Celeste

  Cleo was practically ecstatic that I was returning to the woods. His eyes were bright, and he was running about everywhere, his unbounded energy amusing. I tried calming him down, but it was like trying to hold back the wind. Crashing through bushes, digging, barking, chasing every bird, he circled and charged ahead of me. When we reached the pond, he lunged for the water and went in completely, dog-paddling his way across and then back, his head bobbing as if his neck was one big spring. I couldn't help but laugh at him.

  Then I sat on a rock and looked at the water to stare at myself. Mommy had my hair very closely cut, even shorter than Noble wore his own. My added weight made my face rounder than I wished it to be, but my lips didn't thicken, and despite all the hard work I had done. I still had slight features. I'm almost pretty. I thought.

  "Well, if it isn't the hermit," I heard and nearly jumped out of my body.

  There he was. Elliot, coming out of the woods toward me.

  "What do you do, wait around all day to see if I'm in the woods?" I asked, annoyed at being so surprised.

  "Hardly. But I did hear the dog barking, and I knew you're the only one with a dog around here. It didn't exactly take brain surgery. Where's your fishing pole?"

  "I didn't come here to fish." I said.

  "Oh?" He looked around. "Well, you're obviously not here to swim. right? That water is probably cold enough to freeze your ding-dung

  "Ding-dong?"

  "I know you know what that is," he said. smiling. I felt my back stiffen.

  "No. Im not here to swim. Sometimes I just like walking in the woods. I need to give Cleo some exercise. too."

  "Right, exercise." he said and skimmed a flat rock across the water.

  "How come you're not cruising in your car?" I asked.

  He smirked.

  "What?" I followed.

  "I'm grounded for a month. I got a speeding ticket. Who would ever think they would have a speed trap in one of these one-horse towns? Naturally, my father went nuts. I just get my license and then a speeding ticket, which he says raises the car insurance premium."

  He kicked a stone and then sat on a rock near me.

  "Fortunately," he continued, smiling again. "my new girlfriend drives."

  "New girlfriend?"

  "Yeah, her name's Harmony Ross. Her parents are divorced, and she lives with her mother and her younger sister. Tiffany. Her mother is a paralegal and works for an important attorney. She's a knockout. Harmony and her look more like sisters than mother and daughter. Anyway. Harmony's mother's act a boyfriend, a bank executive, so Harmony has the house often. She told me everything about herself and her family. Her mother and father were divorced when she was only five, and he has nothing to do with them anymore, but they have some money, and she has the house. Its a really nice house."

  He smiled.

  "This was the first time I made love to a zirl in her own bed."

  I stared at him.

  "You don't believe me again?"

  "Why shouldn't I believe you?" I said, looking away, "We did it on the second date, too,' he bragged.

  I stood up and clapped my hands for Cleo.

  "I told her about you," he continued, and I spun around. "What do you mean, told her about me?"

  "Take it easy. She was really curious, and the next day, when she told her girlfriend Roberta. Roberta at very, very interested. They think you're fascinating," he added with a wry smile. "Of course. I built it up a little."

  "I bet you did," I said.

  "Doesn't hurt anyone. Actually, it made me a big shot," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Why? No one knows much about you. You're hardly ever seen anywhere. I could have told them you had horns growing out of your head, and they would have believed me."

  "Who cares what they believe?" I snapped and started away.

  "Relax. I didn't say anything terrible," he quickly told me and caught up. "Actually, I made you look really good. I told them you were really a very nice guy, full of interesting information about the woods, the animals, a true nature boy who could talk to birds. Roberta was practically champing at the bit. She can't wait to meet you. You'll thank me when you meet her. too. I've practically laid out your path to glory."

  I stopped and squinted.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "She'll put out for you without much effort on your part. Just so she can say she's been with you, stupid."

  "How do you know I want to be with her?" I asked, partly out of curiosity. How would he know?

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  "Talk about my sister being built. Wait until You see Roberta Beckman, and from what I hear, she's easy, a little booze or a joint."

  "Joint?"

  "Marijuana. stupid. You've heard of it?"

  "Yes. I've heard of it."

  "So. That, a couple of kisses on the neck, and it's open sesame."

  "Who says I want to see her?"

  "Get off it. You want to. I decided to help you," he added, sounding magnanimous. "What good is all my experience if I don't put it to use to help a buddy. huh?"

  I tilted my head skeptically.

  "I'm now your buddy."

  "Hey, guys have to stick together in this world."

  "Why is it I have these doubts buzzing around me like bees?" I asked.

  He started to laugh and stopped. "I gotta get home." I said.

  "Wait a minute," he said, reaching out and grabbing my arm. This is really a good opportunity for both of us. I can get them over to my house this weekend. We can party."

  "No." I said trying not to sound panicky. "I'm not interested."

  "Why not? You said you weren't gay," he countered angrily. "I didn't say anything bad about you. I made you look good," he whined, "I've set it all up for us."

  "I didn't ask you to do that."

  "Well. I did it."

  "So?"

  He stared and then looked away and turned back to me.

  "Okay. okay. I'm not telling the whole truth," he suddenly confessed.

