touch people is my super weakness, what do we think is my superpower?” I ask.

“Well, if your weakness is that you can't touch, it stands to reason that your power is related. Like, if you ever did touch someone, it would be . . .”

“Super?”

“Well, yeah, in a word. I think . . . when you touch someone, it's like all the best parts of you pour into them.”

“I think that's part of what I'm scared of,” I say.

“But maybe that's your power, that you don't lose anything. You get to give someone else all of that, and you also get to keep it for yourself.”

That
sounds
so nice.

“I don't know what I have to give that's so great, though,” I say.

“Shut up. Now you're fishing for compliments.”

“I'm not. I just—Peter, why do you even put up with me?”

He props up, leaning over me. The hand holding his weight could slip; he might fall down on me any moment. I inhale sharply, can't help it. He looks away like he's thinking, but I also feel like he's giving me a chance to get used to this closeness.

When he meets my eyes again, I can breathe.

“I like talking to you, Caddie,” he says. “When we talk, I feel like you're really here with me—like for a minute, I'm the only other person in the world. And I know you won't talk about what I say or laugh about it after because you get it. I trust you. I like your smile and your laugh”—he brings a finger to the corner of my mouth, so close without touching, and he draws it through the air in a line that follows the line of my lips—“especially when you're laughing at something I said that nobody else thinks is all that funny.”

He draws his finger down, hovers over my throat . . . “I like watching you work. I like how much you care about making the play good.” Over my heart . . .

Then he moves his hand to the side of my face, millimeters away and so warm. I could tilt my head to the side and meet him. My face burns, blood rushes. It's like rehearsal, but this time my eyes are locked on his.

“I like what happens,” Peter says, “when we almost touch. There's all this energy between us, this good feeling. I think that's your superpower,” he says, “all of this, times a million, when you touch someone.”

In the space between our eyes, Peter and I hold each other so tight. It is almost like touching, almost like Peter described.

I remember to breathe.

When Mandy and Drew make their way down the hill, they're holding hands and Mandy's hair is a scandal. She runs a hand through to sort out the tangles and gives me a guilty look.

I shrug. I feel a little scandalous myself.

Drew picks a couple of dead leaves off Mandy's back and shreds them.

“The happy couple!” says Peter, lifting his arms in a victory “V” overhead.

“Momentarily,” says Mandy. “You're too distracting,” she says to Drew.

“My specialty,” he says.

“Maybe that's your superpower,” I say, and Drew crunches his face in confusion.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

I feel Peter's hand rising behind me as if to touch my back. It hovers there where he catches himself and then drops it again to his side.

A few seconds later, I realize that when I felt Peter's hand hovering,
don't touch
never entered my mind.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“I'm thinking about disinviting my dad,” I tell Dr. Rice.

She nods. “Okay, what are your reasons?”

“Well, he won't be able to disappoint me,” I say. “If I don't expect him to come, I can't be upset when he doesn't.”

“So you'd be protecting yourself from a painful situation?”

“I guess.”

“That's kind of pessimistic,” she says.

“Or realistic.”

“Do you
want
him to see the play?”

I have to think about that. “I do,” I say. “If I knew he would come and keep an open mind and maybe be proud of me, then yes, I would like him to come. I want him to see what I can do.”

“Is it possible that will happen?”

“That's what I don't know.”

She purses her lips in thought. “It's not always a bad thing to protect yourself, Caddie, but you've told me that you overdo it.”

“Right.”

I don't love where this is going. Dr. Rice's superpower is reason, and I haven't yet figured out how to deflect it.

“If telling your dad not to come is your way of trying to control things, maybe it would be good practice for you to give up that control, roll with whatever happens.”

“Roll with it?” I picture myself getting rolled over
by
it. Flattened.

“Would you survive if your dad disappointed you again, if he didn't show?”

The idea makes me sad, but, “Yeah, I guess I'd survive.”

“Great.” Dr. Rice smiles and makes a note. “Then Dad gets to keep his invitation.”

Dad would appreciate Dr. Rice's practicality and efficiency. I'd appreciate them a lot more if they weren't so good at punching holes in my resolve.

Rehearsals go fast. Nadia keeps adding in props and set pieces so we'll have less to get used to in tech week. She gives me flowers to rip apart when I'm crazy. Oscar and Peter get real swords to fight with—well, real slabs of dull metal, but still, not a joke.

Nadia calls Oscar over after their fight call on Wednesday. “I don't know what you did to prep for this scene, but it's working.”

Oscar beams and circles the stage in a big arc. Peter intercepts him, “Good scene, man,” but Oscar brushes him off.

“Big actor-man Peter thinks I did a good job. Woo-hoo.”

Peter rolls his eyes and smiles to himself, but Oscar seems full of contempt. They were getting along fine yesterday.

