Burning (18 page)

I took it.

We walked together to the coolest spot we could find, up against the rocky wall of the mine past the edge of the pond, a little extra-deep divot that was created when workers had
pulled a larger-than-usual rock out of the earth. It wasn’t a cave or anything like that, more like an inlet.

I wished I had a blanket to spread on the ground or something, but of course I hadn’t exactly planned this whole thing.

I guess all my daydreams about Lala had led up to this instant in time, being alone with her. Now that we were here … I didn’t really know what to do.

But Lala didn’t seem unsure, not in the slightest. She found a flat spot on the ground and lowered herself Indian-style to the dirt. Then she looked up at me and offered me her hand.

Our fingers laced together easily, and I settled on the ground next to her. It was way cooler in the shade, and being close to the water helped, too. Once I was sitting I didn’t want to let go of Lala’s hand. I kind of felt like now that I had ahold of her, I’d better hang on tight.

It occurred to me that we hadn’t gone through any of the small talk—the introductory, warm-up conversation that people go through when they first meet. You know, where are you from, what are you into, what kind of music do you like, shit like that.

But considering what had just happened—Lala ditching her family at the Gypsum Store to ride out here with me—it seemed kind of dumb to start playing twenty questions now.

Luckily I didn’t have to be the one to get the ball rolling. Lala spoke.

“How can you tolerate this heat?” she asked, and she took her hand away from me to push her hair back and out of her
face, her fingers twisting it up into a knot at the nape of her neck.

For a second I worried that maybe the hair thing was just an excuse to get her hand out of my sweaty palm. But then, sort of shyly, she slid her hand back into mine. Our fingers laced together again.

“It’s pretty hot,” I admitted. I managed to sound casual, I thought. “You get used to it, though. I guess you can get used to pretty much anything.”

Lala arched an eyebrow. Just one. “Out of necessity, perhaps,” she agreed. “But with a cost.”

“Where are you from?” There—I’d done it.

“Portland.”

Her answer kind of took me by surprise. Portland—such a normal place to be from. I guess I don’t know what I had expected her to say. Something more exotic, I guess. Like somewhere in Europe.

“Lots of rain, huh?” I could have kicked myself, I sounded so lame.

She smiled, though, like she thought I was mildly amusing. “Constantly,” she said. “Everything is green and damp. It is often cold.”

The weather. We were talking about the weather.

“Look,” I said. “I’m really glad you came here with me.”

Lala’s thick lashes lay against her cheeks and a pink flush colored her face. “I came because I wanted to,” she said.

It seemed like a simple enough answer, but I think I understood what she meant. Seriously, how many of us do
the things we really want to do? I’ve said it before—I don’t always run because I
feel
like it. I’m pretty sure Mom and Pops moved out here to Gypsum not because it sounded like so much
fun
but because they thought it would be their best chance at the kind of life they thought they should give their kids.

Hog Boy—maybe
he
made all his choices based on what he felt like doing at that particular moment in time. But we can’t have a world full of Hog Boys.

“There is something else I would like to do.” And then Lala leaned over toward me.

She hesitated before she kissed me, and I forced myself to be perfectly still—not to lean forward like I wanted to and smash my mouth against hers, but to wait for her. She stayed like that, her lips so close to mine and the citrus-sweet scent of her surrounding me. Her lips were parted. They looked full and soft, so tempting I could hardly control myself. Mrs. Howell’s breathing technique came in handy again, and I just waited, wound tight and so wanting her, until finally she leaned forward that last half inch, and she kissed me.

I closed my eyes. It seemed like I’d lost all sense of direction—it didn’t matter which way was up or down, whether I was standing or sitting. All that mattered was that Lala was kissing me.

It was different from when Cheyenne and I kissed. Cheyenne was all eager pressing tongue, and kissing her had always felt like kind of a competition. Lala’s kiss—it was sweeter than honey, and soft, too, like velvet. And it was as
if time went away when her mouth was against mine. I didn’t feel that urgency to push forward, to see how far I could get. It was like I had everything I wanted.

Too soon, though, she pulled away, just a little, and I opened my eyes. She was still right there, so close to me, and I tilted my chin forward a little, hoping she’d kiss me again.

Lala laughed. “I like you, Ben Stanley.” She sat back, widening the distance between us. “I am pleased to be here with you.”

I cleared my throat and grinned. “Not half as happy as I am.”

“I want to hear about you, Ben Stanley.” Lala’s voice sounded different, now that we had kissed—full of confidence, I guess, like she’d sounded back in her tent with the cards.

“Don’t you already know everything there is to know?”

“Most likely,” she said. “But I would like to hear it in your voice.”

I chuckled a little. She sounded so sure of herself. “So is it magic?” I asked. “What else can you do? Can you pull a rabbit out of a hat?”

“No magic. None at all. I am sorry if this disappoints you. The truth is, you
gazhè
give away so much. You make my job very easy.”

I felt a little offended. Maybe she hadn’t meant to, but she had said that word—“
gazhè
”—like it was something bad.

“I’ll bet you don’t know as much about me as you think,” I said.

“You are an athlete, and the older of two sons. You feel
terrible guilt about leaving your brother on his own because you fear what will become of him without you there to offer him protection. Your friends are faithful, and look to you as a leader. Here, too, you feel you are shirking a responsibility by leaving them. You will leave in a matter of days to go to college. And even though you know you shouldn’t, you feel an attraction to me, a desire to be close to me, to touch my flesh.”

I didn’t know what to say. Part of me felt embarrassed, to have it laid out there so plain, and part of me felt kind of angry. I guess I felt … I don’t know, invaded.

She must have seen that, too, on my face because she said, “I do not mind these things. I do not mind that you desire me.”

