Untamed (11 page)

The light breaks through the leafy canopy overhead in bursts of brightness, like a thousand camera flashes are going off at once. I catch only scattered glimpses of blue sky.

The air is thick with the smell of wet soil and a dozen different flowers. There’s a sourness on the air, and it reminds me of the apple orchard back home, except it hits the nose harder, has a bitter bite.

Sweat beads on my upper lip, and my t-shirt clings to my back. I should never have worn black in this heat. Even the air that rushes past us as Dad drives us through the jungle isn’t enough to keep me cool.

“Where are we going?” I ask Dad, but my words are snatched away by the wind. He doesn’t hear me, and he keeps driving, winding us deeper and deeper into a dark-green thicket of thin trees, dangling vines, and dense underbrush.

The jeep takes it well – at least, I imagine it does. The ride is not so bumpy, but nevertheless Dad drives slower than he does back home on the street. The sound of plant life being crushed to death beneath us fills the air, and birds stop their calling as we trundle through, only to resume when we’ve left their trees behind.

This was supposed to be a
holiday
. At least, that’s what Dad said when he told me that he was taking me to Thailand. I thought I’d get to ride an elephant, see a tiger, try the non-spicy Thai foods, and experience the land of a thousand smiles.

Instead we went straight to the five-star resort full of other foreign tourists, rested and cleaned up, and then he told me to get back into the jeep with him because he had someone he wanted to see.

That was when I knew that we weren’t here for a holiday.

That was when I knew we were here
on business
.

And even though I’m not an adult yet, I’m smart enough to know what
business
means. It’s what Dad does… he’s a mobster. Business always means drugs, women, or violence… and always dirty money.

“Dad, are we there yet?”

This time he hears me, and he turns to me briefly. “Almost, so stop asking me.”

“Why are we coming out here?”

“There’s somebody I need to see.”

“Did I have to come?” I ask him. “Couldn’t I have stayed at the hotel? They have a nice pool! Or I could have gone for a walk around town?”

“You won’t be walking around town all by yourself in a foreign country,” he says. “You’re only fifteen.”

“I’m nearly sixteen, and I can take care of myself. I’m not stupid.”

Dad laughs meanly… and I know he’s laughing
at
me, as if I’ve just said the most unwise thing in the world. I sink into my seat and fold my arms.

“I thought you should meet him, too,” he says.

I blink.
Him
? “Who are we meeting?”

“A boy.”

I shake my head. I don’t understand. “Why?”

But he doesn’t reply.

The terrifying thought enters my head:
He’s marrying me off!

But, after a moment’s reflection, I don’t really believe it.

He weaves the jeep around trees, eventually finds a dirt road, then breathes a sigh of relief and says to me, “Good thing I found the path again.”

“You mean you were lost?”

“A little.”

Now on the dirt path, soft from the daily rainfalls, he drives faster, and before long we come to a clearing, and I see a collection of huts on stilts. It’s a small village bracketed by lush green jungle on one side, and the sparkling blue-green sea with its yellow beach on the other. The beach looks like somebody took a highlighter pen and traced the shoreline.

In the center of the village sits a wide, square wooden building without windows. It’s suspended on stilts as well, but the walls look older than the houses that surround it. I see a golden elephant outside, notice the incense sticks. It must be a temple of some kind.

“Why couldn’t we just take a boat?” I ask when I spot a small jetty extending from the beach.

“I enjoy the drive.”

“I would have liked a boat ride.”

“Deidre,” he says, looking harshly at me. “Can you just shut up for a moment?”

I tighten my arms around my stomach and crease my brow, pricked by his impatience and rudeness. He’s always like this, always treating me like I’m some kind of burden. Why the hell did he insist on bringing me here, then?

Damn it!

I half expect him to tell me about how he always wanted a son. He’s said that to me before many times, especially when he’s drunk and angry.

He stops the car at the clearing, orders me out with him with a sharp jerk of his wrist. Together we walk into the village, a wide gap in between us.

I see people working vegetable patches, spy a rickety pen of pigs, hear the hum of a generator. These people are farmers, live a simple life.

Suddenly, I feel out of my element, self-conscious. I’m here in my jeans, t-shirt and branded sneakers, whereas other kids I see are wearing hand-me-down clothing, are running around barefoot or in flip-flops that look a decade old. Their feet are dirty.

“Wait here,” he says, walking off into the village.

“Dad!” I call.

He turns around. “What?”

“Dad, don’t leave me alone. Please.”

“Grow up, would you?”

Someone approaches him, and they talk. It’s clear the man is struggling to understand him because he doesn’t speak English. All Dad does is start yelling, as if that’s going to help matters. Eventually the man seems to get the idea, and points toward the temple.

The other villagers pay me no mind, except for the children. They watch me from far away with wide, curious eyes. I shove one hand into my back pocket, and with the other fiddle with my wavy hair held up in a ponytail. I don’t know what to do, and become more and more uncomfortable.

I go back to the jeep and get out my backpack. I rummage through it, pull out my bottle of water, but my small, pink pocket-mirror slips out. The gleaming reflection of the sun catches my eye for a moment, and then the mirror lands face-down.

Bending my knees to pick it up, I notice glass shards. I broke it.

“Shit,” I whisper, looking at it for a moment before quickly picking up all the pieces as fast as I can and dropping them into my bag. I’m embarrassed… all those kids just watched me break my mirror.

I should never have come back for my water bottle. My heart starts to race, and I feel more nervous than ever. I wish Dad hadn’t just left me here.

That’s when I see bare feet walking toward me. The skin is tanned by the sun. I look up and gasp. A boy is approaching me, tall, topless, muscular in a stringy way. His eyes seem to
glow
blue in the bright sunlight, and I feel for a moment as if I’m looking into the eyes of a wolf.

