Sheltered(2)

She wondered where the Ryerson kid had gone. Maybe the punk had knifed him and pushed him into the pool.

“It’s Evie, right?”

Maybe he was going to knife her and push her into the pool.

She stood and put her shoulders back. Folded her arms across her chest and moved in the direction of her house, toward safety and calls to the police and screaming for parents who weren’t actually in there.

Not that they’d come, if they had been.

“I know what you were doing, okay? It’s not just a transaction so don’t call it that.”

She had absolutely no idea where she’d gotten the gall from, but there it was anyway. Right over the top of her churning stomach and all the sudden thoughts of the flick knife he probably had in his back pocket. Like maybe he’d suddenly become a greaser from the 1950s and this was some special on the dangers of interacting with boys.

He glanced away, back at the now empty Ryerson porch. The actual earrings all over his left ear glittered and winked—solid silver loops, she thought, and many more than one.

“I wasn’t buying anything weird. Just a bit of pot.”

“So it being a bit of pot makes it okay?”

In truth, she had no idea. Her parents called pot a gateway drug and her father had said if he ever caught her with anything like that he’d give her such a belting. But then he gave her such a belting for a lot of things. Coming in after curfew, watching something she shouldn’t be watching, breathing in a way she shouldn’t be breathing.

“I didn’t say that,” he said, and for a second he looked…hurt? It had seemed as though he’d flinched when she’d leveled the accusation, but she couldn’t be sure. “But come on. Everyone likes to unwind after a hard day of almost flunking out of college.”

It felt weird that her first urge was to ask him what he was studying. Her first urge should have been to tell him to go and never come back, unless he wanted the police after him.

But then he kind of half laughed, ruefully, and said, “Jesus—I don’t even know why I’m justifying this to you. Guess there’s just something about your face.”

And after that she didn’t know what to think about any of it. What did he mean, something about your face? Did she look particularly pious or something?

“I don’t care what you do. You don’t have to justify anything to me.”

He held up a hand then, and this time she could see he had a tattoo on the inside of his wrist too. A thick line of something, like lettering.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, and she wondered what sign of offense she’d given. Did she seem wounded, suddenly? “You just seem so…”

She watched his eyes flit over her features and felt suddenly conscious of all of them. The way her nose dominated her face. How broad her cheekbones were, how nonexistent her upper lip was. The only boy who’d ever gotten anywhere near to her had said she looked like a silent movie star, which hadn’t seemed to be a compliment.

And it certainly didn’t feel like one now, with this strange, punkish creature studying her with his big, intense eyes. They looked black, in the low light, and they probably seemed more so because of the thick rim of eyelashes all around. Like shadows around his eyes. Like maybe he wore makeup, even though she didn’t think he did.

“You live here with your parents, right?” he asked, and for some unaccountable reason her face heated. Of course it had already started warming up back when he’d first run his eyes all over her, but this was stronger. More obvious.

She was a nineteen-year-old woman still living with her parents, still obeying their crazy rules and doing the crazy things they wanted her to do, like biking every day to Bible college. And now the cool punk with his earrings and his tattoos and his dyed hair knew it.

For the first time in her life, she was truly sensible of how humiliating her situation was. How not like normal people. This guy—this weird-ass guy—was more normal than her.

“I’m not getting at you, honey,” he said, and strangely enough she believed him. The honey should have sounded patronizing, but somehow it didn’t. It sounded gentle instead. Far more gentle than his bizarre exterior suggested.

“It’s okay,” she said, but it was only after the words were out that she realized every connotation of them. She’d somehow shared some part of herself with this punk, this drug addict. She’d told him it was okay as though she was okay, as though she could live like this and be all right, and she didn’t know how or when it had happened.

When she’d thought, This is the guy I want to share the most secret part of myself with. After a two-minute conversation about the criminal activities he indulges in on a daily basis.