  "What?"

  "Harmony is not really my girlfriend, and I didn't sleep with her in her room. At least not yet. but Im determined. She's the prettiest girl in the school, believe me. and Roberta is really good-looking, too. The truth is, they're inseparable. They practically only go out on double dates. I got them interested in me by talking about you."

  "That's not my problem. It's yours." I said and started to turn away again. Again, he grabbed my arm.

  "Cut it out!" I told him.

  "Wait a minute. Maybe we can make some sort of deal."

  "Deal?"

  "Just agree to meet with them at my house, that's all. You can talk about fishing or something or carve twigs for all I care, as long as you're there and you occupy Roberta while I occupy Harmony."

  I started to shake my head.

  "You need some encouragement, that's all. I know you're shy and you haven't seen or done much."

  "No thanks."

  "Tell you what," he said, sounding more desperate, his voice full of pleading. "I'll show you something you want to see if you'll agree to meet the girls with me. You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. Just be there, is all."

  "What would you show me?" I felt my curiosity lift my eyebrows. "What do you think I want to see?"

  "You want to see my sister naked, don't you?"'

  For a moment I couldn't respond. Then I started to shake my head. and he smiled.

  "Don't try to deny it. You came around that night to peep."

  "That's not true."

  "So, big deal."

  "You would do that to your sister?"

  "I don't care. She shows it off anyway. Guess what? We have side-by-side rooms upstairs, and there was something once attached to the wall in my room. It's gone, but there is now an opening that goes clear through. You can be in my room and see her and she won't even know it."

  "I wouldn't do that," I said in a hoarse whisper and backed away.


  "Yes, you would. She parades around naked in there, and sometimes... sometimes she does stuff."

  It felt like my heart had stopped pounding. My chest was hollow. I shook my head and started walking, but he followed alongside.

  "You know what I mean when I say she does stuff?"

  "No," I said.

  "She gets herself excited. It's something to see. I used to think it was something only guys like us did, but its not. I got to confess. It got me pretty excited the first time I saw her do it. If she knew I had seen her, she'd die,"

  I tried to swallow but couldn't. My body felt so hot all over. I wondered if he could feel the heat radiating. He walked with me. Cleo moving from his side to mine as we cut through the forest.

  "I'm sure without television, never going to the movies, and with what your mother lets you have and do and what she doesn't, you haven't seen anything. Noble. Once you do, you'll thank me, and to thank me, you just have to agree to meet the girls. They want to meet you so much," he said. You gotta be interested. If you're not, then something is weird, something strange is going on at your house. Maybe your mother is doing something to keep you from being interested in girls. People should know it," he added, a slight note of threat threading through his words.

  I stopped and looked at him. He held his ground. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  He shrugged.

  "I could tell people anything I wanted to tell them and they'd believe me," he said. "I don't even have to make stuff up. Look at all the things your mother does around the place, and I've been by there when she's been singing in that graveyard. Who's buried in there anyway?" he asked.

  "None of your business."

  "Yeah, you're right," he said. "I don't really care about dead people anyway." Then he softened. "C'mon, well have some fun. You won't regret it. What do you say?"

  "Come over tonight about eight. She takes a bath about eight, and then she's in her room. My father's working tonight. too. It'll be just the two of us. We won't even let Betsy know you're in the house. Whaddya say? Huh?"

  Was it the power of evil? Was it some dark force coming over me? I felt myself nod.

  "Great." He smiled, and then he stopped smiling. "You'd better come. Noble. If you don't, I swear. I'll come get you."

  I started away.

  "You'd better come!" he shouted after me.

  I walked quickly, my heart returning and thumping with a vengeance. What had I agreed to do? When I reached our meadow. I ran all the way to the house and then stopped at the door, panting as hard as Cleo sometimes did. I worked desperately at getting myself calm again, If Mommy saw me like this...

  Finally. I entered the house. I could hear her in the kitchen. The first thing she did when she saw me was scream about Cleo's feet being dirty. I practically carried him out and wiped him down, When I returned, her eves were still wide, her hair disheveled. She looked like she had seen something terrible.

  "We've got to keep the house immaculate," she told me. We must think of our home as a sacred place. They won't come to us otherwise. From now on, leave your shoes outside the door. There will be a washcloth in a pail of soap and water there, too. Wipe your hands clean before you enter. Do you understand? Do you?"

  "Yes,'" I said quickly.

  "Good. Good. It's important. Everything is important," she muttered and returned to preparing our dinner.

  She was unusually quiet during the meal. Once in a while, she would stop eating and look at me hard, her eyebrows knitting together under the weight of some deep, dark thought she was having, I was sure. Occasionally she would just stare ahead, not chewing, not moving. Finally, something I did, some sound, would cause her eyes to snap back to awareness and she would return to eating.

  Afterward, she cleaned the kitchen and had me take out the garbage. When I returned, she was at the door. waiting.

  "Take off your shoes," she said and handed me the washcloth, "Remember now, Always clean yourself before you come into to our temple, because that is what our home is, a temple, a sanctuary for them."

