Girl Parts (8 page)

“Hey, red. What’s with the scowl?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why so glum?”

“I’m not glum. I’m waiting.”

Artie offered Rose a smoke, but she shook her head.

“It’s funny, Dave’s never mentioned you before.”

“We just met.”

“Really? Because you seem really close.”

She smiled warmly. “Really?”

“You guys hooking up?”

“Hooking up?” Train cars coupling, a fish caught on a line. This couldn’t be what he meant. Artie drew closer, sitting beside her.

“Listen.” His breath stank like tobacco. “David and I, we share everything, you know? What’s his is sort of mine. Because we’re best friends. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Again, Rose shook her head. A new feeling bubbled inside her — like what she’d felt in the car, only subtler.

“So tell me, what gets your motor running?”

He reached to touch her knee. A voice came from behind them.

“Hey, Stubb. I know this is a campsite, but go pop a tent someplace else, huh?”

It was Rebecca, cradling her bottle.

“What’s your problem?”

“I don’t
have
problems. I
solve
them.”

Artie stood and stretched. “Whatever.”

“Go bond,” Rebecca said, nodding toward the others. “If you’re looking for someone to grope, try David. He’s the one you’re in love with.”

“Bite me.” Artie stooped to grab his pack of cigarettes and headed for the stairs.

“You wish,” Rebecca muttered. She took Artie’s place on the I beam. “Hey. Sorry about him. He’s just a perv.”

“Thank you for making him go away,” Rose said. “He makes me . . . uncomfortable.”

“No surprise there.” Rebecca stared through the flames at the other boys, who were having a thumb war. “Look at them. You and me, babe, we’re totally invisible.”

“What do you mean?’

Rebecca clinked her bottle with one lacquered fingernail. Rose noticed there was a donkey on the label in a bowler hat. A smartass?

“It’s all one big circle-jerk, anyway. They think they’re oh-so-funny. We’re just here to be the audience.”

Rebecca’s face was heart-shaped, with pretty, tired eyes. A red bird-shaped brooch was pinned to her sweatshirt.

“I like your top. Is that a rose?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s a cherry blossom, actually.”

“You should tell people it’s a rose. Like your name. It’s cute.”

Kindness,
said Rose’s brain.
Return the compliment.

“I like your hair,” Rose said, which was true. It was inky and dark.

“My
hair
? God, why? It’s just boring black. You’re the one with the awesome hair. Mine’s just ordinary.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Well, thanks. I’m thinking of changing it, actually. A little personal renewal.” Rebecca ran a finger along a strand. “Listen, I didn’t mean to be bitchy before. You seem nice, and I’m sure David’s a good guy.”

“He’s the only one for me,” Rose said, and felt a flicker of warmth, and pictured sunlight glancing off steel cabinets.

Rebecca’s eyes went wide. “You must be really into him. Where did you meet?”

“His driveway.”

“You’re neighbors? I know someone on Horizon Lake. A boy.”

“Was he your boy?”

Her laugh was dry, flaccid. “Maybe for a moment. But we weren’t right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought we had a connection, but I was wrong.”

Rose squinted. “But he was your
boy.
You must
form
a connection.”

Rebecca’s thin, dark eyebrows came together. “It’s not that simple.”

Rose shook her head. “That is a difference of opinion.”

Rebecca put a hand on her hip. “Oh, really? Well, my friend Willow tried damn hard to
connect
with your boy David, and he tossed her to the curb like a —”

“That is not true,” said Rose.

“You think you’re his
first
? Sister, there’ve been plenty others. And that’s not opinion; that’s
fact.
”

“That is not true,” she said again.

The arrow connected Rose and David — it was unbreakable, without forks or intersections. There could never be another spoke. Rebecca was either mistaken or lying.

Rose stood.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Rebecca said. “I’m drunk and . . .”

Rose made for the stairs. Up high her satellite connection would be clearer, with no conflicting signals.

David tipped over an empty beer can and looked up.

“Where’s Rose?”

Clay was slumped against the steps, asleep. Artie and that Becks girl were gone.

