“Yes way. Or do you want to wait until something really fast comes on?”
He frowned and, when he could tell I wasn’t taking no for an answer, stood up, setting his empty beer bottle on the bar with a long sigh. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to shiver when he put his hand into mine. What the hell was I doing?
Chris was still talking to his bartender cousin, but his eyes followed me as I walked onto the floor with Josh. I gave him a look like, What? and he responded by swirling his index finger next to his temple in the international sign for loco.
“Let’s go in the middle,” I said, pulling Josh after me. “It’s better there.”
In the crush of bodies, you could dive into the music and forget yourself. I felt like Josh and I both needed that right then. I expected it to be awkward, like we’d have to come up with a game plan for dancing with prosthetics, but he just pulled me against him, one arm slipping around my waist while the other rested between my shoulder blades, his hand on the base of my neck. I reached up and draped my arms over his shoulders, and he looked down at me as we swayed in a little circle. Part of me was terrified of stepping on his fake foot or something, but it was fine. More than fine.
“This song sucks,” he said. The lights painted his skin blue and pink.
“You’re just saying that because you don’t speak Spanish.”
“No, I’m saying that because it sounds like some Mexican cowboy lost his dog and is drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Cuervo.”
“Oh my God, you are so annoying.”
“C’mon, you have to admit this shit’s cheesy as hell.”
“What, do you prefer to slow dance to Metallica?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Remind me never to ask you to dance again.”
“Mission accomplished.”
But he pulled me closer so that my cheek naturally rested against his chest, and I let him do it because there is nothing more, I don’t know, naked than dancing with someone while looking into their eyes. Josh’s heart was beating out a quick rhythm, and I wondered how much of his casual bravado was for show. Had it always been that way, even before his accident?
When the song ended, I pulled away, twirling out of his arms. I couldn’t breathe so well, and my bones felt like Silly Putty, like you could twist me into all kinds of crazy shapes and it wouldn’t even hurt.
We stood there in the middle of the dance floor, staring at each other, my hand still in his. His blue eyes were shining and clear, all that glassiness gone, and a slow smile spread across his face.
“You wanna get out of here?” he asked. “Go swimming?”
My mouth opened; I didn’t think. “Yes.”
This time he didn’t let go of my hand. We slipped out of Leo’s, leaving the loud music and laughter behind.
chapter five
Josh took me to the Paradise pool (or, rather, I took him, since he wasn’t totally sober yet), which was perfectly clean after his afternoon with it. It shone like a new toy, and I grinned.
“Look at you,” he said, shaking his head. “You really got a thing for pools.”
“They’re my first love.” Pools didn’t get you pregnant, and they didn’t die on you. Who needed anything more?
The moon was crazy full that night, its milky light spilling across the surface of the water. The motel was quiet, just a few lights peeking out of closed curtains. Amy was at the desk behind the glass door, her headphones on. She had no idea we were there.
Josh unbuttoned his shirt and threw it onto the lounge chair behind him, but he left his dog tags on. Even though it was dark, I could see dozens of scars crisscrossing his chest, like ridges in a sand dune. What else had that place done to him?
“From the bomb,” he said, his voice tight.
“They got you good, huh?” I wanted to ask him about the scars, but it seemed like shaky territory. Just being around him shirtless felt like shaky territory. There was too much skin, and my body still hummed from our dance at Leo’s.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. Then he gestured to the water with his trademark sneaky smile. “Ladies first.”
There was no way I was undressing in front of him. “Yeah, I don’t know about that,” I said.
He folded his arms across his chest, the left side of his mouth inching up at my hesitation. “I won’t look.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Promise? You’re not gonna get all pervy on me after a perfectly nice evening?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Skylar Evans, where the hell did you come from?”
I kicked off my tennis shoes. “Same place you did. Don’t tell me your mom never explained the birds and the bees.”
I held up my finger and twirled it around, once, and Josh sighed and faced away from me. I slipped off my dress, thankful I’d decided to wear the underwear without holes. I wasn’t trying to be a prude—I knew my bra and panties covered just as much as my bathing suit. But you don’t take off your clothes in front of Josh Mitchell and expect to be a virgin by the end of the night.
I dove into the water, swimming until I touched the bottom of the deep end. The pool lights cast trembling reflections onto the peeling baby-blue paint. It was ghostly down there, as if I’d somehow pushed through to another world. I stayed under for a while, letting the cold water devour every bit of heat in me. Like I was a drunk trying to get sober.
When I broke through the water’s still surface and turned around, Josh was sitting on the edge of one of the lounge chairs.
“Hey, Skylar?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you, like, not pay attention to me for a minute while I get in?”
“Sure. I’ll be over there.” I pointed to the diving board, and he nodded.
When I got to the board, I reached up and hung off the end, going underwater every now and then when I heard him grunt or sigh. I wanted to help, to let him know that it was totally okay, but I was afraid he’d snap at me like he did when I offered to help him out of the truck.