Nadia moves on to rehearse Peter stabbing Drew, and I slip backstage to find Oscar writing on the Wall of Infamy, not so far from the bit about Hank and Livia “doing it” with a mask. I read what he's written out loud: “Oscar Morgan of
Monkey Boy
fame would have made a better Hamlet, but his Laertes rocked the stage!”

“Too stuck up?” he asks, and scratches out, “of
Monkey Boy
fame.”

“A better Hamlet?”

“Just the facts, ma'am.”

“What's your problem with Peter?”

He leans in close. “I'm being method, like Daniel Day-Lewis,” he says. “I have to be mad at Peter till the play's finished. That way I don't have to act.”

“You just said you're not really mad at him. So you
are
acting.”

“And it's working.”

“Okay. That's so weird, though, Oscar. Aren't you worried you'll mess up your friendship?”

“It won't mess it up. Peter's cool.”

“Even coolness has its limits.”

That night as Peter's driving me home from rehearsal, I ask, “Did you know Oscar's only being mad at you to do better in the play?”

“Oh, yeah, he told me. He's excited about it.”

“He
told
you. That's nutty.”

“That's Oscar.”

We pull up to my driveway, but Peter doesn't get out like usual to walk me to the door. “I wondered,” he says, “if you might be doing the same thing. The thought crossed my mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Ophelia gets pretty crazy. I thought maybe all your stuff helps you relate to that.”

So what if it does? That doesn't mean I want it.
My skin goes tight.

“Are you saying you think I'm crazy?”

“No, I don't! That's my point—”

“I'm not like Ophelia,” I say, but I hear the defensiveness in my voice.

“Well no, I just mean—” Peter's treading water. “You've been doing so much better. I guess I've been hoping that after the play, when you don't need to feel afraid or upset anymore, you might let it go. That we could be normal.”

“Normal.” The cab of Peter's truck feels too small for two people.

“Not normal, but you know what I mean. So we could . . .” He holds out his hand, palm up.

“You think I'd still be like this if I could just let it go?”

He presses his lips in a line.
Try,
his eyes say,
try a little harder.

“I want to,” I say.

His open hand is a dare. “You want to. So . . .”

I don't like being dared—it's aggressive, a trap to make people feel foolish.

“Caddie, I know it's hard, but I know you can do it,” Peter whispers.

I want to do it, for both of us, but it's so much he's asking. My teeth clack together. The feeling of falling, this dizziness, won't go away.

But I have to try. I place my hand over his, only inches away, and I hold his eyes, willing him to close the distance. “It's okay,” I say, with a breath to steel myself. “Touch my hand. It's all right.”

“But it's not,” Peter says. “If it were all right, you'd touch me.”

“I'm working on it,” I growl, and Peter lets out a breathy laugh at my frustration. “It's not funny,” I say.

“No, you're right, I know.”

I reach past his hand and take him by the wrist, touching only his sleeve. I lift his hand toward my face, and Peter watches, letting me move him. I feel the warmth of his hand where it floats in space close to my cheek.

“It's on you,” he whispers. “Your call.”

I hold his eyes—this look is as close as a touch—but still I can't pull his hand closer.

I let go.

Slowly, Peter sinks back in his seat, facing forward.

“Say what you're thinking,” I say, even though I'm not sure I can stand to hear it.

He takes his time trying to choose words that won't offend me. “You don't like feeling afraid, I know, and that's normal, but have you thought maybe you're afraid of the wrong thing? What if the way you are right now is what you need to be afraid of?”

I am afraid of it, but knowing that isn't enough. He wants things to be simple, easy, and I'm not those things.

“I think you're afraid, too,” I say, my voice tight. “I think that's why you're stuck here talking with me. Why else would you be with a girl who can't touch?”

He thumps the back of his head against his seat. I am impossible. That's what that says.

But I'm right, I think, at least a little bit. It's like Livia with Hank . . . a person who can't say yes won't make you open up more than you want, more than you fear.

“I won't see you again till Monday,” Peter says. “Will you think about what I said?”

That's almost a whole week away. We're off for Thanksgiving, but I figured Peter and I would see each other at some point in all that time.

As if he's read my mind, he says, “I'm going to my dad's. It will be all family time.”

“Right, of course.”

“I should have mentioned it. I didn't . . .”

He didn't want to make me feel bad. Jordan and I visiting Dad in Virginia wasn't even discussed as a possibility. I suppress a pang of jealousy.

“Okay, well, Monday, then,” I say, stepping down from the truck.

It's felt so easy talking to Peter these last few weeks; I don't know what to do with this awkward chill that's swept in between us.

As I start up the walk, the damp air seems to soak through my clothes, and I wrap myself tighter in my coat. If I were normal, Peter would be walking beside me, holding my hand or playing with my hair. We would stand at the top of the porch steps and kiss.

When I'm halfway up the walk, the truck rumbles, and I turn to see Peter backing away. Usually, he waits until I get inside safe.