The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (13 page)

“I'd walk you to your door, but I'm afraid your dad would shoot me,” I said as I stopped at the end of her front walk.

“He probably would,” she said with a nod of agreement.

“You going to tell me what that was about? With you and that guy?” I asked, though I made a point of not looking at her.

She seemed to consider it but then just shook her head and said, “No.”

“Good night, Delilah,” I said, as I turned to walk away.

“Luke?” she called after me, her voice unnaturally high in pitch.

“Yeah?”

“Don't do anything stupid. About Grant, I mean. I wouldn't … Well, I just think you should be careful.”

“You worry too much,” I said, as I turned again to leave.

The truth is I was worried, too—knowing Grant Parker would be gunning for me for real now and that there was little I could do to stop him.

 

19

Other than compulsory attendance at church, I spent the whole weekend working on the Camaro and doing my best to avoid contact with other people, especially Dad and Doris. If avoiding Dad and Doris were an Olympic-qualifying event, I would have been a top-seed favorite for a gold medal.

Sunday night I tried to study, to catch up on the homework I had been ignoring all weekend. I fell asleep with my light on, my homework scattered on the bed, my music playing. I didn't sleep well in Dad and Doris's house, though I had finally grown accustomed to the quiet—no traffic noise, no sirens, no hum of a thousand transformers powering a city of light and sound.

When I opened my eyes it took me a minute to orient myself, another minute to realize what had wakened me. There was a scratching outside my window and then a rustling sound. At first I assumed it was a raccoon or some other animal, but then I heard a small cry of distress and a thud against the siding of the house.

I sat up so quickly the book that had been resting on my chest fell, but I had swung my legs over the edge of the bed before the book hit the floor.

“Who's there?” I asked, my voice choked with strain.

“Shit,” was the reply, and I recognized Delilah's voice.

I went to the window and opened it all the way, then stuck my forehead up against the screen. “Delilah? What are you doing?”

“Tripping over bushes in the dark,” she said, followed by a little giggle. Delilah never giggled.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Open the window.”

I banged the side of my fist against the edge of the screen to pop it out of its frame. Delilah pulled the screen all the way out and tossed it carelessly on the lawn.

“Hey,” I said in a sharp whisper. “Keep it down, will you? I don't need my dad any more up my ass than he already is.”

She wasn't listening to me, was struggling to maneuver through the open window and reached for my arm to steady herself as she pulled in first one foot, then the other, from her seat on the windowsill. I could smell liquor on her, something sweet, like rum or spiced whiskey. With the amount of noise she was making, I expected Dad to start knocking on my locked bedroom door any second.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Is that what you wear to bed?” she asked, ignoring my question.

My chest was bare and I was wearing sweatpants and socks with holes in them. I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest defensively.

“Get dressed,” she said. “You're coming with me.”

“Absolutely not,” I said with an emphatic shake of my head.

“Fine,” she said with a little shrug. “We can hang out here.” She plopped down on my bed and bounced two of my textbooks onto the floor.

“No, you can't
hang out
here,” I said as I grabbed a sweatshirt from the top of my dresser and pulled it over my head.

“This is the first time I've been in your room,” she said as she glanced around at the few posters I had hung in a halfhearted attempt to make the room more like home. “It's messy.” She wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something unpleasant.

“I wasn't expecting company,” I said as I sat down on the bed beside her to pull on my shoes. “Why didn't you text me first? Tell me you were coming over?”

“Because you would have told me not to come,” she said simply. “Are you ready?”

I climbed out the window first and helped her so she wouldn't make as much noise going as she had coming. She bent down to pick up a bottle of liquor she had left on the ground near the wall of the house. It was only half full and she held it out to me, the bottle swinging by the neck between two fingers.

I snatched the bottle before it fell and smashed on the driveway, then followed her down the street. Delilah was quiet now as we strolled along, me stealing occasional glances over my shoulder, convinced Chief Perry would ride up on us any second in his squad car.

“Will you tell me where we're going?” I asked.

“We're going for a walk,” she said.

“Why are we going for a walk in the middle of the night?”

She sighed but didn't answer and reached for the bottle to take another long swig. Her eyes squeezed shut at the burn from the liquor.

“I can't believe you're drinking this,” I said as she handed the bottle back to me. I studied the label before taking a swig.

“I stole it from my dad's liquor cabinet. He never drinks this stuff.”

“With good reason,” I said and helped myself to another sip. “It's disgusting.”

We had reached the dead-end street where the path into the woods beckoned us like the gaping mouth to hell. This time I was prepared for the total blackness of the woods and was slightly more sure-footed stepping among the tree roots and stones that interrupted the path. We continued on in silence, passing the point where I thought the turnoff for the LARPer fort would be, but Delilah showed no sign of slowing down or stopping.

“Seriously, Delilah, this is how people end up eviscerated in horror movies,” I said as a branch brushed my arm and I almost jumped out of my skin with fright. “Where are we going?”

“It's a surprise. Come on.”

I decided I was probably stupid to follow her but kept walking anyway because, honestly, at this point I had no idea how to get back home. She slipped through a dense group of shrubs, and I lost sight of her for a few seconds. “Delilah,” I called softly, wondering why I was whispering since we were so far out in the woods no one could have heard me scream, even if I wanted them to.

The shrubs fought me as I tried to follow her, and I almost fell when I pushed through and suddenly met air. Delilah turned back to look at me from where she stood at the edge of a clearing, an open, rolling field covered in autumn-gold grass that glowed dully in the moonlight. The moon was almost full, so close you would swear you could reach out and touch it, and the sky was a blanket of stars.

