He never spoke out loud in class.
That is something Peyton remembers very quickly and suddenly, violently almost, upon waking up on a Sunday morning.
She was having a nightmare; she cannot remember what it was about but she can feel her heart beating its fists against the walls of her ribcage. His face was there, and it was gone suddenly, and when she sat up the world fell away from her in one clean motion and dropped into blank eternity.
She opened her eyes and screamed.
It was morning. Pale sunlight greeted her, the yellow walls of her room, the deathly still edge of the lace curtain, the cool metal of the bed frame.
She breathes in and out, looking around her at her silent room. The cool yellow. The edge of the lace.
He never spoke out loud in class, is what comes to her mind then, and she curiously examines this random thought, tries to connect it to the dream she cannot remember from minutes ago without success.
Why didn't he?
Maybe she just didn't notice. He was so quiet all the time. Quiet and golden. Twelve years old, ignoring Lila's silky, chipped pink-polish fingertips on his arm. Tawny golden skin; wiry, hard-wrought body. Slender, downy, like a lion cub, his pale hair brilliant in the late afternoon sunshine in Mrs. Hadney's math class.
That's how she remembers him.
They had all been so curious about him back then, because they were so raw and nervous and aware, twelve, then thirteen, than fourteen. Because they were so sensitive to beauty, to power. To mystery.
He seduced them, and rejected them. They coiled back, retaliated.
It had been a game among Lila and Brooke back then, in seventh, eight grade. Who's gonna kiss Lucas first. They didn't understand – couldn't understand why he didn't bask in their flattery, sit on top of the cafeteria tables wearing his letter jacket, being loud and funny and throwing paper wads, swaggering like Nathan and the rest of the team. They didn't get why he was always playing pick-up games during lunch break, instead of flirting with them.
Why he actually did his homework. Why he had to go home and work at the garage instead of hanging out in the parking lot. Why he was never home when they called.
When Mrs. Hadney had left the room that day to take a phone call, Lila's cool hand had crept up from behind him and slid along his arm slowly, her silky blonde hair falling forwards toward his shoulder.
Her candy pink lips had curved upwards slowly, sweetly, subtly.
He turned in his desk then, not moving his arm away at all, and just looked at her. His eyes said nothing – they were not angry, proud, scornful, flirtatious, or amused.
They were just honest. He looked at her with something between curiosity and pity.
Her hand had snatched back as though burnt.
The lips had curved downward.
He just turned back to his homework, undisturbed, unconcerned.
Lila had smacked her gum five times in a row, like a machine gun. Peyton could smell the hot, pink bubblegum flavor in Lila's mouth.
They all stood around her at recess, too afraid to say anything. Lila's arched, sharp-bow mouth dared them. She caught Brooke's lazy smile, and pink rose in her pale cheeks suddenly and sharply.
"He's probably queer," she had suddenly said, loudly, and they knew Lucas must be somewhere near. He was walking by with Jake, dribbling a ball. "Or maybe he's scared of girls, being such a pubescent and all."
Her cheeks were flaming, burning for Lila then. When Peyton looked up, she was surprised to see Lucas and Jake's pitying, scornful expressions fixed on the small group of girls before they passed by. Lila stared at their backs furiously.
Peyton looked away from her because her heart was suddenly spastic.
He had looked at her for a second.
He had seen the embarrassment on her face for Lila, the unspoken apology.
And he had looked her straight in the eye, and a faint shadow of a smile had passed his lips then, a real smile.
A smile meant for her exclusively. Not the pitying sneer for the rest of them.
A smile for her.
Something had jumped, hard and quick in her stomach, or maybe somewhere lower. She watched his quiet, slinking, lion cub gait as he got further and further, and disappeared around the corner. Her blood thrummed.
She had looked up quickly then, and seen them all looking at her, Lila staring silently. The girl's lips began to curve upwardly then, slowly, cruelly, gently.
"Well Peyton," she drawled then, stretching the words sticky like toffee. Her pale eyes were fixed on her own panicked ones.
