Sacred (36 page)

Before I changed, I slipped outside to say hi to my parents. They were waiting for me with a bouquet. I noticed they were holding hands.

“Oh, Scarlett, that was just so much fun to watch.” My mom hugged me and kissed my cheek. “And honey, you look just beautiful in that dress, but don’t you think you could pull it up a little in the front?” She pinched the bodice of my dress and attempted to hike it up.

“Too late for that, Mom,” I said, swatting her hand away. “Play’s over.”

My dad looked a little bashful, seeing me all made-up and fancy, I guess, and he said, as he had on the night of the winter dance, “You look great, Scar.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

I explained to them about the cast party and promised to be home before midnight. They didn’t seem too worried about curfew; as they walked away, hand in hand, it occurred to me that they might be pleased to have the house to themselves. They took my flowers with them to put into water for me back home.

I grabbed the handle of the stage door and tried to pull it open so I could go inside and change, but it was locked.

“Damn,” I murmured, and then I slammed my palm against it a few times, yelling, “Hello? Anybody there? I’m locked out.…”

“Need some help, Scarlett?”

I turned around slowly, arranging the features of my face in practiced casualness. “Hey, Andy,” I said. “No, I’m okay. I just need to go around to the main entrance. I got locked out.”

He stepped in closer to me. I smelled beer on his breath as he dipped his face down close to mine, snaking his arms around my waist. “I don’t think you need to go anywhere just yet,” he said.

I shoved against his chest, hard. “Step off, Andy.” My voice was strong. “I’m not interested.”

He looked offended, but he took a half step back. “Tell me, Scar, what does Will have that I haven’t got?”

I had a list of attributes I could have rattled off—sincerity, patience, thoughtfulness, gentleness—but before I could say a word, the stage door slammed open and Will appeared, still dressed in his suit, almost too beautiful to look at, his face contorted in anger.

He didn’t stop to listen to reason—“I’ve got it under control, Will, it’s okay”—but slammed into Andy’s chest full force, knocking him to the asphalt and pounding him again and again.

Andy tried to punch back at first, but Will’s anger fueled his strength, and finally Andy gave up trying to fight, curling into a ball and covering his face with his hands.

“Will, stop it, stop it!” I screamed, but he was deaf to my cries. At last, three more guys from the play, including Mr. Steiner, who’d played the Reverend, spilled out of the theater. It took all three of them to peel Will off of Andy, and even with his arms pulled behind his back, he continued to try to throw punches.

Will’s suit was rumpled and dirty, spattered with blood, and the skin on the knuckles of his right hand was busted open. His face was contorted with anger, with pain, as Mr. Steiner and the boys hauled him away, back into the theater.

A few girls who had followed the guys out of the theater fell into a semicircle around Andy, helping him to sit up, to stand.

He touched the back of his hand to his lip and looked at the blood. “Hell of a guy you’ve got there, Scarlett,” he said. Then he limped away, shrugging off any help from the girls. Finally, I stood there alone, too shocked to move, shivering in my thin costume.

All the elegance, all the refinement and beauty in the world … was it nothing more than a mask, a fragile overlay that hid our true nature?

TWENTY-ONE

I
found my way back through the theater and into the changing room. It was abandoned now; costumes lay across the backs of chairs, open cases of makeup and hair supplies cluttered the countertops.

I managed to unfasten the buttons down the back of my dress and I let it fall to the floor. I found my sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Pulling on my sweatshirt, I dislodged several hairpins. I sat in one of the makeup stations and pulled out the rest of the pins. It took forever; every time I thought I’d removed the last one, I found another. When they were finally all out, I pulled a makeup wipe out of a little plastic case on the counter. I rubbed it across my mouth, a streak of red lipstick smearing my cheek, reminding me of Andy’s face.

Finally I was myself again: hair pulled back into a low, messy bun; face bare. I blinked at my reflection.
It wasn’t long ago
, I thought,
that I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror
.

I hung my dress on the rack, then gathered up the other costumes and hung them up as well. Then there was nothing else for me to do, so I switched off the light and left the theater.

I didn’t want to go to the café for the postperformance celebration, so I headed home instead. As I turned onto my street, though, I remembered the look on my parents’ faces; I didn’t much feel like walking in on their private party.

I felt paralyzed, standing on the corner of my block. It was full night. The moon was above me. There was nowhere for me to go.

Party or home. Neither appealed to me. Then I saw him, sitting on the steps of my porch, his head in his hands. He looked up at me before he could have heard my steps.

Still dressed in his costume, Will looked just right sitting in front of my Victorian house. Instead of him being the anachronism, it was as if I had somehow stepped through a portal back in time. In my sneakers and jeans, I seemed like a visitor to some far away, simpler time. In this version of reality, Will was my suitor, and I was his intended, and our life unfolded quite simply and beautifully—a wedding, a child, a country estate, and a flat in the city. He would read his paper in front of the fire, and I would work on a pile of darning from a basket at my side.

But then I blinked, and the misty version of some other reality dissipated, and I was just standing on my street again, and Will was a boy in a bloodstained costume.

He held his hands out to me, palms up, supplicating. I walked to him and stood before him on the footpath that led up to our house. He leaned his forehead against my stomach. My hands reached out to touch him—then hesitated, floating just above his head—before they rested on his hair, and Will leaned his weight more fully against me, and he sighed.

After time had passed like that, I slipped into the house and pulled some blankets from the Yellow Room. Will and I circled the house and spread a blanket on the floor of the gazebo, then lay on it together and pulled the thicker quilt across us.

