Don't Touch (9 page)

And it hurts.

“I hope you didn't let Oscar get to you,” he says.

I feel too aware of the hole in my glove, like if I can't stop thinking about it he'll be able to read my mind.

“No, I was just thinking.” My hands clench the straps of my backpack.

When
don't touch
first came back, I thought about the possibility of meeting a guy at my new school and what that would mean. I thought,
This is from stress. It won't last.
When weeks passed and the game kept mattering, I thought,
I'll be busy with school. Chances are I won't meet anyone I like anyway.

“Well, far be it from me to disturb anybody who's thinking,” Peter says, “but you'd better be thinking about something good.”

His hand drops, and he jogs to catch up with the others.
Please don't let Peter be able to read my mind, pluck this something-good-something-bad thought from my brain. . . .
Sharp and guilty, it sears at my fingertips and my heart, burns my cheeks red and easy to read.

I'm thinking about Peter's hand, Peter taking my hand in his, touching me.

In the car, I try to judge whether the breach in my armor has done any damage.

Mom seems stressed but that might be because Jordan keeps kicking the back of her seat.

“If you let me play football, I wouldn't have so much extra energy,” he says.

“It's a distraction, Jordan. Your grades weren't so hot last year.”

“That's what Dad says.” He's kicking her seat again. “I thought Dad wasn't in charge anymore since you're getting divorced.”

I wait for Mom to correct him: it isn't a divorce; it's a separation. But the correction doesn't come. Maybe something happened between Mom and Dad because Oscar touched my skin. Or maybe my stupid game is just that—a game. If that's true, how will I know when to stop playing?

“I can sew that up for you,” Mom says, and I realize I'm picking at the hole in my glove, making it bigger.

“I know how to sew.”

That night, I make the stitches as close together as I can get them. I reinforce the thumb on the other hand too, for good measure. Once I'm done, I can tug at the seams and barely see space between stitches. It was a bad idea to rely on a cheap costume seam to keep myself safe. But I can't show up to school in chain mail and gauntlets.

I'll have to be more careful.

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. . . best safety lies in fear . . .

—LAERTES, HAMLET (I.III.48)

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You'd think people would notice the way I protect myself, but I'm getting better at making it natural, choosing my moments to touch over clothes. And with fall coming on, the long sleeves don't stand out as much.

People who touch with abandon draw attention to themselves, but the absence of touch . . . people hardly notice.

Mandy's crowd is slowly starting to feel like my crowd. One weekend, we go to the Scratch to play pool. Mandy has a fake ID, but for me, she says, “She's my older sister,” and bats her lashes.

The guy at the door rolls his eyes but says, “Y'all don't go trying to buy drinks now,” and lets us in. The great thing about pool is that no one comes close when you're taking your shot, and the threat of the cue keeps Oscar at bay.

Another weekend, we pile into Drew's and Peter's trucks and drive about an hour north to the Ave Maria grotto in Cullman. In an old quarry, a Benedictine monk made miniature versions of famous churches and other holy buildings out of all sorts of materials—concrete and tiles but also trinkets, tiny shells, and beads. The Temple of the Fairies features cold cream jars.

Livia poses like Godzilla about to crush St. Martin's Church, and a grouchy old lady yells at Mandy and Drew for making out in front of St. Peter's Basilica.

I notice Peter sitting alone for the longest time staring into the grotto itself, a false cave with marble statues, a mosaic altar, and handmade, cement stalactites. I promised myself I'd keep Peter at a safe distance, but he's all alone, so I walk up and say, “What do you see?”

“My parents came here a long time ago as part of the road trip they took on their honeymoon. I have a photo of them standing here. I was trying to picture it.”

“Their honeymoon?” I ask.

“No,” he says, smiling up at me, and I know before he says it: “I'm trying to picture how they were ever in love.”

He gets up then and walks on toward Little Jerusalem.

Mom's taking on more photography jobs lately, and she's been making field trips for artistic work. One night, she drags me down to her darkroom in the basement to show me a series she took near the Irondale Café.

It's a place locked in time. Train tracks run right past the restaurant. Once, we saw an engineer stop his train there so he could hop down and get a sweet iced tea to go. Then he hopped back on the train and took off again.

Mom hands me a set in which the sides of abandoned boxcars scale like birch trees so that patches of color pop out from the rust.

“Mom, these are gorgeous.”

Lit from the side by the red lamp and smiling, Mom's cheeks look hot and shiny, like a person with a fever. She says, “I
know.
I'm really proud of these. It's been so long since I've done something that felt like
mine.
Does that make sense?”

It does—and it worries me. The more things change before Dad comes back, the harder coming back will be.

Mom and Jordan keep fighting. On his thirteenth birthday, she gets him a cake from a place that prints photos in icing with a picture of her holding him as a baby. The image isn't meant to last, of course, but Jordan smears it with a knife before we can sing “Happy Birthday.”

He says, “Don't act like this is some great family memory when we all know how it turns out.”

Jordan's moody because Dad had a lab study and couldn't come. Mom makes excuses: “You know he's a workaholic. He goes into mad scientist mode and loses track of the rest of the world.” She calls it mad scientist mode to make it sound cute, but it isn't.

Jordan speaks to Dad on the phone, but I decline.

I say to Mom, “Tell him he should have been here for Jordan.”

She purses her lips and says, “He knows,” but I'm annoyed with her. There ought to be something she can do.

I make Jordan a card that reads, “I know it hurts right now. This won't last forever.” I'm not sure I believe my own words, so I'm not surprised when Jordan sets it aside with no comment.

Later that night, though, he stands in my doorway and says, “I hear you practicing all the time.”

Ophelia.
I hoped I'd been quiet enough that he and Mom wouldn't notice.

