Burning (24 page)

And then it happened, that weird thing that happens sometimes in dreams—was this a dream?—a shifting of perspective, and all of a sudden I wasn’t standing with Lala under the tree. Instead I was someone else, and I was looking at two figures, a blond male and a dark-haired female, standing, hands clasped, under a tree. She held the moon; he palmed the sun.

“Do you want another Tylenol?”

My head was killing me. It felt like it might split into two halves, like a cleaved melon. I groaned and struggled to sit up.

“Stay there,” said a voice. I knew that voice—it was James’s.

“Water,” I croaked.

It was quiet for a minute, and then James said, “Here.”

He pressed a cold glass into my hand. I took three deep gulps, choking on the third and coughing most of it up.

“Gimme the pills.”

I swallowed the two pills he gave me and then drank some more water, carefully this time so I wouldn’t choke again.

There was a light on, bright and piercing even through my closed lids. “Turn off the light.”

I heard a click as he switched off a table lamp near my head. So I was in the family room, then, on the couch.

“Where is everyone?”

“It’s just us,” he said. “You and me.”

“Where’s—”

“Mom and Dad drove into Reno,” he said. “They should be home in a while.”

I hadn’t been asking about our folks. It was Lala I was worried about, Lala I wanted beside me.

“Lala,” I managed to say at last. It felt like my mouth wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do. Her name came out slurred. I couldn’t tell if James understood what I was saying.

“You’re okay,” he said. “Just go back to sleep. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to get up and find her. But it was as if I was caught in a powerful undertow, and in spite of my desires, in spite of how hard I tried to cling to consciousness, it pulled me under, submerging me completely.

I don’t know how long it was until I woke again. I know it was late, way past dark. I hadn’t eaten any dinner, and though my stomach lurched with hunger I didn’t want to eat.

The light was on in the kitchen, but the family room where I lay on the couch was dark. James was across from me in the recliner with his feet pushed up. He was asleep.

I rolled over onto my side and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I blinked a few times. The ringing in my ears was still there, but it was fainter now. The house was quiet.

I managed to sit up. Nausea rolled through me, but it wasn’t as bad as before, either. Once I was sitting I stayed very still, letting myself adjust to the new position.

James must have heard me stirring. He woke up with a start, jolting upright.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, James, thanks. I’m better, I think.”

He nodded and rubbed his eyes. “You hungry?”

“What time is it?”

James looked at his watch. “Ten-thirty.”

“Where did everyone go?”

James shrugged. “Pete had a date with Melissa, I guess. He left to meet her at the store around nine.”

“Where’s Lala?”

“With Hog Boy.”

“With
Hog Boy
?”

“Yeah. They borrowed Pete’s truck.”

“Did they say where they were going?”

“Lala wanted a ride somewhere.” He paused. “So is she your girlfriend?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know, James. I’m leaving in a couple of days for college. She lives in Portland.” Or she did, anyway. After the scene out at the mine, I wasn’t sure if she lived anywhere anymore. The weight of this realization was almost enough to knock me out again. Lala without a home—without anyone to protect her, to watch out for her. It scared me. In a way I guess I was going to be homeless, too, when we all left Gypsum. But compared to Lala’s situation, mine seemed laughably easy. I might be leaving these four walls, but I’d still have people watching out for me, cheering for me. She would have nobody.

It was all too much to think about with my head pounding
the way it was, so I focused instead on what James had asked. “Why do you want to know about Lala?” I asked, trying to joke with him. “You think she’s pretty?”

“She’s beautiful.” James’s voice was serious. “But not my type, you know.”

Maybe it was the concussion that got me to ask the next question. I remembered what I’d thought before—that maybe part of where I’d gone wrong with James was in the things I
hadn’t
said. “What
is
your type, James?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I’m only twelve.”

I had to laugh at that, even though it hurt my head. “But you know your type isn’t female, huh?” It was getting easier to talk about it, now.

“Well … yeah. I do.” There was something in his tone—a defiance, that’s what it seemed.

“How do you know?”

“How old were you when you first wanted to kiss a girl?”

The answer came easily. “Four. Preschool. Tara Wilkinson. Her family moved her away in the third grade.”

“And how old were you when you first wanted to kiss a guy?”

“I’m not gay, James. I’ve never wanted to kiss a guy.”

There was a smug satisfaction to his silence.

I waited a long time before I spoke again. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, or hurt his feelings like I knew I had the other night. Maybe he even thought I’d gone back to sleep, that’s how long it was before I talked.

Finally I said, “It’s just that I worry about you, James. You’re my brother.”

He sighed, and when he spoke again he sounded a lot older than twelve. “I know. Mom does, too.”

“
Mom?
” Honestly, this was news to me. I’d never flat-out discussed James with Mom and Pops; I figured they didn’t really see James, not clearly like I did. My mom did get kind of a weird look on her face every now and then, like when James had wanted to buy those sandals … but for the most part she seemed to take the things he did in stride.

“Yeah,” said James. “We talk about it sometimes. She used to worry that I wouldn’t meet anybody like me in such a small town, and now she worries that I’ll have a hard time in Reno.”

“Mom never said anything about it to me.”

“I guess she figured I’d talk to you myself.”

“How come you never did? Until the other night, I mean?”

“Oh, come on, Ben. I never kept any secrets from you.”

I wanted to argue with him, but then I thought back. It was true—James had never tried to lie to me about who he was. I’d just refused to talk about it.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of what?”