“Clay.” David tossed a can at his friend. It bounced
off Clay’s sneaker and spun into the weeds. “Clay, wake up, man.”

David got to his feet, steadying himself against the wall. He climbed the stairs with his legs wobbling like Jell-O.

“Tilt-a-Whirl,” David mumbled “Everybody loves to ride . . . the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

“David?”

A pair of new Converse All Stars was a few inches from David’s nose. He recognized the pink flowery socks.

“Hey, baby.”

“You’re intoxicated.”

“You know what I like about you?” David pulled himself into a sitting position. “You don’t even sound mad. You’re just stating the obvious. David, your man, is drunk. Plain and simple.” He looked up. Rose stood with her arms crossed, hair blowing across her face. “What are you doing?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Oh.”

“Can we go back to your house?”

“Yeah.” David surveyed the landscape — dancing trees in every direction. “We just need to find the car. You have, like, a GPS? Thought not.”

The pair stumbled through the underbrush, Rose with a hand on David’s back to steady him. “I guess this is an OK touch, right?” David said, laughing at his own joke. “Let’s keep that hand north of the equator, missy. I don’t
want you trying anything fresh. A girl could take advantage of a man in a . . . in a state like this.”

Finally they reached the car. David made for the driver’s side door.

No,
said Rose’s brain. “David, you can’t drive like this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s . . . forbidden.”

David tossed his head back and laughed. “Not with me, it isn’t. Come on, I do this every weekend. It’s like three o’clock in the morning. There’re no cars on the roads, and I’ll go really slow, I promise.”

Rose didn’t move. David climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He looked at her through the open window.

“Do you want to walk?”

“I want to be with you.”

“Then get in.”

They pulled out onto the empty road and inched back toward Route 20. There were no other cars, and David did drive slowly, occasionally listing to the shoulder. The sound of the engine filled the silent space between them.

“Did you have fun?” David asked when they reached the main road.

“Yes.”

“Good. Me too.”

“Do you think Rebecca is better eye candy than me?”

“Who?”

“Becks.”

“Where did that come from?”

“Do you think she is?”

“I don’t think she’s hotter than you, if that’s what you mean. Why? Feeling jealous?”

Rose analyzed her feelings and found them ambiguous. “How do you know when you feel jealous?”

“Jealous is when you see the person you want to bang flirting with someone else. And it makes you feel angry and tough. Like you could tear a car in half.”

“I don’t feel like that.”

“You don’t need to be jealous, anyway. You’re the only one for me, baby.”

Rose put her hand on his knee, not clutching it this time, but squeezing it. No shock, thank God.
She must feel better,
David thought.
Of course she feels better. She’s never been fed a line before.

This is what Rose saw:

The sweep of trees, the snaking road, the pulse of reflectors on the guardrail. Flash. Flash. Flash. And then a blip, something shining in the darkness between two reflectors. It was a front-mounted bike light, trembling on the shoulder as the rider made his slow progress uphill. But the perspective was wrong. Their twin trajectories, plotted in her mind like glowing dotted lines, should not have intersected. The road slipped away, and for the second time, Rose imagined she could die.

There would be no more Rose, no first kiss, not even a third day.

The tires squealed. David cursed. The wheel spun free of his hand, and Rose threw herself over him, protecting his body with her own. A screech, a clatter, and the world spun.

And then it was over, and David was in her arms.

He was breathing hard. His chest heaved against hers in jagged breaths. Rose squeezed, buried her face in his neck, and felt the soft, hot skin of his cheek press against her own. His smell was a mix of tangy sweat and sweet earth. Then, the crisis over, Rose’s body charged for a shock. She slid back, still feeling him in her arms as the world snapped into focus.

“Jesus Christ,” David said.

The car now faced the opposite direction, the road bathed in light. Something blue lay on the dividing line. A few yards off, a metallic spider was wrapped around the guardrail. The blue thing wasn’t moving.

“Oh, God,” said David. “That was close.”

The engine had died in the frenzy. He turned the ignition, the engine hummed, and he put the car into drive. They began to turn away from the blue thing in the road.

