Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (19 page)

"Say hello to Louis the pilot whale!" an announcer shouted.

A gate opened to the left of the watery enclosure.  A massive black whale swam into the glass tank, cutting the water with his fins.  He lifted his tail and slapped it and waves of cold water splashed over the glass wall dividing us.  Unthinkingly, I covered Sky.  I felt Sky laughing in my arms as he huddled against me, the icy water drenching us, flattening his curls, my braids.

"I just swallowed chlorine," I said.  Sky in my arms was the best feeling.

I just swallowed your hair
, Sky said, spitting out a strand.

"Pilot whales are the most loyal animal on earth," the announcer went on.  "When one member of the pod becomes injured, the rest of the pod stays with him, even at risk of death."

I watched Louis the pilot whale swim through an elaborate set of rings.  The gate opened again, and a second pilot whale joined him in the tank.  Louis stopped what he was doing and raced over to his buddy like he hadn't seen him in fifty years.  Something fired to life inside my head.  The glass separating Louis and me shattered.  Saltwater flooded the tent around me, tearing down the tarpaulin walls, the bleachers.  The sky came down to meet the water--or the water rose up to meet the sky--and suddenly there was no sky anymore.  Everything was ocean, the spectators drifting away, the pilot whales whistling, dancing between rosy corals.  I raised my head and saw the murky sun miles above me, a silver blot on rippling waters.  I was a pilot whale.  I felt it in the oxygen circulating my arms and legs, in the webbing of my fingers, the fins emerging from my back.  I was a pilot whale, and I wasn't alone anymore.

Long after the show had ended Sky sat with his arms around his knees, his knees under his chin, watching me curiously.  The ocean pulsed around us, calling our names.  I was aware that we probably ought to have left the arena, but I wasn't aware of the arena itself.  The scars on Sky's throat moved to the sides of his neck, transforming into gills.  The flute around his neck was a conch shell, his voice inside.

"Should we go?" I asked.  My voice sounded rough.

The ocean receded, revealing the glass tank and the TV monitors, the yellow sky.  I became aware of the bleachers again, the tarpaulin, the sun and clouds.  Sky stood up from the bleachers first.  I stood with him.  Most of the arena's occupants had emptied out by now, the whale trainers cleaning the water tank with long nets.  I tucked my wet braids behind my ears, the rest of my loose hair clumping together.  The dove's feather alone was unaffected.

Sky's curls looked funny wet, dark and kind of limp.  I found myself reaching for them before I knew what had come over me.  I stopped.

Sky nodded briefly, granting me permission.  That changed everything.

I sank my fingers in Sky's hair before I could talk myself out of it.  His curls were the same texture as velvet, save for the droplets rolling off them, his eyes flickering closed when he leaned into my touch.  My throat tightened, restricting my breath.  I grazed his scalp with my fingertips.  I touched the back of Sky's head and the tips of his ears.  He was as soothed as a charmed snake and I could feel it, echoing in my fingers, and it excited me.  He smelled like lavender and artificial oceans.  He was my friend, and he was real.  He wasn't ink and paper.  I wasn't alone.

"I need to," I muttered.

I needed to see something.  It wasn't important, but it was going to eat away at me until I had an answer.  I laid my hand on Sky's shoulder, tremulous.  I curved my hand against his warmth.  If I could feel his feelings, and he couldn't feel mine, I had a shortcut to figuring out whether he was the same as me.  I didn't want to make a jerk of myself, or alienate myself from him, but if he liked guys--if there was even the slightest chance that I could have him--

Sky breathed quietly.  His surface feelings were unusually shaky.  I worried that I'd upset him, but he shook his head before I could move away.  I touched his cheek.  His birthmark was a smooth brown bump under my fingertips.  I wanted to learn it, to know it as well as I knew my own reflection.  Better, considering who I shared a reflection with.

Electric currents wove through my hand.  I felt Sky's emotions for my own:  Trepidation.  Anxiety.  I thought I was going to throw up.  Sky's anxiety gave way to urging.  He glanced at me, furtive, then quickly glanced away.  I took his chin until he faced me, his eyes jumping to meet mine.  I waited until I heard his voice.

