Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (18 page)

One time, even, we were almost caught.

I guess I wasn't very alert when Rafael had me pinned between him and the weathered wall, his knee between mine, his lips at the crook of my neck.  In the back of my mind I could hear the mechanical whirring of the hand crank behind me; but I didn't lend it very much thought.  I couldn't muster up the willpower to care about anything except Rafael's lips and Rafael's hair and my fingers buried in Rafael's hair, the somersaults in my stomach and the heady summer air pressing down on us, Rafael's hip pressing into mine.

What drew me out of my trance was that Rafael's mouth was inching steadily closer to my collarbone, and it wouldn't be long before his lips met the front of my throat, where the scars were; Granny still hadn't given back my jacket.  I didn't want to gross Rafael out.  I tugged gently on his hair.  He pulled back.

"No good?"

I shook my head quickly and smiled.  I didn't want him to think that at all.  I could see how fast his chest was rising and falling, how red his lips were.  I smoothed my hand over his heart to calm it.  His hand came to a rest over mine.  I hooked our fingers together and he raised our hands to his mouth; he kissed the palm of my hand.  My knees felt like they'd give way.

I thought I had distracted him well enough from the real problem, but there wasn't any hiding from Rafael.  His eyes flickered over the canvas of my neck.  Slowly, he released my hand.  Reluctantly, he touched my throat.

His fingers left burning tracks across my scars that cooled in the wake of his touch.  For a moment, I froze.  I didn't like people touching my throat; I didn't usually let anyone do that.  This one time, in first grade, a boy named Sal had poked and prodded at my scars because he'd thought they looked cool.  A janitor had found me hours later, curled up in a utilities closet and half-catatonic.  I had been screaming, but naturally, no one had been able to hear it.

It was different with Rafael.  His touches were deliberate and reverent, feather-light, feather-soft.  There was an apology in his every movement that wasn't warranted, but ran as deep as his conscience, as deep as his soul.  In his eyes were remorse and--I recognized it, alarmed--self-loathing.  I realized he thought it was his fault, in some way, that I couldn't talk.  It wasn't; and of course he knew that on a conscious level.  Rafael's father had left behind a legacy of pain and cruelty, and Rafael was trying to shoulder it on his own.

He didn't have to shoulder anything on his own.  I wanted him to know that.  I reached for his hand.

That was when Meredith came walking around the back of the mill, carrying a big brown sack of flour.

Rafael and I jumped apart, my heart racing marathons in my chest.  Meredith smiled at us in the sunlight.  I couldn't tell if she knew what we had been up to seconds earlier.  Rafael, glancing discreetly my way, didn't seem to know, either.  I guess his mind-reading magic only worked on me.

"This flourmill really is something, isn't it?" Meredith said.  "The oldest building in Nettlebush and it's still going strong."

I smiled feebly.  Rafael, like a chastized child, couldn't meet her eyes.

"Do you boys want to come see my new foal?  She's two days old."

That got Rafael's attention.  His head shot up on his shoulders like a circus cannon.  I hid a laugh at his reaction.  He caught it anyway and shoved my shoulder.

A foal is a horse, right?
I signed--before I could stop myself.  I'd briefly forgotten that very few people on the reserve knew sign language.

That's why it surprised me when Meredith smiled at me.  "You've got it," she said.  Rafael was staring at me in a funny way, probably because the sign for "horse" looks really doofy.  "Somebody told me you like animals."

The both of us followed her down the country lane.  We learned her last name was Siomme; she was half Hopi, and she raised horses and cattle.  Talking with Ms. Siomme was a pleasant experience, not least of all because Rafael and I could take part in the same conversation.  Equally pleasant was that Rafael really seemed to relax around her.  He told her about school, about his hunting equipment; he carried the flour for her and asked her how long she'd had the ranch.  I thought it was a kind of transference at work; Ms. Siomme was amiable, thirty or older, and easy to latch onto if you didn't have a mother.  I tried very hard not to make the same mistake myself.

