Olive 

Saturday, May 13th

Lost: A chance

I wake up in the middle of the night to howling that doesn’t sound like the wind. For a moment I’m not sure where I am, but then the room focuses slowly around me. I’m in the third bedroom of the Oak Road house, lying on a mattress on the floor that usually serves as Ivy’s bed. But Rose isn’t on the mattress beside me anymore. Her impression is left on the discarded sheets, but that side of the bed is cold.

All the doors that lead off the landing are closed, but I can hear music playing softly from downstairs, so I pad down the bare steps of the stairs to the kitchen. When I see the flickering light of candles on the counters, I realize I’m not the only person awake in the storm.

Rowan is sitting alone at the head of the kitchen table like an ancient king in his dining hall. In front of him is an opened bottle of whiskey and a half-full glass. He is topless and his chest is pale and broad. He has a tattoo of some kind of mythological creature all along the left side of his rib cage, and another—a line of words I can’t make out from here—on his right arm. No one I know my age has real tattoos, except these two.

A phoenix. The name of the creature comes to me in a flash of lightning. I stand in the draft from the door for maybe longer than I should, then quickly lower my eyes when I realize I’ve been staring. My cheeks burn.

Rowan raises his eyebrows and smiles. I wish I didn’t blush so easily or so pink. I wish I could believe that I’m enough in shadow at this side of the kitchen for him not to notice. But he does notice. Of course he notices.

I throw my shoulders back. “Came down for a glass of water,” I say, and another long, languid howl from outside cuts me off. My muscles seize up. Rowan kicks his chair back onto two legs and swings his own pajama-clad legs up onto the table. He has hair on his bare toes. I take a shaky breath. Rowan seems entirely unconcerned by the noise, or at least it seems like he wants me to think that. But I can see his hand shake slightly as he reaches for his glass.

I gesture toward the whiskey with my chin. “Can I have some?” The wind rushes at the house again. In the distance, thunder rumbles.

“Ten-year-old single malt,” says Rowan appreciatively, tilting the bottle of whiskey so I can see the label. He gestures to the chair beside him and pushes his glass across the table to me. “Last thing we ever used our parents’ credit card for. It’s delicious. Tastes like peat-fire smoke.”

I sit down slowly. I’m not sure how alcohol can taste like chimney smoke, but I’m too embarrassed to ask. I’m more versed in cans of tasteless cider and cheap vodka mixed with something sweet than I am in fancy whiskey. A small part of me resents that I am the one feeling awkward, when Rowan is wearing only threadbare flannel pajama bottoms, but even like this, drinking alone in the empty kitchen, he is more self-possessed than I’ll ever be. I imagine telling Rose about this in the morning. Flannel pajamas and single-malt whiskey? she’s bound to say. What. A. Hipster. But the problem is, Rowan never seems like he’s trying too hard, or trying at all.

I take a small sip of the whiskey. I’m probably not sophisticated enough to detect notes of peat-fire smoke. “Mmm,” I say anyway, smacking my lips earnestly. Inside, I’m grimacing. It doesn’t taste much better than the poteen.

“Right?” Rowan says, almost excited. “Nectar of the gods.” He gets up to fetch me my own glass. I sneakily take another sip to see if that’ll help me get used to it. Some Diet Coke would help, maybe some cranberry juice. But I’m certain this is the kind of drink that is meant to be taken neat. I bite back a cough.

After the fourth small sip, though, I start to feel that triangle of warmth spreading somewhere between my ribs. My body recognizes the feeling from earlier, although I think I drank less of Mags Maguire’s moonshine than some of the others did. My limbs begin to loosen slightly. The only howling from outside now is the sound of the wind. It’s in part the whiskey and in part the wind that makes me say, “I’ve never met anyone like you guys before.”

“Anyone like us?” Rowan asks.

“You know.” Maybe the whiskey is loosening my tongue. “Painfully cool? Slightly tragic? Sad-eyed, tattooed hipster kids with no parental supervision and a tolerance for strong alcohol? Right now you’re alone in the kitchen of an abandoned house in the middle of the woods, drinking single-malt whiskey, shirtless, during a thunderstorm. Come on.”

Rowan looks a little surprised at all this, but he’s still smiling. “I’m not alone right now,” he points out.

“Touché.” I take another small sip. There is significantly less whiskey in the glass than when I started. “You’re more like people in a story than someone real.” My tone is dreamier than I’d intended, but I find that I don’t really mind, and anyway I’m not sure Rowan has noticed this time. He almost looks a little sad.

“Not really,” he says.

“Yes really.”

Rowan and I sit in silence for a spell.

“So,” I say. “Why are you down here?” I wonder if the howling woke him up, too. Lingering flashes of a red-haired girl running through the storm. I hope she found shelter. I hope she made it home.

“I’m . . .” Rowan clears his throat. “I guess I’m waiting.”

“For what?” I look around the ill-lit kitchen.

