Ariel

After talking with Dad, I start on my homework. When the phone rings again, I let the machine screen the call.

“Hey, Ariel.” Shane sighs. “Look, I know you’re home ’cause your voice mail kicked in, which means you were on the phone. I need to talk to you. Pick up, okay?”

I hurry toward it. “I’m here,” I answer. “I just got off the phone with my dad.”

Shane’s one of the few people I told about having a dad in prison who didn’t get all weirded out. “Have a nice talk?” he asks me.

“Yeah, we did.”

“How’s your headache?”

I’d forgotten about my lie. “Better.”

“I left you two messages,” Shane says. “How come you didn’t call me back?”

“Oh, um, I wanted to take a shower and wash my hair first,” I lie again.

Shane clears his throat. “When I didn’t hear from you, I got worried you were still upset with me about the joke. Ariel, I shouldn’t have done that. I was playing around with you because I was bummed you wouldn’t let me in. But it was a mean and stupid thing to do, and I’m really sorry. Forgive me?”

Even if I was still upset, the awkward softness in Shane’s voice could easily melt it away. “Yeah, I forgive you.”

“Good. Thanks.” Shane pauses. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah. Mom’s working late. We’re going out to dinner when she gets home.”

“Cool. Look, um, I still have an hour before work. Can I stop there on my way? Maybe we can sit at the kitchen table and talk. I’ll wear my Boy Scout badge.”

Not again. “Shane,” I start, trying to sound upbeat, “some night when you don’t have work—when my mom’s home—I’ll show you the house and we’ll hang out in the rec room where it’s private and watch a DVD or something.” I shove my hair behind my ear. Again and again. After about the eighth time, I stop myself. “How does that sound?”

There’s a long silence. I’m starting to get the headache I lied about.

“How old are you?” Shane asks.

I laugh nervously. “You know I’m almost sixteen. Why are you asking me that?”

“Because. The sixteen-year-old girls I knew at my old school passed the I-can’t-make-Mommy-mad-at-me stage at, like, twelve.”

His words hit me like a slap in the face. In fact, a slap would have probably hurt less.

“Shane, stop. You’re hurting my feelings.”

“And you think you’re not hurting mine, Ariel? More than anything, I want to take care of you, and you’re guarding the door and clinging to your mother’s rule like I’m a friggin’ predator or something. How do you think that makes me feel?”

Tears well up in my eyes.

“Look, Ariel, I care more about you than I’ve ever cared about anyone.”

“You…do?”

“Yeah, I do. That’s why this is eating me up inside. I just want to see you. To sit in the same room with you and look at you and talk with you and, and”—his voice cracks—“and keep you safe from the real pricks of the world.”

Steadying the remote, I point it at Bart Simpson’s face. When the screen goes black, I get a sudden chill. Why do I feel like I’ve shut down something bigger than a TV show? I take a deep breath. Let it out. “Okay. Park near the shrubs so the neighbors can’t rat me out. And don’t come to the front door—cut through the garage instead.”

“Be there in fifteen minutes,” he says. “Can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too,” I say back, but Shane’s already hung up.

I hurry to the bathroom for a quick shower so Shane won’t find out I’ve lied. I wet my hair but don’t wash it. There’s not enough time for that.

Eleven minutes later, I hear knocking at the kitchen door. I rush to my room and glance out the window. Sure enough, Shane’s black Yamaha is parked beside our long row of hedges. “Just a second!” I call, grabbing my robe, reminding myself that if I really had showered when I said I did, I’d be completely dressed by now.

When I turn, I stub my toe on the corner of my computer desk and fall, face-first, cracking my forehead on my nightstand. I touch my left eyebrow, which is throbbing. Already there’s a goose egg forming.

I hear Shane trying the kitchen door, which, of course, I locked when I came in. “Ariel?” he calls. “Where are you?”

I throw open my closet, searching for something easy to slip on.

Shane’s knocking morphs into pounding, and I’m nervous the neighbors will hear. “Ariel, are you okay?”

“Be there in a minute!” I grab a black hoodie, faded Levi’s, a pair of bikini panties, and a sports bra. Then, remembering what Shane says about sports bras—that they, quote, take two wonderful breasts and transform them into a uniboob, unquote—I trade it for a satiny white one.

After I slip on my panties and bra, the pounding stops. Still in rush mode, I whirl back around, reaching for my shirt and jeans. But when I glance into the mirror over my dresser, I gasp.

In the glass, there’s a second reflection—Shane’s. He’s leaning against the doorframe to my room. Shane and I have unbuttoned and unzipped our clothing while we’ve made out, but the garments pretty much stayed put. Now, I feel exposed. “I told you I’d be there in a minute,” I say, grabbing my bathrobe and tying it around me. “How did you get in?”

Shane holds up the emergency key.

Shit. I completely forgot about the spare.

My pulse pounds in my neck. I’m usually so calm and rational. Most Likely to be Picked for Team Captain in the Event of a Natural Disaster—that could be my moniker. But now I feel something shift in my brain, the synapses firing differently.

I’m mad, I realize. I push past him and start through the door.

Shane grabs my arm and whirls me around. When he lets go, his eyes lock with mine. Even though he’s not touching me, I still feel pinned in place by that gaze.

