St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (13 page)

waist, his hip pressing into mine, and we followed

the parking lot to the turnpike. We walked along

the turnpike ramps in companionable silence, the

cars rushing loudly down the highway, their tires

blasting us with chilly air.

We waited only seconds before the bus pulled up

to the bus stop. We climbed on board the crowded

bus and dropped change in the receptacle. We

found seats at the very back. I toyed with the

plains flute dangling around my neck. I felt

Rafael's hand on my knee, warm and comfortable.

I elbowed him and he looked at me.

This one time
, I signed,
I saw a blind girl in a

fedora playing the saxophone.

"What? Where was that?"

At an Amtrak. It happened when Danny and I

were running away.

"And I thought that was just a crazy literary

stereotype."

Well, I don't really know that she was blind. I

know she was wearing sunglasses.

Rafael grinned at me. "Dumbass."

I stole his eyeglasses and slid them on my face.

We got off the bus in a city I'd never seen before--

and I wasn't really seeing it now. Rafael and I

stumbled around for a bit, each of us stupid in his

own way. I bumped into a wrought iron fence.

"You look drunk," I heard Rafael say. He snatched

his glasses off my face. The whole world dipped

back into view.

The city was a real derelict place, the asphalt

cracked, the barred apartments towering into the

sky. I looked around with unfamiliarity. "It's the

closest city with a library," Rafael said. I

stretched my arms behind my head and Rafael led

the way to concrete building with tall glass doors.

If this was the library, I thought, it looked more

like a prison.

It was the library. Rafael pushed open the door

and held it for me and we went inside. I heard a

loud beep as we passed the threshold. Metal

detectors, I realized, incredulous. This must have

been a really bad part of town.

"This place is awesome," Rafael said. His hand

grazed mine, but he didn't take it. "C'mon, I'll

show you."

I thought he might start scouring the bookshelves

off to our left. He didn't. He turned right and

hunched underneath a doorway I hadn't realized

was there.

We emerged in a huge, spacious room surrounded

with armchairs and computer tables. One wall, the

farthest wall, bore a very large fireplace, but it

looked as though it hadn't seen use in years. Along

the other walls were rickety staircases with

polished wood banisters. I tilted my head back

and saw a second and third floor--both stuffed to

the bursting point with bookcases.

I heard the gurgling laugh of a child and knew this

was the city's hidden gem.

"Dad took me here when I was little," Rafael

murmured.

I touched his arm.

"I gotta look at the anatomy section," Rafael said.

"You wanna come? I know you don't like books,

but there's a media room upstairs."

The anatomy section? I leveled him with a

knowing stare.

"What?" he insisted, but I detected a sheepish tone

to his false asperity. "I wanna fix your voice

someday," he said. "I don't see why I shouldn't get

an early start on this stuff."

I don't know that I can describe just how much I

loved Rafael. More than anything. More than air.

You don't sit around thinking about how much you

love air. You just breathe. That's exactly how I

loved Rafael. It was involuntary. I couldn't shut it

off any more than a man can hold his breath

without suffocating.

"C'mon," Rafael said. He started up the

impressive staircase and I followed him.

The library's second floor had opaque glass

windows and a muddy brown carpet. Rafael didn't

bother browsing the tags on the bookshelves; he

knew this place by heart. "The media room's that

way," he said, and nodded at a doorway straight

ahead. He dove sharply between two bookcases

and out of sight.

Might as well check it out, I thought. So I went

through the door.

I'm not really sure why it was called the "media

room." In hindsight, I think "children's room"

would've been more appropriate. There were

shelves filled with videos and audio tapes, and a

small television in one corner, but for the most part

the emphasis was on children's murals and colorful

parquets. A bizarre gorilla leered at me from the

lefthand wall. I leered back. A gaggle of kids

crowded around the television set. I walked over

to see what they were watching.

I grinned. Peter Pan was my favorite story.

"What's that?"

Rafael was back. He had four different books

stacked in his arms. He took a baffled look at the

children's television set.

"What the hell--"

"Shhh!" said one of the kids, whipping around in

his seat.

"Sorry," Rafael said sheepishly.

I followed him out of the media room on his way

to the checkout counter.

"I don't know why you don't like books," Rafael

said. "It's just like the storytellers, only you can go

back and read it again and again. Oh, you know

something? In the old days, the storytellers were

really superstitious. Like, it was forbidden to tell

summertime stories in winter, or else you might

disrupt the climate. Stuff like that. Do you know

the story about the first pauwau?"

I shook my head.

"Okay, before the Plains People parted ways with

the soil, it was just the animals running around on

Earth's surface. But all the different animal

species used to put their quarreling aside once a

year, and they'd get together and throw a pauwau.

Once we Plains People separated from the earth,

the animals taught us to celebrate our differences,

just like they did. That's where the pauwau comes

from. 'Pauwau' means 'sacred meeting.' It's a

Powhatan word."

