Perfected (Entangled Teen) (13 page)

Penn started to sing.

His voice moved gently over the words, singing about stars shining and the hush of love being whispered on the breeze. He sang about the way it felt to miss someone, an ache, a longing. He sang about dreaming of the one you love, about how even if you can’t be together, at least you can still dream.

I stood rooted in place. His voice was raspy and vulnerable and sweeter than I ever would have imagined. I sank down onto the floor, staring up at him as he sang, his eyes closed, his head tipped slightly away from me. I could almost see myself reflected in his face, the joy and the pain that moved through the center of me when I played, like a knife cutting me open—not to injure, only to expand, to make more room inside for the music.

When the song was over his fingers lingered on the strings and his eyes stayed closed. Finally he opened them and lowered the guitar down onto the bed.

The room was silent, except for our breathing.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap,” Penn said. His eyes glistened and he looked away.

I stood. At the door, I turned to look at him one more time, wishing there was some way I could tell him that I knew how he felt, wishing I could tell him not to let his father bully him into giving up his music. Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I darted back to the bed and placed a soft kiss at the side of his mouth. His lips opened ever so slightly and I stepped away, hoping he couldn’t see the fear and hope in my eyes before I left the room, shutting the door quietly behind me.

Seventeen

I
lay in bed a few nights later, staring up at the dark ceiling. In my mouth I still held the taste of one of Ruby’s butterscotch candies. She must have been sneaking them into my room when I was out, because every night since the congressman had brought me back, I’d found one waiting for me on my pillow, the sweetest little gift wrapped in shiny gold foil.

I licked the last bit of sugar from my lips and I tried to stop thinking about Penn. But I couldn’t. He’d infested my thoughts.

The cool cement of my patio was familiar beneath my feet. I hadn’t gotten out of bed at night since I got back, but it felt good to be out again, roaming the house with the lights all turned off.

Maybe what Miss Gellner had said was true. Maybe we were so much luckier than all those people that had to slave away, working so hard to buy themselves homes, and cars, and food. They certainly hadn’t looked happy, out there in the real world. Any one of them would have been grateful to get to enjoy all this beauty piled before me.

Penn appeared at the kitchen door. I hadn’t seen him much since the afternoon in his room, and my heart skipped a beat seeing him now.

“I was up, too,” he said. “I saw you out my window.” He pointed up to his room as if I’d still be able to see him there with the curtains pulled wide, looking out.

The courtyard was quiet. This hushed time of night, after all the lights in the house finally went out, was the only time during my day when I didn’t worry whether I was doing things the right way—the way Miss Gellner taught me to do them.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he said, coming to stand beside me. “I have something I want to show you.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“What is it?”

He didn’t speak at first, just pulled me down the hill toward the orchard. “I really wanted to do something for you. To make you feel better after…you know.” He stopped talking for a second, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “Anyway, I guess I just wanted to give you something.”

“You don’t need to get me anything,” I said.

“Good.” He laughed. “Because I didn’t.”

“Then what—”

We reached the gate to the garden and he swung it open. “You’ll see,” he said, leading me inside. His teen glowed white in the moonlight as a wide grin spread across his face. It was such a beautiful smile. I stared up at him a moment longer before I followed his gaze past the tangle of weeds toward the far end of the garden where the round face of the moon rippled across the pond.

“I cleaned it out,” Penn said, turning his smile on me. “Now you don’t have to put your feet in pond scum.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t find the words to thank him. I stepped closer to the ebony stretch of water, kneeling down on one of the smooth slabs of stone that surrounded the pond. It was beautiful. Even in the dark I could see how different it looked. The debris that had lined the surface of the water was completely gone. Now the still water shone like glass. The moss that had coated the walls was wiped clean, revealing the same pale stonework that edged the pond.

I drew my nightgown up around my knees and sat down, dipping my feet in the water.

“So I take it you like it?” Penn asked, lowering himself down next to me.

