Page 42 of Tell Me Softly

He grabbed the picture and balled it up cruelly. His stare seemed to dare me to say something. And he announced, “Detention’s over.”

I didn’t respond. I just stood, ignored everyone’s glances, and walked out.

Taylor ran up behind me shouting, “Kami!”

I only stopped because I knew he didn’t deserve to be ignored.

“What happened? What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to smile. “I guess he doesn’t like people doodling.” I don’t think he believed me, but at least it kept him from digging any further.

“Can we talk a second?” he asked, taking my hand and dragging me toward the lockers, where no one could see us.

I didn’t see the need for it, since the school was basically empty.

“I know you, Kami,” he began. “And I know you’re beating yourself up and won’t stop until you can’t go on.

And I need you to promise me you won’t do that.

Promise me you’ll find a way to convince yourself it wasn’t your fault… ”

He tried to hold me, but I pushed him away.

“It was my fault, though!” I shouted. “Stop lying to me and lying to yourself so you can make yourself love me! Your brother is right. He’s the only one who’s telling the truth here; he’s the one who treats me the way I deserve.

My mother never got me to stop feeling guilty.

The psychologist I started seeing when I was a girl never did.

I’ve still got this weight inside me. So why do you think you’re the one who can make it go away? ”

Taylor was dumbstruck, paralyzed. So I continued, “I deserve all this. I deserve for your family to reject me. I deserve to be hated. And I don’t care what you say because it’s never going to change the way I feel.”

I turned to stomp off and almost ran into Thiago. He had been there, hiding on the other side of the lockers, listening. He grabbed my arms to stop me, and I felt an electric shock. He said nothing. He just stepped aside and let me run away.

***

My mother was still gone when I got home. As far as I was concerned, it was for the best. If there was one person apart from me who was to blame for this, it was her. And Mr. Di Bianco, I guess, but he had been gone for a while.

I tried to close my eyes and relax my mind while listening to music and lying in bed, but it was impossible. Lightning kept striking, brightening the room, which was almost dark now that the sun was setting earlier.

The rain reminded me too much of that day. On TV, they’d said it would storm the rest of the week, and I had taken that as a sign. I got up, took off my headphones, and looked out the window.

How were they? How was Katia? How was Taylor after I’d shouted at him so unfairly? How was Thiago?

His room was dark, but the lights were on in the rest of the house. Outside, past the dark blue and gray, was the thinnest ray of orange against the horizon. I decided to go out for a walk, hoping I’d tire myself out enough that the images that had been tormenting me would stay at bay.

I told Dad I was going to Ellie’s to study and that I’d be out late. I don’t even know if he heard me. He was yelling into the phone at the end of the hall and didn’t bother to answer.

As soon as I was on the porch, I looked at the empty space where I used to park and remembered my car was gone.

I’d almost forgotten it after four days of riding to school and back on my bike.

If I closed my eyes, I could still remember everyone freaking the first day I arrived on two wheels rather than four.

It wasn’t like I was the only one. There must have been a hundred kids who rode their bikes to school.

But when I did it, it was like some earth-shattering event.

It was true that Danny and I had the nicest cars of anyone there, but still.

I managed to play it off for a little bit, telling people I needed the exercise, and a couple of people even talked about joining me, but soon the rumors about my father got around—I couldn’t stop them—and people figured out what had happened.

Whatever. I tried to forget my classmates’ mocking faces and decided a bike ride would do me better than a walk.

I looked up into the sky, above the black clouds crowding over Carsville, making the beautiful night sky look sinister, and I thought Screw you, sky, you’re not stopping me as I got on and started pedaling.

My neighborhood was fifteen minutes from downtown and half an hour to school by bike.

But I decided not to ride in that direction.

Instead, I wanted to go elsewhere, to a bad place full of sad memories—memories that could only hurt me because of how our lives had gotten fucked up eight years before.

I still remembered how that day began… Everything was normal, apart from me and Thiago knowing that our parents were having an affair with each other.

It had been shocking, seeing my mother kiss another man, but even stranger was when she came home and kissed my father as if everything were normal and she didn’t have a care in the world.

