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impertinences) wrote2020-04-15 02:24 pm
impertinences) wrote2020-04-15 02:24 pm
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I'm trying to use my quarantine time productively by writing at least 1000 words a day. No better time than the present to get back into writing, right?
Haven, Luke, teen-aged years, and debauchery.
“Things get broken fast here.” - Nicole Blackman
“Love is large and monstrous.” - Maggie Nelson
Before he graduates, most of Luke’s teachers and the adults in town consider Luke one of the typical neighborhood boys, a confident, scruffy one with a second-hand car and a no-good dad. They think he’s complicated in the way that all boys with similar backstories are. A wasted potential, that’s what they say during their shared office hours or in the staff mail room, because even though he turns in all his reports and completes his homework, he slouches in the back row, one leg comfortably stretched into the aisle, never adding to discussion; he’ll graduate, but he won’t leave this town, not for any scholarship or opportunity with a trade school. He’ll follow in the footsteps of most of the other men who never left Worswick - working construction, lulling under cars, or sweating in the tannery - and end each exhausting day down at Ray’s, drinking away most of his earnings.
Some of the adults hear the rumors, but they don’t know what the students know: every few weeks, a different girl, every girl the same story. Luke isn’t looking for a future wife, or even a girlfriend. All he wants is something quick and easy. Excluding his time with poor Betty Fraser (a pairing that, frankly, nobody understood or supported since everyone knew Betty Fraser was the kind of unfortunate girl whose heart would never recover from the trauma of a high school romance), Luke doesn’t date. There are no family dinner invites, no flowers, no restaurant rendezvouses, no boxes of chocolates wrapped in pink cellophane. He simply drives the girls out to the lake, or the drive-in, or the old paper mill and spreads an itchy blanket over the backseat of his car so that their knocking knees and gripping fingers don’t add more holes to the old cushions. If the girl lasts at all, it’s only for a week, and then he’s moved on.
One of the more popular rumors is that he’s known for deflowering virgins. At school, the girls are proud of it, like they’ve joined a private club. They whisper play-by-plays by their lockers and sometimes even his sister laughs along. Luke himself doesn’t talk to anyone really, not to deny or aid the gossip, much like Haven. They’re not unfriendly, not like the cliche cliques of cheerleaders or popular A-list teens depicted in rom-coms, but nobody really calls them their friends. It’s common knowledge that, excluding Haven, Luke is alone most of the time; their mother left before he started kindergarten, and their father works odd-end jobs six nights out of the week when he isn’t drinking at Ray’s or spending weekends locked up for petty misdemeanors. Luke isn’t exactly social at school either. He does not eat in the cafeteria at lunch; he does not go to dances. In class, he sits in that back row as though he was born to be there, scratching notes with a chewed-on pencil and picking the next girl he’ll offer to drive home. By seventeen, he does this because it’s what’s expected of him, because he knows that in life there are settlers and there are reachers, and the Elders aren’t exactly pinnacles of success.
Haven, at fifteen, is far worse than her brother and a pint-sized hurricane seemingly ripping the town apart from the inside out. There’s so much information about her, spread by the teachers to the cops, from old babysitters to the clerks at the local corner store, that it’s impossible to decipher fact from fiction. Part of the problem is that she’s beautiful, a spitting image of her mother to any who can remember the late Mrs. Elders, which makes her an easy target for envy and cruelty. But she could be popular regardless of her academics if she wanted to. She’s the one who chooses to slip freely between the boundaries of social groups, insulting and complimenting each at random. So all of Worswick agrees that she’s more reckless than her brother, more impudent.
Nobody knows what Sam Elders is fully aware of, but even Sam knows his daughter has secrets. He’s never had to pick her up from the local station, but more than one neighbor has seen Haven dropped off at night by a police officer. She’s never handcuffed, and they say it’s never the same officer twice. They also say she’s made a porn video. She spends her weekends with the quarterback, Jaime Holster, doing favors for a steady supply of coke, or percocet, or weed. She can’t read. She skips most of her classes. She’s sucked off the entire football team, sometimes even the coach. She had lesbian sex in the freshman bathroom her first year of junior high. She got a nose job for her 14th birthday. She doesn’t wear bras to school because it’s the only way she can secure a passing grade each year. She’s brazen and prone to temper tantrums, which is proof that she once set her house on fire and that’s why the backside is smoke stained. She’ll steal anything she can get her fingers on. She slept with her own uncle. She slept with Betty Fraser’s uncle. She slept with Betty Fraser and that’s why Betty broke up with Luke.
