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“Like a motherfucker. But it’s better than getting an infection. Do it quick. ” I grit my teeth and watch. She twists the little white cap off the brown bottle, glances at me. I nod, and she pours peroxide over the wound. I can’t help a groan from escaping. “F-fffffuck that hurts. Goddamn. ” I suck in a deep breath for courage. “All right, do it again. ”

She’s near tears still, but she does it. And fuck me running, the raw agony is nearly unbearable. The wound bubbles crazily, and I dab at it with the corner of the towel.

“Once more. ”

I can’t watch this time. I stare at Kylie instead, at the fall of her reddish-blonde hair draped in loose waves across one shoulder, her downcast electric eyes intent on my legs. Her T-shirt is tight and gray, her boobs round mountains that I want to explore with my hands and my mouth and my eyes. That thought doesn’t help, especially since I’m only in my boxers, and if I pop a woody, she’ll know. I go back to looking at her hair. Thick, lustrous, copper. Waves and waves, with a slight curling twist at the ends.

“You’re staring at me. ” She caps the peroxide, and then looks at me.

I shrug. “Yeah. ”

“I thought we were just friends. ”

I cut a long ribbon of gauze, fold it over a few times, and then place it against the wound. “Wrap it. ” I watch as she winds the gauze around my leg, passing the roll from hand to hand. “We are. ”

“Then why are you staring at me like you could eat me? ” She snips the bandage and tapes it in place, then sinks back to sit cross-legged.

“Because what’s right and what I want are not necessarily the same thing. ” I point at a pair of loose cut-off khakis. “Can I have those? ” She tosses me the frayed shorts and I slip them on, wiggling them past my hips.

Kylie’s frowning at my answer. “What about what I want? ”

I button the khakis and draw the zipper up, then wiggle backward and reach into my bag for my cigarettes and lighter. “Same answer applies. ” I light up and take a deep drag, closing my eyes as the bliss of a nicotine rush hits me. “What you want and what’s best for you are not the same thing. You just saw why. My life isn’t safe. I’m not safe. ”

She crawls on the bed and sits next to me, watches me smoke. Her fingers slide against my palm, and she takes the filter from me, puts it to her lips, takes a small draw, holds in her mouth, and then inhales. She coughs a little, but not as bad as the first time. I watch her eyes dilate, and her head thumps against the wall as the dizziness of the rush hits her.

“Oh, shit. Wow. Now I see. ” She blinks, hands the cigarette back.

I chuckle. “Yeah. No more for you, though. ”

“Is it always like that? ” She reaches for it, and I keep it out of her reach. “Come on, I want to try it again. Please? ”

God, I’m gonna get her hooked. But, like a dick, I hand it to her anyway. “No. Once you’re used to it, you only get that feeling if it’s been, like, twelve hours or more since your last smoke. ” I take it back and drag on it. “If you get addicted, there’ll be a lineup for who gets to kick my ass. ”

“No, if I get addicted, it’ll be my fault, not yours. ” She sees the open Band-Aid tin on the floor beside my bed and snags it, looks in. Pulls out the baggie, opens it, sniffs. “This is pot? ”

I nod. “Yeah. That’s pot. ”

“Are you gonna smoke it? ”

“Not in front of you. ”

She puts the bag back in the tin and sets it between us. “Why not? ”

“Because that’s just one more reason why you and I being more than friends can’t happen. Drugs have no place in your life. ”

“But they do yours? ”

I sigh. “Yes, they do. If I amount to anything, it’ll be as part of a band. That’s it. I’ll be playing dive bars and shitty clubs, and I’ll get high in the alleys and do lines in the bathrooms, and eventually I’ll OD and that’ll be that. ” I glance at her. “Is that the life you want? ”

She runs her hand through her hair. “No. But you can be more than that, Oz. You could, if you wanted to. Your talent with math? You could do a lot of things with that. And you’re a good enough musician that you could be a hell of a lot more than some asshole druggie snorting coke in dive bar bathrooms. You should want more for yourself than that, Oz. I want more for you than that. ”

I shrug. “Yeah, well, I don’t. ” Lies. That’s a dirty fucking lie. I do want more. Maybe not picket fences and a dog with a floppy ear and two little kids snotting on my jeans, but something better.

