Falling Under (10 page)

“But he didn’t.” I rub her back. “Breathe, sweetness. Just breathe. Everything’s fine now.”
 

She pulls away. “Um, no. You’re hurt.”

I wipe my forearm along my chin, smearing the dripping blood away to keep it off her. “Cuts to the head or face bleed a lot. It’s just a split cheek. For real, I’ll be fine. Like I said, I’ve had worse.”

She tugs me by the hand, and I follow her reluctantly, limping behind her. She leads me to the couch, helps me sit. Brings back a few dampened squares of paper towel and wipes gingerly at my face, folding the paper towel over and over until it’s a pink-red wet wad. This goes on for several minutes, until the bleeding finally stops. She touches my cheek, and then my forehead, which I realize belatedly stings, too.
 

“You’ve got two cuts.” She touches near each of them. “Here, and here. They don’t look deep, though.”
 

“Like I said, I’m fine.” I’m dizzy, though, and reeling. Aching, hurting. Shit, it hurts.
 

Kylie leans over me and oh-so-gently pries at the edges of the cut to my thigh. “This is pretty bad. It needs stitches.”

“Not happening.”

She looks up at me, confused. “Why not?”

“Don’t have the money, don’t want the attention. It’ll heal.” I point at the bathroom. “There’s a roll of bandages and some Neosporin in the medicine cabinet. Can you grab it for me?” She nods and gets up, and it’s not until she’s back that I realize I can’t bandage it with my jeans on. I struggle to my feet. “Need to change into shorts. I’ll be right back.”

“Oz, you should go the ER. I’ll pay for it.”

“The fuck you will.” I shouldn’t be so harsh, but I’m in pain and frustrated and confused. Why’d she come here? This complicates things. She’s gonna feel like she owes me something now.
 

“Then let me help you. Please. You can barely walk.” She’s behind me, following my slow progress to my room. I can barely move my leg for the deep throbbing ache that seems to originate in the bones of my thigh.
 

I make it, and fall back onto my bed. “What, you’re gonna take my pants off me?”

She blushes, but enters, sinks to her knees by my feet. “Yes.” She’s tugging on the laces of my boots, slipping them off my feet.
 

Resistance is futile. Shut up, yes, I did just make a
Star Trek
joke. But seriously, I don’t know how to stop her, because it hurts and I’ve never had anyone take care of me. Mom’s not the cuddly, huggy, baby-me type of mom. She’s more my friend than anything else. So this is new, and I don’t know how to deal with it, especially because pushing Kylie away earlier today was seriously fucking painfully difficult, the diametric opposite of what I wanted. I let her take off my shoes, and my socks. The sock on my wounded leg is sopping wet with my blood, and she makes a face as she peels it off me. She looks around for somewhere to put it.

“Garbage in the kitchen,” I tell her.
 

She leaves, and I fumble with the button and zipper of my jeans, fight to get them off, but shitfuckdamn it hurts so bad, the edges of the denim stick to my skin and to the open wound, the blood clotting now. I’ve only got my jeans halfway off before she comes back.
 

“Goddamn it, Oz. You stubborn asshole.”

“Finally got something figured out,” I say, relinquishing my pride and letting her finish tugging the jeans off my legs.
 

I’m wearing boxers, thank god. I do sometimes go commando, if it’s been awhile since I’ve done any laundry.
 

My side aches, throbs. The rib is definitely bruised at the least, possibly cracked. That was a good hard hit he got in. And my head, god, my head is throbbing from the head butt, on top of the two punches I took. Public service announcement for you, kids: Head-butting someone hurts
you,
too. Don’t be fooled by the movies.
 

“Holy fuck, Oz, this is
really
bad. Please, please let me take you to the hospital.” She’s near tears, and looking pale, like she might puke.

I sit forward and give my leg a good look. It
is
pretty deep. Not to the bone, but it’s a pretty harsh gash on the outside of my thigh. It’ll heal on its own. I know this from experience. Not from a gunshot wound, but from similar injuries. I shake my head. “It looks worse than it is, Kylie. It’s just a cut. Gimme the gauze.”

She swallows and blinks, presses her lips together, hands me the roll of gauze, the Neosporin, a bottle of peroxide, medical tape, a pair of scissors. I realize the Neosporin probably won’t do much good, so I set that aside. I take the towel I used to sop up the blood and hold it beneath my leg.
 

