Painted Boots (4 page)

8

WHEN I WAS
younger I thought the month following September was called Halloween.  It was my parents’ fault, really.  They were into ghosts and goblins and fear.  By kindergarten, when Mom tore September from the big calendar on our fridge, I knew to start snooping for fake eyeballs and gummy worms.  At night I’d check my bed for rubber snakes.  I’d practically stroke-out working up the nerve to peek into my closet before turning out the light.  One year Dad put a gnarly stuffed scarecrow in there; another, plastic insects were hidden in my clothes.

In those days
I’d race home from grade school after class, dreading, but at the same time hoping, it was the day my parents had turned our house into a haunted wonderland.  I never knew which day would be
the
day I’d find my house creeped-out to the rafters.  The suspense almost killed me.  It was worse than Christmas.  I loved it.

L
ast year mummies and zombies and guts hung from the eaves.  Fake bloody arms and broken legs grew in the soil of our autumn-weary flower beds.  Our walkway was a tangle of webs, the strands imbedded with gooey spiders and take-it-if-you-dare treats.  Old mason jars, filled with fake hearts and fingers and ears, were stacked in the windows facing the street.  Purple and orange lights dripped from the roof; a smoke machine belched dry-ice mist across our porch; rubber rats crept along the stairs and railings.  I was sixteen.  Yet the moment I saw our house I squealed like a five-year-old.

But
this year every day of October has been as ordinary as the one before—and today is Halloween.  If Dad’s new khaki-and-glasses demeanor is a reflection of what’s going on inside his head, I’m pretty sure he’ll spend the day at work.  I’ll come home to the same old house I’m leaving.  There won’t be any pumpkins on the porch.  There won’t be gore in the gardens.  Dad won’t dangle bats from the windows or clutter the lawn with minions.  I guess I could have done something—a witch poster or a skeleton cut from paper plates, a fake bloody toe in Dad’s bathroom drawer.  But I didn’t.  It’s too heartbreaking to think of ghosts, now that Mom’s become one.

And
Halloween is only the beginning.  Next comes Thanksgiving and Christmas and my birthday.  Then it’s New Year’s Eve and Valentines, Easter and Dad’s birthday, Mom’s birthday and Memorial Day weekend, and the new one.  June third.  The day Mom died.

My room
blurs into a watery mess.  I shouldn’t think of her right now.  I shouldn’t think about the holidays.  I need to get ready for school.  I haven’t had breakfast, or gathered up my books.  But I can’t help it.

Mom
made holidays shine.  She filled our house with guests.  She made sure the special people were always there—the people back in Portland who aren’t coming to visit this year because they’re all from Mom’s side of the family—her sister Marti and Uncle Bob, her half-brother Joe and my cousins, Gabby and Griff.

I miss Mom’s cooking
.  I miss the way she made any meal into a feast.  By this time last year our house smelled of sugar and baking bread, cooked apples and pumpkin pies, fudge and cookies and home-made caramel.

Dad
yells, “Hurry up, Aspen!  I can’t be late today!”

I flop across my bed
.  Minutes pass, then a half hour, and all I’ve done is cry.  I ache for Mom’s arm round my shoulder.  I miss the sound of her voice, so much I almost hear it.  Dad knocks softly on my door.  I hold my breath and wait for our creaking stairway to confirm he’s gone downstairs.

I can’t
tell him how Mom is fading away.  I don’t want to hear those words spoken out loud.  It terrifies me to realize that the longer she’s dead, the more I’m forgetting: her smell, her laugh, the way she loved me so completely.  I wish I’d said ‘I love you’ just one last time.  I wish I’d said ‘Good-bye.’

I’m sorry
for that, Mom.  I’m sorry.

I nibble on the breakfast Dad made for me—toast and apple slices—though I’m not hungry.  I’m late for school and I’ve made Dad late, too.  But he drives like he always does, anticipating the traffic lights and keeping five miles under the speed limit.

“
Maybe we could get a second car,” I say.

Dad
glances at me and frowns.  “I’ll do the school driving for now.” From his tone I know I’ve made him think of Mom, which makes sense.  I mean, I’m thinking of her, too.  I want to talk about her, but there’s a sticky kind of silence in the space between us, like someone has peeled back the Jeep’s roof and filled it to the brim with molasses.

As we near the school
I notice Kyle’s truck, parked sideways across two corner stalls at the edge of the lot.  I haven’t seen his shiny black clean-as-clean Chevy since the day I sat in it, crying like the biggest baby ever.

Dad stops at the curb and idles
, waiting for me to get out.  “Cool old truck,” he says.

I munch on my apples.

