Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [183]
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
“Which means you’re seventeen going on eighteen and you’ve got hormones between your ears.”
“I might be that,” he said. “I might be a lot of fun, too. You’ll never know till you try.”
She sat with her arms tightly crossed, wishing she had bothered to change her clothes. “Drowned rat” was not the impression she was making in this wet shirt, evidently. He would be so appreciative, she thought miserably. It would be so easy to startle him with pleasures he’d remember for the rest of his life. But then again, maybe not, if he’d already set his standards by the magazines under his bed. Boys never knew what they lost on those magazine girlfriends.
“I’ll never know, then,” she said, feeling a change in herself, a permanent shift onto safer ground. “I’m not denying it would be fun, maybe even more than fun. But it’s completely out of the question, and if it comes up again I’ll have to stop being your friend. I’m sorry I confessed I was attracted to you. You should just try to forget that.”
He looked at her with a neutral expression and nodded slowly. “Right,” he said. “Fat chance.”
“Look. Don’t take this the wrong way, Rickie, I like you for you, but also sometimes you remind me of Cole in ways that make me lose my bearings. But you’re not Cole. You’re my nephew. We’re relatives.”
“We’re not blood kin,” he argued.
“But we’re family, and you know it. And, you’re a minor. Just technically, for another few months maybe, but you are. I’m pretty sure what you’re proposing would be a crime. Committed by me, against you. If they have capital punishment in this state, your mother and your aunts would probably see that I got the chair.”
He closed his eyes and said nothing. He seemed chastened, finally, by all of it: her tone, her words, the truth. Lusa felt both relieved and sad.
“I’m sorry to be so blunt,” she said. “I don’t think of you as a child. You know that, right? If we were both two years older and you were somebody I’d just met, I’d probably go out with you.”
He lit another cigarette and gave his full attention to the business of smoking and staring off into the distance. At length he said, “I’ll be sure to remind you of that two years from now when you’re burning heavy with some guy around here.”
Lusa worked a small stone out of the ground and tossed it past her feet. “I can’t even picture that, you know? From where I stand, it looks like a real dry county.”
“Well, you’re not the Lone Ranger. All the girls at my school are hot to get pregnant and married so they can play house, but they seem like little girls. After I graduate I want to do something, like hitchhike to Florida and get a job on a fishing boat or something, you know? See what those palm-tree islands look like. And these girls with their big hair are all down at Kmart looking at the baby shoes going, ‘Aren’t these cute?’ They’re like cheerleaders for boringness.”
Lusa laughed. “And you and me, we’re different, right? Two noble souls cast together in dubious circumstances till we can find somebody halfway appropriate to go out with.”
He nodded, grinning that damned lopsided grin. “That sounds about right.”
“Frankly, your prospects are better than mine. By the time my goats up here drop their kids, I predict you’ll have met the girl of your dreams, and I’ll be toast.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
“I’ll dance at your wedding, Rick. I’m betting on it.”
“I didn’t get to dance at yours,” he said. “You didn’t invite me.”
“Next time I will,” she said. “I promise. That was a big mistake, you know? Don’t ever elope. The relatives never forgive you.”
“Relatives,” he agreed. “What a pain.”
“Thank you.” She looked at him then, hit by a sudden inspiration. “You know what we need to do, you and me? We need to go dancing. Do you like to dance?”
He nodded. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do.”
“That’s exactly what we need to do. Is there someplace around here where they have music on a Saturday night?”
“Oh, sure, there’s the college bar over in Franklin, Skid Row. Or we could drive over to Leesport.