Ms. Siomme led us to a paddock beside a barn and silo.  A cow was grazing by the gate, a pair of horses resting under the shade of what I took to be an apple tree.  The newborn cantered in zealous circles around the center of the pasture, her mother maintaining a shrewd and watchful eye.  Rafael leaned over the gate, a breathy summer wind tossing his hair.  I kind of wanted to run my fingers through it again.  A beautiful grin lit his face when he set eyes on the foal. 

Ms. Siomme said, "She'll start clicker training in a few days."

I didn't know what clicker training was, but I could imagine some of what it entailed.  I'm sure it's ridiculous, but it kind of made me sad.  I didn't think an animal like that belonged in captivity, hauling around some human on its back.

Rafael caught my eye.  I hadn't realized he was watching me.  He stood close, our arms touching.  "Don't worry," he said.  "A horse that's matured can hold about three hundred pounds like it's nothing.  And if you treat them right, they like the companionship."

"I hadn't realized you knew so much about them," Ms. Siomme said.  "You won't put me out of a job, will you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about.  I just like animals," Rafael said.  "So does Sky, except he's kind of a hippie soulbonder about it."

What the heck did that even mean?

Ms. Siomme surveyed the both of us, smiling.  I had the feeling she knew exactly what we'd been up to when she'd found us behind the flourmill.

"She imprinted?" Rafael asked, eyeing the foal.

Ms. Siomme chuckled.  "You can play with her," she said, accurately following his train of thought.

Rafael bounded over the gate and into the paddock without a second thought.  I clapped after him, laughing.  I watched him approach the newborn, solemn and cautious, respectful of her suspicious and vigilant mother.  The foal trotted up to him, pressed her muzzle against his arm, and sniffed.  Apparently she liked what she smelled.  She reared back on her hind legs, and the pair of them raced.  The baby was beautiful, her limbs stubby and doll-like, her coat a gleaming chestnut brown.  I thought I could watch her forever--until I caught sight of the expression on Rafael's face.  He was so at peace out there, so childlike.  He tripped and rolled to the ground; the foal rolled with him.  I wanted never to forget the way he looked just then.

"It's nice," I heard Ms. Siomme say, her voice as soft as the still air.  She was standing next to me; but her eyes were on the mare, the mare watching over her infant.  "That the two of you managed to become friends."

She didn't need to tell me what she meant by that. 

The foal's mom finally got between her daughter and the pesky human boy.  Rafael was smart enough to back away.  I looked at the mare, tall and proud, her head held high.  I heard Ms. Siomme call to the horses and reach into her pockets for treats.  I suddenly had the illusion that I was very small; laughing, audibly, Ms. Siomme's arms around me; reins in Ms. Siomme's hands, the mare's chestnut mane flying in the wind.  An illusion--but it felt like a memory.

Rafael climbed over the gate and joined us.  Ms. Siomme wiped her hands on her pants and checked her wristwatch.

"C'mon," Rafael said at the same time, and took hold of my hand, grass on his palms and jeans.  He tugged me along like a tugboat at sea.  "Dinner soon."

"You boys take care!" Ms. Siomme called after us.  "See you later, Cubby."

I felt like a statue just then.  I stopped so suddenly, Rafael was forced to stop, too.

"What's wrong?" Rafael asked.  "You okay?"

Cubby was Dad's nickname for me.  He'd told me he hated the name Skylar, but Mom had insisted on it.

I looked quickly over my shoulder.  Ms. Siomme had already gone back into the barn.

17

Spittlebug

I sat on the edge of my bed--Dad's old bed--the beeper on my lap.  I was supposed to be asleep.  My eyes just wouldn't close.  I couldn't shake off the unsettling suspicion that Dad might have had an affair with Ms. Siomme.

In theory, it wasn't any of my business.  Assuming there had been an affair, it had to have happened more than a decade ago.  But supposing I was right, and Dad hadn't been home for Mom's murder because he'd been out with Ms. Siomme...  Had he been home, maybe he could have stopped Rafael's father.  Maybe Mom would still be alive.  Maybe we'd never have left Nettlebush.

Maybe I'd still have a voice.

Of course I didn't want my suspicions to be true.  But if they were...  They certainly explained Dad's absence on that vicious night, and how Ms. Siomme knew what he liked to call me.

Why did Ms. Siomme know sign language?  The Little Hawks had Joseph to account for.  As far as I could tell, Ms. Siomme didn't have a deaf little brother.

