Colorado River corridor
Moab, Utah
Back in high school
HER FATHER had told her to stay away from him. “That boy’s just like a dog who’s been kicked his whole life. And a human who’s been beat like that is much more dangerous than a wounded animal. You keep your distance, Day.”
From her inflatable kayak, she lassoed a rock poking out of the riverbank and pulled herself to shore. A canoe was hidden in the tamarisk. He had stolen the canoe from Rapid Riggers River and Jeep Expeditions, but her dad knew it and hadn’t done anything about it. And her dad owned Rapid Riggers.
When she got out of the boat, the mud in the shallows tried to pull her shoes off her feet. Day hated sand and silt. She’d never known anything else her whole life. They couldn’t keep the sand out of the house or out of their clothes. Her cheerleading uniform was the only thing she managed to keep white and only by always hanging it in a plastic dry cleaner’s bag.
Today she wore black baggy shorts and an oversize tie-dyed T-shirt. Her new high-top sneakers were ruined now. The rusty red of the Colorado would never come out.
As she lifted her knapsack out of the boat, the metaland-air sound of a pop-top being pulled from a tin can made her jump. There he was, opening a beer.
Day didn’t want to admit she was afraid.
His eyes were dark brown, and seeing them now, Day realized her father was right. Nick Colter knew things a kid shouldn’t. Day could already smell him, and she remembered what had happened that morning, how the principal and the vice-principal had both restrained him because he wouldn’t sit in the small windowless room between the two classrooms and work on his math. Her father had come down to the school, and at lunch Grace had told everyone that it was to find out about a PTA meeting. Later, when Day had called her on lying, her sister had said, “So, you want everyone in town to find out that Dad likes him? People are going to think he’s our brother.”
He couldn’t be their brother. He didn’t look anything like them.
The tall boy on the riverbank stayed where he was. Nothing about him invited Day to come closer.
Day told herself she was visiting out of kindness. It was a good samaritan act.
But she knew that wasn’t the truth.
The truth was…he was cute.
And fascinating. A cave boy.
“Hi.” Nervous, she explained, “I brought some books. English. I thought we could study together.”
His eyes should have stopped her. They looked mean. As she waded out of the mud, Day said, “I thought, like, I could read the myth about Theseus and you could follow along.”
Did the hardness of his eyes lessen? Difficult to tell.
Day felt silly in her expensive clothes that were supposed to look worn-out and comfortable. He was really poor. He didn’t have good jeans, Levis or Ben Rogan designer jeans. His were part polyester, and his plain white T-shirt looked stained.
She trudged up the bank through the deep powder-fine red sand, the sand that would be in her socks forever. She’d better get back to the house before her dad came home from Rapid Riggers. But she had an hour till then. “Do you have another beer?”
He snorted. “No.”
In other words, he wouldn’t give her one.
Day said, “I drink.”
“So what?”
They were neither of them within half a decade of legal drinking age. And what she’d said wasn’t really true.
He, however, was draining his beer with ease. He crumpled the can and hurled it against the nearest sandstone wall, and it hit the crumbling red rock with a faint clink.
Day followed him to the mouth of the cave. Against one wall, beyond his blackened fire pit, she saw a roll of blankets, army surplus. Not very many, but it was spring, April.
“Didn’t my dad give you a solar shower?”
He looked like she was speaking another language.
She knew her father had given him stuff. Her dad liked him. But none of the gifts was in sight. He didn’t even have a cooler, and she knew he must be keeping the beer cold in the river.
A mosquito bit her arm. It’s so dirty and deserted here. Day wondered how her dad had gotten the cave boy to come to school even once. He had to know everyone thought he was a freak, but he came every day.
“I could bring you some soap,” she offered.
He headed down into the tamarisk and returned with two beers. He threw one to her; it was cold from the river. The water dripped down the front of her shorts and her bare legs. When she popped open the can, the foam poured all over her. Feeling adventurous and adult, Day put the can to her lips and drank the beer, which tasted pretty vile. She ought to be able to drink it; Grace was going to take her to a senior party that weekend, even though Grace was just a sophomore, not quite a year older than her.
Day asked him, “How old are you?”
“When’s your birthday?”
“When’s yours?” He drank his beer, and Day knew he was deliberately provoking her.
But he could be nice sometimes. Once he’d picked up her books when someone had bumped into her in the hall.
“I just had it.” So there, thought Day, and so much for birthdays.
They sat in the sand outside the cave and leaned back against the red rocks. He smelled bad, like the homeless people she had seen when she visited Salt Lake City with her dad and Grace. As she opened her backpack to take out her school copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, Day tried to be helpful. “You should use that shower. I’ve used them on camping trips. They work pretty well, except for I always have to use two to wash my hair. Grace and my dad make fun of me.”
He smiled a little at that. Then he touched her hair.
A strange shiver went through Day.
“Your hair’s pretty,” he said. “Mine’s just brown.”
It was almost black. Day wanted to touch his hair, too, but she was afraid of him. It occurred to her that he was a little drunk, and that she should leave. Instead, she opened the book and began to read about Theseus, the hero of Athens.
Her voice shook, but she kept to her plan, following the words on the page with her finger. He was silent, and when she glanced at him, he looked up from the page as if to say, Why did you stop?
While the sun lowered over the red canyon walls of the river gorge, she read to him.
Nick tried to make sense of the black shapes on the page. He couldn’t. He watched her, instead.
She was so pretty. He’d never seen anyone that pretty.
Ashamed, he knew she was trying to teach him to read.
He tried to follow her finger on the page, tried to be smart. He understood stories, and this was a good story. About a monster in a maze. She read the whole thing, and he listened, trembling with wanting to touch her. Smelling how good she smelled.
“I can’t stay much longer.” Her voice was all shaky again, he noticed, as she took another book from her pack. “Grace and I have a contest with this book. We memorize it, and we try to say it fastest.”
It was a little kid’s book. The letters were big.
Nick wanted to shove her. Hit her.
She handed him the book, opened. “Okay, so here, start on this page, and see if I make any mistakes.” Day began to recite Fox in Socks.
He felt himself smiling. Only when she reached over and turned the page did he recall what she was doing. That she knew he couldn’t read.
He shut the book, mad. Why had she come, anyhow? She was like her father.
Recognizing his anger, Day put Mythology in her backpack. She nodded to the Dr. Seuss and said, “You can keep that. I have to go home.”
“Stay awhile.”
His hand on her shoulder hinted at a wiry strength. Day recalled the whole story of the canoe. After he’d stolen it, he’d paddled it down Cataract Canyon. Anyone that brave ought to be a good person, too.
But the world didn’t always work that way.
She stood up, and so did Nick Colter. His eyes were murky and mean again, and she remembered how tall he was.
“Why’d you come here? You want to get—” The word he chose was not gentle or vague.
Day’s throat ran dry, and her father’s warning returned to her—belatedly.
She drew her shoulders up. “No.”
She tried not to hear the rest, but she did. What he said was obscene. She hadn’t heard all the expressions before, but she knew what they meant. It was time to leave. “Excuse me,” she said. Walking toward the bank, she couldn’t see his shadow. He was behind her, and the sun was the wrong way. He could be creeping up on her. As she climbed into the dinghy, a reflection moved on the water, and Day jumped, rocking the boat. She heard his laughter, but it was far behind her, and she didn’t look back until she had shoved the dinghy away from shore.
He was standing beside the cave, smiling at her in a nasty way, as though he knew he had scared her and was glad.