My handwriting looks almost exactly like my mother's. I don't want to be like her, so I write for a full page trying out different handwriting. I mostly write about what a cheap bastard Derek is for buying the too-small diapers. I hope when he reads this, he feels like the shit he is.
The neighbor's dogs start up a ruckus, and then a few minutes later, I hear a truck pulling into the driveway. The neighbor's nearly a half mile away, but the sound travels through the valley and straight through the plywood walls of the add-on that's both my bedroom and the hallway to Bell's.
Because of the dogs, that means the vehicle didn't come from town, but from the other way. It's not Mom and Derek back early.
I turn off my light and huddle down inside my bed in the darkness. I hadn't noticed how cold my feet were until now. When your room's always cold, you wear three layers of socks and you try not to stop moving until you're snug in your bed, like a bug in a cocoon.
Someone knocks on the front door. Please go away, I pray.
They knock again.
Thoughts race through my head. It's the police, and something happened to my mother. There was an accident on the highway, and now she's dead and Derek will ship me off to foster care. My father's dead, and I'm an orphan. I know a girl at school who's an orphan, and she lives with a foster family. The family she's with now is pretty good, but not all of them are good. I've heard stories that make Derek seem not so bad, and that's saying a lot.
As I listen for another knock, I dig my fingernails into my palms. Maybe it's just someone lost, asking for directions. Ever since I was little, and Mom left me on my own when she went out, she told me not to answer the door. I'm fifteen now, and I don't feel much stronger than when I was ten. We don't have any guns in the house, on account of Derek's record, but there are knives in the kitchen, and an old golf club somewhere.
There's no more knocking, but the door opens. They have a key. I know I locked the door. I checked it three times.
Someone walks through the house, in heavy boots that clomp. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. The refrigerator door squeals as it opens.
“Aubrey?”
It's a boy's voice. Well, a man, I guess. Damion is twenty. Why's he here? He only comes over when Derek's home.
The boots come closer, until he's a darker shadow within my dark doorway. “Saw your light on,” he says, and then he turns to the side to drink half a bottle of beer at once. His belt buckle glints in the light leaking around from the hall.
“Come have a drink with me,” he says.
“They should be home soon,” I say from within my blankets.
“I came to see you.”
A strange type of warmth flushes over me. When he's been here before, he barely even looks at me. I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything. Moving slowly, I push the blankets back and get out of bed, grabbing my housecoat to pull on over my flannel pajamas.
Damion lets out a wolf whistle as I pull the tie tight around my waist.
“That's some nightie you got on. What are those, rabbits?”
I duck under his arm to get past him, and march straight for the kitchen. This part of the trailer is warmer, because of the wood-burning stove. My mother and Derek have been talking about spring arriving, like it's something that happens all at once on a certain date, like turning sweet sixteen.
“Grab me another while you're in there gettin' one for yourself,” Damion says.
“I'm not drinking. No way. I don't need that kinda trouble.” Damion's father, Derek, would tan my hide if he found out I snagged one of his precious beer.
Damion grabs a wooden kitchen chair and spins it around, so that he sits straddling it, his arm relaxed against the back.
“They're out for a date night,” I say.
He gazes up at me with intense concentration, and says, “I know. They won't be back for hours. And I won't tell them anything.” His eyes rove across my body. “Not a word.”
Chapter Ten
SAWYER JONES
That attempt to kiss Aubrey on Thursday afternoon damn near cost me my life.
I was riding home, mindful of the misting rain turning the roads into a hazard. I missed the turn to go to my house, probably because it was the last place I wanted to go. The damp was setting in, but the rain hadn't gotten serious yet. I decided not to loop back, but to keep going—get out on the highway and clear my head. Something about the air whizzing past made the thoughts rinse clean and pure, leaving me only with what I needed.
What did I need?
Aubrey.
Maybe I didn't need her, but I wanted her, right from the top of my head to the soles of my feet and everywhere in between.
I hadn't been with very many girls since Janine, and she and I ended well over a year ago. I wished that when we'd made love, I would have known it was the last time, but you never know if you're the guy. And you never see the end coming.
Janine was one of those girls who always said she wasn't hungry, but you could hear her stomach growling. Whenever we got naked, I had to be careful to keep the lights off, and to keep her focused on me, or better yet, her eyes closed. If she caught sight of my thighs right next to hers, she would get upset by how big hers looked in comparison.
Through my eyes, Janine had a beautiful body, but she didn't see herself through my eyes. I always told her that a healthy body that was free of disease or injury was the greatest gift a person could have. In retrospect, that was not the right thing to say. I should have told her she was a goddess. I wouldn't have been lying, either—I would have gladly worshiped her body. I thought it was an unspoken truth she knew. I hadn't considered how important it was for girls to hear those positive words.
When Janine told me she'd booked an appointment for liposuction, I'd actually laughed. I thought that was just her funny excuse for eating half the fries off my plate, as usual.
The lipo was no joke. They drew lines on her body with felt markers, and then they put her under and suctioned the fat away from around her thighs, and that round part beneath her navel that I liked to rest my hand on when we were in bed.
After the surgery, she had terrible pain, and took enough pills that she had me worried she might not wake up. I slept over at her place, but on the couch so I wouldn't see her na**d until she was all healed up.
When she finally did invite me into her bedroom, I was giddy with excitement. Being around her and smelling her skin but not being able to touch her had made me crazy. She made me sit on a chair and watch as she stripped for me. It was a weekend afternoon, raining and cold outside, and her roommate was out shopping. As she took off her shirt, I started to feel nervous, and it wasn't just my hard-on. She was looking at me funny.