She rolls toward me, and her eyes are close, her breath on my cheek, her hand on my chest. “You don’t believe that. I can hear the lie in your voice, and I can see it in your eyes. ”

I closed my eyes. “Maybe so. Doesn’t change the facts. ”

“Yes, it does. There are no facts, not about your future. You make your future. You’re talented. You’re good-looking. You can do a lot of things, if you believe in yourself. ”

I snort. “What is this, a ‘The More You Know’ commercial? ”

“Yes, and I’m Sandra Bullock, so you know it’s gotta be true. ”

I can’t help but laugh. “You’re way hotter than Sandra Bullock. ” I pause for effect, and to consider whether I’ll regret saying this. “And Sandra Bullock is hot. ”

“She’s older than our parents! ” She laughs.

“So she’s hot for an older lady. And it’s parent, singular for me. ” I say it without thinking; it just slips out.

This sobers up the conversation real fucking fast. “You’ve never known your dad? ”

I shake my head side to side. “Nope. Never even seen a picture. Don’t know a single goddamn thing about the man. ”

Kylie is bursting with questions, I can tell. “Your mom won’t tell you anything? ”

I shrug. “No. It’s…a sore subject for her. She gets pissed off if I bring it up. He’s gone, and that’s all I need to know. ” I sigh. “I think I’m named after him, but I’m not a hundred percent on that. ”

“You’re named after him, huh? What was his name? ”

I laugh. “Nice try, sweetness. Still not telling you my real name. ”

“Damn it. I thought that’d work. ” She’s on her side, head propped on her hand, looking up at me from way too close. “Why won’t you tell? ”

“Because my name belongs to him. And I don’t know a single goddamn thing about him. So I need—I decided in third grade that if I’m gonna be myself, with no help from his ass, then I might as well have my own name. So I chose Oz. ”

“Why Oz? ”

I shrug. “It’s a…derivative. And it fit. Also, I’d just seen The Wizard of Oz for the first time, and thought the wizard was cool. I mean, he wasn’t supposed to be, but he projected this huge image of himself when inside, in reality, he was totally different. And that’s how I felt, like to survive in the world I had to be totally different from the way I felt inside, different from who I wanted to be. I mean, I grew up rough, Ky. I did. What just happened? Not unusual. I’m a fighter, okay? I’ve been to juvie. I had to fight every day when I was in juvie. I had to fight at school, and I had to fight on the playground, and I had to fight in the neighborhoods where we lived. When kids have something to prove, shit gets rough. And in the ’hood, everybody’s got something to prove. But inside, I hated fighting. I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to know who my dad was, where I came from. Why my mom was alone. Why we were alone. Why we moved so much. ”

“You’ve moved a lot? ”

I nod. “Yeah, you could say that. Like, every year or so, for most of my life. The longest I’ve lived in any one city or state was in Dallas, from the time I was like eleven until junior high. Just before seventh grade Mom moved us from Dallas to St. Louis. It was every year, year and a half before Dallas, and the same after St. Louis. A new school, new apartment, new city, new friends. Then, eventually, I stopped bothering with the whole friends thing, since I’d just leave ’em after a few months. Now, I just bide my time till the next move. Keep to myself, do my own thing…shit, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’ve always been lost. Like I’m just shuffling around the world, just me and my mom, and I know there’s a whole tragic story Mom won’t tell me. I’m not really anybody, you know? You know who you are, where you come from. You’re Nell and Colt’s daughter. You’re a musician. You know your parents, each of them. I mean, yeah, for sure they have stories and secrets you don’t know, but they’re both there. You don’t even know what a huge thing that is. Mom is…shut off. I don’t know how to explain it. She’s…present in my life, and she’s raised me to the best of her ability, and I’m thankful I’ve got her. But there’s a part of her that’s…gone. From me, at least. I’ve asked her about it, but she just gets mad. ” I have to stop for a minute and grit my teeth and try to get past the renewed throbbing in my leg and my side.