“I think you can stop practicing,” he says. “You're good.”

“Thanks, Jordan. That means a lot.”

He shrugs and heads back to his room for some serious video game slaughter.

I always get to school early so I won't miss the before-school shenanigans. It doesn't surprise me, knowing Mandy, that her friends are really good at shenanigans.

One morning, Peter arranges a sit-in in front of the main office to plead for “mouse rights.” I don't think he's even for real, just pushing buttons, but he convinces the principal to switch to cruelty-free traps.

The next day is all about Livia leaving a fake love note for a classical guitarist ex of Mandy's who “scorned” her. Of course, his reaction's a total disappointment—he skims the note, looks straight at Mandy, and says, “Ha-ha. Very funny.” For that, we're all late to first period.

A couple weeks into September, I dare to make my first proposal: a flash mob where at the exact same moment, a bunch of people freeze and stay frozen for three minutes straight. There's a performance group called Improv Everywhere that did it in Grand Central Station in New York, and the crowd's reactions in the video are amazing.

“Yes!” Peter says. “But it's going to take some planning.” He immediately drops to the floor and starts drawing up a list of recruits who can be trusted to pull it off.

“Look what you've started,” Mandy says to me. “This is all we're going to hear about for a month!”

I kneel beside Peter. The veins on the back of his scribbling hand stand up like a web of inverted rivers. I imagine a finger tracing one, slipping over to a tendon and following that all the way to the fingertip.

“Don't forget whose idea this was,” I say. “I want creative control.”

“Of course,” Peter says. “Think of me as your production assistant.”

“You can be more than that,” I say. “You can direct. I get nervous telling people what to do. Just remember who hired you.”

He smiles, and I try to keep my face friendly and easy like his, to
not
seem like a crushing idiot, but I wonder how readable I am.

On my way out of acting, two hands grip my upper arms, making me squeal. I'm spun off my path, yanked around the corner, and shoved through the open door of a dark utility closet. I fling an elbow back in defense, and Mandy yelps.

“Calm down,” Mandy's voice whispers as she shuts the door. “You hit my boob.”

“Sorry! What are you doing?”

It's freaky to be in the dark where I can't see her hands.

“God, you're jumpy. You're like my mom when she gets off her beta-blockers. It's time for an intervention.”

Intervention? Oh, Lord.

Mandy has always been pushy. If she pushes too hard, I'll fall.

“I'm going to set you up with Peter.”

I'd thought maybe she knew about
don't touch
, but this might be worse. Mandy doesn't push; Mandy shoves.

She goes on, “We're practicing for auditions tonight at my house. We split up to work on scenes . . . we leave you alone by the pool . . .”

“Please, please, no.”

“I saw you flirting.” She puts on a high-pitched voice: “Direct me, Peter. Make my flash mob dreams come true.”

“Mandy . . .”

“And he was flirting back.”

“He was not.”

“Well, he sure was eager.”

“He was eager about the flash mob. Because flash mobs are awesome.”

“Okay, it doesn't have to be about Peter. It could just be fun. This might be the last weekend it's warm enough to swim. Oscar wants to play strip Marco Polo, of course.”

“Strip?”

“You have to wear extra clothes in the pool, or else everybody's naked too fast.”

“Naked?”

“You can't see much underwater.”

“I can't.”

“Look, you don't have to play, and you don't have to make out with Peter. Just come. It will be good for practice.”

Practice at being normal is what I hear, but my brain plays catch up. Auditions, she means. The idea of Mandy seeing me try for Ophelia makes me cringe.

“No, I have this thing with my mom. She has a special meal planned.” None of that is a lie. Mom plans a meal every night for this special event we call dinner.

“This is for school. Your mom will understand.”

“But I have lots of homework.”

“We all have homework, Caddie.
We're
all going. You want to be one of the group? This is the group. If you want friends, you've got to, you know, put in the time.”

I made too many excuses to Mandy back in middle school when I felt like I was losing it and didn't know how to be around her—or anyone—anymore.

They can't really mean to play strip Marco Polo, can they? That's not a real thing high school students in Birmingham, Alabama, do, is it?

“Fine, yes, you're right. I'll go.”

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Oscar is naked.

Buck. Naked. And doing the backstroke smack-dab in the middle of Mandy's pool.

I want to run after Mom's car, but she's already halfway down Mandy's steep driveway. The Bowers' bright, Tudor-style home sits almost at the top of the ridge, presiding over a neighborhood of equally gorgeous, old houses. Their yard feels like some secluded, medieval glade, but from the highest point, you can look down on the entire city.

“Caddie! You made it!” Mandy squeals, and I hold up my hands in defense. I've got my gloves, jeans, and long sleeves, but there's lots of exposed Mandy flying my way. At least she's wearing a bikini.

Mandy squeezes me, pinning my arms to my sides and resting her cheek on my shoulder, too close to my neckline.
Don't touch, please, don't touch.

Her wet suit soaks through my shirt, just a bit.
Water that touched Mandy's skin is touching mine.
Water's a conductor; it feels like that should matter, but I push the thought down. My magical-thinking mind could make up rules all day if I let it.
No new rules.

I squirm out of Mandy's grip and say, “You're actually playing strip Marco Polo?”

“Marco!” Oscar calls suggestively, but nobody else is in the pool.

“No!” Mandy says. “But this is Oscar pouting.” She flaps a hand toward him and he flips into an underwater somersault, his butt cresting the water like the shiny skin of a humpback whale.

“I am scarred for life,” I say, shielding my eyes.

Peter's laugh pulls my focus. He's sitting poolside with his feet in the water. His swim trunks are neon yellow—
warning, slow down
—and he's not wearing anything else.

These are the things I can process.

I keep my eyes up, on his, which are friendly, but below them is his chest.