It’s been four weeks since I poured my heart against Kyle’s sleeve.  Four weeks since we gave each other a full body hug on the front porch of my house.  That day had me feeling so good about things: about Mom and life, about going on.  But since that day Kyle and I have hardly spoken.

I don’t get it.

He frowns through class, with his head down. No more poetic insights.  No thoughtful answers.  When we cross paths in the hall he says, “Hey Aspen,” and keeps on walking, pretending he can’t see the questions burning in my eyes.  It’s pathetic, but the more he ignores me the more I listen to his music on YouTube, feeling stupid for telling him about my mom, stupid for falling apart in his arms.  I hate how inside I seem broken, like telling Kyle the truth has come back to mock me, shredding my new-found happiness with the same precision a magpie exhibits for road kill.

A stray vampire wanders by and Dad asks,
“You didn’t know to dress up today?”

“
I am dressed up.”  I smooth the black warmth of the wool dress I’m wearing.  It’s a simple cut: straight and tight as Saran Wrap.  The sleeves rest at my knuckles, the hem three inches below my knees, the deep scoop neck a perfect showcase for Mom’s looping strands of beads.  I even painted the heels of my boots black, just for the occasion.  It helps, I think, that I’ve been crying.  My face is washed of color.  My eyes feel too big.

“Lily Munster?” he asks.

“Who?”

“An old TV character.”
  Dad raises his eyebrows.  “It was a guess.”

“I’m invisible,” I say.  “You know. 
Nothing to draw attention.  Get it?”

“Not really.”  Dad drums his finge
rs across his steering wheel. “How about grabbing a snack after school?” he asks.  “Or going out to dinner?  I’ve failed miserably at Halloween. I feel bad.  We should at least shop for candy and give it away to the massing hordes.”

“
Gillette doesn’t have the population to mass.  Let alone horde.”

“
Yeah.  You’re right.  But we could sit on the porch in rockers with candy bowls in our laps.  Let’s get our favorite kind.  That way we can eat it when nobody shows.”

I push my door open
.

“
Aspen,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Are things . . . okay?”

“
Things are fine, Dad.”

“
I’ve noticed you don’t talk.”

“
That makes two of us.”

“
You were always chatty.  Always huggy.  Until lately.”

“
Yeah.  I’m just . . . busy.  Senior year.  Homework and stuff.”

Dad leans across the
console between the front seats.  He grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze.  Then he lets me go.  “I miss her too,” he says.  Something catches in his throat and he coughs.  “It’s hard, being without her.  She did so much.  I don’t know if I know how to be me, now that she’s gone.  I don’t know what to do.  But you have your whole life, baby, spreading out in front of you.  I want to be here for you.  I want to help.  I’ll figure it out, I will.  I just need a little time.  I love you, you know.”

“I know
, Dad,” I say, and slide out of the car.  But I don’t know anything, anymore.  I don’t know anything at all.  Maybe that’s why I don’t say ‘I love you’ back.

9

I’D SORT OF
forgotten, until Gwen loops her arm through mine and says, “Come on divine thin thing,” that the last two hours of school are Monsters Stomp!—the annual Tower County High Halloween dance
.
  I’m not really in the mood to stay but I don’t want to go home, either.  Not that I have a way home until three-fifteen, unless I walk.

My dress is so tight I’m forced to take two steps for every one of Gwen’s. 
I run alongside her, listening as my boots beat their rhythm above her endless chatter.  She steers me through the halls, into the gym, and toward a corner marked ‘The Ghoul’s Lounge.’  There she deposits me with seven other girls, all of us crammed around a card table holding an assortment of sodas.  The girls are loudly debating who is dressed as what and who is hot and why.

My thoughts go straight to
Kyle and how I told him he’s hot.  I roll my eyes, feeling like an idiot all over again, and lean away from the conversation.  No one seems to notice, but it doesn’t bother me.  I’m comfortable on the fringe of big groups.  I don’t feel out of place.  I fiddle with the beads of my mother’s necklace and contemplate the decorations.

Mom hated how I sometimes h
ang back.  When I went out with friends her parting words were often
Get involved.
  She always told me
Just join in.
  I can almost hear her voice, happy but at the same time impatient, urging me to
Find my place
.

“
Assssppeeeen.”

I freeze. 
I’m not sure if I heard my name for real—it was softly spoken.  Whispered, even.  Maybe I imagined it, but I don’t know.  It isn’t normal for my hair to prickle on the back of my neck.  And Gwen’s eyes seem glued to something over my left shoulder.  She’s got a goofy expression on her face.  I turn slowly round.