  I did what she asked, and then she returned to the kitchen. A short while later, she went upstairs. I waited for her to come down, but she didn't, and when I went up to check on her, I found she had fallen asleep with her clothes on. I fixed her blanket over her, but she didn't move.

  She's just very exhausted. I thought. All the responsibilities, the worries, have taken their toll on her. She just needs a good night's sleep,

  I intended to go to sleep early myself, but Elliot's invitation loomed in my thoughts. Try as I would. I couldn't drive the images, the words, out of my mind. Rationalizing that if I didn't go to his house he would carry out his threats and make more trouble for Mommy and me. I slipped out of the house, put on my shoes, and, with Cleo right alongside, ran all the way through the wooded path to the edge of Elliot's family's property.

  Once there. I hesitated, looking at the lighted windows. It was nearly eight o'clock. Suddenly I heard the back door of the house open and then saw him standing on the rear porch, looking toward the woods.

  I stepped out and walked slowly across the field. Cleo trotting alongside.

  "Do you have to bring that dog everywhere you go?" he asked.

  "If I didn't, he'd bark and bark, and my mother would wonder where I had gone," I told him.

  "Well, he can't come in. My sister will hear him." "He's going to bark," I warned,

  "Okay," he relented. Jeez. I feel like a ten-yearold when I'm with you."

  "So don't be with me. I'll go home," I said.

  "Forget I said anything. Man, you are the most sensitive guy I know." He smiled. "C'mon," he said. "I always live up to my side of any bargain I make."

  "This is probably a bad idea." I said. He tilted his head and smiled.

  "Trust me, you won't be disappointed."

  "I didn't mean that," I said, but he already turned and opened the door.

  "Just be quiet," he said in a whisper and beckoned for me to follow.

  We entered through the kitchen. Cleo followed behind, sniffing everywhere. When we reached the foot of the stairway, Elliot paused.

  "Get the dog." he ordered.

  Cleo had gone on to explore other rooms. I snapped my fingers, got his attention, and made him follow us up the stairs, where we turned sharply and hurried to Elliot's room. Unlike mine, it was filled with so many things, including posters of his favorite singers and bands and movies. Books and magazines were scattered about. The bed was unmade, and shirts and pants were draped over chairs and even on the floor. Cleo quickly found a pair of socks and seized them in his mouth.

  "I don't know why, but he goes for socks all the time," I said. I tried to get the socks. but Cleo twisted and turned to keep out of my reach.

  "Forget the dog. Who cares about the socks? Jeez."

  Elliot smiled lustily, and then he went to one of his rock band posters and carefully removed it from the wall. Beneath it was a hole in the wall, just as he had described. He put his eye to it and looked, and then he turned to me.

  "Not there yet," he said.

  "You really don't feel bad doing this?" I asked. "She is your sister."

  "What's the big deal? What she doesn't know won't hurt her, and the way she dresses and parades about, she's practically nude most of the time. She gives my father little heart attacks every day. No one ever speaks about it, but he provides her with birth control pills. He just leaves them in her room like someone would leave a mousetrap."

  I stood there listening, intrigued with the intimate details of someone else's family life.

  "I guess you can figure out what happened," he added with a smirk. I said nothing, and he turned and looked through the hole again. Then he stood back slowly, smiled, and nodded at "All yours." he said, gesturing at the wall. I didn't move.

  "Well, come on. You want to get in and out and not be noticed," he said. "My father comes home in about forty minutes."

  Slowly, my heart tripping. I approached th
e wall. I couldn't help feeling like I was accepting an invitation from the devil himself, but the power of my curiosity was so overwhelming. I couldn't hold myself back. I brought my eye to the hole and gazed through it.

  This was the first time in my entire life I had seen a teenage girl's bedroom. Since Daddy's death. Mommy had done little to change what had been their bedroom. His things were still in his closet. However, it was never a completely feminine room. My own room, once shared, was now as Noble would have it, and all that had belonged to Celeste was gone. buried.

  Betsy's room had pink walls and a canopy bed with a sheer pink netting over it. Her bed was still neatly made, and there were two dolls side by side against the pillows. I didn't know what they were, but they both had long hair and very curvy figures.

  Their were posters on her walls, too, one of a rock singer with his shirt off and what looked like a bike chain around his neck. He held a guitar below his waist. If his pants were any tighter, they would have to be considered another layer of skin. I thought. I saw a movement and shifted my gaze to the right where Betsy sat before a mirror at a vanity table. She was completely naked.

  I watched with fascination as she began to experiment with different makeup, coloring her eyebrows and then putting something on her eyelashes to make them look longer. She rubbed some cream into her cheeks and under her mouth. Then she wiped it off and tested three different lipstick colors, studying the effect each had on her appearance.

  "What's she doing now?" Elliot asked from behind.

  "Makeup," I said.

  "Boring," he said rising. I looked through the hole again. It was far from boring to me. I hadn't seen this since Mommy used to do it, but she hadn't for so long.

  Finally. Betsy rose and then turned and looked at herself in the mirror. She cupped her own large breasts and stared at her image in the mirror. Then she went to her closet and retrieved some blouses, trying on each and studying how she looked,