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“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes. ” All the time, I thought. All the time.
Leif pressed his lips together, as if considering what I’d said. His fingers wandered around on the keys, playing the occasional note. “Da dum dum dum,” he sang slowly, tentatively. A few more notes escaped, creating a familiar string of melody. “Do you know that song?” he asked, turning toward me.
“Pachelbel’s Canon,” I said as I pressed down on the first notes. It was still recognizable, even out of tune. “I learned it in School. ”
“That’s the song she always played. ” He smiled at the wall but it was clear he was looking through it, at a different scene altogether.
I kept playing, leaning forward, letting the song evolve from one melody to the next. I felt the accumulation of the past hours, now a thick melancholy that polluted everything. Watching Caleb come up the shore, the quiet of the room as our lips touched, his heartbeat through his shirt, that dance. Everything was different now, colored in a different light. I wouldn’t be with him. In the dugout or elsewhere. Arden and I would leave soon, maybe tomorrow. It would all come to an end.
What did I get out of it? Teacher Agnes had asked, to no one in particular. What was the point of it all?
Chapter Twenty-one
THE STOREHOUSE WAS QUIET. LIGHT CAME IN THROUGH the windows, casting shadows on the shelves, stacked with old blankets and medical supplies. The containers of fuel filled the room with the sickening stink of gasoline. We had camped out for the night, the boys collapsing in heaps on the downstairs floor. Arden slept in the room next door.
I shifted, turned over, pounded at my makeshift bed of quilts and lumpy pillows, unable to stop thinking about Caleb. Our conversation, his retreat to the porch. After leaving Leif on the piano bench, his hand squeezing mine in thanks, I’d found Arden outside near the pool. As the boys slowed, overcome by the haze of the beer and sugar, Caleb watched me from a distance, never saying anything. When Arden pulled me upstairs, layering the wood planks with pillows and urging me to rest, I couldn’t. Even now.
Hours had passed. Outside, the only sound was the wind in the trees, the occasional snap of a branch. I wondered if I had been wrong. The reaction a reflex, like those physicals at School, my leg jerking out when I felt the doctor’s hammer on my knee. He had said something about my safety. He had said something about him caring. Then I had yelled, pushed him away. What would have happened if he had continued? I was replaying it, imagining his face, when the door opened and a figure appeared behind the wood shelves.
“Eve?”
“Caleb?” I asked, sitting up.
He stumbled and several boxes hit the ground. He crept forward, turning past the corner, kneeling onto the edge of my bed. Then he reached for my hand.
“About before . . . ” I started. The silence swelled between us.
His hand squeezed my hand. Then, in a moment, he was right there, his lips against mine. I leaned in but there was no soft give, only urgency. He pushed forward, forcing my head back. I opened my eyes. I could barely make out his face in the moonlight, squeezed in concentration. His palms were rough against my skin. Everything felt strange, terrible—wrong.
I reached up, trying to ease him off when I felt the thick bun nestled at the nape of his neck. “No!” I yelled, pulling my face away. “No!” But Leif pushed forward, settling his body on the floor beside me, the wood groaning under his weight.
His mouth covered my lips. I could taste the bitter rot of alcohol on his tongue. He ran his hands over my shoulders and down my arms. I tried to scream again, but his mouth was over mine. No sound escaped.
I struggled. My fists landed against Leif’s chest, but he pulled me closer. He kept kissing me, the thick slime of his mouth coating my chin. I jerked away, rolling my shoulders to the side, trying to escape. But everywhere I went he found me, his breath hot and musty on my skin.
So many things had been stolen from me: my mother, the house with the blue shingles where I had taken my first steps, those finished canvases stacked against the classroom wall. But this was the most painful of all, the control ripped from my grasp. No, he seemed to say, with each urgent grope. Even your body is not yours.
Tears escaped my eyes, forming shallow pools in my ears. He kissed my neck, his hands roaming the length of my body. I was drowning. Fear surrounded me, growing so that I was left with no choice: I had to take it in. My chest bucked, my feet seized. I was choking on my own panic.
Somewhere, far above the surface, I heard the murmurs of voices. “What’s going on?” someone asked. “She was yelling. ” The bright light of a flashlight beam settled first on my legs, then on my wet face, and finally on Leif, his eyes in a half-closed daze.
“You monster,” Caleb growled. He picked Leif up by his underarms and heaved him into the side of one of the shelves. Metal boxes clattered and fell, sending hundreds of matches skittering across the floor.
Aaron and Michael appeared in the doorway, their flashlights illuminating the darkness. Leif struggled to his feet. He plowed forward, landing his shoulder into Caleb’s rib cage. Caleb winced in pain as he slammed against the wall.
“Enough, Leif!” he cried, but Leif threw another punch, landing hard in Caleb’s jaw. I folded myself into the far corner of the room, trapped.
Leif staggered to the side, his movements loose from all the alcohol. “Come on, you’ve always wanted to lead,” he slurred. Strands of black hair hung in his face and I wondered if he’d gone to sleep at all, or if this whole time he’d been downstairs, working through the last of the tin cans. “So be the leader, Caleb. See how you like it. ”
Leif gestured wildly at the doorway. The commotion had awoken the rest of the boys and they huddled together, straining to watch. Kevin pulled on his cracked glasses, as if unsure of what he’d seen.
Leif circled Caleb, his arms out at his sides. The person who had sat next to me on the bench, swaying with the music, was no longer here. Something had taken hold of him, something terrifying and primal. “Come on,” he urged again, lunging in Caleb’s face. “Now’s your chance to be a man. ”
Caleb sprung forward. In one swift motion he grabbed Leif’s arm, twisted, and pushed him to the floor. Leif fell hard, his cheek meeting the wood with a horrible whack. A pool of blood spread out underneath his face and I could see, even in the dark, that his lip had busted open.
“She wanted to be with me. ” He spit blood as he spoke, covering the floor in spatter. “Why do you think she was sitting with me before? Why do you think she was talking to me? She wanted me. Not you—me. ” The certainty in his voice was tinged with anger. I slunk back against the wall, afraid even now, with his body limp on the floor.
Caleb turned toward me, his face wrought with confusion. “Is that true?”
My hands trembled violently and tears streamed down my face. What Leif had done was wrong. And yet . . . I had sat beside him on the piano, playing for him. I had allowed his shoulder to press close as he spoke of his family. I had let his hand squeeze mine. Had I given him some unspoken invitation? Had my kindness seemed like something more?
“I don’t know,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand.
“You don’t know?” Caleb asked. His grasp tightened around Leif’s arm, pushing him farther into the ground. He glared at me from under his brows, the lightness I had loved about his face disappearing. I wanted him to stop, to look away, to give me just one moment to think.