beginning of something

Mar 15, 2008 - 22:08 PM PST

Purpley mist hangs above us. It doesn't glisten. It lingers above our eyebrows as if it is waiting for something. Always just out of reach. We can see the cadet blue sky through it. And in that, we see the stars. They stare at us without blinking.

We are lying with our heads together, the four of us. I can feel his shaggy hair brushing the skin near the corner of my eye. I shiver. I close my eyes. I take a long, deep breath of the night air and smell the grass and the soil and the fog. I feel his hair move away from my face and my eyes spring back open. I move my eyes to the left and then to the right. All I see is hair and skin, dark in the shadow of the cloudless sky. It is warm for nighttime, but a cool breeze brushes past us slowly, rustling the leaves in the trees and making my eyelids flutter.

I sit up, fast, and see a sudden flash of white, then spots dancing over the dark green hills and deep blue sea in the distance. Gradually the other two follow suit. We sit in more silence for a few more moments that feel like molasses, dripping with drowsiness and longing. In another moment we are all standing. Rose and Jake and Lukas and I make our way back to the house, step by careful step.

Lukas grew up in a small town in Missouri. One of those small towns you read about in novels or short stories. His dad was a postman. His mom wasn't around. Lukas reads MAD Magazine and watches MAD TV. His favorite poem is that one by Whitman.

LOCATIONS and times—what is it in me that meets them all, whenever
and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odors—what is it in me that corresponds
with them?

He mentions them again. "They sparkle." Well, there's something about his, too. They're brown. They're soft and they look as though they'd feel like melting chocolate on my fingertips. They make me feel all melty, also. He looks at me with those hot chocolate eyes and I feel like I mean something. Maybe not to him, but to someone. He makes me want to leap into those arms and stay there until I'm not me anymore. Until I'm a part of him. I know I'll never want to leave if I go there, so I don't.

At first I don't know what he's talking about. "What do?" I whisper back. He stops walking, and so do I. He touches his thumb under the middle of my eye and pulls it gently over my skin to the corner of my eye and lets go. First it feels like my lower lashes are tingling, and then the rest of my skin. I am tingling all over, with my eyes locked on the ground, and his locked on me. I say nothing. He turns and keeps walking.

The house is small. As we approach it its shadow seems to engulf us and every bit of our bodies is swallowed by darkness. Good thing Rose has a flashlight. The path is long and narrow and I am tired. I follow the dim yellow light of the flashlight. The light shakes as she walks. We reach the end of the path and I skip two of the four steps. I open the unlocked door and use the last of my dwindling energy to run upstairs and collapse on the cream colored, moth ball smelling sheets that cover my bed. My skin is still tingling and I feel so vulnerable that I can almost feel the springs digging through the mattress, trying to reach me.

Rose walks into the room a few moments later and sits on my bed. It squeaks and I look up at her. She gives me a half-smile, gets up and climbs into her own bed. Within minutes we are asleep.