Shine - Lauren Myracle [7]
“Not exactly a gal?” Zippy said. “Or not exactly single?”
“She was real nice,” Hannah said helplessly. “She was a good friend to me.”
Zippy snorted. “Oh, I’m sure she was.”
I didn’t stick around for more. I’d been a fool to think I’d gain anything from church gossip, and I was ready to head home. Unfortunately, I was waylaid by Verleen Cox, who played the church organ and was the worst gossip of all.
“Oh, Cat,” she said, ambushing me with a hug. She pulled back and regarded me sorrowfully. Her makeup was caked in her many wrinkles, and her wiry gray hair was held back in a ponytail. “I am torn to bits about Patrick. Just torn to bits, and I know you must be, too.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said uncomfortably. Verleen had talked to The Pulse. She said that Patrick was sexually broken.
“I know how close you two are,” she continued. “I always did hope he’d take a shine to you, if you know what I mean. Pretty girl like you could turn any boy’s head.”
I said nothing.
Verleen clutched my arm. “The gas fumes should have killed him, that’s what they’re saying.” Her color was high with the thrill of talking about it. “They’re saying he may never wake up.”
“He will,” I said. I listened to her yap some more about how upset she was. She just liked tragedy, that’s what I thought.
When she swooshed off to find another ear to bend, I went and sat at a tucked-away window nook overlooking the parking lot.
I didn’t want to run into another soul on the way to my bicycle, not before I’d had time to collect myself.
When Patrick and I were kids, we didn’t have sexuality, not that we knew of. We were just kids, running around and catching crawdads and breaking ivy for Aunt Tildy and Mama Sweetie. They used the ivy to make wreaths, which they sold to fancy ladies in Toomsboro. In the winter, Mama Sweetie added holly berries to hers, as well as those pointy holly leaves. Then they were Christmas wreaths.
Patrick and me preferred to use the holly leaves as pretend needles. We’d play doctor, but not like you think. We didn’t take our clothes off. We said, “Time for your shot. Be brave so you can get your lollipop.” Our lollipops were pretend, too.
Once, in early April, we were out collecting ivy and we got lost in a laurel thicket. Laurel branches grew twisty and gnarled, and if you got stuck in a patch, the overgrowth was so thick you couldn’t see the sky. We knew we’d blunder out eventually, but for then, all we could see were laurel branches behind us and in front of us and above us. It was like we’d been spirited into a fairyland—the elf kind of fairies, not the other.
We sat for a bit. There were so many shades of green, it made my head spin. Even without direct sunlight, the green shone down on us and filled us with the promise of spring. I felt as if we were part of the forest, as if the real world no longer existed. Or, if it did still exist, that it no longer mattered.
Maybe Patrick felt the same way. Maybe that’s what gave him the courage to open up to me.
We were in the seventh grade. I had a chigger bite on my ankle, and while Patrick talked, I dug at my flesh with dirty fingernails.
He told me he’d been at Tommy Lawson’s house the other weekend with some other guys. No girls, just guys. Tommy’s daddy was at work, and they’d snuck into his home office, where the computer was.
“Check this out,” Tommy said, smirking. Patrick didn’t say Tommy had smirked, but I was sure he did.
Tommy sat at his dad’s desk, tapped at the keyboard, and pulled up a porn site that showed people doing nasty things without their clothes on.
When Patrick got to that part, my jaw dropped open, and I probably laid off my obsessive scratching. Nudie pictures? Tommy? Tommy was a ninth grader like my brother, and he was the handsomest boy I’d ever seen. He had blue eyes and sun-streaked blond hair, a shade my aunt called towheaded. He wore nice clothes. He smelled good, a novelty among the boys I knew. He smiled easily and with confidence, and though he made mean jokes sometimes, I didn