Forever Innocent (12 page)

I let it go and the smoke went everywhere in an ugly cloud. Katie laughed. “You’ll get it.” She passed it back. “One more and then we’ll wait. It takes a few minutes. You may not feel much the first time.”

I briefly flashed to middle school and the anti-drug lectures. No one had paid the least bit of attention then. I hadn’t been around drugs, ever. Katie acted like it was no big deal.

“How you doing?” she asked.

My mouth tasted strange. I had a sense of being a little hot and my heart might have been beating faster, but then, I was nervous. “Nothing,” I said.

“One more.” She passed it over again.

I took another puff and gave it back. “I’m going to do one more timed section and call it a day,” I said.

She examined the joint. “I have no idea if this is any good or not. Nothing to compare it to.”

I shrugged. Figures it wouldn’t do anything to me. I probably did something wrong.

But somewhere about question six, I felt a lightness come over me. My stomach turned, just a tiny tweak, and I felt buoyant, chilled out, like everything was good.

I glanced up at Katie. She’d kicked her feet up on the table. I wondered if her parents knew about her habit. She was doing it right here in the kitchen. Either they approved or they weren’t coming back anytime soon.

I moved through the questions. The extra work was paying off. I could almost predict the answers they would use for options and easily eliminated the wrong ones. I forgot about the clock entirely, feeling a rhythm with the equations, not completely caring if I got them right or not, moving from one to the next with ease. I ticked off the last one and noticed I still had time left. Crazy.

I flipped through to the answer key, realizing the room was getting hazy. Katie was really going at it. The first few questions checked off fine. I ran my fingers down the line. Correct. Correct. Correct.

Holy crap, I hadn’t missed a single question. It was just a set, twenty problems, but still.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Katie said. “You killed it, didn’t you?”

“Might be a coincidence.” I packed up my books, feeling happy and loose. I’d walked over, thankfully. I wasn’t sure I was up for driving. Now that I was done concentrating, I could feel something off, like I noticed each step a second after my foot hit the ground.

Katie followed me to the door. “Let’s try it again tomorrow. Do a longer bit. It’s an experiment.”

I walked out into the night. “Maybe.”

Katie laughed. “You’ll be back!”

In the bath, I rose from the water with a gasp. I’d been holding my breath again, waiting for the black.

Not in the tub. Shower sometimes, but a bath was dangerous. I never knew exactly how long it took me to come back around. Possibly long enough to drown. Another car drove by, illuminating the room for just a moment.

The boys in Austin’s bedroom were a flash of memory, sitting around a table, a big glass bong in the center. Austin probably smoked. If I were around it again, if things progressed, the whole thing could start all over. Relationship. Sex. Pregnancy. Death. Secrets. Guilt.

I wiped my eyes. No more Austin. No more Gavin. I had to get back to where I’d been on Monday, before I saw him again, before everything caved in.

My phone buzzed in my jeans, lying somewhere in the bathroom. I could make out a lump on the white rug and I reached for it, wiping my hands on the denim before I tugged the phone out.

Sixteen texts from Jenny. Good grief. I scrolled through. Most were about Gavin, how he was persistent, desperate to see me. She listed his phone number and said she refused to give him mine.

The next message almost made me drop the phone.

He told me about your baby.

I read it twice then flung the phone away, not caring if it cracked. What was he doing? Why had he done that?

Water flew across the tub as my hand smacked the water over and over again. I came here to get away. I needed to escape.

My face was wet, and I wasn’t sure if I was crying finally or just splashed. I rushed with hate for my high school friend Katie, for her idea, because it had worked too well. I smoked and smoked and smoked and learned exactly how much weed I needed to maximize my test taking. We went through her stash so quickly that we had to drive up to her brother’s college to get more.

I sank below the water, looking up into the blackness. It was almost as good as holding my breath, but not quite. The water was cooling off, and my mind still whirred. I wanted to shut it off, stop thinking.

If only I hadn’t smoked so much. If only I had trusted myself to take the test without it.

