Painted Boots (16 page)

28

UNTIL KYLE PARKS
, not in his usual place by the curb but in the teachers’ lot, I didn’t realize how much I’ve been dreading my return to school.  I’m not being rational, I mean, Em is still suspended and without her here, I don’t think her friends will bother me.  It’s that all I see, when I look at Tower County High, is
me
, lying nearly naked and bleeding in the hall.  Who saw me like that, dressed in shock and blood and my underwear?  When they glance my way today, will I see my victim-self reflected in their eyes?

“I d
on’t think I can do this,” I whisper.

“
I get that,” Kyle says, staring at the school.  He drapes his arm around my shoulders.  “I sometimes wonder who knows the things Em did to me.  I wonder if they watched me all along, looking for scabs or something, trying to catch a glimpse of the hurt that accompanied me most days.  Maybe they still watch for how I shove the hand she burned into my front pocket.  Maybe they made a game of what was happening, like they made a game of calling out your clothes.  But even if people know, what does it change?  Em doesn’t scare me now.  Don’t let her scare you.  I’ll be there, girl, before and after every class, walking you through the halls.  I’ll be there at lunch.  You and me, ‘kay?  We’ll be all right.”

My nose tingles
.  I think I’m going to cry.  “It’s just so embarrassing,” I say.

“
Em’s the one disgraced.”  Kyle kisses my temple.  “You hold yourself above what happened.”

He waits while I
pull myself together and climb from the truck—not his Chevy, but the beat-up silver Ford he’s been driving to school since he got back from Salt Lake.  He hangs my bag from his shoulder and takes my hand.

The teachers’ lot connects with the hallway leading to our English class. 
I tug Kyle toward the entrance, preferring that we creep into the building like ferrets.  We could be in our seats in minutes, hardly seeing a soul.  But Kyle says, “Nope” and guides me round to the front.

Stepping from the
shadowy parking lot and onto the sun drenched sidewalk leading to the main doors is like walking through a wall into another world.  Thick frozen snow, piled high to either side of us, glitters with ice crystals.  People are everywhere, laughing and chatting as they head for class, their breath puffy and white.  A girl near the flag pole bursts into a run, darting across the sidewalk and coming our way.  My grip on Kyle’s hand tightens.  She draws closer, her long brown hair flying.  I move behind Kyle.  But the girl skids to a crazy stop right in front of us.  She shoves her arm forward, her fist clutching a single white lily.  The flower’s smell, mingled with a tart shampoo scent, wafts over me.

“Welcome back
!” the girl says.  She smiles, wide and genuine.

I look at Kyle.  He shrugs.

“Thank you,” I say, taking the flower from her hand.

Near the main doors
we’re stopped again, this time by a group of guys wearing letterman’s jackets.  I recognize a few of them from Kyle’s lunch table.  They hold flowers too: tulips with stems clamped in little plastic water vials, a paper cone of daisies, a yellow carnation, daffodils.  “It ain’t right,” one of them says, “what happened to you.  It ain’t Gillette’s way.”

“
We got your back,” a tall guy offers.  I think his name is Matthew.

“
Count on that,” another adds.

I
cradle my unexpected bouquet in the crook of my arm, blinking back warm, sudden tears.  “Thanks,” I say softly.  Kyle looks at me and grins.

Two girls veer for us the second we enter the building
.  “Welcome back, Aspen!” the nearest one says.  She hands me a bright pink rose.

The other
girl has a stem of lavender freesia.  “I should have told you a long time ago, but I love the way you dress.”  She gives me a broad, brace-filled smile.  “I’m Terri Knight, in case you don’t know.  We’re in Spanish together.”

I stare past Terri
, into the school.  More people have flowers than not.  Kyle and I start for class, though every few steps we’re stopped by people who press a flower into my hand.  Some tell me they’re sorry.  Others introduce themselves or wish me well.  By the time we reach English, flowers spill from my arms.