When you’re ten years old, there are many things you don’t understand. And you hope an older friend can guide you. But even Thiago struggled with what he saw that day…

***

I remember him calling me princess. “Come on, princess,” he’d said, pulling me along and helping me climb up to our tree house.

We’d been working on it for days, fancying it up, and it now had three chairs, a table, some games, a telescope so Taylor could see the stars, a kite Thiago had made himself, and three of my favorite dolls.

I sat down and let my legs dangle in the air. It was so high. I remember thinking if I fell from there, I’d probably die…

“Where’s Taylor?” I asked.

“He’s still sick. Mom won’t let him come out and play.”

The dummy. He hadn’t been able to stop eating all that stolen candy despite his indigestion.

I looked over at Thiago, who was examining the ladder we’d been making for the tree house— the sanctuary , as he liked to call it for some reason.

He told me, “You can come up here whenever you’re sad.

No one will find you. And old people, they’re too scared to climb trees.

” He seemed sure of this; I didn’t know why.

We started talking about how many steps we’d need—I think he’d measured it or something.

Then, all of a sudden, we heard laughter.

I looked down and saw his father and my mother walking into the woods.

I tried to wave and say something, but Thiago covered my lips. I didn’t understand why, but he whispered that no one could know about our secret place, and I nodded as Travis Di Bianco pulled my mother close and gave her a long, sensual kiss.

Stunned, I looked at Thiago, but he had turned away. I looked back at my mother.

“Somebody’s going to see us,” my mother said, pushing Travis back slightly.

“Who cares? We haven’t fucked in a week. I need it.”

That was the first time I’d ever heard the word fuck . I wish the first time hadn’t been hearing some man talk about it with my mother.

“Where are the kids?” she asked, looking around as Travis sucked on her neck and raised her dress up.

“Far away, I hope,” Travis said. And after that came a series of kisses, moans, and groans that had a totally different meaning from any sound I’d ever heard a person make before.

Thiago tried to distract me, putting a pair of headphones on my ears and telling me in a reassuring tone, “Listen to this. It reminds me of you.”

I didn’t understand, but I was happy to let the music muffle the sounds coming from below, and I let that melody take me away from the discomfort, the fear, the misunderstanding…

***

On my bike now, I heard those notes again, those voices: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” And suddenly I was back in reality.

Without realizing it, I’d gone farther than I meant to, and the road was unfamiliar to me. That song…years ago, it had changed our lives, and now I was hearing it again. I pedaled and pedaled, flinching when a bolt of lightning tore through the sky.

Why was I going there now?

Was I sick in the head?

A masochist?

***

“Promise me, promise me you won’t say anything,” Thiago said after it was over, gripping my shoulders.

I was filled with doubts. “But…” I started to say.

“If our parents find out, they’ll split up. Is that what you want?”

“No! Of course not!” I was angry that he’d even asked. I tried to escape his grasp, but he just squeezed me tighter. “Let go of me, Thiago!”

“Promise!” His eyes were deadly serious.

“Fine! I promise!”

He let me go, and I rubbed the spot where he’d been clutching me. It hurt still, and I started crying. Thiago must have regretted it because he apologized. “I’m sorry. But it’s really important that you not say anything.”

“But…my dad needs to know,” I said a second later.

Who was he to tell me what people should and shouldn’t find out?

I felt grown up now––I felt as if someone had thrown a pitcher of ice-cold water on my head and I’d been cast into the world of adults, where not everything was pretty and my mother didn’t love my father and his mother didn’t love his father and…

they were all supposed to be friends! Even a ten-year-old girl could tell that wasn’t right.

“Why? Why does he need to know? Do you want to hurt him? Make him sad? Do you want to start a fight and ruin their marriage? Because that’s what will happen when he learns the truth.”

Thiago was furious. Looking back, though, I could see he wasn’t angry with me; he was angry with his father. But he was taking it out on me then because I was there and because if he couldn’t change the truth, at least he could try to change me.

I promised I wouldn’t open my mouth. But the days passed, and I felt more and more guilty. My father was worried, my mother was distant… She was like a gorgeous doll in her perfect dress, with her perfect blond hair and perfect makeup, but with no real human feelings.