I held my breath, bubbles flowing from my lips and rising to the surface.

Spots filled my vision. My body wanted to come up for air, but I didn’t let it.

I stayed away from everyone for a reason. Too many triggers. Too much history. Small things, like college boys with a bong, became huge, looming over me like the ocean swallowing the stars.

Gavin couldn’t know. He could never know. If Austin talked. If Gavin heard. If he connected the dots.

My lungs were bursting but then suddenly they weren’t. I exhaled everything in my body and sank farther against the hard curve of the tub. Would my body save itself in this black water?

I opened my eyes and saw Finn, curled up like he’d been in the sonograms, and how I’d imagined him to look while he was still tucked safely in my belly. He floated, the curling line of his umbilical cord snaking between us. I reached for him, hoping maybe he’d open his eyes this time, and breathe without a machine. But we were underwater, and he couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t work here any more than they had when he was in his little plastic bed, the ventilator taped to his mouth, forcing air in and out in a loud mechanical whine.

He shifted, rotating, almost as though he were coming closer, then opened his mouth and blew out a long exhale of gray smoke.

I gulped water and everything went quiet, so black, and I couldn’t see anything at all.

Chapter 17: Gavin

I flung my helmet on the sofa, glad to be home from Tijuana. The phone buzzed and my heart raced, thinking maybe Corabelle’s friend had given her my number, but it was just Mario, asking if I wanted to shoot pool.

Saying yes would be wise, get out of my head, stop thinking about Corabelle. But instead of heeding my own advice, I put Mario off and pulled out my ancient laptop, wondering if a web search might help me locate her.

Corabelle Rotheford had plenty of hits, mostly hometown articles. National Merit Scholar lists. A piece on where students were going to college. I saw my name with hers, saying we were going to UCSD, before we realized we couldn’t. The article had been right in the end, because now we both were.

I scrolled through, looking for anything more recent. Corabelle had worked in the admissions office at New Mexico, it seemed. She was quoted in some article about student employees by the school paper. Seems strange she would leave a university where she had such a great job and contacts. I remembered the fear that crossed her face on the first day we talked in the stairwell. If someone there had tried to hurt her, I would hunt them down. Anger flared through me. I had to get to her. Had to find out about the years we lost. We could fix this, I knew it. We were meant to be together.

Only one more link was about her, before the searches were for different people.

I didn’t want to click on that last one, but I did.

Finn Grayson Mays, infant son of Gavin Mays and Corabelle Rotheford, died on May 9, 2009.

My eyes burned. They hadn’t run a picture. Corabelle didn’t want one, since they all had tubes and wires on him, except for the last few, after they turned off the machines.

Finn was born May 2, 2009, in Deming, New Mexico. He is survived by his parents and his grandparents Arthur and Maybelle Rotheford and Robert and Alaina Mays of Deming.

When I saw my father’s name, I closed the link. He’d been at the funeral all right, jovial, relieved, and when he told some member of Corabelle’s church that at least the kids didn’t have to get married now, I asked him to leave.

He refused, and I should have left it alone. My mother was grieving, and the two of us going at each other was making it worse for both her and Corabelle. But I hadn’t left it alone. Then I ended up walking out.

Then not going back.

I shut the laptop. I didn’t want to think about these things. I wanted Corabelle. No one else was going to work, but she was being so darn stubborn, walking off with that other guy right where I could see it.

Rage surged and I fought to bring it down before realizing, hell, no one else is here. What did it matter if I walked around in a pisser? The room was scattered with secondhand barbells and hand weights. I stripped off my shirt and began working through my circuit. Getting physically exhausted would burn off this edge.

After a couple rounds, I wanted music, something loud and pounding. I stuck my phone into a pair of cheap speakers and set the playlist to punk. I switched to squats and ditched the boots and jeans. When the burn got good and solid, the anger started shifting to determination. I wasn’t going to let Corabelle go so easily. If that pipsqueak boy interested her, fine, but I could be unrelenting. And I knew every button to push.