She dates everyone, anyone, all the time, but whereas Luke was once at least clearly linked to Betty, Haven can’t be associated with anyone in particular, not for steady periods at least. Nobody is bothered by it, which is probably the most shocking thing about her. For all her rudeness, for all her inelegance and lack of tact, she is ultimately insidious, an upward creeping vine that tangles around you until her roots take.
Haven is surprisingly disarming that way. Even her history teacher, a likeable middle-aged man with large glasses, didn’t mind when she cussed him out during fourth period. He’d merely told her to go to the office then continued his lecture on the French Revolution. Colin Moorehead, however, had been suspended for the entire week when he’d pulled the same stunt earlier that January. Once, she’d cried for a full half hour when assigned Saturday detention for repeated tardiness. Mr. Hall, the principal, had become so flustered that he’d revoked the punishment only to have Haven show up anyway. She’d wanted to help clean the chalkboards, she’d said. He hadn’t noticed the bruise creeping up the left side of her face because it was half-hidden behind the fall of her hair.
The Elders siblings muddle truth and lies. Haven does it intentionally, letting the gossip spread until she’s protected by a reputation that suits her own purposes. She knows what blackmail is, what fear is, and how hiding the truth is sometimes the smartest thing a girl can do. Luke is collateral damage. He looks at their town as though it’s the problem, not them. It’s Worswick’s ignorance, their simple-minded complacency to rural living. They have small, lonely lives, and the Elders children do not want this, but they don’t want college lecture halls and dormitory rooms either. They wouldn’t fit in there, they think, among all that learning and desire to succeed, to conform to the standards of society’s expectations for greatness. They aren’t normal in that way or in other ways that matter to strangers.
They tell themselves when Luke is eighteen and it’s his commencement ceremony. They watch their peers graduate with beaming, full-lipped smiles. The fresh graduates are greeted afterwards by families with giant, warm embraces. Some of the mothers cry. The students huddle together and take the obligatory photo holding their rolled ceremonial blank diplomas, but it seems less obligatory with these kids and more normal. These kids have high GPAs and money. They have dreams of being doctors, teachers, lawyers, and dental assistants. They have dreams of being good, of behaving. They want large homes and luxury vehicles. Their dark gowns are crisp and represent the possibility of gaining these lives full of promise.
When it’s time to graduate, something she accomplishes seemingly by sheer luck, Haven sees the same type of kids, the same type of parents, the same pride and happiness. She’s genuinely surprised by all of the potential that’s been hiding all around her, in plain sight, all of her life. She never thinks that could have been me. I could have done that. I could have had that life. If she did, those words would click into place like puzzle pieces, and she would be forced to acknowledge them for what they truly represent: the tense of missed chances.
Luke does think it. He thinks it, but he doesn’t say a word. The only sign of his discontent is a crease between his eyebrows, the same crease his father has, and a restless rubbing of his knuckles against his jaw.
During the ceremony, Luke feels grimy, as though he’s caked in mud.
Luke doesn’t speak to anyone when the ceremony is over. There’s a slow directionless anger building in his stomach, climbing up his chest. His anger takes over the small feelings of pride and satisfaction at being here, at having made it, until he feels queasy. When he looks at his teachers, at his classmates, at the parents whom he has known for most of his life, he thinks he understands the way they view him. He is suspicious in everything he does, each of his movements, every shift of his eyes. He’s from a family without friends, a family of misfits. Haven and Luke Elders? A girl like that and a boy like him - all they ever got were pity before pity turned to disgust and distrust and then, finally, to dull apathy.
Sam Elders had made no attempt to celebrate his only son’s graduation. There was no cake, no card, not even a congratulations. Their father was spending the night in his favorite recliner, watching reruns of Friends, and drinking PBR from the can. He’d known that the engine of Luke’s car had died a month ago, but he still hadn’t let them take his truck. The two of them have to walk forty minutes home from the town’s convention center where the graduation had been held.
