“She did it on purpose, Dad! Because she’s jealous of me and always has been! That’s the only reason she came on to him. To hurt me!”
“Now, calm down.”
“Now she’s claiming Chester forced her to do it. Ha! She’s just too cowardly to admit it!”
All she said to me was,“I’ll never forgive you for that, Kansas. Do you hear? Never! As long as I live!”
I don’t know what she really saw that night, but her jealousy must have distorted it.
After she stopped speaking to me, my silence took on a life of its own, like starvation with an anorexic. At some point, the gap between speaking and remaining silent became insurmountable. Too scary. Then, at a certain point, I was happy about the distance because otherwise, my family might have noticed from my behavior that something was wrong at school. Maybe that’s why I shut myself off from James.
Rising abruptly, I hurry into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I have freckles from the sunny day that make my face look different. More delicate. Foreign.
Say something! Anything.
On impulse, I put both hands on my throat as if I might have to force the words out. But the girl in the mirror remains silent. My language is cut off from me, amputated like a leg.
For you. To let fly.
My throat constricts. I lower my hands. Why do I have to think about River’s words right now? Why do they suddenly make me so sad when they previously made it easier to breathe? With dry eyes, I blink and wrap my arms around myself, feeling the bruises on my upper body.Everything’s okay, Kans. Everything’s okay.
But of course, it isn’t. All the days of silence press against me from within as if wanting to tear me apart. A flood of fear and despair, loneliness and shame rushes through me. It’s like every blow I received at Kensington hammers away inside me. Every remark causes inner wounds and bleeding. The water in the bucket that drowned me.
I take a deep breath. Only here, in safety, do I realize how much I suffered at Kensington. It’s as if I had actually turneddeaf over the last year, putting my emotions on the back burner as best I could. Otherwise, I would have shattered. But now I feel everything—the enormity that is my story. Being silent and speechless scares me, and I fear I’ll never be able to escape if I didn’t let it out of me.
Startled, I wake up, my heart pounding. I must have fallen asleep because it’s pitch black outside. My back is drenched in sweat. I dreamed about water and panicked again, thinking I was drowning. Trembling, I rub my eyes and stand. River still isn’t back, or maybe he was here and left again. The air is hot and oppressive, so I open the window and breathe in the cool night air.
Blinking, I look outside and see River pacing back and forth in the parking lot with his phone to his ear. So, he’s no longer with Mariah. Somehow, that calms me, although he looks rather agitated. His hair is tangled, and he has a cigarette in his hand. He listens to whoever’s speaking, then suddenly comes to a halt.
“Not in this life!” His voice is harsh and guttural. I subconsciously hold my breath. “You don’t believe that…” He circles the Porsche he parked in front of the motel room earlier. “They’re making a zombie out of me!” he suddenly shouts, sounding desperate. He grips the roof of the convertible and hangs his head. His shoulders shake, and it almost looks like he’s crying.
I should move away from the window but don’t—I just exhale slowly. “I can’t do that. I cannot do this. It’s hell there, Zozoo.”
Zozoo. He said that name before, last night in the tent. Maybe a friend or a girlfriend?
“I can’t. Leave me alone, okay? Just this summer... you know I can’t... no, I’m fine. Fantastic. No... no... there’s no girl... yes, I promise, no girl.” He pauses. “Yes, I know how this ends...” Hecurses and apparently hangs up because he puts the phone in his pocket.
I’m paralyzed. That didn’t sound like the River I’ve come to know over the last twenty-four hours. He said so many things that I didn’t understand, and it sounds like he’s hiding a lot more from me than I thought. Above all, what did he mean by knowing how it ends? What ends how? And am I the girl he says isn’t with him? Or was that Mariah?
I step carefully away from the window into the darkness of the room, but it’s too late.
“I know you’re standing there; you don’t have to hide.” River’s voice sounds rough. I peer down at the parking lot at the Porsche. River straightens, his gaze lost in the darkness as if looking toward some point in his past that I don’t know about—or at least, that’s how it seems. “It’s your energy, vibrating like a damn guitar string.”
I’m sorry, I would say if I could. I quickly write it in capital letters on the pad and hold it out the window.
He looks at me, his huge eyes shining like oil on water in the night, almost like he’s on drugs. “It’s okay, Tucks. Not your concern.” I see him swallow. Then he goes to the trunk and removes something green and something else neon-colored that glows in the dark like a warning sign.
For a moment, I’m scared even though I don’t know why.
With long strides, he approaches and points to the door. “Will you open the door for me?”
I nod. Naturally, I trust him. For some reason, the few things I know about him outweigh the many I don’t.
I close the window and open the door. River comes in and puts the things he retrieved from the trunk on the table. I recognize the red one by the small white cross—a miniature first aid kit. He fiddles around at the table for a while. I stare at hisback, his broad shoulders. All I can see of the tattoo are the tops of the letters. Why is he still alive for June?
“Your left hand,” he says tersely at some point when he turns to me.
I automatically pull it back, hiding it behind my back. Under no circumstances should he see the ugly wounds.