Kylie lays on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “God, Oz. There’s so much I want to know, so much I want to say. I don’t even know where to start. ”

“Nothing to say. It is what is. ” My teeth are clenched against the pain, which is blazing with sudden intensity.

“You said you were in juvie? ” She asks this hesitantly, not looking at me.

I shrug. “Yeah. Tenth grade. New Jersey. ”

“What for? I mean, what happened that you ended up there? ”

I sigh. “Nothing too exciting. I got jumped by some assholes after school one day. Got the shit stomped out of me. So I got even. Of course, I might’ve gotten a little too even. Hunted all four of them down, one by one, and hospitalized ’em. Apparently, revenge isn’t an excuse for aggravated assault and battery. ”

“Hos-hospitalized them? ”

“Yeah, sweetness. Bash a kid in the back of the head with a brick, he needs more than a couple stitches. ”

“God, Oz. ”

I laugh, but it’s a bitter sound. “Yeah. Maybe you’re starting to see why I said I’m no good for you. They deserved it, sure. They’d been picking on me for weeks. Knocking me around, slugging me in the hallways, and then I get in trouble when I retaliate. See, they were the cool kids. The ones with both parents. Mommies on the PTO and daddies on the school board. Established members of the community, that kind of horseshit. And I was just the new guy from the shitty end of town. ”

“They were bullying you, but you got sent to juvie? I mean, what happened to them after they jumped you? ”

I laughed again. “Nothing, sweetness. Not a damned thing. I dragged my sorry carcass home and skipped school the next day. ”

“You didn’t tell anyone? ”

“Fuck no. Wouldn’t have done any good, and even if they would’ve gotten in trouble, they’d’ve just gotten suspended for a few days. No point. ”

“You said you’ve been hurt worse than this. Was that what you were talking about? ”

“God, the questions. No, Kylie. That was a couple busted ribs and a black eye. Cuts and bruises. Nothing I hadn’t dealt with a dozen times before. ” I hate telling her this. I hate the pity I see in her face. “The one other time I’ve been really, truly hurt, like not just beat up, but hurt…it was junior year. First week of school. There was this kid, Greg Makowski. Big, I mean huge. Stupid as the day is long, but just massive. A bully, of course. What you gotta understand is, when you’re in juvie, the new guy is nothing but fresh meat. You get jumped soon as they close the door behind you. Especially the juvie I was in. Well, I learned real quick that to fend off the beatings, I had to make a point. Prove I wasn’t someone to fuck with. So I chose the biggest, nastiest kid on the block and kicked his teeth in. Nobody messed with me after that, unless they were new and wanted to try to prove that same point on me. Well, this kid, at the school last year. I started a fight with him. Won, too. Only, he had buddies. A lot of them. Big ones. They cornered me on a cul-de-sac. A high wall with the freeway on the other side, empty lots on either side. Nowhere to go. Must’ve been eight of ’em. Broke four ribs and my wrist, fractured my cheekbone, broke my nose, loosened a few teeth. Nearly choked on my own blood. Spent over a week in the hospital, and couldn’t move for another two weeks after that. Mom had to sell her car and pawn some jewelry to pay even part of the bill. Still owe, like, five grand on it, as a matter of fact. Mom worked back-to-back double shifts every day for almost a month to get enough money to buy another car so she didn’t have to walk three miles to work, one way. Almost got evicted, too. But we made it, and after I was released from the hospital, we moved again and I transferred schools. ” I shift to try and ease the ache in my ribs, but only succeed in causing more pain. “So that’s the sordid story. Glad you asked, huh? ”

Kylie is silent, and I look over at her. She’s crying.

I roll over toward her and force myself to sit up. “Hey. What’s wrong? ”

She sniffs, wipes at her eyes. “What’s wrong? God, Oz. Just…god. You’ve been through so much. And you say it all like it’s no big deal. ”

“But why are you crying? ” I honestly don’t get it. “I don’t need your pity, Kylie. ”

She sits up, eyes blazing. “It’s not pity, Oz! It’s called fucking compassion! There are people in this world capable of caring about you. Not everybody is going to beat you up and betray you and abandon you. ”

“Yeah, well, that’s been my experience. So forgive me if I’m a little jaded, okay? ” I can’t take it anymore.

