“What’s
wrong?”
she demanded, her smile gone and worry in her eyes.
“You’re…so beautiful.”
The smile returned, this time sheepish, as her face went red.
“I’m not so hot,” she said. “But thanks.” She patted the blanket in front of her. “Come on, sit down.” She moved backward on her knees to make more room for him, then sat and crossed her legs.
Jeremy sat down facing her.
“I thought you weren’t going to show up,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I had trouble getting away from home.”
“No problem. I’ve only been here a few minutes myself.” A corner of her lip lifted slightly. “It wasn’t easy, coming back after what happened.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Aren’t you awfully warm in that shirt?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He took his sunglasses from a pocket and put them on. Then he took off his shirt. He rolled it into a bundle, being careful not to let his wallet and keys fall out, and dropped it onto the blanket. “That’s better,” he said.
With the sunglasses on, he allowed himself to look at the rest of the Shiner.
“Does it bother you?” she asked.
She wore a one-piece suit, not a bikini.
“What?”
It wasn’t low-cut. Its neck was as high as the top of a T-shirt, and straps went over her shoulders.
“The guy.”
But it was black, and the thin, glossy fabric was skintight.
“Yeah,” he said. “It bothers me a lot.”
It hugged her breasts, which were somewhat cone-shaped and pointed.
“Me too. I keep seeing him…everything.”
It clung to her rib cage and slanted down against her flat belly.
“It’s like a nightmare,” she continued. “But it really happened, didn’t it?”
It swept inward, leaving her hips bare, and was very narrow where it passed between her legs.
“Nothing we can do will change it,” Jeremy said.
The way she sat, he could see the bare hollows where her legs joined her groin. He didn’t see any pubic hair.
“I guess,” he added, “it’ll get easier as time goes by.”
The inner sides of her thighs, turned upward, glimmered with suntan oil.
“I sure hope so.”
Jeremy raised his eyes to her face. “I’m sorry the guy got killed,” he said, “but I’m awfully glad I met you.”
A corner of her mouth lifted. “I’m glad we met too.” Leaning forward, she reached out and put a hand on his knee. It rested there for a moment, then rubbed him, then patted him and went back to her own knee. “You want some of my suntan oil?”
“Yeah, okay.”
She uncrossed her legs, swung them away from Jeremy, and stretched out on her side. Bracing herself up on one elbow, she reached into the side pocket of a denim bag. She pulled out a plastic bottle of oil and gave it to him.
Head resting on her hand, she watched him spread the oil over his skin. He was glad he’d spent some time in the sun so he wasn’t white. He knew his body wasn’t great, but he’d worked out enough to develop his muscles so he no longer looked so much like a skinny weakling.
When he finished, he gave the bottle back to Shiner. He rubbed his slick hands on his swimsuit. Then he lay down on his side, facing her.
“Do you need the sunglasses?” she asked. “I like it better when I can see your eyes.”
Jeremy felt a flutter of alarm. Had she noticed the way he’d inspected her?
He took the glasses off.
She smiled. “You’ve got neat eyes.”
“Thanks. So do you.”
For a long time they stared into each other’s eyes. Hers were so blue that even their whites seemed to be tinted with the color. Her face was so close to him that apparently she couldn’t focus on both his eyes at once. Her gaze flicked slightly from side to side. He supposed that his did too.
It felt very strange to be staring at each other this way. It felt good, but strange. Nothing like this had ever happened to Jeremy before. It made him feel shaky inside.
It was as if she were looking into him.
And I’m looking into her, he thought.
He found it hard to believe that this was the same girl who had kicked the troll last night. The toughness didn’t seem to be there now. He saw only softness, and a bewildering mixture of joy and sorrow, knowledge and curiosity and hope.
He wished he knew what she was thinking.
Maybe she’s wondering what
I’m
thinking.
Maybe she’s waiting for me to kiss her.
“I wish all these people weren’t around,” Shiner said.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Me too.”
“Why?” Shiner asked.
He smiled. “Hey, that’s no fair. You’re the one who said you wished we were alone.”