So she'd seen.
"What?" she had blurted.
Her voice had caught though. Her voice had rasped at the end.
Everyone looked away, sorry for her.
"What?" Lila mimicked her, that same little rasp. A nervous twitter rose from the group and died suddenly. "C'mon Peyton, do you have some dirty details to share? A secret?"
That was when it had all had started, Lila's purity, her snow white cleanness.
Peyton knew Lila hated her for making her have to take that road.
It was the only road left.
Peyton had won the other one.
But she didn't know that back then. She wishes she had understood all this back when it would have counted.
That she hadn't wasted so much time.
She's aware now of how smart he had been, how acutely perceptive even at such a young age. How he had held back, refrained from courting their adoration, knowing that once Nathan found out the tide would turn violently. He had known that all the attention from the girls would then just result in more insults, more hatred, more cold metal lockers against his face. He knew that soon enough Nathan would realize the truth, and lash out in blind anger; and when he did, whoever stood by him would receive the blunt end of it also.
And so he never spoke to her, never looked at her again, never encouraged her to remember that moment.
She knows now that he had loved her even then.
The night swallows everything when it falls, everything outside turning into specters and shadows, the air thick with humidity and pure blackness. He comes, inside the screened-in verandah and to her door in his silent, cat-like way.
She comes out, her skin dark and sheen from sweat. Baby hairs stick to her temples, her hot neck. She throws herself down in front of a fan that clatters at intervals, turning slowly on its axis, barely stirring the leaves that are growing, crowding through a torn screen onto the inside of the porch. The mosquito screen is full of holes, the door open, hanging rickety. Her long legs hang there, sprawled over the ratty wicker furniture. There is a stack of old magazines on the table; the wrinkled pages rise slightly as the fan turns, then float back down like dead moths.
A canned laugh track echoes from inside – the tv is on at low volume.
Her thin arms with their sharp shoulders are propped on her elbows at weird angles. Uncomfortable angles.
A single dim lighbulb buzzes sporadically over her head, and he waits half hidden in the shadows. She stands up abruptly and reaches up with a long arm (like a spider moving and shifting all at once), and pulls the string. They are suddenly in darkness. The warm light from the kitchen, yellow and square and safe fills the doorway and cuts a pathway to the porch steps.
He moves slowly, like a ghost, a warm, living shadow creeping towards her, silently pulling her into the shadow, away from the block of light in the door.
The fan clatters, turning away from them. The thick jasmine blossoms wait, deathly white and still, hidden in the darkness. They are folding themselves quietly into a corner, fading away from the light and the sound of the tv inside, from the phone ringing twice, then the machine tape playing.
All these become dull and far away, and then disappear into silence.
They retreat slowly into that dark and private corner, moving back deeper and deeper into the darkness, until they come against the wall.
There is an old dresser on one side, ornately carved, forgotten, covered in dust.
Ripped screen stretched between two posts. Thick, waxy, white camellia blooms coming through a tear, their dark green leaves like fingers opening the netting.
Nothing but the sound of their breathing.
Of their lips opening, like the sound of a night moth wings' unfolding.
The night before flashes behind their closed eyelids for the precise thousandth time that day. She feels his body contract, tighten against hers, drawing back. The night moth flutters lower in her, and settles down between her hipbones, wings spread. She smells the dust, the sweet and dangerous honeysuckles, the clean scent of his skin, and presses against him, pinned into her corner. A sound escapes his throat that makes her tremble.
His hands are on the back of her thighs, and she clenches her legs obediently (one-two-three, up! All those years) and she's suddenly hoisted up against the wall, his hands under her, holding her up. His hands cup her bottom, but she wraps her legs around his waist and shifts her weight off them, freeing them.
They stay frozen for a moment like that, her pinned in that corner to him, like a moth on the wall in the darkness, his mouth on her damp neck, both of them trembling. Her head droops forward, and rests against his, her petal mouth on his ear, whispering words, words that mean nothing together and everything apart.