We didn’t talk for a long time, or kiss; we just lay there, my head on his chest, his hand pulling my hair loose from its bun and tracing the length of it from nape to hip.

Finally, Will whispered into my hair, “I’m so sorry, Scarlett. I don’t know what happened. It’s like—I lose myself, for a minute, and all I see is my anger.”

“Have you always been like this?” I found that I was scared to hear his answer.

“No. I’ve never started a fight in my life. I’ve been in lots of them … you know, when I have to … but I’ve never wanted to fight. Until now.”

I thought about his words. He’d never wanted to fight before, but now he did.

“Maybe I’m no good for you.” I didn’t want to say the words, but they seemed so true to me.

“That’s absurd.”

“No—listen. First I give you these insane headaches, and
then I point out things about your mom that you probably never needed to know, and then I bring out the worst in you. I mean, what’s changed? Nothing except for the fact that I’m your girlfriend.”

In spite of the depressing nature of my words, I felt Will smiling. “You’re my girlfriend, are you?”

I was glad the night hid my blush. “Or whatever,” I mumbled.

Will sat up and pulled me up, as well. He tilted up my chin so that I looked into his green, green eyes. “No ‘whatever,’ ” he said. “Scarlett,
will
you be my girlfriend?”

Considering all we’d shared, all the different ways Will had saved me, it seemed ridiculous that he would even ask. But I realized, before I answered, that though he had been saving me from the first moment we met on the trail, I hadn’t yet had the chance to save him back.

“Yes,” I murmured, and we kissed in the moonlight.

We settled back in the blankets, comfortable in a different way, and after a time I broached the subject of Will’s anger again.

“If you’re so sure that I’m good for you,” I said, “then you need to let me help you. Like you’ve helped me.”

“I’ve never been adverse to help.”

“So tell me, then … what is it that happens, right before you get so mad?”

Will shifted, as if even thinking about his anger made him uncomfortable. “It’s a lot like the pull I feel to step into violent crimes,” he said at last. “Only instead of being pulled to help someone, it’s as if I’m being pulled to attack—to
smite someone, or something. And I don’t feel better until I do.”

I found his choice of words interesting. Pulled to smite someone … I’d never heard anyone actually use the word
smite
in conversation. It seemed a word from antiquity.

“Do you get the same headache if you refuse the pull?”

Will shook his head. “No, it’s not as bad as that. It’s more just … something I really want to do, and when it hits me, it’s like I don’t think in words anymore. Just colors. And I mainly see red.” He paused, then said a bit begrudgingly, “And, as you’ve probably noticed, it always has something to do with you. So far, anyway.”

Of course, I didn’t like this very much. But I tried to keep my tone light and said, “Yeah, I’ve had that effect on lots of guys.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Will answered, “but it’s certainly not your fault. It’s mine, for allowing myself to be led by my emotions.”

We thought about this for a while, each of us on our own private island, so close together, though, that it seemed if I tried a little harder, I could extend a bridge of light between us and we could combine our thoughts.

“Maybe,” I said at last, “next time you start thinking in colors, you could focus really hard on choosing a different color.”

“I could pick blue,” he said, scooting down a little so we were face to face, our noses practically touching, “and I could focus on your eyes.” So tenderly, he kissed me twice, once upon each of my eyelids.

“Or I could pick gold,” he continued, his hands tangling in my hair, “and concentrate on your hair.”

Another moment passed, as Will’s hands caressed my hair. Then, “I could choose pink,” he said, “and meditate on your lips.” Our kiss was sweet, and soft, and so warm in the cold night.

As if from a great distance, I heard the back door open. “Scarlett?”

It was my mother.

“Damn,” I cursed, then pulled myself away from Will’s embrace. “Yeah, Mom,” I answered.

“Scarlett Wenderoth, what on earth are you doing out there?”

It was like pulling teeth after that to get my parents to agree to let me go on the trip to the mainland the next month with the school. They both felt
very
strongly that things between me and Will were moving too fast.

“Come on, Mom,” I argued. “It’s just a day trip. And we’ll be with the class the whole time.”

Because it was a trip to see a special collection at the museum that would be dismantling in the spring, all upperclassmen were going instead of just the senior class. There was no way I was going to be only upperclassman left at school.

“You could just stay home and help your mother refresh the rooms,” Daddy suggested. “Our first guests of the season will be arriving in another week.”

But the withering glance I shot him put an end to that discussion.

Finally, they agreed that I could go, but made me promise that I’d stay with a group. I could see how hard it was for them to let me go, both away from the island and further and further away from my childhood.

The morning of the trip was beautiful. It was mid-March, and I could taste spring in the air. As the unwieldy ferry pulled out to sea, our island seeming to shrink behind us, Will and I stood at the very front of the boat. His father had urged him not to go, also—but not for the same reasons as my parents. Long Beach was a big city, known in part for its gang violence. I knew, as we took the ferry to the mainland, that Will was taking a chance by leaving the island. Still, I couldn’t help but feel hopeful as we plowed through the sea. Will stood behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist, and though I’d pulled my hair into two French braids to keep it manageable in the wind, still strands of it were blown in my face in the salty air.

I filled my lungs with the sea air. I had never been one of those people who get seasick. It was a good thing, being a lifelong islander as I was; anytime we wanted to travel any substantial distance, crossing the water was a necessity.

I loved it out there—watching the dolphins chasing the ferry, feeling the spray of salt water that shot up from the bow of the boat. As a kid, “ship captain” had made my list of possible professions. And days like this one made me toy with the idea once again.

“I think I could travel the world like this,” I said.