“But you agreed.”
“Well, sure.”
“What would you do if nobody else was around?”
“What would
you
do?”
Shiner reached out and stroked the side of his face. “I think I might want to kiss you,” she said. “Is that what you were thinking too?”
“Yeah.”
She twisted onto her stomach, held herself up on her elbows, and looked around at him. “Not with other people around, though. That’s why I wished we were alone. It’s supposed to be a private thing, you know? Don’t you think so?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it’s disgusting when I see people making out on the beach in broad daylight in front of everyone. It just shows they don’t have any self-control.”
“Or self-respect,” Jeremy added, staring at Shiner’s back.
Which was bare except for two straps that crossed between her shoulder blades, and a triangle of shiny black fabric that started just below her waist and looked as if it were glued to her buttocks. Her skin was about the same shade as a marshmallow after it has been heated over a fire to a mellow golden tan.
He wondered is she would ask him to put suntan oil on her back.
“Where did you move here from?” she asked.
“Bakersfield.”
“Did you have a girlfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“There was nobody I actually went out with. Just some girls in school who were okay.”
“They don’t have any boys in my school.”
“Really?”
“I go to St. Anne’s. It’s all girls.”
“So you haven’t had any boyfriends?”
She smiled and shrugged one shoulder a little. “I’ve had some. Nobody I really cared much about, though. And I never got to see much of them, not with my mother the way she is. She has a way of scaring them off.”
“Sounds like my mother.”
Shiner rolled over and folded her hands under her head.
There went my chance to oil her back, Jeremy thought.
“They’re so protective,” she said, one eye shut against the sun, the other squinting at him.
“Yeah, that’s for sure. I got the third degree when I told my mom I was meeting a girl here.”
“Probably shouldn’t have told.”
“I know. What a goof. Now she wants to meet you.”
“She does, huh? She afraid I’ll corrupt you?”
“Yeah.”
Shiner raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight, and stared at Jeremy. “Maybe she’s right.”
“I hope so.”
She laughed. “If you want to get corrupted, you’ll have better luck with someone else. Like Heather.”
“Give me a break.”
She put the hand down again and shut her eyes.
Her elbow was near Jeremy’s eye. The underside of her arm, though turned upward, had almost no tan at all. The hollow of her armpit looked smooth and white and soft.
“I’ll meet your mother if you want me to,” she said, keeping her eyes shut.
“You don’t have to.”
“No, it’s all right. If it’ll make things easier for you.”
“Okay. I’ll meet yours too.”
“When hell freezes over. Forget about mine. That’d be the last I’d ever see of you.”
“She can’t be that bad.”
“Believe it.” Shiner rolled onto her side. “How about tonight?”
“Hey, you really don’t—”
“We’re getting together at Tanya’s house at eight. You’re invited.”
“No kidding?”
“This is her day off. She asked me to tell you about it. All of us are supposed to be there. Trailers only.”
“Like a meeting or something?”
“I don’t know. This is a first. It must have something to do with what happened last night.”
“Man.”
“Should be interesting, huh?”
“Yeah, I’ll say.”
“Anyway, I’ll be driving myself over, so why don’t I give you a ride? That way, I can meet your mother when I come to pick you up. Put her mind at ease.”
“That’d be great!”
“You think she’ll let you come?”
“Sure. Once she’s met you, she’ll…she’ll like you. Hell, she’ll be overjoyed. But what about
your
mom?”
“No sweat. I’ll make up a story, tell her a friend from school’s having a party. She’ll buy it. She believes whatever I tell her. She’s so strict it drives me crazy, but she trusts me. I can get away with just about anything.”
Shiner went silent. Jeremy lay down beside her. He folded his hands under his head. His elbow brushed against her elbow. She didn’t move it out of the way. He kept his elbow there, touching hers, and shut his eyes.
The heat of the sun pressed down on him. He felt the mild breeze roaming over his skin.
Everything’s going so great, he thought.
She would kiss me if nobody was around. Tonight we’ll be alone in her car.