“You did this,” I say to
Kyle like a little scold, but I can’t hide how happy I feel.  He nods toward the desk in front of his.  Waiting for me there is another large, white hobnail vase.  He helps me load it with as many flowers as it will hold, then he kisses my cheek.  “Welcome back, girl,” he says.

At lunch I sit with Kyle’s group.  Gwen’s there too, picking at her chicken tenders and asking me over and over if I need anything.  She interjects her offers with information about Em—the hours of community service she’s been made to do, the way her mom insists what happened was provoked.  I say, “I could do without the Em update,” just as someone taps my shoulder.

As I turn round, s
ilence spreads across the lunchroom, jumping from table to table like crickets.  My lungs suddenly feel full of mud.  Evvie’s there, chewing on her lip, a massive, radiant sunflower in her hand.  She holds the flower toward me.  “Can we talk?” she asks.  “Maybe in the hall.  Or wherever.”

Kyle glances at her, then at me.  He shrugs.  “Up to you,” he says.

“Tell her to go to the devil’s own bat-infested spiky hell,” Gwen whispers loudly.  Kyle’s friend, Matthew, says, “You ain’t welcome, Evvie.”

I
swallow, hard, and reach for the flower, wrapping my fingers round its rough moist stem.  It’s perfect: a mane of bright yellow and orange ringing a brown textured center the size of a salad plate.  With nothing to hold, Evvie clutches her elbows, sliding her hands up and down along her arms.  It’s brave of her, I decide, talking to me in a room crowded with people who all know what she did.  Maybe that’s why I say, “Okay.  But Kyle comes too.”

Evvie
looks at Kyle from the corners of her eyes.

The minute I stand up I sort of regret my decision. 
I mean, leading Evvie toward the hall is like walking on a conveyor belt built from gawking curiosity.  People twist to see us come and turn round quick to watch us go.  I reach up and fiddle with the beads of my mother’s necklace.  Evvie’s sunflower dances and sways in my hand.  My boots seem too loud against the linoleum until I realize Evvie, Kyle and I are walking in unison.

Once we’re i
n the hall Kyle stands apart, leaning against a bank of lockers with his left hand shoved in his pocket, listening.

“I wanted to say sorry,”
Evvie says.  She breathes in and out, studying her fingernails before she looks at me again.  “I didn’t know Em would hurt you like that.  I . . . I’m not that kind of person.”

“
Were you suspended?”

“For a week.
  They went light on me ‘cause I got in Em’s face.  But I have community service.  Six months of it.”

I twirl the flower in my hand, round and round. 
“I guess I owe you for stopping Em.”

Evvie
shrugs.  She drags her fingers through her wavy blonde hair.  “It shocked me.  What she did.  I didn’t want to be part of it.”

“
But you were a part of it,” I say, fixing on Evvie’s startled gaze. “It was okay by you to strip me naked in the hall.  It was okay for you to play Em’s little game of calling out my clothes.  You’ve been a part of it from the start.  You made fun of my name in the parking lot on the first day of school.”

“I didn’t mean anything by that.  It was just a joke.”

“Not to me!  You only drew your line when you saw blood.  That makes you less of a bully.  Maybe.  But if you’d once considered how I feel we wouldn’t be standing here, right?  Being made fun of every day is just as bad as the physical stuff.  I’m not so sure you get that.”

Evvie
stares at my boots.  “I like the way you dress,” she says.  “I did from the time I saw you in your dad’s Jeep.  It’s so different, though you don’t seem to know it.  You don’t know how much people notice you.  Or maybe you just don’t care.  Em felt attention going your way.  She didn’t like it.”

“That
doesn’t give her the right to hurt me,” I say.

