Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (15 page)

"He'd be honored," Granny said briskly.

I stared at her, flabbergasted, silently pleading otherwise.  Granny ignored me.  It was a wonder my eyes didn't fall out of my head.

Afterward Granny invited Meredith to stay for some lunch, but Meredith declined, very graciously, and said she had somewhere to be.  She waved to the both of us as she left.  Her smile was so warm, I momentarily forgot my misgivings.  Momentarily.

"Stop looking concussed," Granny ordered.  "It's a privilege to play for the ghost dance."

But she didn't tell me what songs I needed to know--and I think I was too sickly and anxious to ask her.

I'd calmed down minimally by dinnertime.  Rafael sat next to me at a picnic table and stuffed his face with Lila's maple candy.  I wondered whether he hadn't really lost that tooth at the back of his mouth to cavities.

I took the post-it pad out of my pocket.

"Hey, cool," Rafael said.  "Sticky notes."

I shook my head at him--sometimes he was way too easily amused--and wrote,
What's a ghost dance?

Rafael took the note from me.  He squinted.

"I can't read this," he complained.  "It's too dark."

I pulled a face, seized his hand--at the prospect of abandoning his candy, he made an indignant sound--and pulled him all the way to Granny's porch.  I thought to leave him there while I went inside the house and retrieved an oil lamp, but he misunderstood and followed me in.

I found and lit a lamp and stuffed the note into his hand.

The confusion cleared from Rafael's face.  "Oh," he said.  "I forgot you're not from here.  It's a dance we hold every August.  It resonates the souls of the living with the souls of the dead."

Well, that sure sounded scary.

"It's not anything weird.  It's kind of nice.  Why?  You don't have to go if you don't want."

I wrote him another note.

I think I do.  Granny volunteered me to play the flute.

"That sucks.  What songs?"

I cramped my writing in at the bottom of the last note--I didn't want to waste paper:
I don't know any!!!

Rafael stood by the unlit hearth, a faint chill rising from the foundation of the house.  "I think you have to play Land of Enchantment," he said slowly, pensively.  "We wind up dancing to that every year.  And Place of Great Mystery."

I probably would have appreciated his input a lot more had I known what those songs actually were.  Suddenly I had an idea.  Rafael knew those songs. 

Horror flashed across the contours of Rafael's face.  "No," he said emphatically.

I smiled slowly.

"I'm not singing for you!  Get your grandma to do it."

I decided that I was going to get him to sing those songs for me, one way or another--not merely because I needed to know them, but because there was nothing more amusing than a flustered Rafael.  I tried using the Gremlin eyes on him, but they seemed to creep him out.  I tried poking him but only got in a couple of jabs before he slapped my hand away.  Imitating Lila's pout didn't work; he eyed me suspiciously.  I'd just about given up, smiling diplomatically--I didn't really want to make him uncomfortable--when he relented.

"You have to turn your back," he insisted.  "Don't look at me."

I gave him a grateful thumbs up and spun around.

Silence, lingering, spread through the sitting room.  I distracted myself by tracing the entrance to the front room with my eyes.  More silence.  I was starting to wonder whether he'd sneaked out through the window and left me stranded.

Rafael started to sing.

It wasn't a polished voice.  I guess that's a generous description, because if I had to be honest, it was a pretty lousy voice.  What I liked about it was that it was deep, pitched low in the back of his throat.  It cracked and faltered over certain notes, and sometimes he ran out of breath when he really shouldn't have, but it was uniquely, unquestionably Rafael's.  He sang in Shoshone.  I couldn't comprehend the words, ancient and lyrical, but the mystery behind each verse traveled across time from an age when the land belonged to its rightful owners.

Then, imperceptibly, Rafael transitioned from the first song to the second.  It took everything in me not to turn around:  I traced the door frame with my eyes; I watched the light from the bonfire flickering across the window in the front room.  Whereas the first song had been mystical, otherworldly, the second was ominous and foreboding.  I shivered.  Rafael's voice was all around me; it reached into me; I felt it more than I heard it.  I felt its innermost simplicity. 

