Crimson Footprints (13 page)

Deena identified with the
conundrum that was St. Louis, Missouri. An independent city, it
seceded from its county better than a hundred years ago. It was a
speculative place, being equal parts north and south, east and
west, and therefore a different thing altogether. It endured
extremes with sweltering summers and frigid winters; and whole
sections of it had been abandoned. Deena could definitely relate to
St. Louis.

They were touring the city,
architecture and art museums, sights and tourist traps, when they
decided to stop at the Gateway Arch for pictures. A massive and
gleaming structure of stainless steel, it was the tallest monument
in the country.

Deena brought a hand to that
iconic image, the identity of St. Louis, made not by others, but by
what it envisioned itself to be. It was then that her phone
rang.

A sort of resigned
indifference passed over her at the sight of her grandmother’s name
on the caller I.D. Deena answered with a sigh.

She was calling to complain,
to do nothing but bitch. Lizzie had been suspended again, this time
for fighting. When Deena breathed a sigh of relief, she nearly
laughed. How desperate did she have to be to be relieved that her
sister had only been fighting? But as far as Deena was concerned,
fighting was a damned sight better than nickel and dime blowjobs on
the bathroom floor.

“
They talking about putting
her out of school, for good, cause she so much trouble,” Grandma
Emma said. “And when they do, you gonna be the one to pay for
private schooling.”

Deena chuckled. She loved
the way her grandmother thought that a college degree came standard
with an inflated bank account. If she only knew, her granddaughter
could barely afford the vacation she was on.

In the end, she promised to
speak to Lizzie when she returned to town and hung up before the
old woman could protest.

“
Everything okay?” Tak
said, eyes on her expectantly.

Deena nodded. “Everything’s
fine. Lizzie’s suspended. Same as usual.”

She offered him a bright and
false smile. “Now what were we doing? Pictures, right?”

“
Right,” Tak
said.

Deena pulled the zipper up
on the white parka she wore and gave him a grin. “Well, what’s the
hold up, buddy?”

Tak responded with a
smile.

They ventured a good
distance from the arch, they waved down a passerby for pictures. It
was a sweet-faced old lady that stopped, took Tak’s digital camera,
and waited for the pose.

They stood arm and arm,
lucky enough to have a pond and good deal of the arch in the shot.
In the instant when the old lady went to snap their picture, Tak
stole a kiss, a single kiss, on Deena’s freckled cheek. She
squealed and blushed scarlet as the old lady gushed, insisting they
were as sweet as Tupelo honey. When she returned the digital camera
with the image of Tak’s stolen kiss still emblazoned on it, Deena
stood there, her cheeks still flushed. She stared at that frozen
screen in silence, the image of Tak’s kiss burning into her mind.
Behind her, he peered over her shoulder with his four-inch
advantage and smiled down at the camera.

“
Perfect,” he said.
“Absolutely perfect.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lizzie was glad her sister
was gone. Unlike her grandmother, who acted like she needed Deena
to come and flip the oxygen on each morning, Lizzie could do
without the old maid. She spent her days at a desk and her nights
in a book, barely existing, if at all. She lived on the beach yet
never went there, was pretty and never took advantage of it, and at
nearly twenty-five was a jaw-dropping virgin. Had she not known
Deena, she wouldn’t have believed such a person existed.

Lizzie lost her virginity
three days before her twelfth birthday and never once did she look
back. A whole world opened up to her that day, a world where
clothes and jewelry, money and drugs could come with a few quick
thrusts and a moan here or there. It was easy really, once you got
past those first painful moments, easy and sometimes enjoyable. She
had a pretty face and an impressive body, an inheritance from a
mother she never knew, and a curse according to the family she
hated.

Everyone thought that the
first time she’d had sex was in school or a crack house, or
somewhere equally unforgiving. But it wasn’t. The first time Lizzie
had sex was at home, with a guy they all knew.

Lizzie and Keisha were
arguing that afternoon, arguing over Lizzie’s tight red dress and
jiggling tits and whether it was all for Snow Man’s attention. For
that purpose or not, Snow Man took one look at Lizzie, bit his
lower lip, and Keisha detonated.

But the girl was mistaken.
Lizzie was no Deena. She was no martyr and took no shit. She
screamed when someone screamed at her, hit back when someone hit
her, and played tit for tat every goddamned chance she got. So when
Keisha called her a slut, and Aunt Caroline laughed until her
makeup ran, Lizzie decided to show them just how right they
were.

She waited an hour. Long
enough for Keisha to begin arguing with her mother about
restrictions on food stamps, long enough for Grandma Emma to fall
asleep in the middle of
Matlock
, and long enough for Lizzie
to grab Snow Man’s wrist and lead him to her room.

She was eleven at the time,
but a mature eleven, already she was known for toe-curling talents
with her tongue. Just that past year her mouth had served her well,
and had meant the difference between passing and failing, Payless
and Prada.

He was rough from the start,
gripping her head, holding it steady. Suffocating and brutal, she’d
wanted him to stop, tried to pull away—but found his grip firm and
determined. She remembered his words when he finally turned her
loose, words that had chilled her, scared her.

“
Come on,” he said, “time
to feel that pussy.”

She’d told him no, that she
was a virgin, but he laughed.

“
Not giving head like that,
you ain’t.”

The look in his eyes was
hard and unforgiving and the look of his cock was the same. So, she
asked him to be gentle, but he didn’t. She asked him to go slower,
but he wouldn’t. And when her bedroom door opened and there Keisha
stood, Lizzie’s adult cousin didn’t scream or call the police. She
simply backed from the door, leaving Snow to finish.