Evvie
looks at me then, her eyes bright green and teary.  “I really am sorry for what I did.  I hope you believe that.  But I’ve been friends with Em since third grade.  The stuff we did was normal, you know?  I grew up doing it.  It took . . . that day in the hall for me to realize Em always hurts the people she feels second to.  I never saw it that way, I swear, until we . . . until I attacked you.  I know I hurt people, hanging with Em when we were kids.  I just taught myself not to see it.”  With the edge of her finger, Evvie wipes her tears away.  “I guess I’m guilty of hurting a lot of people inside, the way you say I hurt you.”

“
I guess you are,” I say.

Evvie
sniffs.

We stand there for a moment and I watch her cry. 
“Maybe you won’t believe this,” I say, “but the easy part for you is right now, standing here, saying you’re sorry.  The hard part is the change you’ve gotta make, the one that shows everyone, me especially, that your sorry is real.  I need that kind of sorry to really forgive you.”

Evvie’s
expression droops, like old snow in warm sun.  She nods, but covers her face with her hands.  Then she breaks with sobs, her frame slumped and heaving, her body shaking with the strain.  Kyle raises his eyebrows the way I’ve seen his dad do.

I
toss him my sunflower, then wrap my arms around Evvie’s shoulders.  She only cries harder, but I feel better now.  I look past her wavy hair to see Kyle’s as surprised as I feel.  I don’t know why I thought to hug her, except it’s what my mother would have done.

F
or me, that’s reason enough.

29

WE’RE WELL INTO
the parking lot when I notice a girl I don’t know leaning against Kyle’s truck.  “Who’s that?” I ask, as his mouth pulls into a frown.  When he doesn’t answer I wonder if his KDT secret is out; I mean, the girl is fiddling with a camera.  But as we near her Kyle says, “Hey Carlie,” and she asks, “Can I interview Aspen?” and he says, “Not a good idea.”

I look at him. 
“Why not?”

My
arms, and Kyle’s too, are filled with flowers.  He glances at me, his chin dusted yellow with daisy pollen, his eyes crystal blue and serious in the cold air.  “Carlie reports for the school paper,” he explains.  “Yearbook, too.”  He turns to Carlie then and tries to talk her out of writing a story, though I still don’t get why he cares.  Carlie adjusts her camera’s lens.  Every now and then she interrupts Kyle, saying, “One shot.  One shot.  One shot.”

I say, “
It’s okay.  Really.”

Kyle corrects: “
It’s okay, if it’s for yearbook.”

Carlie
waits until we’ve loaded my flowers into the truck.  Then she snaps one picture of me sitting in the cab, the flowers all around me like I’m in a float turned inside out, my new hobnail vase sitting on my lap.  She says, “I’ll bet I get this in the local paper,” and scampers off.

Kyle yells, “Just the yearbook!”

“What’s the big deal?” I ask.

He scrubs his fingers through his hair. 
“Far as Em’s concerned, there’s not much difference between that picture and a cattle prod.”

I want to ask why he’s worrying about Em
; I mean, to me, the whole thing is over.  But Kyle’s quiet on the drive to my house.  Maybe he’s imagining all the nasty stuff she might do if she sees Carlie’s picture.  Or maybe he’s just thinking about the weather.  Once or twice he glances at the sky, which is deep with clouds and spitting snowflakes.  He backs the Ford into my drive then we race the falling snow, shuttling my flowers into the kitchen.  Most we arrange in glasses on the counter, pulling off enough plastic water vials to fill a garbage sack.  We set the flowers in rows until we’ve transformed the room into a garden.  We leave three full vases on the coffee table and line the entryway with bouquet-filled jars.

It all reminds me, maybe too much, of Mom.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I say.  With my white hobnail vase in the crook of my arm, I start up.  Kyle’s right behind me, his hands warm on my waist.

The s
ilvery light oozing from between my half-open shutters has washed the colors of my room to gray.  My closet doors are ajar.  This morning I left my pajamas lying like a crime-scene dummy on the floor.  I kick them under my bed.  “Pretend you didn’t see that,” I say.

