The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (15 page)

“Really?”

Why wouldn’t she just
shut up!
“Course; what’d
you think?”

She considered this very
deliberately. “On TV, they’re not naked.” It was not a challenge, simply
uncertainty. “They had clothes with fringeth and featherth.”

“That’s TV,” he said, no
longer even sure where this idea was coming from. He was sure he had read it
somewhere, but couldn’t remember when. “They can’t show stuff like that on TV,
though. The Indians didn’t wear costumes, just war paint and feathers in their hair.”

All throughout childhood,
Cassie trusted Freddy. Not his older brothers. Sometimes not even his parents
or her mom. But she always trusted him.

“’Kay,” was all she said.

He turned his head and
saw her cross-legged on the ground, one foot already bare while she pulled the other
sneaker off, not even bothering to untie the laces. Then she stood up, squirmed
out of her t-shirt, and dropped it on the ground. Finally, she skimmed off the
last of her clothes in one simple, uncoordinated movement, momentarily hobbled
by the tangle of shorts and underwear around her ankles before discarding them.
“Come on, Freddy. Help me look for thome featherth.”

Freddy turned towards
her, his cousin naked in the full light of the sun, no motives beyond relieving
the boredom of a hot summer day.

Could he say the same?

And in that moment,
Freddy’s life ended as surely as if he had died and been reborn, his new life beginning
in that fraction of a second where Cassie stared back at him just long enough
to make sure he would follow before turning away and searching for bird
feathers. And he had seen her, not his cousin, but someone—
something
—else
with sun-browned limbs and an open expression,
naked
.

When they were younger,
he remembered his mother making them take baths together; it saved time and
water, but mostly her patience. Freddy had seen Cassie naked before.

But he had never really …
seen
.

Freddy’s mouth opened,
then closed, then opened again. But nothing came out. He only stared,
remembering something he had heard, but never understood or even much
considered until this moment:
girls are different from boys
.

In that stolen moment
before she turned and scampered across the field, his eyes traveled across her,
no more under his control than his own heartbeat. He took in the straight waist
and hips, her long, coltish legs and knob knees, flat chest and smooth, pale
belly, seeing nothing special, nothing at all.

Then his eyes found it …
and
he saw
.

Cassie was not like him.
She was different
down there
, like what you saw when you undressed a
doll, only not exactly.

He could never make sense
of what he had heard all along, could never make the universal association. He couldn’t
imagine his cousin was somehow part of what he had overheard: from his
brothers, the boys at school, his parents when they thought him asleep.
Everything before was abstract, terms applied to the nameless, faceless
concepts of the opposite gender, an entity of the adult world that existed in a
kind of unreal state in his brain, a set of hypotheticals, the shapeless,
anonymous figures in health manuals that explained the location of unmentionable
subjects like
mammary glands
and
ovaries
with line-drawings and
cross-sectional diagrams that were more informative of the large intestine than
the basic differences between boys and girls. These things did not apply to his
cousin. She was a brat, a pain, a dodo-head. But she wasn’t a girl. Not like
that. Not Cassie.

But there it was, and it
had been there all along, the answers to all things he didn’t understand about
girls running across the field, secrets bared, as innocent as when the world
was new.

Freddy forgot all about
being ditched by his brothers; about playing cowboys and Indians; about
shooting Jake’s B-B gun.
Baby-stuff.

“Cassie, wait up. I gotta
get your clothes.” He grabbed up her shorts and underwear, her t-shirt and sneakers,
awkwardly hugging them in his arms as he walked after her, trying to untangle
some of the pieces as he went, though he had no idea why. And as he did, he
felt a distinct tingling in his own …
down there
. He’d never been aware
of it before. Before, it was just the place he tried not to get kicked, how he
peed, something rude with a host of nicknames synonymous with silly playground
insults. But like with Cassie, this was new, different.

For a moment, Freddy
closed his eyes and felt a piece of himself shut down—the piece that yearned to
shoot B-B guns at beer cans, to win the approval of his older brothers, to play
Justice League of America on hot summer nights, running around the backyard
with a beach towel tied around his neck for a cape.

And when he opened his eyes, he felt another piece, one he
never knew about before, open wide.

He caught up with Cassie
towards the edge of the woods. She was walking with her head down, scanning the
stands of wild grass and hay and goldenrod bordering the woods. “Freddy, I
don’t thee any featherth. Where are we gonna find thome?”

She turned, and Freddy
found himself confronted with the first naked girl he had ever seen—now that he
was looking. He stared at her, trying to understand what it was about the place
between her legs, his brain desperately trying to attach terms from the health
manual that seemed both distant and useless. And he was again aware of himself,
of the tightness in his pants, uncomfortable and pleasant at the same time. The
air felt hot and drowsy and close with the sweet smell of milkweed and hay, the
buzzing of insects impossibly loud. He could feel sweat beading across his
skull, running down his cheeks and forehead.

“Feathers …” He choked
the word, gurgled involuntarily, and started again. “Feathers will be on the
ground,” he said and dropped down closer to the grass, setting Cassie’s clothes
aside. “You have to look from down here because they sink into the grass.”

He looked up once and
realized she was even closer, everything revealed in greater detail. Did she
even know, even suspect?

I wonder what it feels
like?

NO! Absolutely not!
Never!

It’s so hot. Can we
just go home?

“Aren’t you hot?” Cassie
asked, reaching out and touching a finger to the sweat on his face.

“Kinda,” he answered.

“Take your clotheth off. We
can both be Indianth,” she said. “But we need featherth.”