Kyle’s there
—or at least I think it’s Kyle.  A rubbery axe straddles his skull and gummy stitches streak his face.  His hair is dusted white—with flour, probably.  Red paint has dried in drips along his temples and neck and formed red trails down his chin.  It’s all over the collar of his shirt.  He looks hideous.  If it wasn’t for his eyes I wouldn’t recognize him at all.

He pulls a fake set of decayed teeth from his mouth
—a definite improvement.  “Did you forget to dress up?” he asks.

“No.  I’m invisible.”

“It isn’t working,” Gwen says.

“Dance with me,
girl.”  Kyle shoves the teeth into his pocket, wipes his fingers on his jeans and reaches for me.  I think he’s dipped his fingertips in red and black nail polish.

Everyone
at my table crows “Whoo-hooo!”  Except me.  I’m too busy throwing all my unspoken questions at him—things like,
Where have you been
? and
Why have you avoided me since the morning we spent in your truck
?  But I have to admit, Kyle’s wheels are turning, too.  His words are playful enough, but I don’t see happiness in his eyes. There he’s serious.  Careful, even.

“
What are you?” I ask.

“
Axe-murdered zombie,” he says.

“
I should tell you invisible people don’t dance well.  Especially with the undead.”

“I should tell
you
zombies are worse dancers than invisible girls who think they aren’t good dancers.”  Kyle shoves his hand toward me.  “I’m the one with everything to worry about,” he says.

“
Really.  And why’s that?”

He pulls the rubber ax from his head
and tosses it to the table.  A cloud of white dust drifts to his shoulders.  “I’m about to look like a goon, dancing with myself.”

A genuine smile spreads across my face
and then—I don’t know how he did it.  I mean, Kyle just earned my forgiveness.  He made me laugh.

“You never laugh,” Gwen says.

Kyle tugs me to my feet.  We hold hands all the way to the dance floor, his grip so tight it’s like he’ll never let me go.

The song is slow, with a lot of country twang.  Kyle
wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me close enough that I’m aware of the muscles in his legs, feeling them shift as we sway back and forth.  He tucks his head next to mine and says, “I can explain.”

“
You’ve been ignoring me.”

“
I had to, girl.”

“
Not an explanation.”

He asks,
“What do you know about Em Harrelson?” and I pull away fast, like he jabbed me with a pin.

My eyes sting with tears.  My face grows hot. 
I’ve been missing this guy.  At the same time, it’s like he broke my heart.  I want answers.  I want to know what happened.  Not talk about Em.

Kyle steps toward me.  He takes my hand in his.  H
e slowly draws me close, again.  “I said that wrong,” he whispers.  “I’m sorry.”

I
take a deep breath.  “Em is a bad sliver I can’t dig out.  Every day she waits until we’re in the most crowded part of the school so she can yell a fake guess about whose clothes I’m wearing.  I don’t want to talk about her.  And anyway, word is you two broke up.”

“I broke up with her
a month ago.  But it’s been rough.”

“If you still love her, why’d you end it?”

“Love her?”  Kyle shifts.  His body stiffens.  “I don’t even like her.  I haven’t liked her from day one.  I wish I’d never met that girl.”

I glance up, holding his Caribbean gaze. 
“You know you aren’t making sense, right?  I mean, Gwen told me you’ve been with Em for almost two years.”

He tucks his head next to mine, again.
  “I’m not denying it’s complicated.”

M
y lips brush against the red paint dried into the cotton weave of his shirt.  My nose tingles.  If I’m not careful, I’ll cry.  “All I know is that I spilled my heart to you and you’ve ignored me ever since.  Now we’re having our first conversation in a month and it’s about your old girlfriend.  I’m not connecting the dots.”

Kyle
’s hold on me tightens, like he thinks I’m a flight risk.  The palms of his hands grow sweaty, especially the one holding mine.  “I didn’t think it . . . I didn’t think things would be so difficult.  I don’t want to ignore you.  You have to believe that.  I want us to be friends.  More than friends.  I can explain about the last few weeks.  I’m askin’ that you give me the chance.”  He straightens his back until he’s looking down into my eyes.  “You gotta know, girl.  I see us as full-fledged life-long lovers.”

I
bite my lower lip and squeeze Kyle’s hand.  I had felt that way too, in his truck.  “All right,” I say.  “I’m listening.”

His eyebrows pinch toward the center of his forehead. 
“Not here, Aspen.  We can’t talk about anything here.  Come hang with me.  On Saturday.  I’ll pick you up at eight.  I can make things right between us.  I swear.”

“Are you going to ignore me until then?
  I mean, it’s only Tuesday.”

“I have to
.”

“But why?”

Kyle shakes his head.  For the rest of the song all we do is dance.  When the music stops he whispers, “I’ll be there, eight o’clock
.
”
 
Then he walks away.