Corabelle and I had been pretty heavy on the sex, and I snuck in her window most every night. Because of that, we could never agree on when Finn had been conceived. To make matters worse, her being on the shot and not finding out for a while meant everything was a big question. When she was about three months along, the doctors pegged the date as mid October. I remembered that period, right in the middle of this crazy time when she was trying to retake the SAT to qualify for one of the big national scholarships.

She was studying with Katie, another super-brain who was going for a perfect score. Corabelle was completely different for a while, alternatively manic and utterly chill. When I slipped into her bed, she’d be so willing. Not like she wasn’t always. Once all that started, we could scarcely keep our hands off each other. But during that time, she would try anything, do anything. We cracked open the
Kama Sutra
and just went after it, laughing at some of the more impossible positions. I felt like we’d never been closer.

I always insisted that Finn was conceived the night in the park. When I arrived at her house around midnight, she was bouncing off the walls. She’d taken an entire practice test and only missed three questions, and this was the closest she’d gotten to perfection.

Instead of crawling into her bed, we left, running down the street in the cool autumn moonlight like two kids finally escaping their parents. The little neighborhood park was silent and mostly dark. I pushed her on the swings and chased her through the monkey bars. Everything seemed possible, our future so close we could almost reach it, and Corabelle believed she could achieve this goal of the perfect score and a scholarship that would pay her way completely.

Eventually we tumbled in the cool carpet of grass. The night had chilled down, and she snuggled into me, her black hair a curtain across my chest. We had looked at the stars, I remembered suddenly, lying like we had on the roof. I’d have to remind her of that. I didn’t know any constellations other than the Big Dipper, and we didn’t really talk about that then. I just know she turned into me and slid her hand under my shirt and across my belly, and we were lost.

Too much. I set down a barbell and wiped my face with a towel. I hadn’t known how good I had it with Corabelle then, so willing, always matching me. That night had been beyond amazing, stripping down in the grass, the moonlight on her body, highlighting the curves of her breasts and waist and hips, brightening her hair as she crawled up to sit on top of me, straddling my waist.

Her face and the stars were all one picture as I touched every part of her. My thumb went between us and found that sweet spot. Her eyes closed and she leaned back. I could see all of her skin, smooth and beautiful. She gripped my free hand, squeezing, and by paying attention to her sounds and movements, I knew when I had her close to peaking.

I slid her body down, then up, until we were almost joined. Her eyes opened wide, and she smiled, adjusting so I slipped inside. I worked her faster and now she was frantic, leaning forward, her breasts near my mouth, bracing herself on the ground as she moved in a rhythm so hard, so perfect, that I could scarcely hang on myself.

I knew when it all burst in her. She forgot where she was, crying out loud enough to set a few dogs to barking beyond the trees, grinding herself down on me with such force that I had no choice but to let go, filling her up, hanging on, breaking free of the need to hold back right as she dropped flat against me.

We shuddered against each other, the quiet settling into the low hum of crickets and a faraway highway. I held her close and this time something came over her and she started sobbing. I thought maybe I’d hurt her, but she whispered “I love you” in my ear and the emotion was so intense that it flowed into me.

I swear I felt that night as though some light began to glow, like something changed inside us both. Later, when we learned about Finn, and after the shock had worn off and we were settled into the revised version of our future, I brought that night up. Corabelle insisted it was impossible, that it happened later, but always, I felt that I knew, and for a long time I hoped it meant that I had a connection with the baby that meant I’d be a decent dad.

Chapter 18: Corabelle

I was on fire. Everything inside my chest was burning like it might ignite.

I broke the surface of the bathwater, coughing, gagging, and sucking in air. My arm and leg went over the side and I tumbled out onto the floor, shivering, naked, and in unbearable pain.

Water dribbled from my mouth and nose and I sobbed uncontrollably, tightening into a ball on the floor, head to the rug. Calm down calm down calm down. You’re okay. You’re alive. You’re fine.

The corner of a towel brushed against my hair and I yanked it down, rolling up inside it. The screaming heat was dying down, but still I hurt, my head pounding, my chest throbbing.