Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (30 page)

"I have a boyfriend," I told Andrew Nabako, when I bent down to help him pick up his bolts.

He looked at me over the top of his mangy scarf.  He said to me the first words he'd ever said to me.  "I really don't care."

You'd think I would have gotten the hint and shut up about it, but I was so damn happy, I couldn't.  Holly came with me to deliver mutton to Meredith Siomme's horse ranch.  Meredith climbed the paddock gate to us and Holly said, "Hello," glumly.  Meredith asked us if we'd like to step inside for a drink.

"There's no point," Holly said.  "We're all dying, anyway."

"I have a boyfriend," I said.

Meredith smiled warmly at me.  "That's wonderful!  What's his name?"

"Not telling," I said.

"You made him up," Holly accused.

"Bite me," I said again.

"At least let me give you some iced tea," Meredith said.  "You both look like you've been working hard this morning."

Two glasses of iced tea later and Holly and I doubled back to the farming commons.  I sat down on the dusty dirt.  Holly panted, leaning against the smoke tree.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Asthma," she said.

"You never told me that," I said, and tried to hide my concern.

"You never asked."

"Does Daisy have it?" I asked.

"Nope."

"Sit for a while," I said.  I clarified.  "I can do the rest without you."

"Thanks," she said dryly.

"I didn't mean it like that," I said, frustrated.

"It doesn't matter.  You're not acting as unbearable as usual."

I stood up with the both of our wrapped mutton shares.  "Been trying to work on that," I said gruffly.

I finished with the deliveries a little before noon, at which point I went back to my house, washed up, and changed clothes.  Sky was coming over to listen to Ghost Dance songs on my stereo.  I felt so happy I might have left my body behind altogether.

"Do you want me to make you kids lunch?" Uncle Gabriel asked, just before he got ready to leave the house.  He was heading out to combat a pine beetle infestation in the eastern part of the rez.

"No," I said, because Uncle Gabriel was always doing nice things for me, and sometimes you have to put your foot down.  "Did you have lunch?"

"I'll grab some with George."

I went back to my room and dug through my closet, searching for Mom's old Ghost Dance tapes.  I moved all the library books off my floor and onto my bed.  It wasn't long later that Uncle Gabriel left the house and Sky came over.  I let him inside and led him into my room and he sat cross-legged on the floor, eyeing the books on my bed with confusion.

"Uh," I said.  Now that Sky was here I could only think about holding him.  He was wearing his peace necklace again, freaking hippie.  My hippie.  All mine.  "Uh.  Do you want anything?"

I meant to eat or drink, but he shot me a single look, irresistible, and tugged on my dangling hand until I sat on the floor with him.  He slid onto my lap, arms around my neck, and kissed me in light little flurries.  Okay then, I thought, before I lost the ability to think at all.  I put my hands on his thighs, skittish, nervous.  My nervousness melted away at his warmth.  He wrapped his arms around my back, and my hands bit into his hips, and with a
thump
we'd both fallen over.  He laughed into my mouth, and I laid my head on his shoulder and laughed even harder, and nothing had ever felt so good.

Sky practiced his Ghost Dance songs, and after two tries I swear he'd replicated Land of Enchantment perfectly.  Who learns the flute in two months?  Hippie St. Clair, that's who.  Hippie St. Clair who forgets his shoes at bus stops and bribes giant octopuses into assaulting his friends.  I put my head on his lap, because it was my favorite place to be.  He raked his fingers through my hair, until at length he forgot he was supposed to be playing the flute.  My hair was coarse, badly tangled, and he spent a while trying to unknot the strands for me.  I knew it was a lost cause.  I grabbed his hand and kissed his palm.  His fingers curled around me, shivering, brushing against the corners of my mouth.