When I pulled myself up, I heard a splash and whipped around, worried that he would drown or something, which didn’t make sense, but that was the first thought that went through my head. He was fine, a dark shadow swimming underwater. My eye caught a glint of metal; his prosthesis lay across the lounge chair. It was so strange, this limb, separate from a body, abandoned on the patio. Not human. Where there should have been blood and bones, there was only metal and plastic. Seeing the leg sitting by itself—that was the moment when I really understood what had happened to Josh. Here I was, treading water like it was nothing when for him it would be everything. I reached down and touched my leg. I ran my hand over my foot, past my ankle, along my shin, my calf, my knee, my thigh. Still there. I flexed my foot, turned my ankle round and round. It was a miracle, this leg.
Josh’s metal calf ended at a plastic joint that acted as a knee—it was how he was able to bend the leg when he sat. Above the joint was a hollow plastic tube, like a soda bottle, but not transparent: dark blue and thick. I realized it made up for the part of his thigh that he’d lost. What did it feel like, to have that under your hand when you touched your leg? To scratch at an itch that couldn’t possibly be there?
“Crazy, isn’t it?”
I jumped at Josh’s voice, my face reddening. I didn’t know how long he’d been watching me. Had he seen me touching my leg? I felt like a Peeping Tom.
“I’m—I’m sorry. It’s just…” I bit my lip, searching for an answer.
“It’s okay,” he said, after a minute. “I’d be curious too.”
I wanted our laughter and joking around to come back, but it was too late. I’d screwed everything up.
He flipped onto his back so that he was floating in the water, staring up at the sky. His dog tags glistened on his chest, and the pool lights hit him from below so that he had a sort of halo all around him, like those pictures of saints in Chris’s house. He’d put on a pair of long silky ba
sketball shorts, so I couldn’t see his stump—the extra fabric swayed in the water like a jellyfish, and I swam over to him, careful not to invade his space.
I hoped he hadn’t put on the shorts because he thought it would bother me, seeing his stump. But I wasn’t honestly sure how I would feel if I saw what was left of his leg. Grossed out? Scared? I thought about how everyone at Leo’s had avoided it, as if nothing had changed. The pretty girl, the high school friend, Ricky. Even Dylan and Chris. Their eyes never left his face, and they were always smiling, smiling, smiling. You don’t talk about lost limbs and smile. You don’t talk about war and sacrifice when you’re wearing your Friday-night clothes. And I wondered if that was what Josh really wanted—that pretending. I didn’t think I would. I’d want to talk about it or at least be honest about the fact that it had happened.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
He let out a sigh and his body seemed to relax and sink a little more into the water. I decided that I’d made the right choice.
“Yeah,” he said. “Always. But it feels good to be in the water. At Walter Reed they had these pools we could swim in every day, for rehab and stuff. I miss that.”
I stopped treading water and lay on my back to float beside him. The stars were never very bright in Creek View—it was in a valley and there was too much pollution blowing down from San Francisco. But they were still pretty, so far above us.
“You’ve changed,” I said.
He snorted. “No shit.”
I gently pushed him on the shoulder. “Shut up. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
His voice was soft, and it made me think of that moment when he was in his uniform and I kissed him on the cheek. Maybe he’d started changing even before he’d lost his leg. Maybe I hadn’t bothered to notice.
I don’t know how long we floated on the water, the only sounds our breath and the pool water gushing in and out of its drains. I wondered what he was thinking about and why I cared so much. I wondered if I pitied him and if that was why I’d said yes to swimming in creamy moonlight.
But I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“Blake said you’re moving to San Francisco,” he said.
“Hmm” was all I said.
My throat had suddenly closed up, like San Francisco was Mom, like the two had become so attached that I didn’t know how to break them apart. All I could think was, Please don’t let me be stuck here forever, and I didn’t know if I was praying or just talking to myself.
“Was that a yes or a no?” he asked.
“It’s an I-don’t-feel-like-talking-about-it.”
“Not even to a one-legged dude? I promise I’ll keep your secret.”
“Not even to a one-legged dude. Maybe to an armless one.” I turned my head a little, let my lips turn up. “You have too many limbs. Sorry.”
Josh laughed and pushed his body down, standing in the water by moving his arms in slow circles as he looked at me. I put my eyes back on the sky.
“I think it’s cool,” he said, after a little while. “You know, that you want to go to college and stuff. Full scholarship, right?”
I nodded.
“What do you want to study?”
“Art. I want to…”
“What?” He was looking at me like he really wanted to know.
I shifted so that we were eye to eye. “I was thinking that I could work in an art museum someday. Or teach art, like a class about Impressionism at a college or something? But at night I could work on my collages. I’m also thinking about paper sculpture.” I tilted my head back, stared down the stars. “It’s stupid.”
He kept looking at me. “That’s not stupid.” When I didn’t answer, he moved a little closer. “It’s not a crime to get out. Even if … even if it doesn’t go the way you thought it would.”
“Maybe,” I whispered. I took a breath, cleared my throat. “I’m turning into a prune.”
I showed him my wrinkled fingertips, then slipped underwater, swimming to the shallow end. When my hands collided with the stairs, I broke the surface and climbed out.
“Shit,” I said. Water pooled at my feet and I looked at the glass door to the lobby, wondering if a towel was worth Amy talking my ear off for the next hour.
“What?” he asked.