“Yes.” I nodded. “Penn… It’s so… I don’t know how to—”

He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

It was the perfect gift, made even more wonderful by the mere fact that he was sitting beside me. He clasped his hands in his lap for a minute while we both stared out across the water. A long-legged bug danced across the surface, sending a few small ripples dancing in our direction. When the water was still again, he moved his hands from his lap, letting them rest by his side.

“Why don’t you want to study political science the way your father wants you to?” I asked.

Penn slid his hand closer to mine until our fingers brushed. “It doesn’t interest me. If I’m going to spend my whole life doing something, I want it to be something I love, not just something I tolerate. My dad thinks that just because he loves something, everyone else should feel the same way about it.”

“Maybe he just wants to see you doing something important,” I said. “Something that matters.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think it’s more important to make yourself happy, or to make other people happy?” I asked. I’d never imagined that the two didn’t go hand in hand, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe sometimes it was one or the other.

Penn glanced at me sideways. “What’s with all the deep questions?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. I couldn’t tell him that I’d always thought my happiness depended on how well I served my masters. Their happiness was supposed to be my own. But no one had ever told me that I might want something all for myself.

He turned his face up to the night sky and then down into the pond. “Do you want to get in?” he asked, nodding his head toward the dark water.

“I will if you answer my question.”

“Promise?”

I nodded.

He peeled off his shirt, sliding down into the water, and I swallowed back the thrill that bubbled up inside me, trying not to stare at the way his muscles moved as he swept his arms across the surface.

“What was the question again?” Penn asked, pushing off of the wall into the center of the pond.

“Is it more important to—”

“To make yourself happy or to make other people happy,” Penn said, finishing my sentence. “I remember. I was just kidding.”

He stood silently, and I thought he might not answer me after all. When he did speak his words were quiet, nearly lost in the water surrounding him. “I’d like to believe my dad really is interested in making other people happy,” he said. “Maybe when he first got into politics that’s what he was thinking about. I don’t know. It was when I was really little, so it’s not like I really remember.”

He waded back over to the edge, propping his elbows on the stone next to my legs.

“So maybe I’m jaded or something,” he went on. “Like I haven’t really seen anyone who does something to help someone else without expecting to get something in return. With my dad, it’s all about the constituents. What’s going to make them vote for him again, you know? It’s not really about what’s best, or right.”

I rested my hand on his wet arm. “You’re talking about your father, not you.”

He shook his head but he didn’t respond. After taking a deep breath, he dove underneath the water. In the dark I could hardly see him. I counted to ten, to twenty, to thirty, but still he stayed beneath the surface. Finally, after the blood had started pounding in my ears, he popped up and wiped his face.

“I thought I might find the answer down there,” he said, smiling. “But I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “If you don’t answer, then I guess I don’t have to get in.”

He stroked smoothly across the length of the pond on his back until he reached the other side.

“Why can’t it be both?” he asked. “Why can’t I make other people happy and be happy myself? Why does it have to be a sacrifice? You can’t tell me music doesn’t make people happy. Maybe not people like my dad.”

A warm breeze blew over the water, whipping my hair around my face and bringing goose bumps to my arms. Penn was right. Why did it have to be a sacrifice? For him. For me. Why did we have to choose? Maybe we just needed to find the right people to make happy.

“Besides,” he went on. “Just one more year and I won’t have to worry about pleasing him anymore. He can’t control me my entire life. The second I’m an adult, I’m out of here.”

He dove back down, streaking beneath the surface like a silver fish. When he popped up next to me, he was smiling.

“That’s my answer, like it or not.” The water dripped down his face, but he didn’t make a move to wipe it away. “Now you have to keep your promise. You’re coming in.”

“I’d get in, but I’m not wearing a swimsuit,” I told him, scooting back from the edge of the pond. “I guess I could run back to the house…”

“Don’t use those lame excuses with me,” Penn said. “You can swim in your underwear for all I care. Just get in.”

My stomach gave a little flip. I could tell he didn’t really think I’d do it. Fear and excitement tied themselves together inside me. I’d never imagined that every move I made didn’t have to revolve around someone else’s notion of what I should do. If it was all right for Penn to choose his own happiness over his father’s, maybe I could choose my own happiness, too.

