Don't Touch (30 page)

“I don't know when Peter might be back,” I say, “but I hope you'll see him again.”

Jordan drums on the counter with his hands. “Me too.”

“He's fun, right?”

Jordan nods. “You should make him your boyfriend.”

I laugh. “Simple as that?”

“Yeah. I think so.” He looks deadly serious.

Jordan must know something's wrong with me, but I don't think he knows exactly what. If I told Jordan about the not touching, he might try to torture me with it, but maybe that's good. If he touched me and nothing bad happened, that would be a sort of proof.

Just this morning, I had my second appointment with Dr. Rice. She wants to see me once a week, at least until I'm willing to touch other people. We talked about how anxious it makes me to tell people what's going on with me. “Silence is your enemy,” she said. “Your fear wants to stay secret so it can be as big and scary as it likes. As soon as you share it with other people, it starts losing its power.”

I push past my “big, scary” fear and keep talking. “I've been kind of weird since Dad left, have you noticed?”

Jordan nods emphatically.

“That bad, huh?”

“Yep. Real weird.”

“Ha. Well, part of it is, I got this stupid idea . . .” I focus on grating the cheese for our tacos—swipe the yellow brick down and up, down and up. What I'm talking about doesn't matter. “I got this idea that if I could keep from touching people—touching their skin—that maybe Dad would come back, or they'd fix things or something.”

Breathe, have to breathe, but not too much . . .

Jordan looks toward me, but not at me, like he's sorting through moments of me being strange, putting pieces together.

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“No, I know. Like I said, it was stupid, but it felt real.”

He looks as if he's trying to figure me out, but also, maybe, feeling sorry for me? For us. “But it didn't work,” he says, almost a question.

“No.”

He rolls along the counter, facing away from me. “I thought there might be something I could do, but I didn't try anything like that.” He sounds wistful.

“Well, that's good you didn't think of it, because it was a bad idea. And it's still got me messed up.”

I'm waiting for Jordan to flip my confession back on me, lunge across the counter and grab me, but he's quiet, staring at my gloves. “Do you still think he might come back?” Jordan asks. “You think that's why you're still messed up about it?”

I told Dr. Rice this morning that I don't think Dad will come back. I still hope it a little, but in my heart, I
know
he won't.

I shake my head. “Now it's more like if I give it up, I'm afraid for myself.”

When I told Dr. Rice my theory that it's mostly myself I'm protecting, she said a wry, “Knowing is half the battle.”

“Okay, so the thing is, if you touch people, Dad won't come back? Or some other horrible thing happens. But what can you do that makes everything okay?” Jordan asks.

“Nothing.”

“Well, that's a bad deal.”

“I know.”

“Because you could stop touching people forever and it won't make a difference.”

“I know.”

“And then if you
do
touch somebody, and some new bad thing happens because it's supposed to, because . . .”

“Bad things happen all the time.” We say it together.

And Jordan continues, “. . . then you'll always wonder if you caused it.”

“Right. I know.”

“Caddie, that's stupid.”

“Yeah, well, that's what I said.”

I've grated way more cheese than two people could ever eat, but something makes me keep grinding away. I want to see it all in shreds.

“You've got to quit thinking that,” Jordan says.

“Yeah, I know.” I've grated the cheese down to my fingers. It would be satisfying to scrape right through the plastic but not helpful. Instead of forcing the last tiny wedge through, I say, “Catch,” and toss it to Jordan.

“So, you don't believe it?” I say. I feel silly even asking, but I still have to check. “If I took the gloves off and shook your hand right now, you'd be okay with that? You wouldn't be mad at me for taking the chance?”

“Chance of what?” Jordan says, his mouth full of cheese. “There's no chance Dad's coming back. I know that. You know that. And I don't believe that my sister has magic powers to make random bad things happen.”

“You don't believe I'm magic?” I feign shock.

He shakes his head, emphatic again.

