Wanted (13 page)

“I can’t believe you found this.” I let go of his hand and set to work pulling up my hair.

He coughed, picked up his sketchbook and started on a new page. My mane was in desperate need of attention and my heart was beating so fast I thought if I didn’t get some distance between us it might combust right there in my chest, so I stood up and went to my bag for my brush. At the bottom of my bag I felt something soft and familiar.

“Oh yes! I forgot all about this!”

I pulled out the fabric from the bag. It was only a t-shirt I had brought along in the likelihood that I spilled something on myself during the road trip and wanted to prevent embarrassment. Still though, it made me ridiculously happy to think I had something of my own here in this strange place. I could even switch shirts and wash my tank top while I wore this one. I inhaled the fabric and smelled the detergent and fabric softener. Instantly it reminded me of home. I wondered if Dad would bother to get any of the laundry done while I was gone. Would one of the neighbors at least show him how the washer and dryer worked? How many episodes of trial and error would it take before he figured out how much soap to use?

I put the shirt back and finally managed to get my hair into a decent ponytail. When I turned back around, Charlie was glancing up at me slightly but put his eyes back down when he caught me looking at him.

“Thanks for this, Charlie.” I sat down on the bed and leaned my head against the wall.

His voice was soft but tight. “You’re welcome.”

“What time is it?” I asked

“Late,” he said finally.

I was enjoying the sound of the pencil against the paper. Charlie increased the intensity in pressure he applied as he sketched away. I took pleasure in the way it took the silence from the room, filling it with the resonance of creation and something more intense than I could describe. Each time the point broke, he didn’t hesitate to sharpen it furiously with the blade and get back to work.

As I listened, I felt my eyelids begin to grow heavy, so I kicked off my sandals and scooted my legs up under me. From the corner of my eye, I watched Charlie work the paper, his brow wrinkled in concentration. I could feel myself smile as I stared, it was as though he was in his own world there; unable to escape until the image did.

“Addie?” A hand was shaking my shoulder. “Hey, Addie?”

My eyes peeled opened and I saw Charlie sitting in front of me. Whatever he was drawing must be done now, because the sketchbook was closed and the pencils put away.

“I’m gonna take off.”

I stretched, “Okay.”

He hesitated and looked over his shoulder. “I’ll be across the hall. Make sure you lock the door and don’t go nowhere.”

I closed my eyes and think I might have nodded a bit. Truthfully though, I was only concerned with the potential of going back to sleep. “Yeah, got it.”

I felt him smile through my closed eyelids and saw the lamp go dim. When everything went dark, a blanket was placed over my shoulders and I snuggled deep into its folds.

“That is a very rude way to wake someone up!” I had to inhale sharply to keep from laughing.

He released my arms and pushed me back. “I had to,” he laughed. “Your snorin’ was ruining my thinkin’.”

I stopped struggling against him, “I do not snore!”

Charlie just laughed harder, “Yeah, yeah, you do.”

“Take that back!” I kicked him with my foot.

He went back to his sketch. “Nope.”

“You big jerk!”

I threw myself against him with the hope that maybe I could upset his drawing, but I managed to unbalance him enough that his leg slipped against the blanket and he went tumbling to the floor. Unfortunately, as I went to survey the hilarity he pulled me along with him, forcing us both to land in a crumpled heap on the floor.

With him beneath me, I could smell the dull remains of aftershave, soap, and the sea. I inhaled deeply. I could feel his heart pounding beneath me, sticks at the center of a drum. I could imagine the blood pumping in his body to every essential organ and limb, keeping him steady and sure. In that moment, my senses betrayed me with how attractive I found him. I wanted to kiss him so very much. I scolded myself—a psychologically healthy person shouldn’t have been thinking that way. I still should have hated him, and because I didn’t, I sincerely disliked myself.

Before I could embarrass myself further, I rolled away from him, instantly missing the feeling of his body against mine. For a moment more he lay there, swallowing hard before pushing himself back up again in a single motion.

An idea occurred to me as I glanced back and forth between Charlie and the door.

“Hey.” I looked at the door again. “Wasn’t the door locked?”

He flopped back down on the bed. “It was.”

I rested my hand on my hip. “Then how exactly did you get in here?”

He looked at me as though the answer was obvious. “Picked it.”

Being skeptical, I walked over to the door and examined it closely. The keyhole didn’t appear to be damaged in any way. Even when I turned the knob over, the lock didn’t turn with it, suggesting that it hadn’t been tampered with. I lobbied for a more suitable explanation.

“No way. You just had a key.”

He smiled and sauntered over to the door, opened it, and closed himself outside.

“Okay, lock it,” he called. The smile in his voice had me biting my lip in anticipation. I was eager to hear the sound of his voice again.

I followed his directions and heard the little latch clasp against the wooden door frame. Immediately I knelt down and tried to see through the keyhole, but it appeared to be barreled by the lock. If he was trying to trick me, he was doing a very good job.

From outside the door I could hear Charlie breathing—a fantastic sound all by itself. Then I heard a kind of jingling and within an instant of that, the unlatching of the door.

“See?” he said from the doorway. “Easy.”

A horrifying thought came over me. Reading my expression, Charlie’s own smile receded and his smugness vanished.

“What?”

“If-if you can do that,” I looked at him, “then why didn’t you just go ahead and open the door that first day I was here?”