We talked for a while about the Pine Nut Festival in September, and about the William Gibson book Aubrey had lent to me.  I asked if Sky knew anything more about his dad's whereabouts, but he was eager to get off the subject.  He told me he was learning to cook blue corn mush at Annie's house, mostly by showing me a handful of baking ash he was carrying around in his pocket, for some crazy reason.  I told him he was nuts.  He sprinkled the ash in my hair, and I shook my hair out and swallowed him up in my arms, kissing all over his face as punishment.  I kissed his temples, his mouth crinkling in a mirthful smile.  I kissed his brows.  I hated to be so harsh with him, but he'd made me.  He'd brought it on himself.

"I don't like being indoors," I complained.

We got up and hiked out to the windmill field.  The sun was a sweaty giant in the sky, the heat unbearable.  I would have taken a dozen heat waves if it meant being outside, so I didn't complain.  I sat on the burning grass and Sky hung his flute around his neck, reaching into his pocket for a sprig of lavender.  I was ready to tell him he smelled like a girl when I spotted Zeke ambling around the field in circles, brows furrowed, hands in his pockets.

Zeke had been in a bad mood since the morning's hunt.  Thinking about it now, he was probably like me in that neither of us coped very well with criticism.  I knew for a fact that his bad mood had worsened when he walked right over to Sky and me, the blue aura around him darkening to black.

"If you're going to murder the kid, try not to do it here, okay?" he said.

Have you ever seen one of those dogs that thinks it's bigger than it is?  And it regularly runs after the pitbulls, the Rottweilers, looking for a fight?  Yeah.  That's Zeke.

"Because I own this place," Zeke went on, without any confidence, recalling what Sleeping Fox had said months back.  "Ha," he concluded, the most pitiful, least convincing laugh you've ever heard.

"You don't own anything," I said, annoyed.  "Get lost."

Zeke had the attention span of a gnat; within seconds he'd forgotten he was supposed to be angry.  He advanced on Sky with one of his giddy, bubbly smiles.  I didn't know what he was doing.  His hand snaked out toward Sky's throat.  I panicked.

The next thing I knew I was on my feet; Zeke was on his back; my knuckles stung with the imprints of his emotions,
I just want to be friends
, and
I'm tired of everyone hating me
, and
Should I have been scared of this guy, after all?

Zeke said something to me--I think he did--but I didn't hear it.  I almost didn't see it when he jumped up and sprinted away.  Burning, pulsing horror took root in my chest.  It swelled through my arms, my legs, tightening in my wrists and ankles.  I lost my breath before I could even suck it in.

"I thought he was going to hurt you," I said.

My eyes went spotty and black.  I'd hurt someone again.  Every time I vowed I'd become a better person, I wound up taking another step backward.  Every time I tried to distance myself from my father, my actions brought me closer to him.

Sky scrambled to stand up.  He took my smarting fist in his hands, smoothing my fingers between his.  His eyebrows creased with worry, his mouth slack.

You didn't do anything wrong.

"I hurt him," I said.  Help me, I thought.  I can't breathe.

I know why you did it
, Sky said.
  It's okay.  It's alright.

"Where'd he go?  Do you think I can apologize?"

Rafael.

My hands slid down Sky's arms, his freckles a kind of solace.  He put his head back and rocked on his heels.  I knew he was asking for a kiss.  I touched our lips together.  He'd had this in mind from the beginning, I realized, when the dark spots on my eyes dissipated in hot light, the magic of his skin sealing my insecurities away.  I still didn't know how he was capable of that.  One touch and he changed my emotions for the better.  If I were a smarter person, I probably would have feared him.  I wasn't smart.  I'd taken remedial reading since I was seven.

Sky pulled back and stole the pencil I'd tucked behind my ear.  He took the post-it pad out of his back pocket, scribbling a quick note.

"What are you doing?" I asked, reluctant, confused.

Sky nodded briefly over his shoulder, I guess in the direction that Zeke had run. 
Do you really want to break that habit?

"Yeah," I said.  I wet my dry mouth.  "More than anything."