I laid the beeper on the bedside table, next to Rafael's sketch and the photo of Mom and Dad.  I lingered on the latter before picking up the picture frame and placing it face-down.  Dad's absence and reticence were the joint catalyst for way too many mysteries this summer.  Just for a little while, I wanted a rest from thinking about him.

Annie stopped being so hard and diamond-y over the next couple of days.  Instead she was eerily serene, humming quietly while we cooked, headphones over her ears and walkman in her back pocket.  Sometimes Mr. Little Hawk was in the house with us, cleaning the grime from his fishing nets or mending an old shirt.  I'd look at him; and he'd pretend he hadn't seen me, or else he'd pretend he was in the middle of meditating, like I wasn't aware of the darning needle in his hand.  Joseph would come running into the room and complain of an earache or a toothache or Lila pinching his bottom and Mr. Little Hawk would stall, like he didn't know what to do.  I was deathly frightened that he'd send Joseph off to Annie and Annie would have a nervous breakdown because she was already Joseph's sister, she shouldn't have to be his mother, too.  Luckily, I happened to live with Granny, one of the most savvy women in Nettlebush, and I knew that an earache needed olive oil and a toothache needed clove oil and Lila needed a wet willy.  But it should have been Mr. Little Hawk giving the olive oil and the clove oil and the wet willies.  Okay, maybe not the wet willies.  But definitely all those other things.

Rafael's hideout of choice wasn't the flourmill anymore.  I wasn't sure whether that had anything to do with Ms. Siomme almost discovering us as much as it was simply a reflection of his moods, which remained as ever-changing and unpredictable as high tide.  No; now he liked to spend his time in the church cupola, a room-sized hatch that was supposed to house a bell, but didn't.  I guess the cupola was exempt from Rafael's "outdoors only" rule because it was open on all four sides, but I kept worrying that one of us would forget about the lack of walls and fall between the slats.

I climbed the ladder into the cupola one afternoon and found Rafael with his back against one of the slats, a new notebook on his lap.  The colored pencils tucked behind his ears were little more than stubs.  The high sun poured through the open cupola and lit one side of Rafael.  I waved.  He looked up, then away, sheepish.  That wasn't very like him, at least not this early in the day.  I tilted my head.

"You should teach me that hand thing," he said.  "The sign language."

I smiled lightly, endeared.  I didn't think he needed to learn it.  We'd never had trouble communicating in the past.

"Don't give me that," Rafael said crossly.  "I like talking to you.  I want you to talk back.  You talk to Little Hawk and Meredith.  You should talk to me."

I stole his notebook, dumbfounding him.  I took one of his pencils--the green one--and flipped to a clean page.

You'd have to learn a whole new alphabet
, I wrote.

"Don't care," Rafael said.  "I already know two.  I'm not dumb."

I raised my eyebrows teasingly, as though to suggest otherwise.  Rafael shoved my shoulder.  Normally I liked it when he did that, but the cupola still had me paranoid.  I glanced quickly over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't anywhere near the wide gaps in the slats.  Rafael saw what I was doing and fell silent.

"C'mere," he finally said.

Very reluctantly, I inched closer.

Rafael snagged my arms and pulled me back against him.

His legs were longer than mine.  I found out firsthand because I was sitting between them.  There was a small tear in his jeans above the right knee.  He wrapped his arm around me, his hand clutching my thigh in a familiar, absentminded way.  I could see the sunny tops of the pine trees through the slats opposite us, but they didn't worry me anymore.  He held me, strong chest pressed against my back, his hair tickling my neck, his chin warm and reassuring on the crown of my head, and I felt like I couldn't possibly fall.

I tried to teach Rafael the ASL alphabet that afternoon.  It turned out he was Aubrey's polar opposite when it came to learning:  He needed everything repeated over and over again before it sank in.  He kept confusing A and E and became flustered whenever I took his fingers in mine and corrected him.  I tried to assure him with a grin that he was doing just fine.  Actually, teaching him was kind of difficult, his learning facilities aside, because he was left-handed while I was right-handed; I had to figure out how to sign each letter backwards, otherwise I would have been teaching him useless gibberish.