Quoth the Raven(64)

“Look,” she said, “I know that everything’s gone wrong. I know you don’t want to touch me anymore—”

“That’s not true—”

“—and that you can’t stand to talk to me anymore—”

“That’s also not true—”

“—and that you’re going to leave here tonight and not come back—”

“Chess, don’t be an idiot—”

“—but the one thing I absolutely refuse to put up with after all this time is listening to you delivering a little speech about how damned adult we’re being and how we’re both going to grow up and find out what love is really like at last and all the damned rest of it. I won’t do it, Jack. I won’t co-operate in that kind of charade and I won’t hear any crap about that was then and this is now or any of the rest of it.”

There was a silence from way up in the branches that went on for so long she began to think: Well, I’ve said it all for him, and now he doesn’t have anything left to say. Then Jack began to climb down from his perch, to test the branch she was lying on with his foot. It wouldn’t hold them both. They’d discovered that her sophomore year, when she and Evie had first taken this room. When he helped her out of the window he always stayed in the crook near the trunk. Chessey felt the branch spring and bounce back, shaking her. Jack said “damn” under his breath and retreated.

“Chessey?” he said. “Will you listen to what I’ve got to say?”

“No.”

“You’re going to have to. I’m not going to help you down out of here until I’m done talking.”

“I’ll start screaming at the top of my lungs and someone will come.”

“Don’t.”

“Oh, hell,” Chessey said. “I don’t have the energy for it anyway.”

Jack cleared his throat. “Chessey, look, I’m not going to say there hasn’t been anything wrong, because there has been. It just hasn’t been what you think it has. It isn’t that I don’t want to touch you anymore.”

“Oh, I see,” Chessey said, “you’ve given it up for Lent.”

“Lent is at Easter. Chess, it’s just gotten to the point where I can’t do that and stop in the middle of it. This morning in your room, there was a point where I thought I was going to rip you up. It’s not that I want to hurt you. It’s just that the whole damn thing—the way I feel and the way I respond—hell, Chess, whether you realize it or not, the way you feel and the way you respond—Christ, Chessey, I don’t know how to describe it. There’s been some kind of cosmic shift. It’s different and you know it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit. And you know that, too.”

Chessey swung herself up into a sitting position, forcing herself to move and forcing herself to stop. For a minute it felt as if she’d launched herself into space.

“Listen to me,” she said. “If this is the great put-up-or-shut-up speech, you can shove it up your own ass. I don’t give a flying damn about cosmic shifts. I don’t give a flying damn about anything where that subject is concerned. It’s my body and my life and I have every damn intention of doing what I want with both of them my way.”

“I know. I’ll admit I thought of that at first—coming to you and making a fuss about it and seeing what happened. I gave it up because I knew what was going to happen.”

“Don’t you dare tell me I’m pretty when I’m mad.”

“I won’t. I couldn’t tell you anything about the way you look at the moment. All I can see is that jack-o’-lantern face in Day-Glo on your—backside.”

Her—backside—felt as if it were sticking up into a spotlight, making a spectacle of itself. It felt that way even though she was sitting on it. Chessey shifted a little and then wished she hadn’t moved. She hadn’t come close to calming down since Jack left her room this afternoon, but she was calming down now. That was not such a good thing when she was dangling up here in space. It was one thing to take risks when she felt she didn’t care if she lived or died. It was another to take them in cold blood.

She started to inch her way down the branch, toward the trunk, moving slowly. She felt Jack’s hand waving in the air near her face and grabbed on to it.

“I can’t breathe,” she said.

“I was wondering how you were managing to sit out there all by yourself without fainting.”

Jack inched farther back up the tree, and Chessey let him pull her farther in toward the trunk. When she was finally in the crook she relaxed a little, because the crook always made her feel safe. She was only half-aware that he had not gone all the way back up to his usual perch, or that her head was resting against his knees. When he began to stroke her hair, she let him. It just felt so nice not to be tense anymore.