“Dump the peroxide on that bitch,” I say to her. “A whole bunch.”

She blanches. “Won’t that hurt?”

“Like a motherfucker. But it’s better than getting an infection. Do it quick.” I grit my teeth and watch. She twists the little white cap off the brown bottle, glances at me. I nod, and she pours peroxide over the wound. I can’t help a groan from escaping. “F-fffffuck that hurts. Goddamn.” I suck in a deep breath for courage. “All right, do it again.”

She’s near tears still, but she does it. And fuck me running, the raw agony is nearly unbearable. The wound bubbles crazily, and I dab at it with the corner of the towel.

“Once more.”
 

I can’t watch this time. I stare at Kylie instead, at the fall of her reddish-blonde hair draped in loose waves across one shoulder, her downcast electric eyes intent on my legs. Her T-shirt is tight and gray, her boobs round mountains that I want to explore with my hands and my mouth and my eyes. That thought doesn’t help, especially since I’m only in my boxers, and if I pop a woody, she’ll know. I go back to looking at her hair. Thick, lustrous, copper. Waves and waves, with a slight curling twist at the ends.
 

“You’re staring at me.” She caps the peroxide, and then looks at me.

I shrug. “Yeah.”

“I thought we were just friends.”

I cut a long ribbon of gauze, fold it over a few times, and then place it against the wound. “Wrap it.” I watch as she winds the gauze around my leg, passing the roll from hand to hand. “We are.”

“Then why are you staring at me like you could eat me?” She snips the bandage and tapes it in place, then sinks back to sit cross-legged.
 

“Because what’s right and what I want are not necessarily the same thing.” I point at a pair of loose cut-off khakis. “Can I have those?” She tosses me the frayed shorts and I slip them on, wiggling them past my hips.

Kylie’s frowning at my answer. “What about what
I
want?”

I button the khakis and draw the zipper up, then wiggle backward and reach into my bag for my cigarettes and lighter. “Same answer applies.” I light up and take a deep drag, closing my eyes as the bliss of a nicotine rush hits me. “What you want and what’s best for you are not the same thing. You just saw why. My life isn’t safe.
I’m
not safe.”

She crawls on the bed and sits next to me, watches me smoke. Her fingers slide against my palm, and she takes the filter from me, puts it to her lips, takes a small draw, holds in her mouth, and then inhales. She coughs a little, but not as bad as the first time. I watch her eyes dilate, and her head thumps against the wall as the dizziness of the rush hits her.
 

“Oh, shit. Wow. Now I see.” She blinks, hands the cigarette back.

I chuckle. “Yeah. No more for you, though.”

“Is it always like that?” She reaches for it, and I keep it out of her reach. “Come on, I want to try it again. Please?”

God, I’m gonna get her hooked. But, like a dick, I hand it to her anyway. “No. Once you’re used to it, you only get that feeling if it’s been, like, twelve hours or more since your last smoke.” I take it back and drag on it. “If you get addicted, there’ll be a lineup for who gets to kick my ass.”

 
“No, if I get addicted, it’ll be my fault, not yours.” She sees the open Band-Aid tin on the floor beside my bed and snags it, looks in. Pulls out the baggie, opens it, sniffs. “This is pot?”

I nod. “Yeah. That’s pot.”

“Are you gonna smoke it?”

“Not in front of you.”

She puts the bag back in the tin and sets it between us. “Why not?”

“Because that’s just one more reason why you and I being more than friends can’t happen. Drugs have no place in your life.”

“But they do yours?”
 

I sigh. “Yes, they do. If I amount to anything, it’ll be as part of a band. That’s it. I’ll be playing dive bars and shitty clubs, and I’ll get high in the alleys and do lines in the bathrooms, and eventually I’ll OD and that’ll be that.” I glance at her. “Is that the life you want?”

She runs her hand through her hair. “No. But you can be more than that, Oz. You could, if you wanted to. Your talent with math? You could do a lot of things with that. And you’re a good enough musician that you could be a hell of a lot more than some asshole druggie snorting coke in dive bar bathrooms. You should want more for yourself than that, Oz.
I
want more for you than that.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well, I don’t.” Lies. That’s a dirty fucking lie. I do want more. Maybe not picket fences and a dog with a floppy ear and two little kids snotting on my jeans, but something better.
 