Please touch me.

I cupped his face in both hands.  I slid my thumbs along his bottom lip.  His mouth was burning hot against my fingers, soft and damp, glistening in the sun.  He turned his face into my palm, knocking the wits out of me.  I could hear every breath Sky took.  I could feel his breath expanding in my own lungs.  His face was kindness and sunlight, his eyes the eyes of a fox.

I wanted to hold him.  My body ached because I wasn't holding him.  Whose bright idea was it to give me arms that didn't hold him?  I took a tentative step closer to Sky.  I stroked the contours of his cheeks with rough palm lines, his curls resting on my knuckles.  His knees brushed against mine, lazy hands tracing tickling patterns across my stomach.  He tilted his head back and searched my eyes, something that made me feel desperately shy.

His fingers trembled where they touched me.  He was scared.  He wanted me to touch him, and he was scared.

A park employee climbed down the bleachers, a mop in his hand.  Sky lifted his head.  We hadn't managed to get thrown off the premises yet, and I didn't want to change that.  I tucked my hands in my pockets.  I cleared my throat and Sky rubbed his arms, like he was cold.  Without looking at each other, we straggled out through the arena's exit.

I stole glances at Sky when we made our way out through the aquarium, when he dropped off his stolen clipboard at the front desk and waved goodbye to the beluga whale in his glowing blue tank.  Sky's Plains flute jostled around his neck, clinking against his throwaway camera.  Plains flutes used to be a courting instrument.  I was courting him.  I hadn't even realized it; or maybe I had, subconsciously.  It was one of those things you took for granted, like the sun rising every day, like the fact that you've always known you were gay, and never had that moment of realization where you totally freaked out.

I never needed a moment of realization.  I wondered whether Sky had.  I wondered whether he still did.

By the time we reached the bus stop our hair and clothes were completely dry.  That's Arizona for you, I guess.  We got on the bus and it was emptier than it had been in the morning.  The plastic doors squished closed as we paid our fare.  Sky sat down by the window.  I sat next to him.

I didn't know what to say.  I knew what I would have liked to say--"Are you alright?  Was I wrong to touch you?"--because I wanted to protect him, even if that meant protecting him from me.  I didn't know how to bring it up.  The thought left my mind entirely when the bus inched closer to the Sonoran Desert.  My stomach lurched.  Dad lingered in the back of my head, in blue denim and black pants and a brown belt, laughing, hiking into the sagebrush, me in tow.

Hold onto your sagebrush, because too many evil people are standing on this planet, and one day it's going to tip over.

I felt Sky examining me again.  I forced myself to return his gaze and found it softly analytical, curious, partly knowing.

What happened?
Sky asked.

The last thing I wanted to talk to him about was the man who had cut his throat open.  "Don't worry about it."

The ride back to the reservation felt a thousand times longer than the ride away.  I didn't know what to say to Sky, and for once, his voice was silent in my head.  At one point he put his hand on the seat between us.  I wasn't sure if it was an invitation.  I touched his fingers very lightly, prepared to make it look like an accident.  He locked his fingers with mine, jolting me.  He stared out the window at the cactuses and caltrops.  Maybe he wanted to make it look like an accident, too.  How do you hold hands on accident?  How do you run your thumb across somebody's knuckles by mistake?  Because that's what he was doing.  I wasn't buying it, either.

The both of us were very confused.

The bus rolled to a stop on the ramp outside Nettlebush.  Sky and I climbed off together.  We walked in silence to the dirt road off the hospital, the sun strong over the tops of the pines.  We held hands when we stepped across the tarmac, the hospital building looming in view, flat and brown with a wheelchair ramp.  My hand tingled where Sky's feelings touched it.  Want.  Fear.  A little bit of denial.  I stopped him before we reached the main road.  I turned him toward me by his shoulders.

"Don't wear your jacket anymore," I said.

As if remembering, he tugged the cords around his neck closer to his scars.  I shook my head.  I took hold of his hands, stopping him.  His hands curled into my grasp, warm and slender and driving me mad.

"Nothing you do is gonna get rid of your scars," I said.  I felt sorry at once, weighed down with guilt, Dad's legacy a black cloud on our shoulders.  "They're part of what made you who you are."