I wasn’t used to it—this kind of naked honesty. Chicks aren’t like that. Most of the time it’s like they’re trying to be mysterious, to make things difficult.

It’s usually all smoke and mirrors, as if they want to complicate matters to distract us guys from the truth—that they’re as lost and confused as we are.

But Lala didn’t seem like she was trying to hide anything, and still she was a mystery to me.

“Tell me how you know all that stuff.”

“I pay attention,” she answered. “That is all.”

I tried to quiet my mind, to think back to the reading she had done. If I really thought about it, I guessed that some of it made sense—she could see the way Hog Boy and Pete sort of looked up to me, and I kind of remembered Hog Boy making one of his comments about James, so that must have
been when she found out I had a brother. College—that must have come up in conversation, too. I hadn’t really been trying to hide anything; maybe I did give an awful lot away. And the way I felt about her—I guess that was pretty plain to see.

“Okay, but how did you know that I’m an athlete?” I was pretty sure I hadn’t mentioned anything about that.

“You have a beautiful body,” she said. “Strong muscles and sun-kissed hair. This does not happen without work, and time out-of-doors.”

I tried not to show it, but I was sort of embarrassed when she called me beautiful.

“Let me try it,” I said.

“All right,” she answered, and she sat very still.

I tried to look really carefully at her face, and at the clothes she was wearing, the way she sat.

She had a little half smile on those fabulous lips, like she thought I was amusing or something. I saw that she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Even though her eyelashes were long and dark, they weren’t clumpy at all, like Cheyenne’s used to get when we’d go out on a date. And the color on her lips hadn’t rubbed off when she’d kissed me; it was hers, naturally.

Her hair was starting to unwind from the knot she’d pulled it into and I let myself reach across to her, wind a tendril of it around my finger. I saw as I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek that she sort of caught her breath.

“You’re not one of those fancy girls who’s hung up on how
she looks,” I said. “I’ll bet you don’t spend too much time looking in the mirror.”

Then I let my gaze trace over the rest of her, hoping it wouldn’t make her uncomfortable for me to look at her like this. I saw that she was wearing the same white shirt she’d been wearing the first time I’d seen her, and that like then, it was tucked into her skirt, belted with a thin piece of leather.

“You’re not really into the latest fashions,” I guessed. “You have your own style, and you don’t care if it’s not what other girls are wearing.”

I wanted to look into her face to see how I was doing, but I pressed on. I saw that she had a thin gold bracelet around her right wrist. It didn’t have a clasp, and it wasn’t really loose or jangly. “You’re left-handed,” I guessed. I figured she’d put the bracelet on whatever hand she used the least, kind of the way I did on the rare occasions when I wore a watch.

“Well?” I asked. “How am I doing?”

“Not terribly, for a beginner. I am left-handed, that is true. And I do not care for makeup. You are right there also. But the fashion …” She shrugged. “I do like fashion,” she said. “But for my people—and especially in my family—it is not common for the women to show their legs.”

“Really? Why not?”

“It is complicated.”

“Try me.”

She looked conflicted then, and I got the feeling she wanted to tell me more but wasn’t sure how much to say.

“Lala,” I said, “I want to know everything about you.”

She thought before she spoke. “Have you heard of
marimè
?”

I shook my head.

“It means … unclean. Not dirty—worse. Like a darkening of the soul.”

“And fashion—that’s
marimè
?”

“Not fashion,” she said. “The body, from the waist down, is unclean. Especially the lower body of a woman. At best it is unclean. At worst, a source of
marimè
.”

I could tell she was embarrassed. And she took her hand back from me then, and wrapped both of her arms around her knees like she was cold, which I knew she couldn’t be, not out here in the desert midafternoon.

It made me angry. That Lala should feel that way about her body—any part of it—that there was something shameful or wrong about it. I didn’t want to insult her or be disrespectful to her culture, but from where I sat it just didn’t make any sense at all.

“Well,” I said finally, “I don’t know about that. If it weren’t for these babies”—I thumped my hands against my thighs—“I’d be heading to Reno instead of San Diego next week. And I don’t want to be … I don’t know, insensitive, I guess, to your culture … but I got a quick look at your legs when you were getting on my bike back in town. There’s not a thing wrong with them.”

She flushed a deep crimson red then, and I think tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them back pretty fast.

I didn’t say anything for a minute, I just kind of looked
away to give her a chance to sort of compose herself. But then I put my hands on her arms, wrapped tight around her legs. “Can I do something?” I asked.

For a second she held on even tighter. Her eyes looked around kind of panicked, like maybe she would run. Then her gaze landed on my motorbike and I guess she remembered the hugeness of what she had already done, coming way out here with me, away from her family.

And she nodded, and she let go.

Ben Stanley knelt near my feet and his hands touched the hem of my skirt. I was in a place I had never been in before. This landscape, first of all, with its husked-out rawness, bare dirt and rock all around me, and, as if a miracle, this other thing I never would have guessed could be here—a body of water, white tinged by gypsum dust but a real oasis, one you could not see from the road, a beautiful surprise.

And horses. To me horses had always been something special. They seemed to embody my own secret heart, what I often wished to be but did not always feel—wild and free, proud and strong.

There used to be a saying, back when my people traveled in caravans: A Gypsy without a horse is not a Gypsy.

Of course, the days of traveling by horse-drawn caravans ended long before I was born. In these modern days my people kept permanent homes more often than not, and when we did head out on the road we traveled like everybody else, in motor-driven vehicles.

Still, it seemed somehow just right to see these horses in Ben Stanley’s quarry. As if our two worlds were in some way more linked than I could have guessed.