Then, quiet.
She lay there, counting whatever she could: her breaths, her heartbeats. She willed time to pass even as its passage frightened her.
She imagined different scenarios—going to meet Matthew, staying in bed, not getting caught, getting caught.
She told herself repeatedly that she was not waiting for midnight, that she wasn’t stupid and reckless enough to sneak out.
Midnight came. She heard the last little click of the hand on her clock.
She heard a birdcall through her window, a little trill of sound that wasn’t quite real.
Matthew.
She climbed out of bed and dressed warmly.
Every creak of the ladder terrified her, made her freeze in place. Every footstep on the floor did the same thing, so that it took her forever to reach the door. She stepped into her rubber boots and slipped into a down vest.
Holding her breath, she unclicked the lock, slid the bar latch, and opened the door.
Night air rushed in to greet her.
She could see Matthew standing on the crest of the hill above the beach, his outline against a pink and amethyst sky.
Leni closed the door and ran to him. He took her hand and together they ran through the grassy, wet yard, slipped over the rise, and down the stairs to the beach, where Matthew had laid out a blanket and set big rocks on each of the four corners.
She lay down. He did the same. Leni felt the warmth of his body along hers and it made her feel safe even with all the risk they were taking. Normal kids would probably be talking nonstop, or laughing. Something. Maybe drinking beer or smoking pot or making out, but Leni and Matthew both knew they weren’t ordinary kids for whom sneaking out was expected. The crazy wildness of her father’s anger hung in the air between them.
She could hear the sea washing toward them and the spruce trees creaking in the murmur of a spring breeze. A pale ambient light shone on everything, illuminated the lavender night sky. Matthew pointed out constellations, told her their stories.
The world around them felt different, magical, a place of infinite possibility instead of hidden dangers.
He turned onto his side. They were nose to nose now; she could feel his breathing on her face, feel a strand of his hair across her cheek.
“I talked to Ms. Rhodes,” he said. “She said you could still get into U of A. Think of it, Len. We could be together, away from all of this.”
“It’s expensive.”
“They have scholarships and low-interest loans. We could do it. Totally.”
Leni dared—just for a second—to imagine it. A life. Her life. “I could apply,” she said, but even as she heard her dream given voice, she thought of the price. Mama would be the one to pay it. How could Leni live with that?
But was she supposed to be trapped forever by her mother’s choice and her father’s rage?
He slipped a necklace around her throat, fumbled to clasp it in the dark. “I carved it,” he said.
She felt it, a heart made of bone, hanging on a metal chain as thin as cobweb.
“Come to college with me, Len,” he said.
She touched his face, felt how different his skin was from hers, rougher, whiskery here and there.
He pressed his body to hers, hip to hip. They kissed; she felt his breathing turn ragged.
She hadn’t known until now how love could erupt into existence like the big bang theory and change everything in you and everything in the world. She believed in Matthew suddenly, in the possibility of him, of them. The way she believed in gravity or that the earth was round. It was crazy. Crazy. When he kissed her, she glimpsed a whole new world, a new Leni.
She drew back. The depth of this new feeling was terrifying. Real love grew slowly, didn’t it? It couldn’t be this fast, like a crashing together of planets.
Yearning. She knew what it felt like now. Yearning. An old word, from Jane Eyre’s world, and as new to Leni as this second.
“Leni! Leni!”
Her father’s voice. Yelling.
Leni jackknifed up. Oh, God. “Stay here.” She scrambled up and ran for the weathered steps. She rushed up their zigzagged path, her down vest flapping open, her boots clomping on the chicken-wire-covered steps. “Here I am, Dad,” she yelled, out of breath, waving her arms.
“Thank God,” he said. “I got up to take a leak and saw that your boots were gone.”
Boots. That was her mistake. Such a small thing.
She pointed skyward. Did he notice how hard she was breathing? Could he hear the thud of her heart? “Look at the sky. It’s so beautiful.”
“Ah.”
She stood beside him, trying to calm down. He put an arm around her shoulders. She felt claimed by the hold. “Summer is magical, isn’t it?”