I turn to stir the sauce. It's bubbling now, threatening to splatter, so I turn down the heat. And on impulse, I peel off my gloves.

I mean, really, who cooks wearing evening gloves?

“What, no gloves?” says Mom later that night.

“Fashion is fickle.”

From her smile, I'm sure she gets this is more than a fashion choice.

Even touching objects without gloves feels new and strange.
It's okay. It's allowed,
I tell myself, as I grip the fridge handle. But my heart's still thudding like it's trying out for drumline.

I pour myself a glass of juice, making a conscious effort not to slow down in case Mom decides she wants one too and brushes her hand against mine.

“You're going to get that song stuck in my head,” Mom says.

I've been humming Ophelia's crazy song, the one she sings after her father dies and Hamlet is taken away. Nadia gave me a singsong tune that won't leave me alone, but the words are sticky too: “An' he'll not co-ome aga-ain, an' he'll not co-ome aga-ain.”

When we blocked that scene, I got “hands on” like Nadia asked, dragging my fingers along Livia, Hank, and Oscar, but I was wearing my gloves. I already convinced Nadia that the gloves should be part of my costume, but it's exciting to think that one day soon I might not need them. Exciting and scary. My humming turns shrill, and I cut it off.

“Has Dad said anything more about the play?” I ask Mom.

It's been more than a week since he promised to call more often, but the phone has been silent. I tried not to think too much about that after I took off my gloves, but the idea's already there. If he comes to the play, it will be a sign that taking off the gloves was the right thing to do. And if he doesn't . . .

Mom shakes her head.

“Caddie, your epidermis is showing!” Oscar pulls out that old joke when I arrive gloveless at the lockers the next morning.

Mandy's more direct. “You're practically naked!” she squeals.

I make eye contact with Peter. His eyebrows are raised in question, and his lips curl up at the corners.

“I'm trying something new,” I say.

Oscar steps in as if he means to take my hand.

“Nope. No,” I say, tucking my hands under my armpits.

Peter's smile falters.

“I'm working on it,” I say to Peter.

“Working on what?” Oscar asks.

He doesn't look snide, just curious. I bite the inside of my lip, focus on the pain instead of on my nerves.

Friends know things about you, Livia said. And Oscar
is
one of my friends. Talking about fear takes its power away. Trembles shudder from my heart down my arms, and my legs feel unsteady, but I say it. “I have trouble touching people. I'm afraid of it, but I'm trying to get over it.”

“That. Makes. So. Much. Sense!” Oscar says.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, I
knew
there had to be a reason you weren't jumping my bones.”

He doesn't come any closer, doesn't try to tease me or make it a game like I feared he would. Instead, he says, “Stay right there for one second.”

He pulls his coat from the hook inside his locker and tosses it over my head like a net.

“Hey!” Mandy says.

I say, “Oscar, what the hell?”

I can't see a thing, but Peter's laughing, which reassures me. He knows how big my fear is. If he thinks this is funny, it must be okay.

And before I can panic, Oscar's bony frame and wiry arms are squeezing me tight. The force of it steals my breath, and the coat smashes my nose flat. It's a ferocious bear hug, but the coat protects me.

“I'm sorry you're having a hard time,” Oscar says close to my ear, his voice muffled by the fabric. “Soon you'll be all better, and you and I will have so much sex.”

“Oh, Lord,” I mutter.

“Hey now,” says Peter.

“Or you and Peter,” says Oscar. “You'll be having sex with someone soon, Caddie. Don't worry.”

“Please, please, stop,” Peter says, choking on laughter.

“Please, I'm going to pee myself,” Mandy says.

Oscar just squeezes me tighter. As obnoxious as he can be, I'm kind of grateful for it.

I haven't been hugged in the longest time.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Mandy's insisting on cutting the kiss even though it changes her “vision.” I didn't want her to compromise on my account, but she said, “Caddie, when you're ready to kiss Peter in real life, I will do backflips, but I'm not going to complicate your mental health for the sake of a play.”