Luke has removed his gown. When nobody was looking, he’d shoved it into a trash bin. His jeans are ripped and his white Walmart t-shirt is stained at the neckline. There’s already sweat dampening the fabric under his arms. Haven is in shorts and a peach colored tank top, her long hair, beginning to whiten from days in the early summer sun, is caught in a loose ponytail gathered at the nape of her neck. She is fresh-faced but sullen, kicking her dirty sneakers against the pavement, punctuating their unspoken thoughts. Nobody has offered them a ride home.
“Thanks for coming,” Luke finally says. He still has that crease between his eyes and his arms swing with a restless energy.
“You’re welcome,” Haven replies simply, her voice uncharacteristically tight.
As they walk, cheap houses gradually appear out of the grainy dark. This whole area is a square of poverty where the houses have ripped window screens and the front doors are smudged with hand streaks and disappointment. There’s broken down cars in front yards, cigarette butts and beer cans in the gutters. The crab grass is splotchy, but it seems harsher than usual in the dim evening street lights. There’s weeds in the cracks of the sidewalks and running up the driveways, and Mrs. Allan’s front door light, which she keeps on no matter the time of day, highlights the thicket of summer mosquitoes. A clump of birches stand at the far corner of the street, out of place, an odd patch of greenery amidst a row of cheap cement-block homes. Some neighborhood kid once fixed a tire swing to one of the tree limbs, and it hangs still in the night, looking much like a man hanging from the gallows.
“Here’s a landscape I wish we could never see again,” Haven says mildly, pausing at the crooked red stop sign that marks the start of their street. Their house is the last one on the left, 600 feet away.
Luke’s right hand curls into a fist by his side. Uncurls. Curls again. He takes a shaky breath and cranes his head back, looking up at the wide expanse of sky above them. His sandy hair falls into his eyes, the ends already brightening like his sister’s.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing one of Haven’s hands.
Turtle Lake is tucked in the back of the Carolanne suburb twenty minutes away from their house. It’s about a quarter-mile down a paved path ending in high marsh grass, shadowed on either side by thick trees. A sliver of land separates Turtle Lake from the river and a hiking trail winds through the woods near the lake. It’s usually a popular spot for longboarders and fishers, Boy Scouts and bird watchers. At night, the teens use Turtle Lake for hook-ups and small parties. Luke has taken a few girls here himself preferring the dark slopes of leafy terrain by the trails to his own house, his own bedroom.
All the kids are at graduation parties, so the dock is empty and damp. It smells a little of river water and mud, fresh and rotting at the same time. Haven pulls her hair free from the elastic band holding it at bay and stretches across the dock beneath the moonlight, her sharp face looking sly and expectant. Luke sits beside her, his anger still churning, slow and persistent, inside of him.
He hears Haven slip off her sneakers and socks and then the rustle of denim as she peels her shorts off. He lets her crawl into his lap, her long, young legs wrapping around his waist so that her sharp knees frame his hips. She rocks her hips down without warning, grinding, the friction harsh between their bodies, electric and rough and painful. She licks his neck where he tastes like dirt and sweat.
Luke sighs, tipping his head back. He places a rough hand on the center of her chest and gently pushes. It isn’t shyness that provokes his response, they’ve done this plenty of times before, but caution. “Someone could come. Someone could see.”
Haven huffs, a childish, impatient sound. She moves his hand to her breast. She isn’t wearing a bra and her nipple cuts across his palm. “C’mon. You brought me here. I thought you wanted to celebrate. I can be your present.”
He closes his eyes, and she licks his neck again, her mouth warm and wet against his skin. Haven reaches between them where their bodies are close to joining. Her fingers make quick work of the front of his jeans, and she murmurs a sound of approval when she finds him hard and ready. It’s a sound that makes him shiver with shame, but it’s also a sound he wants to hear for the rest of his life, close to his ear, full of heat.
