Going Underground (13 page)

“Are you close to your mom?” I ask, because I want to know, but also to keep myself square in reality.

“I used to be.” Her feet twitch. Tense, then letting it go. Livia seems good at that. I should take lessons from her. “Mom shut down when my sister died. She doesn't talk much anymore. How about your parents?”

I think about this for a second. My family's hard to explain, but then again, it's pretty easy, too. “My parents rescue animals. With work and school and all they do with the SPCA, I don't see them that much—but we get along.”

“That must be nice.” Livia slips her feet out of my lap, sits up, and kisses me, leaving her lips on mine for a long, long time. I close my eyes as she presses against me, her leg to my leg, her side to my side, and I feel her softness, her sweetness.

What are we now?

That's the question I want to ask, that I feel like I need to ask, but when Livia's this close to me, words stop making sense and being important.

When the kiss ends, it's like falling off the edge of the world.

I want more. I want it all. I want her.

“I have to go,” she whispers in my ear, her voice as soft as fairy wings. “I'll call you later, if I can.”

Because I'm not some sex-crazed maniac, I let her go. Then I watch as she gathers her things, watch as she jogs away toward Claudia's grave. She'll stay a few minutes, then head toward home so she's in before dark, like her father wants. Sometimes I go back to work before she's gone, but usually I sit and watch, waving when she waves, until she's a speck on the road, until I can't see any hint of her in the twilight.

After I get home that night, when the phone rings and I answer it, the first thing Livia says is, “I miss you.”

Blood pumps in my throat and ears, and before I can stop myself, I tell her, “I miss you, too.”

She goes on for a minute or two about how her family's going to visit relatives for Thanksgiving next week. Then, “I told my cousin about you. She's happy I've got a boyfriend.”

Oh. Shit.

Boyfriend.

There's the word.

I am. I know I am. I've been acting like that, wanting that, but hearing it out loud—

“Forgot to ask earlier, how's Marvin?” Livia's voice sounds like little bells, all ringing and happy, and I know I can't get heavy with her, not on the phone.

Marvin's pissed that I'm dating you
. “He's hot on a girl named Lee Ann.”

“And Harper?”

Working on being drunk straight through the holidays and totally oblivious
. “Same as always.”

He offered me rubbers
.

“Is anything wrong, Del?”

You're not here next to me, and when I'm not looking at you or touching you, nothing makes sense
. “No. I just miss you.”

She laughs. “Good. Miss me a lot while I'm gone.”

“I will,” I tell her, and when I hang up, I feel completely lost.

If It Rains Down , It Will Rain on Me

(“Penitentiary”—Citizen Cope. He's right. Most penitentiaries are in our minds.)

The Thanksgiving holidays come and go, and Livia's still gone. She can do that, since she's homeschooled. When she called last night, she said they'd probably be back tonight or tomorrow.

It's been strange not having her around—and sort of empty, knowing she won't be coming by Rock Hill for her nightly visits. I want to hear her voice in person again. I want to hold her, talk to her. I really want to make myself do the right thing by Livia, explain every bit of my past, give her the choices I should have given her right from the start.

Even if she doesn't make it easy, even if it's the last thing I want, we have to go there. The next time I see her, we just have to.

At school, the noise in the hallway seems halfway bearable after first period as I try to keep myself distracted from Livia and also research the endless grin on Marvin's face. “Is Lee Ann pretty
and
hot, or just one or the other?”

Marvin grins even bigger as he stops in front of our lockers and opens his door. “Pretty. Hot. And pretty hot. She's got these shorts she has to wear in the Bangles and Stuff booth.” He throws his books in the locker and taps the top of his thigh. “You gotta see them to believe them.”

I change out my books and ask the big, big question. “So, when's the first date—assuming she's not totally blowing you off?”

“Next weekend.”

Figures. After his birthday. “Did you check her driver's license?”

The question comes out automatically, and I swear I'm talking in Dad's voice, just like Fred.

Marvin doesn't seem to care. “She's selling jewelry. Gotta be eighteen to do that at our mall—but yeah, actually, I did check the license. She didn't mind.” He starts digging through his locker. “Is Branson still on you about testifying at those hearings at the special session in April?” The question comes out light, almost offhand, but I'm thinking there's an edge to it, which is weird. Marvin has his big-deal moments with me, but he doesn't usually start them.

I feel a flash of nervousness, almost like inner movie music right before something awful happens, and it makes me shiver.

Marvin doesn't notice.

“Branson's giving it a rest.” I clear my throat. “But my parents have started—about themselves, not me—but I think they kind of want me to go.”

Marvin stops rooting through the junk covering his books, and without pulling his head out of his locker, he asks, “Are they going to do it?”

That dread-the-disaster feeling in my gut doubles, maybe because when I get a look at Marvin's face, he's frowning big-time. It makes him look serious and older.