I open my tin and thumb a nugget of weed into my little glass pipe. I don’t typically like smoking from a bowl, but I’m too impatient to roll right now. I flick the Bic, and the pot crackles, glows orange, and the smoke fills my lungs.

I hate myself for doing this in front of Kylie.

I hold the smoke in until my lungs protest, and then lie down, blow it out, toward the ceiling. Kylie is watching me intently.

“No. Don’t even ask. ” I take another huge toke, and then set the pipe and lighter on my chest.

“I wasn’t gonna ask. It smells funny. ” She glances at my bedroom door, which is open. “Won’t your mom smell it? ”

“She knows. ” I’m high now, and my eyes are heavy and the pain is distant. “She lost her fucking mind the first time she caught me smoking pot. Like, total meltdown. Hysterical. We fought about it for weeks. I wouldn’t stop, and she kept grounding me and shit, but I just ignored her. I kept going out whenever I felt like it, because what was she going to do, nail my door shut? Wrestle me into my room? Ground me again? Finally, she just gave up. Said if I wanted to destroy myself with drugs, go ahead. Sometimes, when she’s really upset, she’ll smoke with me. And when she does, I can tell she’s remembering…. him. ”

I’ve got the lighter in my hand, and I flick it to life. Flick the Bic. Flick the Bic. The flame is short and yellow, wavering and bright and hot and inviting. It’s not something I even think about—I’m just drawn to the flame, like a moth. My hand descends, palm an inch above the fire. It’s just hot at first. Heat on my skin. Nice. Easy and slow and warm. Then hotter. Feel it. It’s better than thinking about how Mom won’t tell me the truth, and that’s not something I can endure anymore. She’s got the secrets, the answers, but she won’t share them. And I get angry, hurt, filled with rage. Did he abandon us? Was he a criminal? Was he killed? Was he just a slacker douchebag who bolted as soon as he found out he’d knocked her up? Was he a good man who wanted to be a father and Mom’s the one running? Is that why we’ve moved so often? Is she running from him? Or is she looking for him? Following him? I don’t know, and I’ll never know. I think sometimes that my desire to burn myself is an attempt to burn the need to know out of my body. Trying to sear the questions from me. But that’s stupid. All I know is, the flame calls to me. I need it, and when it’s got me in its thrall, I can’t pull away.

The heat grows, turns to pain as I lift the lighter closer to my hand. I watch as the flame touches my skin, turns to searing agony.

“Oz! ” Kylie smacks the lighter from my hand, shrieking, “WHAT THE FUCK! ”

I’m startled to awareness, and I clench my hand into a fist, feeling the pain in my hand take over from my ribs and leg. It’s better. Familiar.

She grabs my hand and turns the palm face up, examines it. “You burned the shit out of your hand, Oz. What the hell was that? ”

I tug my hand away, but she doesn’t let go. “It’s no big deal, Kylie. For real. ”

And then she sees. Hand. Forearm. Fingers. “Oz? ” Her voice is so small and hesitant, and hurt. Like each patch of shiny, burnt skin causes her pain. Her fingers drift out and touch each burned spot on my forearm. I close my eyes and let her touch. She understands now that these scars aren’t accidental. “Why? ”

I jerk my arm away, fumble for the lighter, and take another toke. “You say that in the exact same tone of voice that Mom does. So I’ll tell you what I tell her. I don’t know. It just helps. I can’t explain it to her, so I can’t explain it to you. I can’t even explain it to myself. ”

“This is a big deal. ” She’s still tracing the contours of each scar, on my forearms, on my hands. On my fingers. God, the tenderness in the way she touches me is…fucking unbearable. “I don’t know how to deal with this. ”