I could tell that Sky didn't see the draw in that; not the way I did.  He shuffled around meaninglessly on the patchy brown dirt.  He flashed me a short-lived smile.

"I like you," I explained.  "I like who you are."

He closed his eyes, as if to say,
I was afraid of that.
  The rest of his face didn't match his eyes at all.  His cheeks were slack, his chin tilted up.  He was the picture of peace.  I found myself tracing his jaw with my fingers before I could stop myself.  He had said it was okay.  He had said I could touch him.

Please touch me
, he said again.

I laid my hands on his sun-kissed arms, dizzy with the scent of lavender.  His freckles tasted playful and sweet under my skin.  I tried to memorize the feel of each one individually: the tiny one on his elbow, the slightly scratchy one on the outside of his forearm, the smooth, flat one that intercepted his translucent veins.  I wanted to kiss his freckles.  I wanted it so badly it embarrassed me.  I didn't know how to ask him.  I didn't think it was okay.

Sky slid his arms out of my grasp.  Sky's hands slid against mine, palm for palm.  He wouldn't look at me, but his feelings beat in the pulses of his heels.

I'm scared.

I think I'm gay.

How can I be gay?

How can I be scared?

The one that really took me by surprise: 
How can I be scared if Rafael is here?

No one had ever put so much faith in me at once.  No one had ever relied on me, or looked to me to protect him, or even conceded that he felt at ease in my presence.  My eyes burst with color, like when you stare at a flashing camera and the imprints linger on the backs of your lids.  Sky lingered on the backs of my lids.  I couldn't get him out of my head.  I couldn't believe what he had given me.

A heavy gray cloud covered the sun.  Without the sun's light, the cloud cooled to black.  I shivered at the sudden cold, a dry wind picking up my braids.

The monsoon was here.

10

King of Nothing

Mid-July is when Nettlebush sees its annual monsoon.  Clouds cover the sun and tear the sky apart and rain falls everywhere--and I mean everywhere.  The crops wash away, if you're stupid enough to have any in the ground.  The arroyos in the forest flood.  Tent rocks come crashing down in the badlands; you can hear them no matter what part of the reservation you live on.  The weather's so savage, so unrelenting, you can't leave your house for two weeks.

In other words, it's God's way of laughing at me.

The day before the monsoon struck, Uncle Gabriel and I took inventory around the house, making sure we had enough mutton and venison to tide us over indefinitely.  We dried the meat by fire and stocked up on oil lamps, because the electricity would go out once the first winds struck.  I wished I could see what the windmills looked like in the thick of it.  I sat on the sitting room floor, brooding, and made a fort out of books and notebooks, charcoal and ink sticks and tattoo needles.  The sun began to set outside the windows.  The front door swung open and Uncle Gabriel came inside, Rosa Gray Rain on his heels.

"Rafael," Uncle Gabriel said cheerfully.  "Rosa's going to stay with us for the monsoon."

I wished he had told me about this sooner.  I looked up at Rosa, a stubby pencil in my hand.  The pencil snapped in two.  Rosa flinched visibly and glanced away.

We ate dinner on the sitting room floor that night, because Uncle Gabriel was too much of a doofus to build a dining room nine years ago.  Rosa was as quiet as a mouse when she slipped chokecherries into her mouth, meeting no one's eyes.  Uncle Gabriel chatted pleasantly and didn't seem to notice when neither of his roommates participated in the conversation.

"M'gonna wash the dishes," I said when we were done.

"Rafael, I can do that," Uncle Gabriel said.

"I wanna do it," I said, standing.  Anything to get away from the two of them.  I wasn't at all sure how I was going to last two weeks in the same house as Rosa.

At nightfall Uncle Gabriel made a bed for Rosa in Mary's old room.  Rosa thanked him, stammering.  I put on an old pair of ratty jeans and settled down behind my manmade fort in the sitting room.  Every year the monsoon freaked me out; and every year I vowed I was going to conquer it.  It wasn't the sound of the rain that scared me.  It wasn't the thunder or lightning, or even the darkness.  The combination of all four, coupled with the total isolation from nature, inspired real panic in me.