Please.
The crickets screaming. Chorus rising. The silence of that dark and secret corner. Her hand on the back of his head, the other spread on his back, oddly sacred in their arrangement, position.
"I couldn't…..I couldn't even sleep – last night" he murmurs wretchedly into her neck, the words muffled there, pressed into her skin; their plaintive tone strikes her numb. "Peyton I'm going crazy – I'm sorry I can't stop this – please tell me if I'm going too far-"
These fragments stop and start like the quick pulse of the firefly, the avalanche of tortured whispers brushing against her skin. She shudders then, and groans, unfreezing suddenly. He is apologizing, not asking for more. He is asking for permission, he is asking for forgiveness.
She writhes in agony under him, throwing her head back to the wall, tipping it backwards and closing her eyes. Her body pulses against him.
Please. Please. Please. The moth moves, restless. The night presses to them, hot and suffocating.
"Oh don't," she hears her own moan, her own voice begging him to forget himself. She feels the muscles of his stomach tighten against her open legs and screams silently.
Please Lucas. Please forget permission. Just take. Please forget asking. Just take.
"I couldn't take my mind off it today – if you knew it would scare you –every two minutes, Peyton, your face, the lake water, the ground. I tried-"
"Shh," she pleads, and he twists her hands away from him, pinning them back to the wall. They are dangerously close to forgetting everything.
The world closes down, turns off, and fades into the night outside the porch.
Time sinks into the lake. Moonlight gleams on the water, then disappears.
She slips.
It is the hard, brusque motion as he catches her, or the sudden friction, or the hard edge of his belt.
Dizziness.
She felt the moth unfold its wings. Slow, calculated.
"Peyton?"
His voice, as though from far away. Something coming. Something coming quickly like a tidal wave, suddenly enormous and then – the chasm opens-the massive wings beating inside her, taking flight – she can't stop it ( torn ragged, a wail from her throat) she's shaking against him – (please. Please).
And then, quiet.
She falls limp against him, hiding her face in his neck, sliding down, her feet once more touching the floor.
She is still held up by him.
A screen door bangs.
They freeze immediately.
"Peyton?"
Blood rushes to their heads, their hands, their heart again. His eyes gleam in the darkness, and she lurches quickly forward.
"Stand in front of me," he tells her quietly, and she feels the blood rise to her cheeks, understanding.
The yellow block of light in the kitchen door is suddenly blacked out, and then the sound of a string pulled, and the dim lightbulb springs the whole porch into vivid detail.
"There you are," the voice says. Two kind eyes blinking, a little dazed at the harsh light.
"Hey Daddy," she says dully. A quick, nervous smile is found, and lost just as rapidly on her face.
The tired eyes take her in, her pale face, awkward elbows, bitten mouth.
The boy is sitting on the wicker couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, looking away.
He reaches up, and pulls the string, plunging them all into darkness again.
"Good to see you, doll," he says then. A pause. "How're you doing, son?"
"Fine, thank you sir," comes the reply from the couch. The tone is steady.
The older man in the doorway nods to the indistinct shadows. He looks at her. Her eyes gleam wetly in the dim light.
"I'm glad you're home," she says simply.
"Good night," he replies.
"Good night."
They watch the kitchen screen door slowly swing shut.
"I'd better go," he says, and his voice is low and desperate in the darkness. They are both dazed. "I think I'd better not kiss you goodnight."
She crosses her arms awkwardly over her stomach. She follows him to the end of the driveway, beneath the darkness of an old oak.
They both look at the living room windows.
His voice suddenly cuts quickly through the silence in a low whisper, close to her ear.
"Did….back there….did you –"
"Yes," she cuts him off, tremulously.
They stand there, weak with desire. Night. Jasmine. Dust. A clattering fan. Darkness.
And she runs up the driveway, light and quick, pale like a moth, and pauses on the front steps to look back at him for a moment. Then she is gone.
He waits until he is home to collapse to his knees.