I slip myself from Evie, her right leg draped across me, and dash silently down the steps and to the bas.e.m.e.nt door.
The music is pacing gently, a slow, crawly song filled with tiptoeing guitar sounds and mewling voices.
I stand at the top of the stairs and whisper, almost losing my nerve, though I"m not sure why, "Mr. Verver?"
He pokes his head around the corner and looks up at me, a green beer bottle in his hand, his face flushed and caught up in itself.
He looks surprised, and not surprised at all. And he smiles and waves me down.
Suddenly I feel conscious of my bare legs and tennis socks, but I scramble down the stairs and he makes "quiet, quiet" motions with his hands and mouth and we both grin at it.
I settle down on the hooked rug, spreading the stack of alb.u.ms like a poker hand, looking at all their covers.
"Couldn"t sleep?" he says, settling back into his chair.
"No," I say.
"Even with the alarms, the cops driving by all the time," he says, rapping his fingers fast on the table, "it"s still hard for me to let her out of my sight."
"I know," I say.
"I"m sure I"ll feel safer when she starts toa to share things. And there"s the therapist. Buta but she still hasn"t told you anything? Talked about whata he did?"
"No," I have to say, and I can see the disappointment in him.
Tell me what I want to hear, he"s saying. Give me what I need, Lizzie.
"Not yet," I add. "But she"s so happy to be home. She feels so safe now. So happy and safe."
His smile, even if it"s filled with doubts and wonderings, is immense, and my face goes very warm and, sitting on the floor at his feet, I find myself wanting to lean against his legs and bury myself there.
We"re quiet for a while and Mr. Verver keeps switching records, and he"s enjoying his beer, and still not letting me have even one sip.
"It"s late," he says. "You should hit the sack."
I nod, but he keeps talking, and so I get up from the floor and settle into the chair next to him, and then a new song comes on, and it"s jauntier, it"s like a swagger and it hits me low and makes my stomach twist, riotous.
"Oh, Lizzie," he says. "Thin Lizzie, do you hear that ba.s.s line? Do you? You don"t get that on your ca.s.sette tapes. I don"t even think you get it on these compact discs. That sound is too huge to be compacted. You can feel it in your chest, can"t you?"
I"m listening, but it"s hard because the song that"s playing, the lyrics are slow and loud, the singer talking about different kinds of girls and the things they do. It has lots of swearing and a slow, lingering beat and Mr. Verver doesn"t seem to notice the lyrics at all until suddenly he pauses, and that"s the exact moment the singer slurs about how black girls like to get f.u.c.ked all night.
Mr. Verver looks over at me with a jolt, and I know he can see my red face, feel the blush radiating off me.
He laughs, and as he lifts his beer bottle from the floor, its coldness brushes up against my leg and makes me jump and suddenly I"m laughing too. We look at each other and laugh, strange, jangling laughs that make me feel hot and shaky.
We laugh so hard that I feel the chair sc.r.a.ping beneath me, and I look down and see my very own fingers curled around his wrist.
My fingers pressed against his pulse. Oh, to feel it throbbing there, I do. It"s fast, and my hearta"
I look down and see my fingers there.
His hand on the armrest, and there they are, my G.o.d, they are, my fingers curled around his wrist.
He looks down too.
The split second is endless and I can"t breathe.
He pats my hand and smiles, turning all of it into something else, just for me. He makes it into something else, something light and meaningless.
The song ends, then a new song rises up, and Mr. Verver starts talking about how I"ll be going to dances soon.
"You"ll have boys circling you," he says. "Oh, will you ever."
"I don"t know," I say, still trying to catch my breath, my voice funny and high. "There"s no one at school I"d want to dance with."
And he grins and he starts to tell me about his first dance, and how he tried to get up the courage to ask a girl named Miranda Morton to dance, and she was so pretty, with hair up tight like a ballerina. But he didn"t have the guts. So his friend Toby did it instead and she said yes.
Mr. Verver burned with jealousy, watching them dance under the strobing lights, pretending with all his heart that he was the one holding Miranda Morton in his arms, holding her wrist, like blown gla.s.s, in his hand.
Watching, pretending, he could feel his life unspoola"that"s what he said, unspool, his arm fanning outa"a majestic life with Miranda Morton at his side. A life of beauty and warmth and golden days.
But then he spotted Miranda"s friends coiled in a corner laughing and he realized that, through the whole dance, Miranda had been rolling her eyes at them over Toby"s shoulder.
"I"ll never forget that," he says, then prods me with his finger, right in the ribs. "The cruelty of women."