“No towels.”
“You can use my shirt.”
Too late, I realized that I was standing there dripping wet in nothing but my bra and underwear. I instinctively covered my chest and backed away from the pool.
“Nice panties,” he said.
“Turn around,” I snapped.
He raised his hands in the air and flipped onto his back. “You need to learn how to take a compliment. Besides,” he added, “I’ve seen a lot less on a girl, believe me.”
“Yes, Josh, everyone in Creek View is well aware of your sexcapades.”
He snickered. “Sexcapades. I like it.”
I stomped over to the chair where he’d thrown his shirt and dried off as best I could. I slipped on my dress and pulled off my soaked undergarments, balling them up in my hand so Josh wouldn’t make another comment about my lack of clothing. The wind gusted through the palms and the fronds rubbed together like crumpled tissue paper. It carried the scent of manure and gasoline and the orchard behind the fence. It blew under the thin material of my dress, and I shivered when it slipped over my skin. I envied its reckless abandon, the way it touched without fear.
A train was going by in the distance, and I closed my eyes and listened to its slow, clunking progress through the fields surrounding Creek View. I wanted to be on it, flying away from Mom and the trailer park and these strange feelings that were taking root in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to get out of there, under cover of darkness, hiding in a metal boxcar.
“I used to jump them,” Josh said.
I opened my eyes and turned around. He was sitting on the edge of the pool, his good leg dangling in the water.
“Jump what?”
“The trains,” he said. “It’s a fuckin’ amazing rush.”
This was what country boys did, the Industrial Revolution’s answer to cow tipping.
“Can’t you, like, die doing that?”
“You can die doing a lot of things.”
I hugged my arms, the wind suddenly too cold. I’d seen some pretty real stuff in my life—my mom, before she got sober, sitting in a pile of her own vomit the day my dad died, missing him too much to care about anything but dulling the pain; my best friend giving birth to a baby she was terrified to have. But what Josh saw in the war … I wasn’t sure how to touch on that. Or if he wanted me to.
I’d heard the stories about Afghanistan. Guys coming home all screwed up with PTSD, lots of them killing themselves. I thought of the pictures in the paper, with the coffins being unloaded on airfields and the American flags folded into neat triangles at funerals for guys who weren’t even old enough to legally drink. But it had never been real to me. Now I could see the flesh and blood of it.
I forced my feet forward and crouched behind him, then raised my hand, my skin inches from his, hesitating. Then I traced the letters on Josh’s back: Semper Fidelis. He sighed as I silently trailed my finger along the intricate letters.
“Always faithful,” I whispered. “To what?”
“The guys,” he said, his voice low. “I should be out there with them. I’m a fucking waste of space here, Skylar.”
I swept my palm across the words. “No, you’re not.”
He snorted.
“You’re an excellent dance partner. A badass pool cleaner. Probably the best mechanic in town, but nobody will ever know that because—”
I stopped myself, afraid of going too far.
“You can say it,” he said, keeping his eyes on the water. “I know my dad’s a total screwup.”
“Well. My mom has spent the past few weeks sitting in her bedroom, feeling sorry for herself and eating enough Little Debbie snacks to keep them in business.
So, you know, it is what it is.”
He turned to look at me. “Why’s that?”
I shook my head. “She lost her job. Long story.” I stood up and started putting my shoes on. “Speaking of … I should get going. She’s probably mildly freaking out right now.”
It was only eleven, but the longer I stayed out there with Josh, the more our night got hold of me.
His eyebrows drew together. “What are you gonna do?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and made myself look him in the eye. “Work, like always. And try to … I don’t know—” My voice caught, and I turned away.
“Hey,” he said. Gentle—very un-Josh-like.
He reached out a hand and grabbed my wrist so I couldn’t run off like I wanted to. I almost missed the devil-may-care Josh who made stupid jokes and was sober for about three hours a day. He was so much easier to deal with.
For a minute we stayed there, looking at each other. The wind rustled the orchard trees and whispered secrets to us.
“I’m fine, seriously.” I shrugged him off and headed toward the back gate. “I’ll wait out front, okay?”
When I got to his truck, I leaned against it, drinking the night air in great, heaving gulps. My hands were shaking, and my lips tingled, and the skin around my wrist—the part that Josh had touched—the skin was singing.
chapter six
“What the hell?” I muttered as Josh pulled into my driveway.
A rusted truck sat behind the Prizm my mom and I shared, the bed sticking out into the narrow road between the trailers. All the tension I’d pushed down threatened to boil over as I looked at the truck in front of me.
It shouldn’t have been there this late at night.
“I think that’s Bill Easton’s truck,” Josh said. He turned to look at me, his eyebrows drawn together in a V. “He a family friend or something?”
“No,” I said, my voice flat.
Billy Easton was a good-for-nothing loser, one of my dad’s old drinking buddies. He was the kind of guy that women tried not to make eye contact with, a tall, wiry snake with a loud, mean mouth. I’d be lying if I said he didn’t scare me. Even when Dad was alive, I never thought Billy was all right. But after Dad died, he’d latched on to us, coming over every week to fix the sink or take a look at the stove. Anything to flirt with my mom a little.