He wondered what would happen at Tanya’s house. It made him excited and nervous to think about that.
But he felt even more excited, more nervous, about being in the car with Shiner. Maybe she wouldn’t take him straight home after the meeting. Maybe she would park someplace dark and deserted. Maybe they would do more than kiss.
Robin couldn’t shake the cold, hollow feeling that had settled into her after Nate left. She played her banjo and she sang, but she ached inside.
It felt like homesickness.
It’ll pass, she told herself.
She’d gone through a heavy period of
real
homesickness after running away two years ago. It hadn’t come at once. In the beginning there had been only rage against Paul, anger against her mother for taking up with him, fear that she would be caught and sent back to them, and fear for her own safety on the road. The homesickness didn’t hit until she’d been gone for more than a week. When it came, it was crushing.
She’d been walking through a small town just after dark. It was October. A chilly wind tumbled leaves past her. She smelled wood smoke from chimneys. On both sides of the street, warm light glowed from the windows of homes.
It hit her then. The loss. The sudden understanding that she was outside, alone, unloved, with no hope of ever returning to the home that had once been so cozy and safe and full of happiness.
She fell apart, but she kept on walking, striding into a wind that filled her gaping mouth and blew her tears across her cheeks.
She hadn’t been able to stop crying until sometime later that night when she decided to return home. She would find a way to deal with Paul. Maybe even go to the police.
The next morning she started hitching her way back.
A man named George picked her up. He was about forty, cheerful and talkative. It went fine for a while. Then he stopped the car on a deserted stretch of road with nothing but cornfields all around. He turned to Robin. She saw the look in his eyes, and she knew what was coming.
It was the same dazed, feverish look she’d seen so many times in Paul’s eyes.
“Don’t try it,” she said.
“Aw, now, don’t be that way. I’ve been nice enough to give you a lift.”
She wanted to leap from the car. But her pack and banjo were in the backseat. She couldn’t escape from George without risking the loss of them.
Her knife was in the side pocket of her pack.
She unfastened her safety harness and faced him. “Just let me get my things and leave, okay?”
He unfastened the top button of her shirt.
Voice shaking, she said, “You don’t want to do this. I’ve got syphilis.”
He smiled and opened more buttons. “Imagine that. So do I.” With both hands, he spread her shirt open.
Her fist crashed into his nose. Blood gushed from his nostrils. Hurling herself at him, Robin clutched his throat and slammed his head against the driver’s window. His eyes rolled in their sockets. She shook him by the neck, bouncing his head off the window until he sagged. Then she tore the key from the ignition. Hanging on to it, she left him behind the wheel, hurried from the car, and unloaded her pack and banjo.
She tossed the key case onto the floor between his feet, gathered her things from the roadside, and ran into the cornfield. Hiding there she got out her knife.
She waited for George to come looking.
While she waited, she thought about how foolish she’d been, wanting to go home. She had no home. Paul was there, and Paul was worse than George.
Before long, she heard the car drive away. She waited a few more minutes, then walked out to the road. It stretched straight in both directions. George’s car was out of sight. She turned west, and started walking.
That was the end of her homesickness.
But this felt like homesickness—this empty, longing ache that Nate had brought to her.
She took a break. After her audience had scattered, she gathered the money out of her banjo case, latched her banjo inside, and carried her case and backpack to a nearby bench.
She piled all her money onto her lap and counted.
She had a total of $63.75.
She took a cotton sock from her pack and filled it with loose change. She folded the paper money and tucked it into a pocket of her jeans.
Though she didn’t have a wristwatch, she suspected that she still had time to reach one of the banks in town and exchange her coins for bills. From there she could go to the bus terminal and buy a ticket out of this place.
No reason to stay, she told herself. She had enough money to hold her for a while, even if she spent half of it for a bus ticket. Nate was certainly no reason to stay. And it would be good to get away from this nest of bums and thieves and trollers before she ran into real trouble.
Leaning forward, she stuffed the sock full of change into the side pocket of her pack.