He scissors his finger into my ribs as he says it, and I can"t help but laugh. But his finger there, ita"
"So you see, Lizzie," he says, "you have to dance with them, those poor fellas. You have no idea how important it is, and what those dances mean. You have to make up for the Miranda Mortons of the world."
"I will," I say, meaning it with such fervor without even understanding it.
"You dance with them," he says, and takes a long sip from his beer, "and they"ll dream about it for weeks after, months, years. Decades. They"ll play it again and again in their feverish little heads." He looks at me. "Don"t you want that?"
"Yes," I say. Yes.
"Lizzie," he says, eyes on me warmly, so warmly I can feel it in my toes. "You"re going to leave a long trail of broken heartsa"one for every finger and toe."
He knocks my foot with his, sending tingles through me so I can"t breathe.
"But just remember," he says, eyes still on me, "I told you first. I was your first."
The words thrum in me, fierce and swiping. How could I ever forget that? As if I would ever forget that.
"You girls never know how hard it all is," he says, grinning lightly again. "The asking, the pursuing."
Just like that, everything slips away, and he"s talking to me like I"m so small, like he thinks I"m a little Brownie in his bas.e.m.e.nt, playing Chutes and Ladders.
I can"t stop myself. The words come tumbling out.
"I know things about boys," I blurt.
He looks at me.
"I"m sure you do," he says.
"I know things," I say, and the minute I do, I want to crawl under the chair and hide.
"Well," he says, slowly, looking at me carefully, like he"s trying to figure something out. "I guess it"s different than when I was your age."
There"s a pause.
"Now I sound like an old man." He laughs, but it"s a funny kind of laugh and I feel him yanking the conversation into a far corner, far from where we are.
"You"re not an old man," I say, fast and too loud. "And I don"t know what I meant. I don"t know anything about boys. Men. Nothing at all."
He smiles.
"You know more than you think," he says, and then he turns away from me quickly.
It"s so fast I almost miss it.
But the look on his face, the look on his facea it wasa I feel a shudder tear through the whole of me.
And we sit, and we sit, and it gets so late and the music swallows everything and I"m glad for it.
It"s hours later that I name it. In my sleep that night.
The look on his face.
He had all the sorries in the world on his face, filled brim-full with sorries and regret, and I hate myself for making him feel it.
There was something, and you weren"t supposed to look at it, you weren"t supposed to lean in, peer too close, and I did, and I made him do it too. And he did, anda And now something"s gone forever, and I feel its loss. It crushes me.
When I climb back in bed, Evie"s eyelids twitch and she stirs.
The moonlight bleaches us both. I see her eyes, so wide and white they sear me.
"Oh, Lizzie," she says. "I want to tell you, I want to tell you, but I can"t."
"Why not?"
She hunches up fast on her elbows, looking at me so hard.
"I don"t know," she says, blinking slowly, watching, the looming whiteness of her eyes. And then, "You don"t seem like Lizzie."
"What do you mean?" My mouth goes dry, I"m not sure why.
She doesn"t say anything.
"It"s me," I say. "Why can"t you tell me?"
"Because of the way things are," she says. "Everything looks funny now. But I don"t think it"s really changed. I just never saw it before. The pieces just got switched around."
"What do you mean?" I say again, but something flashes in my head, me on the patio with Mr. Verver, laughing, warmed under his warming gaze. Looking up to Evie"s darkened window, the shadow of the mobile, still and listless, and seeing Dusty up there where Evie should be.
I feel a crawling trespa.s.s inside me. I fight it off.
"I don"t know what I mean," she says, her fingers clawing out at me, twisting tight on my hair.
I don"t say anything at all, I can"t say anything at all.
And she"s looking at me like I"m the ghost.
Twenty-one.
It had been a dreamless, lost sleep, like sinking down an endless hole. I"d been grateful for it.
And then the noise, some noise, a firecracker pop.
I look at the clock flaring five forty.
I feel Evie stirring, jumping up, running to the window.
It"s the tiniest gasp from her, and I wonder what she sees, but my head isn"t working right and I can"t unfurl the sheet from my ankle.
I stumble to the window, squeezing my eyes into focus.
It"s the pear tree out back, there"s something at the foot of it, something black at its knotty roots.
That"s a dog, I think, or a trash bag. What is that dark thing?
At the same moment, elbows b.u.mping each other, we lift up the heavy window, push our faces against the screen.
That"s when I see.
It"s a person.
It"s a man, sprawled under the tree.
"Evie," I say. "Evie."