Tangled (8 page)

That afternoon, I ran hard. I went down the stairs that lead to the lake, all the way to the end of the gravel road, up the steep hill, back down the hill. Once I reached the lake again, I picked up my speed and began sprinting. The lower road was lined with cabins, but there were only a few cars parked out front. Most of the houses were boarded up. As I ran, I looked out at the lake. It was muddy near the shoreline, but farther out it was blue and sparkling. On the other side of the road were woods and ravines. I remembered hiking in those woods when I was younger. My dad would bring me out there when my grandparents were driving him crazy.

It felt good to be running again, to have my heart pumping. I was just nearing the end of the road when this barefoot little kid, maybe two or three years old,
came cruising around the side of a cabin, stumbled in the yard, and fell down.

I stopped quickly. “Are you okay?”

The kid stared at me with huge brown eyes. At first I couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl, but then, as it wobbled up again, I noticed nail polish on her toenails, every color of the rainbow.

I pulled my iPod out of my ears. “Are you okay?”

She kept staring at me, but didn’t say a word. She had wild black hair, a combination of braids and dreads, and she was wearing an oversized T-shirt.

“Are your parents around?” I asked.

All of a sudden, I heard a voice shouting, “Dewey! Dewey!”

A second later, a light-skinned black woman emerged from the side of the house, spotted us, and said, “There you are, Dew. It looks like you’ve found a friend.”

Then she glanced over at me. “Sorry,” she said. “He was chasing a butterfly and he took off on me.”

“He?” I asked, gesturing toward his toenails.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, smiling. “It’s just the two of us out here. We like to have fun.”

She was probably in her mid-twenties, wearing jeans and a white undershirt with no bra underneath. I could see the outline of her nipples, full and dark.

“I haven’t seen you around before,” she said as she scooped up the kid and positioned him on her hip.

“I’m just here for a week,” I said. “I’m staying on the upper road.”

“I’ve been renting this place all winter. You’re probably the first person under sixty I’ve seen on the road since January. I’m Shasta, by the way.”

“I’m Dakota.”

“Cool name,” she said.

“You too.”

Shasta grinned at me. “Thanks for watching out for Dewey.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “He’s cute.”

“Just like his mama, right?” she said, nuzzling his forehead.

I fitted my earphones back in.

“Have a nice run,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. “See you.”

“Yeah, see you.”

I waved good-bye and kept on running. As I neared the bend in the road, I turned to see if I could catch another glimpse, but they were out of sight.

The next afternoon, I ran by Shasta’s cabin again. She wasn’t there as I passed. But when I circled back, I
spotted her sitting at a table on the deck.

“Hey, Dakota!” She stood up and headed toward me. But then, all of a sudden, she tripped and went flying forward. I started up the stairs, but before I could catch her, she grabbed onto the railing.

“Damn,” she said, steadying herself.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s this stupid board.” She kicked her sandal at a two-by-four protruding from the rest of the deck. “I’ve asked the owners to fix it and they never seem to get out here. I’ve tried nailing it myself but it won’t stay down.”

“It’s probably rotten,” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead with my hand.

“Probably.” Shasta pulled her braids into a ponytail. “Want to come up for a while, have something to drink?”

“Where’s…” I paused. I couldn’t remember her kid’s name.

“Dewey’s napping. He went down an hour ago.”

I wrapped my earphones around my iPod and followed her across the deck, past a toy truck and a faded plastic rocking horse. She gestured at the table where she’d been sitting. It had an empty coffee cup, a stack of books, and an ashtray with a scattering of cigarette butts.

“What do you want to drink?” Shasta asked as I settled into a chair. “Soda? Beer?”

“You have beer?”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen,” I lied. I hadn’t shaved since Monday, but even so, I doubted I could pass for twenty-one.

“You won’t tell anyone?”

I glanced down the empty road. “Who’s there to tell?”

“Hang on.” Shasta grabbed her mug and slid open the glass door.

When she returned, she handed me a Budweiser. Then she sat next to me, set some black coffee in front of her, and moved the ashtray over to the railing.

“I don’t usually smoke,” she said. “I never do it in front of Dewey.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Shasta sighed. “It was a long night.”

I checked out her face. She was pretty, but her mouth was drawn and she had circles under her eyes.

“I had one of those conversations with Dewey’s dad,” Shasta said after a moment. “We were on the phone for three hours.”

I cracked the beer. “You’re not together anymore?”

“Not for two years.”

“How old is Dewey?”

“He’ll be two in July.”

“Oh.”

“Exactly.” Shasta reached into her pocket for her cigarette pack. “Do you mind?”

“Nah.”

She moved the ashtray back to the table and held the cigarette between her lips. As she raised the lighter, she said, “So what are you doing here this week?”

“It’s sort of…it’s complicated.”

“Isn’t everything?” Shasta said, laughing.