He doesn’t think about how good she is at this, how there’s such a familiar, an experienced, way to how she works her hand, to her unabashedness. She’ll be seventeen in a few months, and there’s more than one thing wrong with her age, her youthfulness and the subsequent lack of innocence. As if to punctuate his observations, Haven pulls aside the tiny slip of fabric between her legs and guides him into her, sinking down with a force that causes her to hiss. He could listen to that sound forever too, he knows, his hips giving an unconscious buck at the sudden slick sensation, the pull and drag of their skin.
The incredible wrongness of the moment drowns him. Luke’s lust collides with his anger, crashing back and forth in a steady wave, finding a rhythm that matches the way his sister’s hips lift and fall. He places his hands on her sides, steadying his need to flip them and drive into her until her back burns from the wood beneath them. Sometimes his desire to hurt her is stronger than his lust.
“Look at me,” Haven says, moving her hands to either side of his face.
He does. Her eyes are the same shade of blue as their mother’s. Luke groans, and the noise is full of too many emotions; they choke in the humid air. She rests her forehead on his, and he crawls his fingers up her spine, lifting his hips beneath her to match her leisurely pace.
“Fuck them,” she whispers, her eyes bright, voice stuttering around her breaths. “Fuck this town. They don’t matter. We matter.”
Luke tries to duck his eyes, but she’s persistent, holding his face in place.
“Say you love me,” she says. She hasn’t stopped moving her hips, but her pace is still slow, deliberate.
“I love you.” He had wanted to hesitate, but the words came out easily.
Her smile is triumphant.
“You’re the only good thing in my life,” she tells him and feels his body jolt beneath her, his hips sharp between her thighs and chafing against his jeans, her bare feet scratching against the dock.
She notices that his eyes go dark and glassy, as though he’s been shot, but she doesn’t care. Haven runs her thumb across the corner of his full mouth where his lips have twisted into a grimace. He’s breathing loudly. She wants to pull his shirt off of him, to run her palms across his chest and up over his shoulders. There’s scars there that she likes to trace with her fingers, her tongue, her mouth. Instead, she leans in and kisses him, slipping her tongue inside. Luke doesn’t fight it, but she can taste his pain anyway. It’s acrid and bitter, but she likes it.
Afterwards, Haven ties her hair up, removes the rest of her clothes, folds them into a neat pile, then slips waist high into the river water. It’s warm and clean, and she rubs the water between her thighs, up and over her sticky skin. The moon makes her shimmer like a nymph.
Luke sits on the dock, watching, catching his breath. He doesn’t feel angry anymore. He feels empty, which he guesses is better than what he was feeling before, but he isn’t sure. He doesn’t think about it - he keeps his mind blank.
“We need to start using some protection,” he says after a moment, voice pitched low.
Haven doesn’t look at him, but her mouth flips into a smirk. “You worried about mongoloid babies?”
Luke winces a little, just around the eyes, and retrieves a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jeans. He lights one and inhales, shaking his head.
“You could just come on my tits.”
“Haven.”
She rolls her eyes and wades out of the water. “Calm down. I’ve been on the pill for two years. Hand me those.”
He pushes her clothes towards her and watches as she gets dressed. There’s nothing childlike about her body - no remnants of baby fat, no softness. She has slim hips, a long midsection, and small, high breasts. Her shoulders and arms have the lean definition of a runner’s. Her skin is the color of tea thanks to recent mornings spent bathing in the sun, her nipples the pink of seashells. He thinks she’s always looked like this, and it doesn’t seem right. She should have something of adolescence to mar her, a cluster of pimples across her jaw or a gangly unconfidence. Instead, Haven watches Luke watching her and seems to preen. She pulls her clothes on over her wet body, not minding how they stick and scratch, and winks at him playfully.
“School is going to suck without you next year.”
Luke shrugs. “You’ll be fine.”
“We could leave now, you know. Hit the road. Never look back.”
He shakes his head, standing slowly. “One more year.” Luke pitches his cigarette into the river bank where the mud catches it.
It’s Haven’s turn to shrug now. She bends down to pick up her sneakers, the socks tucked into them. She walks home barefoot until she’s tired, and then Luke lets her climb onto his back for the last two blocks, her legs framing him for the second time that night. Luke realizes that he can smell her on his skin - musky yet sweet - but against him, her damp chest pressed to his back, she still smells of the river, of rot and salt, like she’s a creature of it.