I make myself look at her. “Kylie. Eyes on mine, babe. ” Her blue, blue gaze locks on me. Her tears well, unshed. I give her a sad smile. “Now you get it? Why you and me won’t work? You don’t get it. You don’t get me. You could’ve been raped, just by visiting my apartment complex. You watched me fucking brutalize your attackers. I’m…” I swallow hard, force the reality out. “I’m tainting you, Kylie. Making you dirty just by association. It wasn’t about you not being good enough. It’s not…it’s not even about me not being good enough. It’s about my world and my life and why I am not compatible with yours, with who you are. Who you could be. Compatible isn’t the right word. I’m fucked up. I’ve got a shitload of issues. This burning thing? It’s not going away any time soon. I try not to burn. Mainly because it makes Mom lose her shit, and she’s got enough to deal with. But like today? Just now? I wasn’t even thinking about it. It just happened. And it should not have happened in front of you. I’ve let so much of my dark and dirty world taint you, and I hate myself for that. ”

Kylie doesn’t answer for a very long time, and I let her have the silence, have the time to process, to think. She just stares at me, at my hands and arms, at my face, at the bed, at the pipe and lighter lying on my chest. I stuff the pipe and lighter into the tin, toss the tin into my backpack, shift to a sitting position. Kylie is sitting on her shins, hands on her thighs, head down, blinking away tears. I don’t know why she’s crying. No clue. Because I’m fucked up? Because of what happened earlier? She was assaulted, threatened with rape, and witness to a hell of a fight. She has every right to feel traumatized, to be in a bit of shock. But that’s not it, I don’t think. It’s about me.

And I don’t want her to cry for me.

I lift her chin with my fingers, and she closes her eyes, turns her head away. A single tear trickles down her cheek. I brush it away. I can’t help it. I feel like my touch is far too rough, but I try to be gentle.

“Don’t cry, sweetness. Please? ”

“I can’t help it. I want to make everything better for you. I know I can’t fix you, that’s not what I mean. I just…I want…I want to be able to help. To—I don’t know, not take away your pain, but…help you deal with it somehow. I don’t know, Oz. I’m so mixed up. And you keep saying how you don’t want to taint me, but I don’t feel like you are. I want to be a part of…of your life. Even if it’s messy and dark and dirty and—and violent. ” She looks up at me. “I was so scared, but then you appeared out of nowhere, and I knew I was safe. But then I was scared for you. But you—you won. And it was scary, but I know…I know I don’t have to afraid of you. ”

I don’t know how to react. Do I tell her she shouldn’t want to help me? That she can’t? It’s a nice feeling, knowing she cares. I mean, I know Mom cares, but she has to. Kylie doesn’t. My head is spinning with crazy thoughts, my heart is pounding with emotions I don’t understand and can’t sort out and don’t know what to do with, and my body hurts, and I’m high, and Kylie is so beautiful and so tender and sweet and kind and good, too good for me. And I should keep pushing her away, but fucking goddammit, I don’t want to, and I’m not sure I can.

Then she reaches out, and I’m frozen. She sweeps my hat off my head. I feel strangely naked without my hat. I always wear the hat. As if that wasn’t overwhelming enough, she reaches for the black elastic band tying my hair back. Not even my mom sees me with my hair down, except rarely. But yet, for reasons I can’t decipher, I let her tug the band down, and off. I have to hold perfectly still, or I’ll bolt. My hair hangs just below my shoulders, thick and auburn, just like Mom’s. Kylie runs her fingers through it, gingerly and hesitantly, hands sliding past my ears and fluffing it away from my neck.

“Oz, I’m not scared of you. I’m not afraid of your life. Of getting dirty. So quit trying to protect me and let me make my own choices. Let me—”

I kiss her. Cut her off, my lips brushing hers and eating her words, my hand cupping her cheek. She shifts forward on her knees, closer to me, leans into me. I’m doing this consciously. I have control over my actions. I’m kissing her because I want to, because I’ve wanted to kiss her since the first moment I saw her. So I kiss her, and I try to make it good. Her hands slip through my hair and rest on my shoulders, and then curl around the back of my head, and one of her palms goes flat on my cheek, and now she’s almost in my lap, so close to me, leaning into me.