She rolls toward me, and her eyes are close, her breath on my cheek, her hand on my chest. “You don’t believe that. I can hear the lie in your voice, and I can see it in your eyes.”

I closed my eyes. “Maybe so. Doesn’t change the facts.”

“Yes, it does. There are no facts, not about your future. You make your future. You’re talented. You’re good-looking. You can do a lot of things, if you believe in yourself.”

I snort. “What is this, a ‘The More You Know’ commercial?”

“Yes, and I’m Sandra Bullock, so you know it’s gotta be true.”

I can’t help but laugh. “You’re
way
hotter than Sandra Bullock.” I pause for effect, and to consider whether I’ll regret saying this. “And Sandra Bullock is
hot
.”

“She’s older than our parents!” She laughs.

“So she’s hot for an older lady. And it’s parent,
singular
for me.” I say it without thinking; it just slips out.

This sobers up the conversation real fucking fast. “You’ve never known your dad?”

I shake my head side to side. “Nope. Never even seen a picture. Don’t know a single goddamn thing about the man.”

Kylie is bursting with questions, I can tell. “Your mom won’t tell you anything?”

I shrug. “No. It’s…a sore subject for her. She gets pissed off if I bring it up. He’s gone, and that’s all I need to know.” I sigh. “I think I’m named after him, but I’m not a hundred percent on that.”

“You’re named after him, huh? What was his name?”
 

I laugh. “Nice try, sweetness. Still not telling you my real name.”

“Damn it. I thought that’d work.” She’s on her side, head propped on her hand, looking up at me from way too close. “Why won’t you tell?”

“Because my name belongs to him. And I don’t know a single goddamn thing about him. So I need—I decided in third grade that if I’m gonna be myself, with no help from his ass, then I might as well have my own name. So I chose Oz.”

“Why Oz?”

I shrug. “It’s a…derivative. And it fit. Also, I’d just seen
The Wizard of Oz
for the first time, and thought the wizard was cool. I mean, he wasn’t supposed to be, but he projected this huge image of himself when inside, in reality, he was totally different. And that’s how I felt, like to survive in the world I had to be totally different from the way I felt inside, different from who I wanted to be. I mean, I grew up rough, Ky. I did. What just happened? Not unusual. I’m a fighter, okay? I’ve been to juvie. I had to fight every day when I was in juvie. I had to fight at school, and I had to fight on the playground, and I had to fight in the neighborhoods where we lived. When kids have something to prove, shit gets rough. And in the ’hood, everybody’s got something to prove. But inside, I hated fighting. I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to know who my dad was, where I came from. Why my mom was alone. Why we were alone. Why we moved so much.”

“You’ve moved a lot?”
 

I nod. “Yeah, you could say that. Like, every year or so, for most of my life. The longest I’ve lived in any one city or state was in Dallas, from the time I was like eleven until junior high. Just before seventh grade Mom moved us from Dallas to St. Louis. It was every year, year and a half before Dallas, and the same after St. Louis. A new school, new apartment, new city, new friends. Then, eventually, I stopped bothering with the whole friends thing, since I’d just leave ’em after a few months. Now, I just bide my time till the next move. Keep to myself, do my own thing…shit, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’ve always been lost. Like I’m just shuffling around the world, just me and my mom, and I know there’s a whole tragic story Mom won’t tell me. I’m not really anybody, you know? You
know
who you are, where you come from. You’re Nell and Colt’s daughter. You’re a musician. You know your parents, each of them. I mean, yeah, for sure they have stories and secrets you don’t know, but they’re both
there
. You don’t even know what a huge thing that is. Mom is…shut off. I don’t know how to explain it. She’s…present in my life, and she’s raised me to the best of her ability, and I’m thankful I’ve got her. But there’s a part of her that’s…gone. From me, at least. I’ve asked her about it, but she just gets mad.” I have to stop for a minute and grit my teeth and try to get past the renewed throbbing in my leg and my side.

Kylie lays on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “God, Oz. There’s so much I want to know, so much I want to say. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Nothing to say. It is what is.” My teeth are clenched against the pain, which is blazing with sudden intensity.

“You said you were in juvie?” She asks this hesitantly, not looking at me.

I shrug. “Yeah. Tenth grade. New Jersey.”