Shasta smoked her cigarette and I drank my beer and we talked about running and the rain and how the lake is still too cold for swimming. But then Shasta sipped some coffee and said, “You know, it pisses me off. A mother would never leave her child. But a dad feels like he can walk away and never look back. Know what I mean?”

I nodded, but I was actually thinking the opposite about me. When my parents divorced, my mom said she could only handle one of us. She picked Owen to move into Rochester with her, which meant I wound up with my dad.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Shasta said. “Mostly I’m fine out here. But sometimes it’s things like that stupid
board.” Shasta swallowed hard. “Whatever. Don’t let me get too deep or anything.”

“No,” I said. “It’s fine.”

“Sometimes it just helps to bitch about it.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, even though that’s definitely not my style, to spill for the sake of spilling.

“Where do you go to school?” Shasta asked.

“Brockport,” I said vaguely. There’s a SUNY in town, after all. I didn’t have to mention I was at the high school. “What about you? Are you in school?”

“Cornell,” Shasta said. “I’m getting my PhD in statistics. Or at least trying to. It’s impossible to write my dissertation with…you know…” Shasta gestured in the direction of her house. “I think my adviser is about to give up on me and, honestly, I don’t blame her.”

“So you’re seriously smart,” I said, grinning. “Like one of those genius types.”

Shasta shook her head. “I’ve just seriously done the right thing my entire life. Until I got pregnant and my boyfriend ditched me and now I’m way overdue on my dissertation. When Cornell cuts my funding I have no idea how I’m going to pay for—” Shasta took another drag on her cigarette. “There I go, getting deep again.”

I downed some beer and didn’t say anything.

“Where are you staying up here?” Shasta asked.

When I described my grandparents, she asked if they were that power-walk couple.

I nodded. “With the matching raingear.”

“They’re not exactly friendly, are they?” Shasta asked. “I’ve been trying to figure out whether they’re racist, or just plain don’t like people.”

“Don’t like people,” I said. “With me at the top of their list.”

Shasta began fiddling with her lighter and dropped it onto the deck. As she leaned over to pick it up, I noticed she was wearing a thong. Black and silky. Very hot. When she sat up again, she caught me looking. I must have flushed because as she slid back into her chair she grinned at me.

I smiled back at her. For a second, we looked each other straight in the eyes. But then there was a piercing cry from inside the house and Dewey shouted, “Mama!”

“Shoot.” Shasta stubbed out her cigarette. “I better go. He gets loud quickly.”

“That’s cool.” I drained the last of my beer.

“Listen,” Shasta said, hiking up her jeans. “Dewey goes to bed around eight. Feel free to come back after that.”

I nodded. “Maybe I will.”

As I started down the deck, Shasta called out, “Watch out for that board.”

Then she waved and headed into the house.

Around nine, as Pauline and Bill were watching TV, I went upstairs and showered and shaved. I couldn’t stop thinking about going to Shasta’s. I wondered if she’d still have that thong on. I thought about her nipples under her shirt and what it’d be like to get my hands on them, maybe even my mouth. I’d never been with someone in her twenties, and I’d definitely never been with anyone who’d had a baby. I wondered if her body would feel different than a high school girl’s, fuller or something.

At nine thirty, I could hear my grandparents pass my room on their way to the bathroom. It’s the same every night. They brush their teeth together. Then the toilet flushes twice. Then their bedroom door closes.

I waited on my bed for a few minutes before head
ing to the door. But just as I gripped the knob, this thought flashed through my brain:
I don’t want to be an asshole right now
.

There was something Shasta said earlier,
Don’t let me get too deep or anything
. It reminded me of that girl, Jena, who I hooked up with at the resort last month, the one who found the suicide note. One night, when Jena and I were hanging out, she quoted a song to me about going into shallow water before you get too deep. I was thinking about Jena tonight and I kept getting a mental picture of her face the morning after I ditched her for her hot friend. I’d been heading over to the breakfast area when I spotted Jena hunched over a bowl of cereal. She looked like hell, her face blotchy, her eyes puffy. I didn’t want her to tell me off, so I grabbed a banana and trucked down to the beach. But now, as I pictured her face, I realized:
I made that girl cry until her eyes were swollen
. And thinking about that, it made me feel like shit.

I let go of the knob and sank onto the bed again. I thought about that loose board on Shasta’s deck and how she was on the verge of tears when she talked about it. I thought about how Shasta is a real person with real problems, and I’m just some stupid kid who got suspended from school for fighting.

Let’s say I went over to Shasta’s tonight and we had sex. My mom is picking me up tomorrow around lunchtime. I’m heading back to Brockport and I’ll never talk to Shasta again. But she’ll still be here, and she’ll still be alone to handle everything, to be a single mom, to worry if she’s going to run out of money. And maybe she wouldn’t think about me again, either. But maybe I’d become one more thing that’d stress her out, one more thing to make her smoke and drink cold coffee.