“Don’t be upset,” he says, reaching for my chin, turning it toward him. “When you didn’t answer, I was scared something had happened to you. That you were hurt.”

I walk to my dresser and grab my hairbrush, tugging on a tangle. Mentally, I recap what just happened, looking at it from Shane’s point of view. Finally, I decide I can’t blame him. I might have done the same thing if I was that concerned.

Shane steps behind me and takes the brush. He glides the bristles down my scalp, clear to the end. “I worship every inch of you,” he says, gathering the tips of my hair into a clump, which he brings to his lips, kissing it. “Right down to your split ends.”

I elbow him. “I don’t have split ends.”

“Do too,” he teases. He rests his chin on my shoulder, studying our reflections in the mirror. When he lifts my bangs away from my forehead, the lump from my fall leaps into view. He touches the bruise. “Hey, how’d this happen?”

“I tripped and hit it on my nightstand.”

“Ouch.” He smoothes my bangs back. “I hope no one thinks I did that to you.”

Confused, I watch his face in the glass. “Shane, why would they?”

He laughs and I jump, which makes him laugh even harder. “Hah! Right! Why would they?”

He loops his arms around my waist, undoing the tie on my robe. The bow on my bra appears, a rectangle of stomach, a sliver of panties. Self-conscious, I reach to close it.

Shane moves my hand aside. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers. Then he leans in, kissing my neck. I watch him in the mirror as his dark hair falls across his face, as his lips creep slowly toward my ear, then tenderly nibble the lobe. His tongue inches inside, exploring the innermost folds. Shane’s kisses ignite something that’s never been on fire before. And if we were making out somewhere else—in a movie or at a concert—I’d be fine with what’s going on. But this is not happening somewhere else.

Shane moves closer, pressing his full weight against me. His hand reaches through the opening in my robe. His fingers ease beneath my bra.

I glance at my clock. “Shane,” I whisper, “I should get dressed. It’s six thirty. You have to go to work. And my mother will be home soon.”

“I’m not afraid of the Momster,” he breathes, moving against me. The bones that stick out on either side of my hips grind against the edge of my dresser. When a sudden sharp pain rages there, I say, “Ow!”

Shane takes my hand. Turns me around. Lowers me onto my bed.

“I want you.” His lips graze my neck again. But now the good feeling’s gone.

“Please, Shane. I think we should stop. I don’t think I—”

Shane’s mouth covers mine, silencing me. He reaches to unzip his jeans.

My pulse races. I pray for Mom to show up. I don’t care that I’ll have to confess it was my fault Shane came over. Or how it looks that I have my bathrobe on. I just want to hear the familiar sound of her car pulling into the garage.

My heart wallops my throat so hard, I’m scared my neck might explode. “I’m not ready!” I blurt out. Except I can’t tell if the words make a sound, or if I only think them.

But they must. Make a sound, that is. Because Shane rises up from my bed. Avoiding my eyes, he zips his pants. Adjusts his T-shirt. Takes a step back. Then he starts down the hall, past Mom’s room, the bathroom, the guest room.

Suddenly I feel guilty. I’m not sure why, but I do. Big time. “Shane”—tying my robe closed, I follow him—“don’t go. You said we could talk. Remember?”

I step between him and the kitchen door.

There’s a raw, unfamiliar pain in Shane’s eyes I’ve never seen before. He looks so vulnerable. Could he really be the same confident person who took on the Veep? All traces of that person are erased now.

I reach to touch his face, but he pushes my hand away. That’s when I realize he’s crying. “Shane,” I whisper, “what’s wrong?”

Hard, wrenching sobs shake his body. It’s almost too private to watch. He gulps air, like someone trying to stay afloat. “I—I care—way too—much about—you.”

Our eyes meet. Then lock. Something deep in our centers connects. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. We’re joined. Perhaps permanently.

Shane doesn’t look away, either. “Y—you’re my whole fucking universe,” he chokes out. “You’re all I think about, Ariel, the only person I want to b—be with. Ever.”

Oh. My. God. Ever. As in forever. He cares that much about me.

When Shane blinks, our gaze is interrupted, and I feel like my lifeline’s been cut. I clasp his waist, holding tight, so I won’t drown without him.

Shane doesn’t reach back, though. He removes my arms, placing them at my sides like he’s posing a mannequin. Then he reaches for the doorknob.

“Wait!” I shout, surprising myself.

Shane turns. “Wait for what, Ariel?” He flips up the blank screen again. Studies me with the same cool look you’d use to examine a specimen in chem lab.

The detachment undoes me. I can’t take it. I want him back. I untie my robe, let it part. “I’ve changed my mind. I am ready.”

Shane reaches down, touching the bruise that’s forming on my hip. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he says, and his eyes fill again. He gathers the ties on my robe, knotting them across my front. “You’re not ready, Ariel. Not for someone who loves you the way I do.”

I open my mouth to speak, but Shane presses a finger to my lips.

Turning, wordlessly, he leaves.

As I watch him cross our garage, then start outside, activating the motion light, I make a silent promise to myself. I will be ready next time. Maybe after Mom and I return from our trip to Elmira.

Yes, I decide.

That’s when.