The buildup to the final note was almost impossible to endure.  Powerfully, it rose; tragic and abrupt, it plummeted.  The silence that followed was ringing and steep.

I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.  When I thought it was safe, I turned around.

Rafael's lank hair fell over one side of his face.  He peered at me guardedly.  I understood at once that he expected me to make fun of him.  I don't know how I could have.  I smiled, as warmly as I dared.  Rafael's eyes flickered from my eyes to my lips.  He cleared his throat and looked away.

"Uh...well, if you're going to play them, that's probably not..."

I couldn't remember where I'd put my pen.  I grabbed the post-it pad off of the mantelpiece and looked around.

"What are you doing?  You don't need to write."

And that was true, I thought.  He always knew what I wanted to say.

I chanced a look at him.  His eyes were on mine again.  Every nerve in my body was alive, itching and crackling with heat.  I felt terrified--and as contradictory emotions go, imbibed.  I saw something indefinable flicker across Rafael's face.

He always knew what I wanted.

He was across the room in two strides.  He took me by the waist in warm hands.  And he kissed me.

It wasn't my first kiss.  A girl had kissed me once, in freshman year, on a bet.  I don't remember her name.  In some ways, this was more of a first kiss than that kiss had been, because there was actual emotion in this kiss, live want tinged with frenzy.  Rafael's lips were soft and burning, and it didn't make sense--and yet it did--that they were on mine.  Rafael's lips were on mine.  Rafael was kissing me.

It was unreal and very real and briefly, I thought time had frozen; but then I realized it was Rafael who had frozen.  Rafael wasn't moving.  It hit me:  It wasn't my first kiss, but it was definitely Rafael's.  And I thought:  This was another of those crossroads.  I could stand still or push him away.  I could decisively distance myself from that foul word Dad liked to scream at the opposing baseball team. 

I dropped the notepad.

I sank my fingers into Rafael's coarse hair.  I felt him jolt beneath my fingertips.  I coaxed his lips with my own, gently, the lightest touch, an encouraging touch.  It was dizzy and intoxicating and enthralling and tranquilizing, paradoxically, all at once.  Maybe it was his first kiss, but he learned fast enough; because he pressed against me, hard, his mouth hot, aching and taking and apologetic, but he didn't need to apologize for anything because I kissed him even harder and it was so good, so cathartic, it almost hurt, in a delightful, wonderful way.  I didn't remember untangling my fingers from his hair, but I must have, because my hands were wrapped around fistfuls of his shirt, and we were pressed together so tightly, I could feel his taut belly against mine and our legs--his hard and muscular, mine skinny and long--a tangled mess.  His arms were around me, searing and heavy across my back, but safe.  Safer than anything.

It wasn't the Navajo girl he'd wanted to dance with at the pauwau.

I ran out of air first.  I pulled back.  Rafael's arms locked around me, like he was afraid I'd run away from him.  I was surprised to hear his breath labored.  He spent all day hunting, treading across wilderness, running around the reservation like a lone wolf with rabies, and I'd never heard him lose his breath, not once, until he kissed me.  His eyes were on my lips.  He seemed to come to his senses, suddenly; I saw fear stitched all over his face, in his dark blue eyes, stormy and wild.  I shook my head softly.  I wanted to reassure him.  I slid my finger across his lips, thinking to silence him before he could protest.  In a way, that wasn't so good, because I could feel the heat emanating from his lips, heat that had passed from my lips to his, and the blood rushed to my face and pounded between my temples.  I lowered my hand, embarrassed.

And then we were kissing again, sudden and fierce, his hands on my face, my hands in his hair.  And for a moment, a pure moment, I forgot to think.

I heard the front door creak open.

Rafael and I jumped apart.  Granny came hobbling into the sitting room.  She waved in our direction--I couldn't tell whether it was a good night wave, or a dismissive one--but she never so much as looked at us.   She shuffled off to her bedroom and snapped the door shut, oblivious.