My arms and legs shook as I got to my feet and pulled my nightgown over my head and dropped it down in a pile at my feet.

“Wait. What are you doing?” Penn asked, his eyes wide. “I wasn’t serious.”

The thin satin camisole and panties that I wore underneath my nightgown did little to hide my body, but I didn’t feel like worrying. If I was going to get in the water, it was going to be now, not five minutes from now, not ten minutes from now.

Now.

The cold night air settled across my skin and I wrapped my arms around my body. “I still don’t know how to swim.” I said, looking down at him. My knees were already knocking together, but it was too late to try to steady them.

Penn grabbed onto the side with one hand and with the other reached up to me. His face was serious when he spoke. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I stepped closer to the edge and sat back down so my feet hung into the pond. The water was cool, but the chill that ran up my spine had nothing to do with the cold. Penn moved closer to me. He reached for my waist and I was reminded of the last time his wet hands had touched my skin this way, in the pool with Ruby that first day when he’d pulled me from the water. I’d been so scared then, but now a strange sense of calm settled over me.

“Hold onto me,” he said, pulling me into the water.

I wrapped my arms around his slippery neck as my whole body slid along his. Beneath the water, his legs felt warm against mine. In the quiet, each one of his breaths was a tiny puff against my face.

I thought back to that first night I’d seen him in the pool, swimming with his friend. And now here I was, the lucky one, the girl who got to wrap her arms around him in the water.

“All right, I’m going to swim to the other side, okay? Just keep your arms around my neck and your head up.”

With a few powerful strokes he pulled us across the water. When he stopped, I straightened my legs beneath me. As soon as I felt the smooth stone press against my feet, I let go of his neck, already missing the feel of his skin.

He stood, looking down at me, and I wondered if I saw a bit of regret in his eyes as well.

“That was good.” He smiled. “You didn’t panic at all. Now the first thing we’re going to teach you how to do is float on your back. Have you ever done that before?”

I shook my head. It was too hard to find my breath.

Penn wiped the water from his face. “All right, I want you to lean back into me. I’m going to hold you up, so don’t worry.” I could tell he was trying to sound confident, but his voice shook slightly.

“You aren’t nervous, are you?”

He smiled. “Well, yeah, maybe I am.”

“But you’re the one who knows how to swim.”

He smiled softly. “It’s not the water that’s making me nervous, Ella. It’s you.”

It’s you.
His words reverberated through my head, ringing from ear to ear. I turned around, hoping the moonlight hid my blush.

“Okay, now lean back and kick off the bottom. Try to bring your hips up to the surface,” he said again, guiding me down into the water.

I let go. My arms and legs floated up to the surface.

“Relax. I’ve got you.”

His gaze roamed my body. Maybe I should have been worried about the way my camisole clung to my figure, hardly even fabric anymore as much as a second skin, but I couldn’t bother to care. All I could think about was the way Penn’s hand cupped the back of my head while the other brushed along the length of my spine, finally stopping in the middle of my back. The water sloshed around my ears, making the world seem lost, and far away, as if the only things that existed were Penn, the night, and me.

He leaned his face closer to mine. “Okay, I’m going to slowly let go. You just stay relaxed. See if you can stay afloat.”

I waited for his face to recede, for his hands to move off my body, but if anything he seemed to come closer, those beautiful eyes swimming above me, staring down into my own. My body lifted, weightless, as if I was floating high above the world, Penn’s touch the only thing holding me there amidst the stars.

“Ella…” His voice trailed off, his breath hot against my cheek.

I wanted him to lean closer so there wasn’t any air separating us. I wanted to close my eyes and breathe him in.

I wanted it so badly the
want
scared me.

His lips brushed mine and my body stiffened. My arms beat the water at my sides, reaching out for something to grab onto as my feet searched for solid ground.

“I’m sorry,” I said, standing. “I…I have to go.”

I waded to the other side and climbed out, leaving Penn standing alone in the dark water behind me.