“To see if the spell worked.”

“Oh.”

He’s said it so matter-of-factly. He’s said it like he believes it’s true. I give my feelings a little prod. Do I believe it? Before last night I would have given a resounding no. But now I’m not so sure.

“You look . . .” I say tentatively. “You look a little sad.”

Rowan’s mouth twists. “Not sad so much,” he says, but I’m sure he’s lying. “More . . . afraid.” He smiles drily, tries to laugh it off.

“Afraid of what?” I ask. The howling wind. The darkness of the empty development. Footsteps on the tunnel roof.

“I don’t know,” he answers. The whiskey swirls in his almost-empty glass. “It just feels like we found Laurel’s diary as a warning. You know? All these weird things started happening to them after they cast the spell. A boy going missing. Finding that Jude guy. Not knowing anything about him. Creepy lost dogs. Blood and baby teeth.”

“I guess they’re just some of the things we lose during our lifetime?”

“You’re telling me you don’t find the idea of finding teeth in the forest creepy as fuck?”

I can’t help a shiver. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll give you that.”

We both take a drink.

“I’m just worried,” he says slowly, deliberately, as if he’s trying not to slur. “That with all the things we wanted to find—big things, like everything Rose lost, like my mom, like, I don’t even remember what Ivy wrote—we might have called up other things that shouldn’t be found. And the bit about sacrifice, you know? That scares me. There’s not a whole lot I can afford to lose right now.”

The candles drip wax. The flames flutter.

“All I’ve got is right here. All I’ve got is this roof over our heads, my pay cash in hand at Maguire’s, and Hazel and Ivy. They’re all I’ve got left.”

I want to say he’s got me and Rose, too, but I know we’re not the same thing.

I honestly do not realize I’m about to say it until it’s halfway out of my mouth. I ask, “Have you ever . . . you know . . . with Ivy?” I mean to say been out with or dated or become involved with, but because of the way I’ve said it I know it sounds like had sex with. I open my mouth to clarify, but Rowan gets there before me.

“Have I ever what? Sat shirtless in the kitchen with her at two in the morning and drunk whiskey?”

I try not to blush even redder than I’m currently blushing. “That’s—I didn’t mean—”

Rowan goes on as if I haven’t said anything. “Kissed?” he says. “Yes.”

“Oh.” My voice is short, catches at every syllable. “I mean, I guess that makes sense. I mean, you really seem like there’s . . . history there.” I curse myself as I keep talking. I can’t say anything right. My cheeks feel like they’re on fire.

“Not that kind of history really.” He’s looking at his hands.

“Oh.” I push the empty whiskey glass away from me. On top of the poteen earlier, and the beers before that, I’m starting to feel like this was a bad idea.

“Have we had sex? No.” He says it as if he’s talking to himself, to his freckled hands folded around his glass. I realize that he’s a lot drunker than I thought. It makes me feel a bit better about how bumbling I’ve been acting.

“No?” is all I say.

“No.”

In a way—a small, strange way—this is like talking with Rose after a party. Confessions and secrets and head-ducking whispers. I’m suddenly on slightly more familiar territory and it thrills me. Because, really, he’s not just some unfathomable, sophisticated person who drinks single-malt whiskey in the kitchen of an abandoned house. He’s also a boy. And I’m a girl. And we can talk to each other.

“Have you ever?” I ask, once I reach the end of that train of thought. Rowan looks surprised to hear me ask that, and he smiles when he looks up at me. I’m so relieved I giggle a bit— giggling, really, Olive?—and say, “It feels like we should be playing truth or dare or something.”

That makes him grin wider. “Not really,” he says. I have a moment of slight confusion before he clarifies. “Had sex, I mean.”

A funny feeling skitters across my tummy. I clear my throat before I say, “Not really?”

“More than kissing, less than sex?” he offers as an explanation.

That sounds like a mathematical equation. If x = k2 but k2 < se(x), find the value of “not really” se(x).

And then it hits me. “Oh. You—right.” More than kissing, less than sex. Why didn’t I realize it earlier? It could have been with Ivy. I can feel the blush to end all blushes flooding my face. How am I going to look at her in the morning? How am I going to hear her soft voice talking about breakfast cereals when they might’ve done “more than kissing”? What is “more than kissing” anyway? Part of me wants—no, needs—to know every exact detail so that I can stop mentally filling in the blanks. Was it with Ivy? How much is “less than sex” anyway? Just some groping? Have they seen each other naked? Have there been orgasms? Has he gone down on her? Has she gone down on him? Why can’t I stop thinking about this?

“How about you?”

My train of thought comes to a screeching halt. “Huh?”

Rowan pours more whiskey into my glass, then his own. “How about you?” he says again.

“Oh. Right.” More than kissing, less than sex. “Same. I suppose.”

