A desk had appeared in her room a week back, and Evangeline settled at it then, proud of not delaying. Only she couldn’t find a pencil and decided there might be one in her old backpack. She fished through its foul pockets, snagging months-old candy wrappers and ratty socks, a small flashlight with corroded batteries, a leaky pen.
One pocket was left unexamined. She knew it didn’t contain a pencil, but she unzipped it and retrieved the filthy bracelet. It lay along the lifeline of her palm as she ran a fingertip over the crooked J. She took it to the bathroom and placed it in a sink of hot water, watched as mud seeped from its knots.
She didn’t worry she’d wash Jonah out of it. He had promised that she never could.
* * *
—
AFTER THE EVENING WITH THE FROG, she hadn’t expected another gift from Jonah. Given her abrupt departure, she hadn’t even expected to see the boy himself. But as she approached the park the next night, his truck was in the spot where she’d last seen it, and she did an odd little skip, happy despite herself.
She had been thinking of him all day, how he’d blurted that stuff about his dad, so full of pain and bitterness, acting like he wanted to shock her with it, when really—she felt certain—he longed to be close to her, believed she could relieve him of his particular aloneness. She felt they’d gone through it together, the percussive blast of the gun, the twisting away of Jonah’s head. For all its horror, she rejoiced in believing she knew him, in thinking they had reached—so easily, it seemed—a place where she might be safe exposing some stories of her own.
She snuck up to the truck’s passenger side, picturing him laughing in happiness when he saw her. But when she swung the door open and hopped in, he bucked away, his head cracking against the side window. A crazy, jumpy boy. A boy wired up all wrong.
“You sleep here or what?” she said, pretending not to notice his panic.
He was panting, trying to collect himself, and she wished she could say she was sorry for scaring him, sorry for leaving the night before. She wished she knew how to be sweet.
“No. No,” he said, fast and anxious. “I went home last night. I did. Right after you got out. Today I—”
“It’s okay. I’m just teasing.” But she got even that wrong, her tone implying he was an idiot for thinking otherwise.
He forced a laugh like yeah, he knew he was a jerk.
She almost wouldn’t have recognized him from the night before, though nothing whatsoever had changed; he even wore the same clothes. The more powerfully she felt about someone, the harder it was to imagine them accurately. And on this early-September evening, Jonah appeared more ordinary than the boy she’d created in her head these past twenty hours, his skin not quite as pale, his lashes not so dramatic. Even his acne was less obvious. But when his hazel eyes finally met hers, her body remembered perfectly how it had felt to kiss him. Like he’d been burning inside and passed that bright burning right into her.
“How do you think the little frog is doing back in the wild?” she asked.
“Great,” Jonah said, his voice relieved. “He was singing so loud you could hear him all over the neighborhood. My mom complained he was keeping her up.”
“So. You and the frog got pretty tight? You recognize his croak over all the others.”
“Hell yeah,” he said, laughing. “Like a mama with her baby.”
When he’d jerked away from her the night before, she’d thought he’d talked to Daniel and knew what she was, didn’t want to be touched by a girl like that. If he’d slapped her, it wouldn’t have been worse. But as soon as her feet hit the gravel, she’d known she’d gotten it wrong. He’d been surprised is all. She saw it again tonight, that faulty circuitry of his. She should have gone back to him right then, but she had a habit of sticking with punitive reactions, especially when she was being an ass. Better to wait a day and act like nothing had happened. And it was working, because here they were, wiping out that misstep as if it’d never been.
“Why don’t we go visit him?” she said, picturing the secluded road end where they’d park, already tasting the mints he popped, the heat of cinnamon in his mouth.
“You mean like right now?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, okay. I think he’d like that.” He started the engine, and she noticed, as she had before, a woven cotton bracelet with a crude red J dangling on his right wrist. She reached over and tapped it with a finger.
“This from a girlfriend?”
He ground through a gear as they started up a hill. “Don’t have a girlfriend.” He glanced at her. “My little sister, Nells, made it for me a year ago.”
“Pretty nice big brother to wear it all this time.”
“Nells had a matching one for a while. Best-buddies kind of thing.” He shrugged. “She took hers off a long time ago. I probably should too. She’s thirteen and thinks I’m useless.”
* * *
—
EVANGELINE RESTED HER HEAD ON JONAH’S SHOULDER, listening for frogs who’d yet to sing. They hadn’t kissed, but there was no hurry because she knew they would. Finally a croak rose from the pond.
“Is that him?” she asked.
Jonah laughed. “That’s a girl.”
“Don’t I feel stupid.”
“I’d think so.”
She didn’t know if she’d ever spent time like this with a boy. Just quiet and listening. It made her body feel different, like the weight of it had lifted away. When he finally did tilt her face to his and she was brought thumping back into her body, she had never felt so happy to have lips and skin and heat pulsing through her.
He didn’t buck away when she touched him this time. She’d been careful though, starting at his knee and working her way there. She should have waited longer to make her move, but a frantic greed filled her, as if he were a table laden with food and she’d been starving for a terribly long time. To have a boy be cautious with her—to worry she might not be ready or that she could be hurt—well, wouldn’t that make anyone crazy with lust?
The sex didn’t last long. He probably came on entry, but she kept moving, pretending he hadn’t. She gasped and shivered and moaned with a reasonable amount of drama, and when she figured he was convinced, she dismounted, throwing herself back in the passenger seat as if awash in pleasure.
She pulled on her jeans. “Not bad,” she said, and kissed his cheek.
He sat there stunned, his cock limp on his pale thighs, his breath fast, almost gasping, as if he’d survived a horrible accident. “We didn’t use protection.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s a good time of the month.”
She had no idea if that was true. She hadn’t bothered to count the days since her last period. But why should he worry? She’d had her share of unprotected sex and never gotten pregnant. Maybe something was wrong with her that way. Besides, she’d decided long ago that if she ever got pregnant, she wouldn’t tell the boy. Unless she and the boy were married or something. Maybe then she would.
“You sure?” he said, looking at her squarely, like it mattered to him, and even knowing he had a crush on her, she was surprised by this caring.