“
So this is where you sleep.”  Kyle takes the vase from my grasp and places it on my desk before he quietly closes the door.  “Let me lay you down, girl.”  He scoops me up and tosses me on my mattress.

“You’re a naughty boy
,” I say, and smile.

With one hand on each heel,
Kyle pulls off my boots.  I laugh as he hops back and forth, yanking his boots from first his right foot and then his left.  He stations all four of them like guards against my bedroom door.  Then he climbs on top of me, spreading his legs between mine.  He kisses my mouth.  His hand slips beneath my sweater and up under my bra.  His fingers trace the notch at the base of my throat.  “I was made to be naughty with you,” he says.

We kiss
for a while, rolling over and under and around each other.  I pull his shirt free of his jeans and caress the curve of his back.  He unbuckles the latch of his belt.  I fumble with the buttons wedged tight between the fabric fly then tug his pants down until I see the buffalo pattern on the band of his boxers.

When h
e pulls my sweater over my head my hair snaps with static.  He digs under me, arching my body toward his as he unclasps my bra.  “God, I love you,” he whispers.

“I
love you more,” I manage to say.  Then I close my eyes.

Love is a lot of things,
I know, but right now it’s Kyle.  His breathing is the only sound in existence.  His smell is the only smell in the world.  His skin is my private universe—I unbutton his shirt and send it flying.  I’m in the middle of helping him kick free of his jeans when he freezes like he’s been turned to stone.

“What was that?” he
says.

“What was what?” 
I run my hands up his arms to his shoulders.  His muscles feel like solid steel.

“
Stop a sec,” he says.  “I heard something.”

“
I was thinking we should just do it.  I was thinking it loudly.”

He smiles
and his eyes almost twinkle.  “Just a few weeks left to mess around.  Enjoy it.”

“
I don’t care about some arbitrary number!  We’re almost buck!  Let’s go for it.”

“
You hit eighteen girl and trust me.  We will.”

“
Just come on—”

“Shush!
  There it is again.  I swear, I hear something.”

Three soft knocks
sound against my bedroom door.  “Aspen,” Dad says.  “I’m home.”

Kyle
whispers, “Shit
.
”

Silence
, and then the stairs creak—first the third from the top, then the second from the bottom.  Through my partially opened shutters I watch as huge snowflakes float like spilled feathers from the sky.  Kyle kisses my forehead.  “You stay here a while,” he says.

“Where are you going?”

He stands up and pulls on his jeans.  His belt buckle clanks until he threads the leather through.  “I’ve got you in bed, girl, and in your father’s house.  I’m going down to talk to him.”

“
Wait!”  I sit up, groping the folds of my comforter for my bra.  I can’t find it so I pull on my sweater.  It’s inside out and backwards.  “I’ll go with you.”

Kyle shakes his head.  “No.
”

“Yes!
”

“
No.  You could fix this, maybe, for the moment.  But the bigger picture’s mine.  I love you.  We’re together, you know?  I’m the man who wants to stand by you, across your life.  Your dad, he’s the man who’ll always see you as his little girl.  This’ll take discussing my intentions, Aspen.  It’s for me to set things right with him.”

“
But I can’t just wait up here not knowing!  What if he goes crazy?  What if he throws you out?”

“
He won’t do that.”

“How do you know?”

“I’d already be out.”  Kyle tugs on his shirt, buttoning it from the bottom up.  I tumble off the bed and wrap my arms around him.

“
But what if he takes me away?”  Tears start into my eyes.  “I don’t want to go to Portland.  I won’t!  I belong here, with you.”

With his thumb
s, Kyle wipes the water from my cheeks.  “You’re not going to Portland,” he says, and kisses me.  “Now finish dressing that hot little body.  Comb the passion from your hair.  The thought of you up here, all wild and lyin’ on your bed, is enough to keep me from saying what I need to say.”  He takes his boots in his hand, pushing mine aside with his foot.

S
ilently, he opens the door.