He let out a deep sigh. “I guess I coulda easy ’nough, but you seemed scared enough; I didn’t want to spook you anymore than I had to.”

“Oh.” I tried to appear indifferent. Truthfully, I didn’t quite know how to feel about that.

“Will you teach me how to pick a lock?”

He laughed. “Why would someone like you need to know somethin’ like that?”

“What does it matter?” I shrugged. “It’s interesting, and anything that’s interesting is worth learning.”

For a moment I thought he might laugh in my face, but instead he took something out of his back pocket and sat on the floor next to me.

“All right then.” He locked the door with the two of us in between it so it couldn’t latch. “This is a tumbler lock. It’s the most common lock ‘round…” He watched my face while he spoke, as if waiting for me to interrupt or become bored with the process, but when I didn’t, he continued. “To get one of these open, you need a pick and a tension wrench—”

I raised my hand like a good student. “What’s a tension wrench?”

He smiled again. If that was all I had to do to make him smile then I had to start thinking of more questions.

“One of these.” He held out the tool he had removed from his pocket. “You use it to put pressure on the inside of the lock so you can hold any picked pins in place while the others are bein’ moved.”

I tried to peer inside the keyhole once more. “This is one of those things that requires a lot of practice, isn’t it?”

He laughed, “Yeah, generally.”

“Okay, then what?”

“The tension wrench goes in first and you turn it the same direction you do the key.” He demonstrated on the door as I hovered over his shoulder. “You’ll feel it give way on the plug. Then you use the pick…”

His face was all concentration again. I was glad I was good at multitasking so I could both admire him and observe the refined motions he made with his wrists.

“…try and listen for when the pins fall back into place. If you get real good at it, you can just feel it and it becomes easy.” With a final move of the pin, the door unlocked. He grinned, looking more smug than usual.

“I want to try.” I felt like a child again. It had been a long time since I had been challenged with a skilled task.

“Go for it.” He handed over the pick and wrench, but he kept his smirk. I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling quite nervous to see him move from my front to behind me—now he was hovering over my shoulder.

I locked the door then inserted the tension wrench. I was sure I had screwed up already until I felt the end of the lock plug just as Charlie had said.

“You got it?” He pushed up closer against me, trying to get a better look.

I coughed, cleared my throat, and hesitated. “Um—yeah, I think so.”

I told myself to focus, to pretend it was for a mark of some kind, but the illusion did little for me and in actuality only made it more difficult to concentrate.

The pick went in easily enough, but I had difficultly pushing the pins up into their positions. It was only after several minutes of hard work and eventual frustration that I finally heard the click of a pin give way.

I was well aware that as I worked, Charlie had been scooting ever closer to me—now his chest against my back. I could feel the taut muscles of his torso touching me just slightly, and the urge to lean back completely and test his strength was almost unbearable.

His breath quickened just a little as his arms reached up and came for the pick and wrench. Instinctively, I went to let him finish the chore, but his hands pulled me back.

“Here.” His voice was considerably strained.

His hands became mine as we worked the lock together. His right thumb and index finger overlapped mine completely, but he was strangely gentle. Come to think of it, he was always gentle with me. Even now, I could feel that as he rested the weight of his own arm against mine. By accident I brushed my thumbnail against the inside of his palm—he jolted and another pin came undone.

“Do you feel that?” His voice was hoarse.

I coughed again. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

It took dozens of tries and strings of cursing that I wasn’t even aware I knew before I was finally capable of getting the lock picked on my own. Really, it was something of a bittersweet moment, because while I was excited at having learned something new, I felt a little wretched that I had lost the excuse for Charlie and I to be so close.

“Okay, now what other kind of lock can I learn?”

He began to chuckle. It was nice to hear him let go of whatever it was that was holding him back.

I rolled my eyes. “And why exactly am I a source of comic relief?”

“You like to learn, huh?”

“Yes. Do you think that’s strange?”

“I guess, yeah.” He shrugged and then put the tension wrench in his back pocket and answered my unasked question. “‘Cause girls tend to be all crying and stuff when bad things happen, not wanting a school lesson—it’s weird.”

“First, not all females panic in stressful situations. Second, lock picking is hardly something my parents would have taught me, let alone something they teach in public schools. And third, if you recall correctly when…we met, I originally did ‘cry and stuff.’” I stuck my chin out and tried to be smug but the out loud mention of the situation seemed to put tension between us again.

He stared at me. His gaze was intense, as if he was considering something. “That’s right.” He took out a pack of cigarettes from the plastic crate and placed one in his mouth. “You were homeschooled. You liked that?”

I shrugged. “I can’t imagine a better education.” While it was somewhat closed minded, it was true. Mom and Dad had given us the opportunity to attend high school like other kids, mostly because Mom was nervous that we weren’t socializing enough. Robbie jumped at the idea, joining every team and sport he could, but I was irritated at the idea. Why would I want to do that when I could learn at home?

“You went to public school?”

“Sometimes.” I watched the flame of his lighter brighten his irises as he smiled. They seemed to be a combination of light green and blue today—a turquoise, I decided.

“That worked out well.”

Charlie shrugged and considered my response. “I picked up things I wanted to.”

“What does that mean?”

He lay down on the bed and blew smoke at the ceiling. “I ain’t smart like you, but I always managed to learn things I wanted to know.”

I fiddled with the lock of the door. “I guess we’re both like that.”

He smiled at me again.

“What did you say the name of this ship was?”