Coach is always telling us we have to learn when to walk. I know he’s talking about partying and fighting guys like Timon Birch. But right now, this thing with Shasta feels like one of those situations.

I stripped down to my T-shirt and boxers, switched off the light, and climbed into bed. I lay there for a while, my mind racing. I’m not saying it was easy, especially since I’d already gotten my head around the fact that I was going to hook up with Shasta. Those tits. That thong. Peeling off that thong.
Mmmmm.
But instead of pulling my jeans on and trekking down the lower road, I reached inside my boxers and took care of things myself. Can’t hurt anyone that way. And, man, it was good.

The next morning, my grandparents went into Ithaca to do their recycling. After that, they told me, they
were going to the farmer’s market to get something healthy for my farewell lunch.

“Your mom looks like she needs all the vegetables she can get,” Pauline said, collecting her canvas bags.

As soon as they were gone, I walked out to the shed behind the house. I found a spare two-by-four, a hammer, nails, a measuring tape, and a saw. I loaded everything into a metal toolbox, tossed in some sandpaper, and headed down the stairs toward Shasta’s cabin.

Shasta was on the deck, drinking coffee and writing in a notebook. Dewey was toddling at her feet, pushing around a fire engine. When I reached the stairs, Shasta looked up.

“Hey,” she said, waving. “What happened to you last night?”

“Sorry. I just didn’t want to…” I trailed off.

Shasta studied my face for a second and then gestured to the toolbox. “What’s going on with that?”

“I thought I could try to fix that board,” I said, “if you still want.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded. “No guarantees. I’m heading home in a few hours, but I can try until then.”

“Help yourself,” Shasta said.

I crouched down on the deck and got to work ripping out the rotten board. After a few minutes, Shasta scooped up Dewey and carried him inside. I’m not a carpenter, but my dad is a do-it-yourself guy and he’s shown me some things. I spent the next half hour measuring the spot where the new board was going to go, sawing the replacement, sanding the edges so it wouldn’t be splintery.

I was just nailing in the new board when Shasta came out on the deck.

“Where’s Dewey?” I asked.

“He’s watching a
Thomas
movie. My one major Mommy indulgence.” She stood above me, staring down at my work. “I can’t believe it.”

“No big deal,” I said.

I hammered in the last two nails. I was shaking the board to make sure it was secure when Shasta said, “What were you going to say before?”

“About what?”

“About why you didn’t come over last night.”

“I just…” I set down my hammer and looked up at her. “I can be an asshole sometimes and I didn’t want to be one with you.”

Shasta rested her hands on my shoulders for a little while and then headed back inside. As I cleaned
up the scraps of wood, I could still feel where she’d touched me.

After a few minutes, I loaded up the toolbox and walked over to the sliding glass door, which was partway open. Shasta was sitting on the rocking chair, Dewey on her lap. He was drinking from a sippy cup and she was reading him a book about trains.

“All done?” she asked, looking up.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Thank you so much. That was the nicest thing to do.”

“It really wasn’t a big deal.”

Shasta and I stared at each other, neither of us saying anything. Finally, Dewey began to wiggle in her lap and point his finger down at the page.

“One second, baby,” Shasta said, tousling his hair. Then she glanced back at me. “I just wanted to say that I don’t think you’re an—” She mouthed
asshole
over Dewey’s head.

“You don’t know me very well,” I said.

Shasta shook her head. “I still don’t think you are. I mean, we all have our moments, but don’t let them define you.”

“I…” I started. This lump was forming in my
throat. Goddammit. I had to split from here before I broke down.

“I better go,” I said quickly, nodding my head in the direction of the road.

“Okay, well, see you around. And thanks again.”

“Yeah, see you around.”

I raced across the deck. As soon as I was off the steps, I could feel the tears coming on. I jogged down the road. When I reached the ravine, I chucked the toolbox and sprinted into the woods. I ran fast, hurdling over stumps, stumbling through holes.

I must have been a quarter mile into the woods when I let myself collapse onto the moss. I was breathing hard and my face was wet. As I lay on my back, staring up at the towering trees, I thought about how I didn’t cry when Natalie died.

But now I was laying on the ground, twigs probing into my shoulder blades, and I was crying because Natalie and I were a shitty couple. She was most likely cheating on me. I wasn’t a great boyfriend to her. If she hadn’t died, we would have broken up sooner or later and we both would have moved onto better things and someday, in five years, we would have bumped into each other at a bar and joked about how we were such a shitty couple.

As it is, she’s buried in Lakeview Cemetery and I’ve been left behind to figure it out, wonder whether I could have prevented her from dying.

Well, I couldn’t. Because sometimes horrible things just happen and you have to live with the fact that there’s no explanation. It is what it is. End of story.

I stayed there for a while longer, breathing in the damp leaves. And then, finally, I stood up, brushed the dirt off the back of my legs, and started out of the woods.