The planes of her face caught the moonlight, and I could make out the angles of a smile. “Beautiful, right?” she asked as she turned her face back to the sky and took a long swig from the bottle. For a moment I thought she was asking me if she was beautiful, because it was what I had been thinking. Somehow I had never noticed Delilah was beautiful before. Maybe it was the liquor. Or the moonlight. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, put the cap on the bottle, and dropped it in the grass at her feet.

“Yes. Beautiful,” I said, still speaking in almost a whisper.

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I saw the moon earlier from my window. Figured it would be nice out here. There's a pond,” she said pointing into the blackness against the opposite tree line. “My brother and I used to come down here to fish and swim. When we were kids,” she added, and I detected sadness in her voice.

“I didn't know you had a brother,” I said.

“You wouldn't. Nobody talks about him. He went to Afghanistan,” she said to the stars. “Came home three months later in a box. He would have been twenty-one today. Figured I'd have a drink in his honor.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, knowing as I did that it was worthless.

“What an idiot, right?” she asked with a mirthless laugh. “I mean, who joins the army in the middle of a war?”

There was nothing to say.

“Anyway,” she said, oblivious to my silence, “I wanted to come down here but I was afraid to come alone. Ghosts,” she said, then betrayed her emotions with a self-conscious laugh.

For a while we listened to the crickets and the wind whispering through the trees. I kept turning my head to look around us, convinced someone would happen onto us, more afraid to run into another human than I was to see a wild animal.

“I miss him,” she said finally, her words slurred a little, letting me know she had already been pretty drunk before coming to my window. “Do you believe in heaven?”

“No,” I said. I cleared my throat as I said it but had not hesitated, didn't consider lying to make her feel better. Most of the time I felt like that was my dad's whole job. Lying to make people feel better.

“Me either,” she said with a sigh. “Sucks. It must be easier for people who believe.”

She turned and came to stand right in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat from her body on my arms and neck. Close enough that my body reacted to her and I wished I had brushed my teeth before leaving the house.

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.

“I wasn't really thinking about it,” I said.

“Why not?” she shot back quickly.

“What do you mean, why not? You just told me about your brother. It's not like that would turn me on or something.”

“What about before that?” she asked, somewhat impatiently. “Before I told you about my brother. Were you thinking about kissing me then?”

“No. I was thinking that you're going to end up getting us killed or busted by your dad, dragging me out here in the middle of the night.” I said this with another cautious glance around us, though I was unsure if I was more afraid of meeting Chief Perry or an ax murderer out here in the dark.

“Really?” she asked, incredulous. “Like it never even occurred to you?”

I shrugged. “You don't like my shirts. Remember?”

She dropped her head to one side and twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “You're so sensitive. And I never said I didn't like your shirts. How much time do you need to consider it? Kissing me, I mean.”

I cleared my throat and felt ridiculous, just standing there, not really knowing what to do. There were plenty of guys who would have grabbed Delilah and kissed her, probably would try to get to second base, or even a runner into home, without worrying about lying down on the ground where piles of wild animal poop probably lurked unseen. Those were the guys who ended up getting laid all the time because they weren't afraid to take the initiative. And here I was, a girl asking me to kiss her and I couldn't even say yes.

“You've been drinking,” I said.

“So?” she pressed.

She leaned in and put her lips against mine, grabbed me by the shoulders, and lifted onto her toes as she wrapped an arm around me. The liquor was sweet on her breath. My nose and mouth filled with her smell. And she was kissing me with tongue, putting everything into it.

The kiss had come so suddenly I hadn't even been able to prepare by taking a breath, and found myself suddenly starved for oxygen. That was, until I remembered I could still breathe through my nose. When I did take a breath it was loud in the stillness of the meadow.

Delilah took my hand, still hanging uselessly at my side, and guided it under her shirt. At her invitation my hand went straight for her left breast, and when I felt the soft roundness of it, I was instantly hard. Now my other arm was around her waist and pulling her closer so I could press myself against her, an unconscious action that surprised both of us.

She laughed softly, and it was enough to break the spell. I pulled away so suddenly that she pitched forward and stumbled against me. “We shouldn't do this,” I said as I wiped my mouth with my hand.

“Why not?” she asked, her voice sleepy now.

At that moment I could think of a million reasons why we should and not a lot of reasons why we shouldn't, so I didn't answer.

“Because you don't want to?” she asked in a whisper as she leaned in against my chest.

“No,” I said but took her by the shoulders to hold her at arm's length. “Because you've been drinking. Because you're … upset. We wouldn't even be here if you were sober.”

“Oh, God, you're not gay, are you?” she asked with a moan. “I didn't just make a fool out of myself, did I? Throwing myself at a gay guy?”

“I'm not gay,” I said. “Guys can have other reasons for not wanting to fool around with a girl.”

“Not any guy I've ever met,” she said.

“Look, you chose me to come out here with you because you knew I wouldn't make any moves on you.”

“Hmph,” she said, hating that I was right.

“If you want to talk about your brother, I'm listening.”

“There's nothing to talk about,” she said, sounding almost angry, but I knew her anger wasn't directed at me. “He's dead. That's it. That's the end of the story.”

“What was he like?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, “you don't really want to know about it.”

“Sure I do,” I said. “If you want to tell me.”

She cast a sidelong look at me for a minute as she built up the nerve to say more. “Jeremy was … hard to explain. Everything he did was larger than life. Big laugh, big heart, big personality. He was really good-looking. All of the girls had crushes on Jeremy.”

“Sounds like a cool guy,” I said, fighting the urge to yawn. The dark, the liquor, the warmth of her body next to my arm were all making me sleepy.