God…god, she tastes good. Faintly of cigarette smoke, and of something citrus. Sprite, maybe. And cherry lip balm. Her mouth is warm, and her lips are soft and damp and hungry. I tease the seam of her lips and she opens for me, and now her tongue slides into my mouth, taking over, searching, aggressive. She’s eager for this. She wants this. It feels right, like it means something. It’s not empty, not just a precursor to sex. It’s an exchange, an admission. It’s foreign to me, to feel this connected to another person. I don’t feel connected to my mom, and there’s never been anyone else. Just girls slumming it with me for a couple of hours. Kylie? Fuck, she’s kissing me like she could kiss me forever, like there’s never been anything in the whole world, in her whole life, so perfect as this kiss.

Our lips part, and she’s gazing into my eyes from an inch away, searching me. My hands don’t leave her face, her hair. I’ve tangled one fist in her long strawberry blonde locks, the other still cupping her face with a tenderness and a gentleness I’ve never showed to another human being in all my life.

“Oz. ” She says my name, maybe just to say it. I don’t know. But then she brushes the corner of my mouth with her thumb, and my heart clenches, stops. “Don’t tell me that didn’t feel the same for you. Like it—”

“Meant something real? ” I owe her the truth, at least.

“Yes! ” she exclaims, a soft excited breath. She slides one thigh over mine, facing me, straddling me. “Like it meant something real. That’s exactly how it felt. ”

“That your first kiss? ”

She shakes her head. “No. I’ve kissed a couple guys. I mean, I kissed them back. Not…those two guys I told you about, the ones who kissed me. These were guys I kissed because I wanted to. But…it never felt like this. It was okay, but not…so intense. ”

I allow myself the liberty of skating my palms over her back, down to her hips and back up. She shivers at my touch. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never had a kiss like that, either. Like you said, it was intense. ”

“Why ‘for what it’s worth’? ”

I roll my eyes and shrug. “I dunno. ”

“You mean something to me, Oz. Everything about you means something to me. You make a difference to me. ”

“Why? ” I toy with a lock of her hair, spinning the ends in my fingers. “I don’t get it. ”

“You’re different. ” She sits on my legs, reaches out to put her palms on my chest, smoothing and touching. “So different. And I like that. There’s…something real about you. Everyone else I know seems like they’re…putting on a show. ”

I blink at that. “I’m just me. ”

She smiles at me. “Exactly. And that’s special. To me at least. ”

Her T-shirt has hiked up a bit in the back, and when my hands make a circuit from shoulders to spine to lower back, I feel her warm, soft skin. It’s like a compulsion then, to slip my fingers under the cotton and find more flesh, just her back, the knobs of her spine, brushing the lower edge of her bra strap. No more, neither lower nor higher. I’m careful, hesitant. But temptation is a powerful thing, and I have to fight it, for her sake. I tear my hands away, curl my fingers into fists to keep from devouring her flesh with my palms and fingertips and lips. I’ve never felt such need before, never had to fight it so hard, never denied myself the luxury of touching if the girl was willing.

This girl? She’s different, and deserves better.

But Kylie has different ideas. “I liked that. It felt nice. ” She arches her back. “Do it again. ”

“I shouldn’t. ”

“Why not? ”

I sigh, close my eyes so her hot hungry eyes don’t see so deep into me. “I shouldn’t, because I don’t want to stop at just…touching your back. Won’t want to, won’t be able to. ”

“So don’t. ”

“You don’t mean that. ”

She curls her fingers into my hair, leans in. “I’m a virgin, Oz. ”

I laugh. “Yeah, sweetness. I know. And that’s why. ”

“I’ve had opportunity. Choices. I decided not to. I waited. ” She shifts forward, her hips closer to mine. “Just because I waited didn’t mean I didn’t want to. I did want to. I do want to. I’ve wanted to for a long time. But I wanted it to be with the right guy. To mean something. I know it’s not always, like, true love the first time. I’m not naive. And I know…I know it’ll hurt. And I know it will probably be different than I’m imagining. But I want it. And Oz? ” She leans in and kisses me, so hot and so hard and so hungry, clutching me to her and crushing our bodies together, kissing me with such frenzy and such desperate abandon that I feel myself going hard, and I know she feels that, too. “I want it with you. ”

SIX: Performances and Gestures and Ghosts Colt