The line was moving pretty slowly. I looked

around at the various bookshelves. Fiction,

Nonfiction, Religion, Self-Help...

"You sure you don't wanna get a book? You can

use my library card."

I pressed my finger to my lips and winked. I

slipped away from the line and slithered between

the bookshelves, leaving Rafael to stare after me in

confusion.

Boy, were there a lot of self-help books in this

library. I guess they were convinced that everyone

in the world had problems. Maybe that's true, I

don't know. I browsed the titles mindlessly. I

thought: I must really hate reading if the titles

alone are boring me.

"Sky?" I heard Rafael say.

I closed in on the bookshelf and tucked a book

inside my jacket. I guess hiding items is something

I've always been good at. I'm not proud of it, but it

comes in handy.

Rafael and I left the library together, Rafael's arms

wrapped around his anatomy books. He rambled,

for a while, about Nai Nukkwi, a little Shoshone

girl who escaped slavery in the 1800s and ran a

thousand miles home.

We sat down at the bus stop and I took the book

out from underneath my jacket.

Rafael stared. "Where did you get that?"

I waved my fingers and opened the book.

"I only checked out four books. That's-- Did you

seriously steal a book?"

I looked at him dully. It wasn't stealing if I

returned it--eventually.

Rafael suddenly gaped. "What the
hell
is that

book?"

He reached for it; he snatched it from my

fingertips, nearly knocking the books off his lap in

the process. As he blanched at the cover, as he

flipped frantically through the pages, I knew that

his swarthy complexion was concealing a furious

blush.

"Why...what...I can't believe the library would..."

Carry a sex manual? Yeah, they think of

everything, those libraries.

Rafael put the book down. He seemed to regard

me warily, like he wasn't sure what he'd find on

the other side of his glasses.

"Why?" he asked me plainly.

I didn't have a single answer. I had about a

thousand different answers, and each one made

little sense; but when I put them all together, I

knew this was the right thing to do.

I want to make you feel good
, I signed.

Rafael pretended to read the back cover of the

book, maybe so I wouldn't have to see how

embarrassed he really was.

"It's not worth it if it's gonna hurt you," he finally

said.

I didn't bother stifling my laugh; my laughs were

already soundless.
I can take a little pain.

"Not
that
. I mean...if I touch you...if you get a...a

flashback or something..."

Patiently, I replied:
You've touched me about a

million times in the past year and a half. I never

ran away screaming.

"No. But the last time I saw you without a shirt on,

you locked up."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Look. You wanna make me feel good. Okay. But

I wanna make you feel good, too. And I don't... I

mean... Are you sure you--"

I pressed my fingers to his lips, silencing him. It

was funny, really, that despite his dark and

unpersonable affect, he was both relentlessly

talkative and painfully shy.

If I don't like it, I'll tell you
, I signed.
Or deck

you.

I didn't even know the hand signal for "deck." I

had to spell it out.

Rafael stared at me in silence. His mouth

twitched. All of a sudden, he was laughing, the

most beautiful grin enveloping his face. God, I

loved that grin. I'm sure I sound ridiculous. But

when he smiled, when his face lit up, you could

see all the potential in him. You could see the

goodness in his heart.

I don't know how anyone could have hated him, no

matter who his father was.

"Alright," he said at last, straightening his glasses.

The remnants of his smile stowed themselves away

in the creases of his dimples, in his ocean-blue

eyes. "So... Now what?"

I tucked the innocuous book under my arm. I stood

from the sidewalk bench and started to walk.

Considering that I'd never been to this city before,

I thought I did a pretty decent job of tracking down

the drug store, an out-of-the-way joint on the other

side of a fenced-in vacant lot. Rafael followed me

inside and I held the door for him, so he didn't

drop his books.

"What are we looking for?" he asked.

I couldn't really answer with one hand. I followed

the signs above the aisles and hoped Rafael would

figure it out for himself.

"Trojans? Like
The Iliad
?"

He didn't.

He leafed through the not-quite-stolen manual

when we boarded the bus again minutes later, a

shopping bag around my wrist. He made the most

interesting faces, too.

"We are
not
doing that," he said disparagingly of

one chapter. And of another: "That looks

ridiculous. I can't tell which way is up and which

is down." And then: "Well, you haven't got the

right parts for that one."

I had to cover his mouth. People were starting to

stare.

It was just after dusk when we returned to

Nettlebush, coal-black shadows encroaching on

the murky blue sky. The parking lot was empty, for

the most part, but I spotted Racine's car, a neon

green Buick parked by the side of the dirt road.

Rafael dumped his books in my shopping bag and

we followed the road to the reservation. The

reservation was ridiculously dark. That's what

happens when there aren't any street lamps. I

couldn't tell which way we were going.

"That way's the badlands," Rafael said, and

pointed--although I could barely see what he was

pointing at. "Here," he said gruffly. He took my

wrist and led me along.

I knew we had reached his house when I heard him