I'll help you
, Sky said, and taped a sticky note on my forehead.

Where the heck had he gotten the idea that my face was a bulletin board?  I peeled the note off my forehead.  Sky had only written one sentence on the square green paper.  His penmanship was loopy, not at all like my cramped handwriting.

Stop punching people
.

"Yeah," I said hotly.  "Like it's that easy."

I know you can do it
, Sky said with his face: soft and unguarded, eyes smiling.

I think I smiled back without meaning to.  It wasn't that I'd let myself off the hook for punching Zeke.  It was more like I couldn't believe there was someone with so much faith in me.  I'd never done anything that warranted faith.  I figured Sky wasn't any smarter than I was.  A smart person would have realized that rats don't change their whiskers.

We held hands and walked through the reservation.  We went out to the hospital parking lot, little kids playing four square with rubber balls and street chalk.  I was thinking about Zeke still when Sky gave my hand a light squeeze.

"What is it?" I asked.

He dropped my hand, gesturing between the two of us.

"Nobody cares," I told him.  "If you're a guy who likes guys.  If you're a girl who likes girls.  Nobody cares."

Sky didn't seem to understand that.  I sat down on the ramp outside the hospital, waving him over.  He scurried to sit next to me.  The nearby redbud tree offered relief from the sun.

"I don't know why your dad didn't raise you traditional," I began.  I didn't want to offend either one of them.  "I think if he had, you wouldn't feel so afraid."

Sky's face held still.  He knew that I was perpetually reading his expression for cues.  Maybe he didn't want me to this time.

"Do you know the word Napaka?" I asked.

Sky shook his head.

"It means 'Split in Two Equal Halves,' " I said.  "It's an old word.  For people like us."

Sky stared at an SUV a way's out from the hospital, trying to look unconcerned.

"Every community needs Napaka," I said.  "If you don't have Napaka, there's no spiritual balance.  Because it's a gift to be able to love someone from the same gender as you.  It means you can see things that other people can't.  That's why the tribe always used us as mediators."

Sky looked like he wanted to believe me, but didn't.

"I'm not lying to you," I said.  "You can go and ask Shaman Quick, or your own grandmother.  It's not the Native world that decided gay people are a disease.  That idea comes from the west.  If it wasn't for the west, you'd never have to be afraid of who you are."

Sky put his hand on my knee, shy emotions curling around his fingers.

"I don't want you to be afraid," I said.  "Not around me."  Was I babbling?  "I want to make you feel safe, no matter what's going on."

He hooked our ankles together.  He said,
I've got you.

He had me.  Somehow that was enough for him.  Somehow that was bigger than me, bigger than the planet we stood on.

Eventually Sky had to go home to cut firewood for his grandmother.  I worried about that, because he was a city kid--
my
city kid--and freakishly skinny; even when I promised to give him my old handsaw, I couldn't help imagining scenarios in which he lost control of the thing and decapitated himself.  I had to head home too, though, but for a different reason.  I went back to my bedroom and opened the display case next to my bed.  I heated a needle over a candle and got to work tattooing myself: a new chain link on my right leg, the forty-first addition, and hopefully the last one.  I had to treat people the way they deserved from now on.  I had to be the person Sky thought I was.

"I want to perform the Coyote Ceremony," I told Uncle Gabe that night.

He was sitting on the sofa with Rosa, the both of them hunched together to read the same newspaper article.  The both of them looked up at me, Uncle Gabriel faintly amused.

"I've never done it before," Uncle Gabriel said, lifting his reading glasses to scratch his face.  "I can't help you with that."

"Do you really think you need it?" Rosa asked.

I wanted to start over.  The wisdom of our elders said it was never too late to start over.

"I'm sure you'd need the Natsugant's permission," Uncle Gabriel said.  "But I don't know whether it would be a good idea to approach him out of the blue."

"Why not?" I asked, nonplussed.