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I puzzle my expression, pinching my brow and preparing myself to lie, but for some reason, I just can’t.
“Kinda,” I shrug.
He chuckles to himself and takes another draw before licking his fingertips, twisting the end of his joint, and tucking it in his wallet and eventually shoving it in his back pocket.
“He tell you that I tried to kill him once?”
I huff out a laugh but my smile stops short when our eyes connect. He isn’t joking. I flinch a little, like a nervous tick rejecting something I don’t like.
“Yeah, well…” Jesse shoves his hands in his pockets and spins on his heels, smiling broad and wide up at the sky before leveling me one last time. “Guess he didn’t tell you everything”
Frozen where I stand, I blink at the image of Jesse’s back as he walks away. Everything suddenly feels like it’s happening behind a pane of glass. Sam is laughing with Rag where I left them on the couch. Chris and Logan are going over everything they think they must be doing wrong, both a little on edge and fidgety, their nerves becoming more physical as Jesse lifts his guitar and swings the strap back over his neck, stepping closer to them. He wipes the side of his hand from the corner of his mouth down along his chin in a slow drag, as if he’s clearing away the remnants of his most recent kill, and that small act seems to force his friends to attention.
I can’t hear him count, but I watch his head bob, his lips curve with words—one, two, one-two-three-four…
It’s a different song this time. It’s less painful, less of an echo blurring its way through the air. This song…it isn’t personal. The sound is sharp and fast, Chris does a better job of keeping up. The pounding bass seduces me back inside, but I’m too numb to sit. I can’t go back to the blissful crush I was nursing before, but I’m still obsessed. My fascination is different now. Jesse, he’s…different now. He’s a risk. He’s fucking beautiful. And I want more of him—to know more.
My fingers inch from my overly long sleeves and begin to tap along my hips on instinct. My eyes close and I feel it, the rush of a train and the clip of loose railway ties flapping against my chest, resetting my heart to skip in all the right places. The music chugs, or it should. I hear it how I want it, how I would perfect it, and my hands play it right. It’s smoother, fast but raw like jazz. It’s a little country, maybe a bit Johnny Cash. My head falls forward and my hair shadows my face as I nod up then down with a slower syncopation.
There’s a built-in break that I almost anticipate, and I smile and lift my chin when it happens and my fingers catch it, my palms freezing half bent at my wrists. I open my eyes just in time to catch Jesse’s gaze on me, one eye closed more than the other, the lines around his curved lip paying me a compliment. He saw that—he saw me get his sound.
I smile back faintly, and I narrow every ounce of my focus on his mouth, his lip hung open in a sexy breath that’s put there on purpose. He uses it all to create—even his sex appeal. And while the music is paused, my chest continues to pound out the rhythm, falling right in line when the band picks back up. I feel like I’ve been kissed—the kind of kiss that leaves you swallowing hard and confused.
I do, and I am.
I waited for the music to flow again over the weekend, but the sound never came. The only thing I heard was the roar of an old Chevy Camaro that someone picked Jesse up in. I watched them drive away from my creeper perch, as Sam is now calling it. She isn’t wrong; I stare out this window at Jesse’s house now instead of the stars. Or at least, this is where I have been for the weekend.
&n
bsp; His house is quiet this morning. No little brother running around the driveway, or his harried mom who I’ve only seen twice. I don’t see him or his sister, either. It could be that it’s five in the morning and everyone who is not on the school’s drumline for marching band is still asleep. Two more glorious hours of sleep.
Sam is asleep. She quit band in fifth grade the second a guest student from high school came and answered our questions.
“How early is practice?” Sam asked.
“Five-thirty,” was the answer.
“I’m out,” she said.
And she was. She got her mom to drop the class for her by the end of the week. She took pottery instead. She has never once made anything.
Five-thirty doesn’t phase me, though. I’d give up sleep for weeks to keep my hands moving, sticks vibrating, the buzz perfect. There are times when I’m better talking in short, choppy sounds than actual words. It’s weird, but I speak drum.
Gadda-gak.
My dad opens up the mail shop early during the week, so he’s my ride. I offered to walk Bessy, our Yorkie, around the block this morning, though, and she’s slower than I remembered. She did her business about a hundred feet from home, but I kept walking with her because I wanted to see if I could hear anything behind Jesse’s house.
Creeper 101: Listen through the fence.
I scooped Bessy into my arms when she started to wander and slow me down, and I gained a few precious minutes that I’m now spending with my confused pup behind the wall of Jesse’s back yard.
Someone’s crying. Not hard. It’s the sniffles, mostly, and I can just tell that they aren’t the allergy or cold kind. They come every few seconds, like a curse word—almost angry. I wonder if his sister hates her school? I wonder if she goes to the charter near the mall or if she’s at Public, where everyone in Orson goes. Our high school is the same—everyone’s either a dropout, online schooler, or stuffed into overcrowded classrooms at Vista High. A new high school was planned, but when the tax base bottomed out, so did the state support. Me and my friends draw totally inappropriate things on the abandoned foundation slabs with sidewalk chalk. Rain is welcome because it means there’s a clean slate, and that means we have something to do again.
It’s not vandalism if it’s ugly and abandoned in the first place. At least, that’s what Sam says.
I stand just on the other side of the wall, my ear pressed to the thin cracks where cement was poorly slathered on. The longer I listen, the more certain I am that this isn’t a young child crying. It’s either Jesse or his mom, and my gut oddly tells me that it’s a guy’s stifled cry I hear.
My hand repeatedly runs over Bessy’s fur-ball head, trying to keep her distracted and calm, and after a full minute of just listening, I realize I’m frowning.
