She drew the wool blanket to her neck and turned off the lamp. She’d obeyed Isaac’s instructions and closed the door tight. It couldn’t have been a minute before something heavy landed against it with a low whump. She heard it shifting on the other side, its hair—for she assumed it was the dog—rubbing against the carved door.
“Rufus?” she whispered.
The motion stopped. A remarkable quiet; even the wind abruptly died. She waited a moment, then rolled onto her side. The rubbing started again, but only briefly. Then, as if the creature had been waiting for the perfect pitch of silence, there rose from the hall a long and mournful sigh.
* * *
—
THOUGH EXHAUSTED, Evangeline couldn’t sleep. She sensed Daniel in the house, her eyes drifting to the ceiling, certain his room had been up there.
After their first meeting, she’d seen Daniel once more. She was on her table in the park the next night, wondering if the boys would appear, a possibility that had set up a confusion of wanting and not-wanting. She forced her eyes across the water to the soft blue islands in the distance, trying to shut down all that unnecessary longing. But the glittering Sound seemed nothing more than a thinly painted mural compared to the dazzle of heat that rushed through her when she pictured the boys.
She examined the sky. Still light, but everything would change in the next hour. A purple-tinged exhaustion would seep into the upper reaches of brightness, drift lower until it met the dark line of the horizon. An eye closing against the safety of the day. She decided to head back to the empty trailer. Best to enter that place before the night filled its corners with all that can menace a mind.
She had turned away from the water and was about to slip from the table when Daniel strode from the black trees. Even without Jonah to show him to advantage, he radiated beauty: tight through well-muscled shoulders, loose through narrow hips, a worn leather belt riding his movements. This was a boy who, though annoyingly full of himself, could protect a girl if he wanted, could protect her no problem at all.
Again he carried a paper sack that he set on the table. “Hey,” he said, pulling out a beer and popping it open for her.
She took a swig and leaned back. “Hey.”
He opened another and joined her on the table, his thigh casually touching hers. He began talking away as if they were old friends, as if this happened every night, just the two of them sitting in the park, shooting the shit.
He’d spent the day at football camp. The new coach was a “kick-ass guy,” and Daniel was glad they’d finally brought in someone who understood “the importance of discipline.” No one took the game as seriously as Daniel did. They pissed him off, “that bunch of wusses.” He was the only one who’d head to the gym after practice—could she believe that?—but it was their loss, because you got out of things what you put in. As he spoke, he guzzled a couple of beers, crushed the empties in a powerful hand and tossed them into the bag.
Evangeline kept her focus on the horizon, nodding and muttering agreement here and there. She wasn’t interested in sports, especially not football, but was struck by his passion, aroused by an intensity she imagined turned toward her. True, there was a lot of judgment in him. The boy was arrogant as hell. Ugly edges. But that was a given, wasn’t it? If anywhere there existed something pure, she’d never found it.
They fell silent a moment, and then he turned to her. “You want to grab some pizza?”
She hadn’t eaten since midmorning, not since she’d snagged an apple fritter from under a plastic-domed plate in a neighborhood grocery. She was dying for something with meat.
“Sounds good,” she said. She searched her pockets as if expecting to find something there. “Sorry, must have left my money at home.”
He smirked a little, said it’d be on him.
As they headed to his car—a Ford sedan she guessed was his dad’s—the thought of going to a restaurant, even a hole-in-the-wall pizza place, walking straight in the front door and sitting down like a normal person, not having to sneak around and worry about getting caught, was so pleasant that Evangeline brushed up against him and let him take her hand. True, she sort of hated Daniel’s handsomeness, his self-aggrandizing stories, his assumption that of course she would want to be with him, but she found herself looking forward to how his small-town celebrity—for she had no doubt of this—would shine on her.
Daniel drove the mile or so to Watertown Pizza, and though there were plenty of spots in front, he parked around the corner on a narrow side street. She opened the door to hop out, but he said, “Wait here. I’ll only be a minute. Pepperoni okay?”
When he returned, he said he knew a perfect place to eat it and headed out of town, the smell of the pizza so intoxicating Evangeline grew sick with desire for it. He drove straight toward her place, and she half wondered if the boys had followed her home the night before. But a few blocks before her road, he turned down a wooded street with a NO OUTLET sign and parked at the end. He handed her a blanket and lantern, then grabbed the pizza and the last cans of beer.
She’d done plenty of trail walking since moving to Port Furlong but hadn’t discovered this one. As they moved into the woods, the path grew narrow. Saplings—ten, twelve feet tall—leaned over the trail, blocked the last of the evening light. Daniel kept stooping to avoid branches, each time grabbing and holding them back for Evangeline. The foliage grew so dense it was hard to see. She clicked on the lantern, a battery-operated job that lit the undersides of entwined limbs, and they pressed on another few minutes.
Then the trail opened up and they made what became their final turn.
* * *
—
NOW, LYING IN DANIEL’S HOUSE, Evangeline felt the weight of him above her, and from the dark center of herself a breath rose as loud and pressurized as it had been that warm September night.
12
Day of My Death
The wind is still rattling that rake around, but I barely hear it. I’m using everything in me trying not to think of Red. I have to open up space for other things, because all those tangled feelings with Daniel, the ones that led to this night, started years before I met her. Love, shame, jealousy, pity. Name an emotion, any emotion, and I guarantee it lived somewhere in that space between Daniel and me.
Red floats up again—that girl with her pale skin and wild eyes. This time, I place her on a raft, let her drift to the shadows. And it works, this sailing out of sight. As soon as the brightness of her hair disappears, I’m watching myself at fourteen.
It’s cool and fresh outside, but my room turns sticky with heat, fills with the sulfurous aroma of the paper mill south of town. Mostly we didn’t smell it. But when the trade winds from Mexico or the Antarctic or wherever blow just right, there it is, and we remember. It’s always spewing its foul odors, only usually in someone else’s direction, so it’s no concern to us. I’m in my back lot, and there’s Daniel walking out of that stench across his field on an August afternoon. Rufus is loping at his side. The dog flops onto his back, switches his hips one way, then the other, kicking his feet in a wild-assed jig, probably thinking the smell comes from the dead lawn and there’s no better heaven than a good wallow in a rotten-egg stink. I’d call my dog, Brody, but he’s inside where it’s cooler. Just as well. He’s moving slower these days, and Rufus plays pretty rough.