A very awkward silence fell over the sitting room.  But then I stole a look at Rafael and realized he was trying not to laugh.  Ultimately that got me started laughing; and then, when he couldn't control himself anymore, he hid his face in his arm to muffle laughter of his own.

I knelt on the floor, took some flint from the tinderbox, and lit a fire for the night.  With a powerful rush of wind, the flames came to life in the hearth.  I leaned back and stared at the fire while I tried to gather my thoughts.  My mind must have been completely empty, because I couldn't summon a single mental image if it wasn't Rafael's lips or Rafael's eyes or the iron earring Rafael wore in his right ear.  Finally I thought, what use was there in avoiding looking at Rafael if I was just going to go on thinking about him anyway?

When I looked at Rafael again, his hands were in his jeans pockets, his eyes averted, guarded and shy.  I kind of thought that wasn't fair, because he was the only one present with a working set of vocal cords.  If he wasn't looking at me, and I couldn't even say his name, how was I supposed to get his attention?

I got a bit creative:  I picked up the post-it pad and chucked it at his head.  He twitched, startled.  I couldn't stop laughing, suddenly.  His face took on a whole array of rapidly fluctuating emotions, each one a different stage of realization, before he laughed, too, a beautiful laugh that lit up his entire face, and I drank it in, stupidly smiling, stupid and infatuated.  He wasn't quick enough to muffle his voice this time; Granny shouted from her bedroom, "Quiet out there!"

Her warning was completely ineffective; if anything, we laughed harder, victims to circumstance and irrepressible urge.

I gestured over my shoulder to the front door, and we went outside the house to leave Granny in peace.

I missed the comfort of the hearth, my arms bare, the night air ridiculously cold.  Rafael sat cross-legged on the wooden surface of the porch.  I watched the wind play with his hair; I traced his profile with my eyes.  Admitting what I wanted felt so much easier than denying it.

Rafael turned his head and met my gaze.

For a moment, I was overpowered--not by Rafael, but by memories.  I could see him in my mind's eye, the man with the knife, the man who had pinned me down with his knees and cut my throat open, like he'd done my mother's, only I'd survived and she hadn't.  It was eleven years ago; but that kind of memory doesn't disappear, no matter how much you want it to, no matter how heavily you smother it.  I could see Rafael's father reflected in Rafael's face, in his square jaw and flat nose and dark gaze.  Very briefly, it terrified me that I'd allowed him to kiss me, that I had kissed him back.  But there were obvious discrepancies between the man from my memories and Rafael.  The soft, intent way Rafael was looking at me, not with malice, but with quiet yearning.  The protective way he had held me while he kissed me.

His eyes like ocean slate, like the sky before sunrise.

"Uh," Rafael started, drawing me out of my reverie.

I waited.

"You...  Are we..."

He looked so determined, so embarrassed, I wanted to save him from elaborating.  I smiled at him.  I was a little scared, if I had to be honest; I got the feeling that he was scared, too.

I sat at Rafael's side.  He watched me warily, probably gauging my reaction.  I touched his hand.  I don't know what I would have done after that, but Rafael spared me from figuring it out:  He laced our fingers together, his fingers sliding warmly against mine.  I had another stupid moment of complete thoughtlessness; all I could do was smile.  When he started to smile back, a shy, lopsided tilting of his lips, dimples deepening, I felt like I could kiss him all over again.  I wanted to kiss him senseless, breathless, until he couldn't think of kissing anyone but me.

Rafael picked up my wrist.  He pressed the light-up button on my wristwatch and looked at the time.

"Damn," he muttered.  "Uncle Gabe's gonna kill me.  I gotta go..."

I wished he didn't have to.  I made sure to smile anyway.

Rafael climbed off the porch.  I stood up.  At the bottom of the steps, he turned around to look back at me.  I think my heart might have missed a beat.

"Those songs for the ghost dance," he said.  "Come over to my house tomorrow.  We can go through them again.  And...whatever.  Just so you learn them.  I mean, you don't want to look like an ass in a couple of weeks, right?"