“I … I think so, yeah.”

Marvin closes his locker, leaving his hand on the lock, and that frown keeps right on going. “I wish they'd leave it alone. I wish everybody would just drop it and move on.”

“Yeah,” I say out loud.

Inside, it comes out,
I wish I could, but I'm the one with the felony conviction
.

For a second or two, I stare at Marvin with his frown. Marvin, who never got charged with anything. Marvin, who's leaving for Notre Dame as soon as he can. Marvin, who really can drop all this, the whole big, awful mess, and move on.

His face shifts, and for another few seconds, it's like I don't know him, or maybe it's just that I don't know the
real
him, like lots of people don't know the real me. Is he going to turn eighteen and change everything in his life—me and my nasty past included?

That's stupid.

I do know Marvin. I know him better than anybody, and he knows me.

Right?

Arms slide around my waist and somebody hugs me from behind.

I jump so hard I smack my head on the locker, then wheel around, pushing myself away from Cherie as she lets me go, laughing and barely dodging the flow of bodies in the middle of the hall.

“You should see your face.” She hiccups because she's laughing so hard.

Blind mad. It happens fast and my face feels like it's boiling. “Don't be sneaking up on me and touching me like that.”

My voice is loud enough to make me breathe and think and breathe again. Marvin clears his throat from behind me, and when I imagine him, I see that frown. My face stays hot.

“Why?” Cherie teases, winking at me. “You fragile?”

Her
pussy
comment comes floating back to me, and all I can do is glare. She's wearing black jeans today, and another one of her black sweaters. Makeup, hair, nails—perfect and dark. She looks like a vampire doll, and the morning sunlight through the hall doors makes her eyes twinkle. Probably wearing glitter or something. She's definitely wearing perfume again, but this time it makes my eyes water.

“Go away, Cherie.” Marvin bangs his books against his locker, but Cherie doesn't so much as tell him to screw off because she's too busy staring at me.

“You miss me, Del?”

God, the things I want to say. I settle for, “No.”

Her smile makes her lips look like they're made out of dark blood. “I'm coming out to the graveyard tonight.”

“Don't.” I point my finger at her. “I'll call my parents.” Which is a total L-I-E. After last time, I could never do that again, but maybe she won't call my bluff. “We can't be friends because your family thinks I suck.”

“You don't suck?” Cherie's mocking me, laughing all over again, and I wish she was hateful instead of sort of nice and playful and cute. I'm so weirded out I can't even tell what's fake and what's real.

“Uh, yeah he does suck,” Marvin says, still behind me. “And so do I, so go away.”

Cherie moves away from the crowded part of the hall toward me, her eyes getting more serious even though her lips are still curving up. “You don't suck, Del.”

Christ, what am I supposed to do with a girl like this? She's the most stubborn person in the universe, and I don't want to stomp all over her feelings, but she doesn't give me lots of options. Right now, she's just making me sweat and making my heart pound, because I'm expecting her brother to show up any second and crack my skull.

“Look—thanks for being so nice to me. For not ignoring me.” I suck in a breath and pick my next words as best I can. “I do think that's, I don't know, brave, I guess. You're a very nice person. I just don't need any trouble, okay?”

She's too close to me now, and Marvin's starting to gripe over my shoulder about her backing off.

“There won't be any trouble,” she says. “My family doesn't get to run my life.”

Marvin steps around me. His head seems to be on a swivel as he watches out for Jonas.

“Don't come to Rock Hill,” I tell Cherie, having another one of those not-fun premonition feelings. “We're not friends. We can't be, like I said.”

The hall fades away as I study her, and I see it's not sinking in, and Marvin's doing that stranger-frown thing, and it's all just too much. “That's not it,” I admit before Cherie starts arguing with me again. “What I'm saying—I mean, it's all true, but there's another reason I don't want you to come.”

Cherie's eyebrows come together.

Miracle of miracles, I seem to have her attention.

“There's someone else.” My tone is as gentle as I can make it, but the words still sound brutal.

Cherie's smile goes still. Her confident expression melts into something like shock. For once, I've got the advantage with her. She's finally listening to me, and she'll hear whatever I say next, so I'd better make it good. My hands start sweating like the rest of me.

“I've got a girlfriend now, Cherie. Whatever you thought this was between us—that it wasn't … it … it—isn't. Okay?”

Way to make it good, asshole
.

But I can see she's taking my meaning, because what's in her eyes now is pain. Damn it. I wish she'd get pissed instead. Pissed would be way easier to deal with. Her broken-doll look is half killing me, and it's still killing me when she spins away from me and runs away down the hall, pushing people out of her way.

I can't move or say anything.

Marvin's standing beside me like he's made out of concrete, his mouth hanging open.

It's Jonas's heavy punch to my shoulder that jars me back to reality. I bang into my locker wondering where the hell he came from, what he heard—what's he going to do?