Dark, jagged tattoos sheathe his arms, shoulder to wrists, and they run down the sides of his torso, too, ending at his hips.

He’s smiling at me, more of a cocky smile than a warm one, and I notice that he’s really attractive. It makes me all the more uncomfortable.

He looks a bit older than me, and he’s definitely not from the village. His face is nice, his jaw a sharp, straight line, and his hair dark and messy, and a little too long.

“Hey,” he says, his voice deeper than I expect it to be.

I furrow my brow at his accent. “You’re American?”

“Yeah.” He kneels down, picks up a shard of glass. “You broke your mirror.”

“It’s fine,” I say quickly.

“Do you have another one?”

I shake my head, tell him that really, it’s fine. It’s no big deal. It’s just a mirror. I care more
that
I broke it in front of everybody, rather than it being broken itself.

My heart is surging – I don’t know why I feel so nervous – but I do know that I feel drawn to him. I meet his eyes for a moment, and he smiles a warm smile at me this time, and all at once his face bursts with brightness, and cute dimples dig into his cheeks, and I can’t bear to keep my eyes on his any longer.

I look away.

“I’m Duncan,” he tells me. “Glass told me to introduce myself to you.”

“Deidre,” I whisper. “You call my Dad ‘Glass’?”

He shrugs. “That’s what he tells me to call him.”

“Do you know why that’s his nickname?”

“Like he’s made of glass, right? Because he couldn’t stay healthy when he was a boxer.”

I nod, feel his eyes burning into me. “Who are you, exactly? I mean, how do you know my dad?”

I’m too embarrassed to look anywhere but his forehead now – feel too awkward to meet his eyes, and definitely don’t want to let my gaze fall down his body.

That’s when I notice the scar just beneath the line of his tousled hair. It’s quite fresh, still red, still scabbed.

His reply is not what I expect. In fact, I don’t know what I expected.

“I’m,” he says, before his voice trails off. Then he shrugs. “I guess I’m your stepbrother.”

“What?” I say, stepping backward. I look past him toward the temple, and there see Dad sweeping out of it having a heated discussion with what looks like a monk. The monk, dressed in an orange garb and with a bald dome like Dad, is busy shaking his head, and together they gesture at Duncan.

“What do you mean my
stepbrother
?”

“Your father legally adopted me,” he says. “Six months ago.”

I tilt my head to the side. “You mean
foster
brother, then… I think. And I don’t believe you. Dad would have told me.”

His smile only disarms me further. He’s got a perfect set of teeth. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

Duncan shrugs.

I look around.
Why didn’t Dad tell me
?

“So what are you doing here?”

“Training,” he says.

“Training what?”

“Thai kickboxing.”

Again, I’m just even more confused. My eyes fall down his lean, muscled body, and that’s when I start to see the bruises. He’s got green and purple patches around his ribcage and on the outsides of his strong, defined, arms.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Seventeen. You?”

“Fifteen. But I turn sixteen in a couple of weeks.”

“Oh, yeah? When?”

“Umm, two weeks…” I make a face, surprised at the coincidence. “Exactly, actually.”

He gestures at my t-shirt. “You like cats?”

I look down, see the stenciled image of two cats touching noses on my top. “Yeah, but Dad doesn’t. He doesn’t let me keep pets.”

“We have a cat,” Duncan says. He looks around. “Somewhere.”

“We?”

“The village. The pets here are owned by everybody.”

I grin, find that idea pleasant. “Can I see it?”

Duncan looks at me a moment too long.

“What?”

When he doesn’t reply, I grow annoyed.

“Tell me!”

He laughs, and there’s a flash of awkwardness in his features, a break in the confidence. “I just think you’re a really pretty girl.”

I flush, don’t know what to say, and so try to ignore it altogether. “Where’s the cat?”

“Come on,” he says, leading me. “It’s fine, don’t worry, there’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

“What about snakes and stuff?”

“I’ll keep you safe,” he tells me. “Come on.”

We walk off toward the tree line together, and Duncan starts calling out a name. It sounds like ‘dye’ but with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘d’.

“Just hold on, she’s probably spying us.”

“Spying?”

“She’ll climb a tree,” Duncan says, shrugging. “Sit there and watch us in secret.”

Sure enough, a few moments later, a tabby cat comes bounding through the jungle, it’s brown-and-black tail sticking up through the underbrush.

The cat meows, rubs against Duncan’s feet, and then turns to sniff my shoes. I bend down, but the cat recoils, back arched.

“She’s not good with newcomers,” he says. He lifts her up gently, and then holds her out to me.

It’s not exactly the world’s most beautiful cat – her eyes are too small and ears too big – but she’s cute nonetheless, and I pat her, scratch the top of her head, draw a purr from her.

He puts her back down, and after staring at both of us in turn for some inscrutable feline reason, she slinks off back into the jungle.

“Why does she stay in the jungle?” I ask. “Why not in the sun?” I think of all the photos of cats I’ve seen stretching out in sunlight.

“Oh, she’ll go into the sun later. It’s still early.”

“Do you get wild cats here? Like tigers and stuff?”

“Not here,” he says. “Not outside the parks. All tigers here are endangered and very rare.”

“Oh.”

We meet eyes, and I feel zapped by electricity, look away instantly.

“Why are you training out here?” I ask him, using the question as an excuse to turn back to the village. “I mean, this place specifically?”

“Glass told me that guy was one of the best former kickboxers in Thailand.”

“You mean the monk?”

“Yes.”

I glimpse at the man, a little confused. He’s short and small with a thin-frame. He looks nothing like what I imagine a fighter to look: Buff-as-hell and missing teeth.

“He doesn’t look it,” Duncan says, as if reading my mind. “But he fights like the fucking devil. Quick as shit, too. Very skilled.”