“David.”

“What?”

“David!”

He braked, jerking them in their seats. The car was lengthwise across the road.

“There’s a
person
out there,” Rose said.

“Yeah, that’s awful,” David said. “Come on, we better go.”

“We can’t
leave
him here,” Rose said. “Can we?”

She faced him. His face was still flush, his breathing hard, but his hands were steady at the wheel. The haze of drunkenness had lifted from his eyes. “Why not?”

Rose had no answer. She asked herself again and again, but the queries bounced back. There was no rule about this in the data banks.

“That’s why you don’t ride your bike at night on a dark road,” David said. “Jesus, Rose. Just be thankful that isn’t us, and let’s get out of here.”

He began to turn the car again. Rose twisted in her seat, keeping her eye on the thing, the
person,
lying out there. Wearing a blue jacket. His (or her) bike twisted around the guardrail like a tangle of shiny confetti.

How horrible to die out here alone. Better to be here, in the car. Better to be you than him.

As they turned, the headlights caught the bicycle tangled in the guardrail, the light glancing off its twisted aluminum piping.

But what if it were David out there?

The person in the road moved. As David accelerated, Rose opened the door and jumped. She landed hard on her wrists. A thousand minifractures cracked like lightning through her limbs, and instantly a million microbots set to work repairing them.

She heard David yell and the tires squeal. The brake lights flashed. In the crimson light she knelt beside the fallen boy with woolly hair and big glasses, who was slowly turning over, moaning.

Charlie opened his eyes and thought it was dawn. It looked like the sun was rising. Then suddenly the weird light was gone, the night rushed in, and he felt like he’d been creamed by a car.

“Are you OK?”

The girl had tumbling red hair.
So, an angel,
Charlie thought.

“I think so.”

“You’re not dead.” Her hot whisper was close by his ear. Through the pain and the chill and shock, her breath on his neck was soothing. Charlie checked himself for broken bones. He wiggled his toes.

“I’m Rose.”

“Charlie.”

“Hey, buddy, you OK?”

A figure stood a few paces off. His features were hidden in the dark, but the voice was familiar.

“I think so.” He raised his head slightly. “Where’s my bike?”

The old Huffy was under the guardrail, the front tire a mesh of spokes. Charlie rose slowly. He put his hand out to steady himself, but the girl, Rose, backed away, as if afraid to touch him.

“Can we take you to the local medical center?” she asked.

“No,” Charlie said. “I don’t like hospitals.”

“Do you want a ride home?” the boy asked.

Charlie stretched, cracking his back. What he wanted was an apology, but that didn’t seem likely from Mr. Manners. The girl, though, his guardian angel, was contrite enough. She folded her hands as if praying, her cheeks frosty pink like strawberry icing on soft serve. She was beautiful. But the world was full of beautiful girls — girls who went home with guys in fast cars, not guys with busted bikes.

Charlie tried to unlock the front tire from its death grip on the guardrail. The front wheel was destroyed, but apart from a few scratches, the bike was otherwise undamaged.

“That is an old-school bike, dude,” the driver said.

Charlie grunted. He wanted to get away, be home in bed, not talking to a pair of drunk rich kids.

“Well, you sure you don’t need anything?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“OK, then. Have a good night.”

The girl, Rose, lingered a moment.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s OK. I shouldn’t have been riding so late. It was stupid.”

He began to carry his crippled bike toward the road, but a sudden pinch in his hip made him drop to one knee.
Rose’s hand clasped his, to keep him from falling. Charlie felt something — like tonguing an old battery or chewing tinfoil, a minivibration that rushed up his arm and into his heart. His vision cleared. She pulled her hand away fast, as if she startled herself. They stared at each other, Charlie’s hand throbbing warmly, pleasantly.

“I . . .” Charlie started, but before he could finish, she was gone, running back to the car and climbing inside. It was then he recognized David Sun’s Cadillac.

They sped off, washing Charlie in red light, which no longer seemed like dawn, but only some asshole’s brake lights.