Part of me wants Mandy to push me so I'll have no choice but to work it out, but she's right—no matter how much I want to embrace Mandy's vision, I don't think I'm ready.

So, on Saturday, Peter picks me up for a private rehearsal at Mandy's house. He doesn't honk from the driveway when he comes to pick me up. He comes right up to the door—fifteen minutes early. “I thought Jordan and I might get in some man time,” Peter says, and they hole up in Jordan's room with video games while I finish lunch.

“He's great,” Mom says, and I nod, chewing. “Just a friend, or . . . ?” She's a little too hopeful. She should know that me having “more than a friend” would be nothing short of miraculous.

When Peter pokes his head back in the kitchen, Mom tries to feed him, water him, plant him as a centerpiece and sing to him to make him grow.

“Wow, good with moms?” I say, when she finally lets us go.

“I'm good with parents in general,” Peter says, “as long as they're not my own.”

“What happened?” I ask as we pull ourselves into the truck, and there's one of those monumental silences, one that has to be filled with talking, but in its own time.

Peter backs out of the driveway and puts a country station on low. “Sorry,” he says. “I'm just thinking about it.”

“That's okay. You don't have to tell me.”

“No, it's not that,” he says. “Please. I would tell you anything you asked. But I want to get it right. We—disappointed each other,” he says. “That seems like the best way to put it.”

“How could they be disappointed in you?” I say.

He flashes me a cocky smile. “No wonder I like you.” I flush.

“I was a ‘difficult' child,” he says. “I told you about the roof. I think my parents spent a lot of my childhood wondering what they did to piss off the gods. My mom loves to tell this story of us in a Target. She was trying to empty her cart because she couldn't take it down the escalator to the parking lot, and she lost track of me. She heard some commotion; turns out I was at the bottom of the escalator, flipping birds at everybody as they rode it down. When she tried to get to me, I hopped onto the up side and kept flipping birds and saying, ‘Come and get me! Come and get me!'”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Yeah, my parents are saints. And with the divorce I got worse, or at least angrier. When it was just me and my mom, I could be hard on her. We did family therapy, anger management, the whole deal.”

“And you're better now?”

He shrugs. “I've got a temper, but I'm ‘channeling it in productive ways.' That's counselor speak for ‘I do theater instead of break things.' And I've got a sense of humor about it. That helps.”

“Do you still go for counseling?”

“Not for a couple of years. My parents and I get along. They're both remarried now, and I've made peace with the stepparents.”

“I'm seeing somebody now,” I say. It just comes out and I immediately wish I could suck it back in. “A doctor. Mandy knows, but nobody else.”

Peter nods. “That's good, right?”

“I guess. I wish I didn't need it.”

“Think about it this way—it makes you way more interesting. Problem-free people are boring.”

Knowing he knows, and that it seems to be okay, is a relief. I swell like a bright wave, like I could pour out past the boundaries of my skin. I want to know all about him, want him to know me. And I hope we'll have time to fill in all the gaps.

“Do you remember when you invited me to the ice cream social? You were going to tell me what your favorite ice cream flavor is. I still don't know.”

“You remember that?” He gives me a look like he's ready to tell me the most solemn secret he has, but he can't even look at me while saying it. He has to turn back to the road. “It's butter pecan.”

Mandy tells us her new “concept:” we'll perform the same actions, but with distance. “So it will be like you want to touch each other, but you can't,” she says, “because it's a memory, see? It might even be better this way.”

“Maybe we could work up to the touch,” Peter suggests. “You can touch through clothes, right?” he asks, holding his arm out toward me. Because it's unseasonably warm, we're outside on the flat lawn above the pool. Peter's wearing short sleeves.

Mandy doesn't say a word, but her eyes are fixed on me. They want to know how bad my fear is. It will disappoint them if I don't at least try. I reach out a hand, touch Peter's T-shirt sleeve, take a breath, and without giving myself time to think, place my hand on his shoulder.