Lots of witnesses all around us. Nobody's slowing down to watch, though.

Hands down. Don't react.

But I'm reacting. Fists clenched. Breathing hard. So is Marvin.

My heart thumps fast enough to make peel-out noises as Jonas says, “Hartwick, that was cold. Past cold. It was frozen.”

My ears buzz like my brain's about to explode. I study Jonas with his perfect jeans and oh-so-I-look-good long-sleeve jersey, with his blue eyes and blond hair and big square face. My thoughts do stupid things like,
Cherie's prettier than him
and
He reminds me of Marvin's frown
and
I bet Kaison was a lot like this in high school
.

Marvin and I stay flush with our lockers as Jonas and his posse crowd us, but that's all they're doing. Jonas is shaking his head. “Cold,” he says again. “But, you did what you had to do.”

“Cold,” Marvin echoes, staring as Jonas and his big boys move off into the crowd, leaving us behind. “Okay, that was like demented or something. What the hell just happened?”

My heart's still bump-bump-bumping, and my fists crush into my own thighs. “Guess Jonas is leaving it alone. You know, dropping it and moving on.”

“Yeah, okay.” Marvin's mouth twitches like he wants to frown and be that other guy again, but he smiles instead.

For some reason, that doesn't help the way I'm feeling. I still want to hit something, and I can't figure out why it's Marvin.

He's moving, heading off to class, so I follow, but I feel way past strange, and selfish and stupid, and more lost than ever.

Graveyards can be sad and lonely and cold and quiet, but sometimes, they're just peaceful. Sometimes, they're just right.

It's cool when Fred and I get to Rock Hill, and the sun seems to be lazing in the sky, halfway down, in no hurry to disappear and turn the fall breezes into cold night air. My head's still spinning and buzzing from the day, from Cherie and pinhead and even Marvin, and I wish I could figure out what I'm feeling about all that, but the sensations don't make any sense to me.

“Fred,” Fred keeps saying from Harper's countertop. I dig around by the phone, knocking beer cans onto the floor as I look for his ledger that has the list of upcoming funerals and the lots where the graves need to be carved out of the chilled, leaf-covered dirt. Fred sounds kind of nervous, probably because I have the little blanket tucked around even more of her cage to keep the wind from being too cold for her when we go outside. She might be nervous because I feel so weird, and I can't figure out what I should do next, and I don't really mean what I should do next in the graveyard.

“What should I do next with my life?” I ask Fred as I finally find Harper's list, count two graves, and figure out which plots need to be turned.

“One,” Fred says. “Two. Four. Four, four, four.”

I lay the list on the counter beside her, scribble a note on the back of a milk and peanut butter receipt so I don't forget which plots to dig, and give my parrot the best oh-please look I can muster. “Are you telling me to take it one step at a time?”

“Four,” Fred repeats, her eyes bright and fixed directly on mine.

“You're as bad as Dr. Mote—and you missed a step yourself. One, two,
three
, four.”

Dr. Mote wouldn't really like what I'm doing now, standing in Harper's junky, stinky house, looking at his mess, knowing that he's passed out in his bed, probably crusted with dirt and booze and whatever else he hasn't washed off in the last week. That doesn't help with all my angst about life, either.

“Sad,” I say to Fred, because all I really know for sure about my future is, I don't want to be Harper. Not all of what Harper is, anyway. I don't mind the hard work, and his business is legit, and it's not a business that cares about my past, even a little bit. But can I dig graves for the rest of my life and not slowly go insane and end up where Harper is now?

I so don't want to deal with any of this.

How long can you put it off?

Yeah, that last one was Dr. Mote in my head. Right after that comes Branson's voice.

Sooner or later, you have to have a plan
.

Write colleges. Testify at hearings about unjust laws. They say it like it's possible for me to make a plan, like it's possible for me to open doors.

“Four,” Fred says again, and I carry her outside without asking her any more questions. Sometimes I get afraid she'll answer me in some major way, and I'll have to add insane bird freak to all the other stupid crap people can say about me.

The plot I need to dig is in Acorn Section—older, lots of trees and bushes, but the spot itself has high green grass washed in so much sunlight it looks almost blue. It smells like bark and dirt, the whole area, but not in a bad way. More fresh and natural.

I hang Fred's cage on a low-hanging branch in a little oak tree, find a shovel, and set the dimensions of the grave. The sun on my face feels perfect, and I try digging without my music even though it feels strange and weird, and I have trouble keeping a rhythm.

Something about the addiction conversation with Dad and the drinking conversation with Harper has stayed with me. I'm thinking maybe my music isn't as good as Dad's animal rescuing, even if I'm not sure why. Except, it keeps me from feeling and thinking, and I'm not sure Dad's animal stuff does that. It's like he's using animals to be part of the world, but I'm using my music to be separate from it. I'm using music more like Harper's using his beer.