Cassie planted her feet
wide, arms windmilling in long carefree arcs as she stared off towards the deep
woods, oblivious. And seeing her like that, legs set apart, Freddy knew
instantly what he should do.

Freddy, you need to stop, now!

Girls are different from boys.

He should have Cassie get
dressed, take her home, let his brothers catch hell for abandoning them. They
would get him back for it later, when mom and dad weren’t around, but that’s
what he should do.

What he should do.

…
should do
.

He set her clothes aside
and got undressed. And as the air touched cool against his skin, he finally felt
relief.

Cassie was already
creeping through the brush to the woods beyond. “Come on,” she called. “Maybe
we’ll find thome featherth down by the crick.”

Freddy followed her,
winding along a narrow animal track that ducked low under twisted bows of
sumac, feet sliding lightly on muddy earth. The creek was only twenty feet off
the edge of the field, concealed by a sloping embankment and thick tangles of
trees and brush. Freddy wasn’t even sure if they were still on his parent’s
property anymore. He was certain he didn’t care.

Just ahead of him, he saw
Cassie, skin pale against the verdant backdrop of leaves and dark earth,
picking her way carefully along the muddy shore of the slow, shallow stream, looking
for feathers. Why was she so different to him now, but not yesterday, not this
morning, not five minutes ago?

… should do should do
should do …

“Freddy, look!” Cassie
had turned, her hand up high, a long, black crow feather held between her thumb
and finger. “I think there might be thome more over here. Hold it tho I can
braid my hair.”

She paused long enough to
hand him the feather then started to braid the back of her hair; not great, but
passable. Enough to anchor the feather, he supposed; not that he gave it much
thought. Not really. Standing beside her, their toes squelched into the slick, silt
shore, he squatted down, looking towards the bank of tall reeds, brush, and
touch-me-nots, ostensibly scanning for more feathers. But that wasn’t what he
was doing, wasn’t what he was looking at. Crouched down, eye-level to her bellybutton,
he peered into a reality he had never known before. He wanted to reach out and
touch it, stroke it like a butterfly’s wings, take the slippery mud at his
fingertips and paint circles and designs upon Cassie’s skin. But he knew it was
not what he should do …

… should do should do
should do …

He delicately flicked the
tip of the feather between her legs, causing her to giggle and jump. “That
tickleth! Now help put the feather in my hair.”

She turned her back to
him, squatting down so that he could reach the tangle of uneven braid she had
created out of the back of her hair. Freddy reached up with trembling fingers,
looking to tuck the point of the old crow feather into the thickest part. It
might stay, it might not. It might stay long enough for Cassie to pretend to be
an Indian for an afternoon then be forgotten.

But he would not forget. His
thing had stiffened, sensitive even to the light breeze that infiltrated the
woods. He promised himself he would never forget.

Strange, the things we
tell ourselves when we are children.

The sound was nothing, a
pop-and-
plink
somewhere downstream.

But Freddy knew
instantly: a B-B had missed its target, gravity sending it harmlessly down into
the water to disappear unnoticed.

Almost.

JakeTommyKevin! God!

That quickly, every
feeling turned into terror.

“Hide!” he hissed,
grabbing Cassie and pushing her down into the mud beside him, concealed beneath
the thick overhang of leafy brush. “We can’t let ‘em see us.”

“Who?” she said.

He clamped a hand over
Cassie’s mouth, his lips beside her ear, her body pinned underneath him. “Jake
and Tommy and Kevin.” Freddy’s other hand was trapped underneath, holding her tightly.

You want to know what
it feels like?

No! Yes!
If his brothers caught them like
this, naked as babies, him and Cassie … He could not begin to imagine what
would happen, every train of thought leading down ever darker, more hideous visions
of his imperiled future.
Freddy, what are you doing!?

Cassie stared across the
empty stream, motionless, concentrating as only a child can when the rules of a
game are tantamount. He felt her breath warm across the backs of his fingers.
She flicked a wide glance back at him, eyes gleaming, caught up in the game,
before continuing to search the silent woods for any sign of the older boys.

Freddy refused even to
breathe, listening intently: the gurgle of the stream, the rush of blood
pounding through his veins,
voices
—distant, but there just the same.
How had he missed them?

“It went over here
somewhere.”
Was that Kevin? It sounded like he was up in the field, close,
too close.

Freddy pulled Cassie closer, shrinking into the shadows,
trying to melt into the water, into the mud. He relinquished a slow, noiseless
breath, afraid to disturb the air, as if holding back the air in his lungs
could hold back time, slow it down, control it.

There was a pause, a
reply too distant to know what was said, then: “Well, where are they?”

Freddy hugged Cassie to
him, hoping his brothers wouldn’t stumble upon their clothes, knowing they
would search them out if they did. And when that happened, they would know,
everyone
would know. And then they would make him go away: to juvie hall or jail or the
nuthouse or wherever they send you when you’re a sick, disgusting pervert who
touches his little cousin. He should stop. He knew he should…

… should do should do
should do …

Cassie made a small
squeak behind his hand, barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears,
every nerve straining upon the knife-edge of self-annihilation. The arm pinned
under Cassie’s body ached and tingled, but still his fingers clutched her
tightly, his brain rattling insensibly in ecstasy and terror—
boys have a penis and girls have a Freddy,
you need to stop, now!
—his penis trapped in the thick mud, straining, oblivious to the danger as
he surrendered to the excruciating sensation, unyielding, unstoppable.

… should do should do
should do …