Rowan tilts his glass so that the candlelight hits it, refracts into sunbeams on the rickety old camping table. With every sip, the whiskey tastes a little earthier, a little warmer, a little more like peat-fire smoke. Nectar of the gods.

“Virginity,” Rowan says suddenly, as if he’s answering a question.

“Virginity?”

“Something you can lose.”

“Ugh,” I cry. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Saying what?”

But I’m getting riled up now. “Why doesn’t everyone understand that the very idea of virginity is a hetero-patriarchal concept invented to make women feel bad about sex?”

Rowan splutters. “A hetero-what?”

I ignore him. “As if a woman is somehow worth more when she hasn’t had penetrative intercourse, because of course there’s a double standard when it comes to men, and anyway who the hell gets to decide what the cutoff point for virginity is?”

Rowan nearly swallows his whiskey the wrong way. “Do you want me to draw you a diagram?”

I glare at him. “I understand the mechanics, thanks. But ask yourself this: What if you’re a girl who has only ever dated girls? Who decides on the mechanics then?”

“The hetero-patriarchy,” Rowan answers with an almost-straight face.

So he was paying attention. “Exactly.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’m with you. But don’t you think you need something? Like, to mark the occasion? I mean, not you personally. One. One needs something.” He frowns at himself and drinks more whiskey.

I think about Rose. I try not to think about Rose. I think, instead, about all the glorious freckled skin Rowan’s got on display right now.

“Maybe it’s more about firsts,” I say slowly, still figuring this one out. “Maybe every first is a loss.”

Rowan leans forward in his seat. Suddenly he’s watching me with this incredibly intense look in his eyes, as if he’s drinking me like whiskey. I wonder if I’d taste earthy, like peat-fire smoke. “Every first is a loss,” he breathes. “I like that.”

He picks up a marker and stands in front of me. He’s really not wearing very much. I take the marker he’s offering. He hunkers down on the tiles beside me and hands me his left arm, the one not already tattooed. Before uncapping the marker, I take his other arm and turn it so I can see the words inked there. They are written in a particularly perfect cursive, and they say Not all those who wander are lost.

“So you’re a Tolkien fan?” I ask, and he looks pleasantly surprised. “All that is gold does not glitter,” I quote. “Not all those who wander are lost.”

“I got it as a reminder,” he says, “that no matter how far away from home I get, I don’t have to be lost; I can still be myself. Of course, it’s got a lot more meaning now,” he says. “Lost things everywhere.” His face is lower than mine, tilted up so he can see me. So many freckles. The candles on the table reflect at the very edges of his glasses. I want to touch his cheek. I want to run my hand through his hair. Really, I probably just want to kiss him.

Instead, I uncap the marker and take his bare arm in my other hand. I swivel in my chair so that I can write steadily. He rests his arm on my knees. I start at the crook of his elbow where I imagine his heart beats and I write Every first is a loss in the same careful writing that covers my own left forearm. I’ve never thought my handwriting was particularly pretty until now. Somehow, it complements the cursive of his tattoo.

“Does that mean that every first kiss with a new person is also a loss?” he asks in an almost-whisper, his arm on my knees, his face just below mine.

“I guess it must,” I tell him.

“Then not all losses are bad.”

“I guess not,” I say softly. His face is tilted up toward me. He raises himself up on his knees ever so slightly and our lips are aligned. His eyes are not quite closed; he’s staring at my mouth. I’m staring at his. We inch forward and the kitchen door slams open. We spring apart. A couple of the candles blow out and a bowl full of something or other on the counter tips over, spilling little things all over the floor. When I turn around, I see Ivy.

“Oh,” she says in that tiniest voice. “I’m sorry.” The wind howls through the house; it must have been a draft that blew the door open. I somehow can’t imagine little, quiet Ivy banging doors. “I just wanted some aspirin.” Her voice trails off at the end of every sentence. Even with my hearing aid in, I can only make out half her words.

“Whiskey?” Rowan offers, sitting back in his seat at the head of the table. “Nectar of the gods.”

“Oh, no,” Ivy says sadly, shuffling toward the sink. “I think I’ve had quite enough strong spirits for tonight.”

My lips tingle, unkissed. Ivy runs the tap and drinks water from it like a cat, swallows two aspirin, and waves good night with a sad-eyed smile before disappearing upstairs. Her skin is so pale and she is so thin and her lips are so soft and her eyes are so big; she’s like Little Red Goldilocks or Snow Beauty. I can imagine Rowan kissing her. I can imagine his hands around her tiny waist. I look down at my own decidedly untiny waist and the soft flesh of my belly, and I fold my arms over myself and scrape back my chair.

“I should get some sleep,” I say to Rowan, who is still staring at the door to the kitchen, at the invisible imprint Ivy has left behind. “I’m in for a fun time explaining all this to my parents tomorrow.”

“See you in the morning,” Rowan says, as if from far away. He tilts the whiskey bottle and refills his glass. The candles flicker, almost all melted, around him.