Lizzie thought it was their
secret—she and Snow and Keisha’s. But three days later, Snow’s car
was riddled in a hail of bullets, leaving him shot in the thigh,
shoulder and chest. Anthony, it seemed, had found out.

Snow came to her, hours
after being released from the hospital, begging, crying, convinced
there was a bounty on his head. Talk to him, Snow said, tell him
nothing happened.

So, Lizzie went to Anthony
and persuaded him, surprised by the conviction with which he spoke.
He could deal drugs, he said and he could rob or kill, but what he
couldn’t stomach, what he wouldn’t, was a grown man with a little
girl. That kind of man, Anthony reasoned, needed to die.

After that, boys were afraid
of Lizzie. They would fuck her, but in a brief and nervous sort of
way, as if half expecting to be murdered mid-stroke. It didn’t
matter how many times she explained to them her brother’s only beef
had been Snow’s age; still, they were afraid.

But when Anthony died, so
did their fear.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tak held out his ice cream
cone and Deena took a lick. Three kids nearly collided with them as
they tore for a monstrous red rollercoaster.

“
Wow, Tak. That’s good.
What is it again?”

“
Double chunk chocolate
chip. Told you to get it.”

He took a bite of the frosty
treat and Deena frowned. She turned to her suddenly plain vanilla
cone as they walked.

“
Trade you.”

Tak raised a
brow.

“
Hmm, let’s see. You’ve got
plain Jane vanilla while I have mouthwatering double chunk
chocolate chip. I mean, would you look at the chunks in this thing?
We’ve got nuggets of fudge here, bits of chocolate chips there, and
this enticing swirl of white chocolate comfort.”

He shrugged. “Mm. Sorry.
Just don’t see the benefit.”

Deena turned back to her
cone, bottom lip out. “But I want yours.”

Tak rolled his eyes in
exaggerated fashion, fully aware that he intended to give her his
cone. Still, he loved the pouting.

“
Deena, I’ve got to tell
you, you’re not much of a negotiator.” He handed his two scoops
over and took her single vanilla. “Now let’s hurry. We’ve got a
date with the Screamin’ Eagle.”

Deena froze. The Screamin’
Eagle was a wooden roller coaster a hundred and ten feet high and
one she seriously doubted she had the gall to ride. Till then,
she’d been charmed by the costumed characters of her childhood
,waving and posing for pictures with glee, delighted by the sticky
and sweet treats they’d devoured with abandon, and giddy with the
sophomoric way they tore through the park. And when the Screamin’
Eagle’s cherry train barreled past with its cartload of screaming
passengers, all that changed. Deena’s jaw went slack, her cone
plummeted, and she gripped Tak’s arm in terror.

“
I can’t, Tak. I can’t get
on that.”

Tak glanced down calmly at
the manicured fingernails that blanched his flesh before returning
to her face.

“
Of course you can do it.
You wanted to do this, remember?”

As if to contradict him, the
train tore through the sky again before plunging towards the
earth.

Deena’s eyes
widened.

“
People pay money for this?
To be terrorized like this?”

Tak laughed. “Definitely.
Now what do you say? One try?”

She lowered her eyes. Before
their visit to Six Flags, she’d never been to an amusement park.
Her mother Gloria, amazingly enough, used to be something of a
worrywart and would never allow her child to attend the fair when
it came to town. The fairgrounds were unkempt, the rides unsafe and
the food unhealthy. And later, when her mother was in prison and
her father dead, it was pretty clear that asking Grandpa Eddie was
not an option.

But of course, Tak knew all
that.

“
I’ll be with you, Dee. I
promise. And you can hold on to me as tight as you
like.”

Cone tossed, he tilted her
chin so that she met his gaze. He had to redirect it when a fresh
cartload of passengers careened by. “Tell you what. Afterwards,
I’ll have a surprise for you.”

Deena’s eyes widened.
Surprises were that other Tak novelty.

“
Really? What?”

Tak shook his head. “Uh uh.
Screamin’ Eagle first. Surprise second.”

Deena looked at the ride. It
made her heart thud, her palms were sweaty, and her mouth dry. But
as she stood there with Tak’s undivided attention, she knew that
her reaction was only partly because of the ride. And in the end,
she agreed to the Screamin’ Eagle.

Two to a row, twelve rows of
carts, each connected by ball and socket joints. 3,872 feet of
track rose 110 feet into the air. Laminated steel set against wood
gave each passenger the roughest, wildest ride possible, as they
tore through the air at better than sixty miles an hour. The ride
would last for two minutes and thirty seconds and the highest drop
would be from 92 feet. Deena knew all of this because she insisted
on being briefed by the ride’s attendants before
boarding.

Deena adjusted her harness
from what she ascertained to be the safest locale within a
relatively unsafe place—the middle seat. She looked at Tak; her
eyes unusually large with terror, and was grateful when he extended
a hand to her.

“
It’s gonna be great.
You’ll see.”

Tak adjusted his long legs,
tight against the safety bar of the cart and smiled.

Deena turned her attention
back to the track. She would use reason and science to battle fear,
as always. The ride was heinously tall and climbing it would employ
positive gravitational forces, which were the easiest for the human
body to endure. The name of the game was fear, and the expectation
of climbing to towering heights combined with the average body’s
ability to endure about five times the pull of gravity meant that a
designer would seek to push the limits in that regard. There was
also whiplash to think about. The human body needed time to sense
changes in speed and—

“
Deena, stop,” Tak
said.

She blinked, startled.
“What?”

“
I know what you’re doing
and I want you to stop it.”

“
What? I’m just—getting
ready.”

With a sigh, Tak leaned in
until his mouth brushed her ear. The feel of wet lips coursed heat
to her core.