“Of being made fun of, to start.”

“Ben, I know you think getting in fights kept people off my back, but it just made them whisper their insults instead of shout them.”

“Who?” I said, angry. “Who insults you?”

“It doesn’t matter, Ben. You can’t fight everyone. Anyway, like you said, you’re leaving for San Diego in three days. And I’ll be going to Reno.”

I felt sick again, but it was guilt this time, not the headache, that caused it.

“I don’t have to go,” I said. “I could defer enrollment for a year. You know—help you guys get settled in Reno. Maybe get a job and save up some extra cash—”

“No way,” James interrupted. “You’re not going to get any faster hanging around Reno for a year. And how cool do you think that would make me, if my big bad brother walked me to school every day of the week?”

“I wouldn’t have to do that,” I said. “I could just … be there. I
should
be there, in case you need me.”

“San Diego’s not that far, Ben. If I really needed you, you’d come.”

“Would you call?”

He shrugged. “It’d have to be pretty bad.” After a minute he added, “And Ben, it’s not like I’ll be alone. I’ll have Mom and Dad. A few of the kids from my school here will be moving to Reno, and I know for sure my friend Katie will be going to the same school. We’ll probably have a class or two together.”

The thought of my brother being protected by a girl named Katie didn’t make me feel much better.

James must have sensed this because he said, “You know, Ben, I can take care of myself.”

“Can you?”

“I’ve done all right so far.”

“James, you haven’t been on your own a day of your life. I’ve always been there to scrape you off the sidewalk when you fell down.”

“Well, I guess times are changing, because tonight I’ve been taking care of you.”

I laughed a little. “Yeah, I guess you have.” It was nice, sitting there in the half-lit room like that, talking with James. I felt really sad that I’d waited this long to do it.

What
had
taken me so long? I guess it was just that James had always seemed like such a
kid
—the six-year spread between us had seemed impossible to bridge. He was always this dorky little guy who wanted to tag along.

Until he hadn’t wanted to tag along anymore. When had that happened? I guess it was when I was about thirteen and he was seven or so. Nothing really drastic had happened; I guess he just finally got the clue that I didn’t have time to hang around with him. I was running by then, and I had my little group of friends that I did things with.

I guess I didn’t know all that much about him, if I forced myself to really see the truth of the matter. I knew he liked to play video games, but I never paid attention to which ones. I knew he was still into drawing, like he’d been when we were younger, but I would have been guessing if I had to say whether he preferred pencils or charcoal.

And I had no idea what he drew. It had been years since he’d shown me a picture.

It must have been the concussion, but suddenly my eyes filled with burning tears. I felt weak and weepy like a little girl. James was looking at me, his head tilted a little to the side.

“I’m sorry, James,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for, but I was really, truly sorry.

He smiled at me. “That’s okay,” he said. “I forgive you.”

And there it was—the same expression I’d seen on Lala’s face out at the mine. Peacefulness. I’d seen it on James’s face before, but I’d never stopped to name it, to recognize it for what it was. A sense of peace.

I wanted to feel like that.

“Hey, James,” I croaked, my tears constricting my throat. “How come you’re so well adjusted?”

He shrugged again. “Someone around here’s got to be. Come on,” he said, getting up. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

It was generous of Pete to give me the use of his truck, and kind of Hog Boy to drive me. I would be eighteen in a matter of days, but I had little experience driving and did not have a license. I had never had need of one: I did not go out alone. And in a large family such as mine, there was always someone who could give me a ride.

But now I felt hobbled by my inability to operate a car. I resolved that I would learn.

We did not leave Ben and James until it was fully dark. Pete and Hog Boy had watched something on the television—a sitcom, something with a laugh track that told you when the jokes were funny. James seemed to pay no attention to the show. His focus was on his brother, as was mine.

Surrounded by
gazhè
on the couch in the small room, softened by the blue light of the television, I thought about what I had done.

I had kissed a
gazhò
. I had made marriage with Romeo an impossibility. I had waved my skirts at the men of my
kumpànya
. I had, in effect, exiled myself.

People make choices every day. Some of those choices are made through action; others are made through inaction. I knew much about human nature, learned from all the people I had seen at my table, their hopes and fears laid plain to me like the cards on that table.

I have always known that there is no magic in the cards. I think even that I have always known that there is no magic in this world. There are only choices. Many times a woman has sat across from me, tears running down her face as she wished desperately—like a child—for a magic solution to a problem she herself had created.

These women wanted me to give them something I could not give, no matter how many bills they pressed into my palm. They wanted me to rearrange past events, or restructure the future so that it would shine for them like a newly minted coin.

The
gazhè
come to us—me, my sisters and mother, others like us—for counsel, much as they go to their expensive psychologists, looking for easy answers and willing to pay for them. So I place their cards on the table and I show them what I see—what I need no cards to see. The truth is in their faces.

I felt the truth of my own situation as well. I had made a choice. I had stepped off a cliff. If I did not entirely like where I now found myself—well, there was no one else to blame for that.

But some choices necessitate other actions. And there were some things—some
people
—that I was unwilling to give up.

So I left Ben Stanley in the care of his little brother. It
seemed to me that Ben perhaps overworried himself when it came to the question of James. There was intelligence in his eyes, and real humor, and warmth. In my estimation, James Stanley was perfectly able to look out for himself.

“Your dad’s not gonna be too pissed?” Hog Boy asked once he got the engine running and had pulled away from the curb in front of Ben’s house.