When they get home, their father is already asleep in his recliner, a six pack of PBR by his feet. Haven covers him with a blanket while Luke trudges to his bedroom. He doesn’t protest when Haven slips inside half an hour later, the damp river smell replaced by the more familiar scents of her nighttime routine - mint toothpaste, citrus body wash from the shower, a mild, fruity body lotion. She’s in one of his large oversized t-shirts; the hem skirts the tops of her thighs, and here, finally, Haven looks her age. Something about that twists his gut.
Luke is stretched out on his back in his twin-sized bed, and he tells her to close the door. She does, flicking the lights off too before sliding into her brother’s bed. He’s grateful for when she drapes herself over him, her lithe body perpetually hot. He doesn’t have to move much to make room for her; she seems to fit naturally against him, easily. Her hair tumbles into his mouth as she crawls into the crook of his arm, her legs tangling around his like ivy, one of her arms tucked over his chest.
In the morning, Haven will ask him to make her toast spread thick with nutella. She’ll drink milk from the carton, standing in front of their old fridge, a hip cocked out and Luke’s too-big shirt tucked into a pair of shorts. Their father, having at some time gone to his own room in the middle of the night, will sleep until noon. At this moment, the kitchen will still be theirs. Haven will have a hum of excitement about her, the start of summer break too great of a pull for her to ignore, and she’ll stretch out one leg across the cheap vinyl flooring, touching her bare foot to Luke’s as he stands by the toaster, big toe to big toe.
This mundane moment in their kitchen will shine lightning bright to Luke. Years of yearning had made him sensitive, the way a starving dog twitches its nose at the faintest scent of food. The nudge of her foot against his, the sweep of her toes, and the amused, secret way she will grin at him while wiping milk from her mouth with the back of her hand, these are all the discreet ways she has of telling him she’s his, of making him hers. It’s her way of telling him, bit by bit, moment by moment, that this, that them, is not his fault.
Such ordinary, small acts will wind around his heart, binding tighter over the years, until they slice into his flesh, and he will be unable to remember the exact meaning of right and wrong.
Haven, Luke, teen-aged years, and debauchery.
“Things get broken fast here.” - Nicole Blackman
“Love is large and monstrous.” - Maggie Nelson
Before he graduates, most of Luke’s teachers and the adults in town consider Luke one of the typical neighborhood boys, a confident, scruffy one with a second-hand car and a no-good dad. They think he’s complicated in the way that all boys with similar backstories are. A wasted potential, that’s what they say during their shared office hours or in the staff mail room, because even though he turns in all his reports and completes his homework, he slouches in the back row, one leg comfortably stretched into the aisle, never adding to discussion; he’ll graduate, but he won’t leave this town, not for any scholarship or opportunity with a trade school. He’ll follow in the footsteps of most of the other men who never left Worswick - working construction, lulling under cars, or sweating in the tannery - and end each exhausting day down at Ray’s, drinking away most of his earnings.
Some of the adults hear the rumors, but they don’t know what the students know: every few weeks, a different girl, every girl the same story. Luke isn’t looking for a future wife, or even a girlfriend. All he wants is something quick and easy. Excluding his time with poor Betty Fraser (a pairing that, frankly, nobody understood or supported since everyone knew Betty Fraser was the kind of unfortunate girl whose heart would never recover from the trauma of a high school romance), Luke doesn’t date. There are no family dinner invites, no flowers, no restaurant rendezvouses, no boxes of chocolates wrapped in pink cellophane. He simply drives the girls out to the lake, or the drive-in, or the old paper mill and spreads an itchy blanket over the backseat of his car so that their knocking knees and gripping fingers don’t add more holes to the old cushions. If the girl lasts at all, it’s only for a week, and then he’s moved on.
One of the more popular rumors is that he’s known for deflowering virgins. At school, the girls are proud of it, like they’ve joined a private club. They whisper play-by-plays by their lockers and sometimes even his sister laughs along. Luke himself doesn’t talk to anyone really, not to deny or aid the gossip, much like Haven. They’re not unfriendly, not like the cliche cliques of cheerleaders or popular A-list teens depicted in rom-coms, but nobody really calls them their friends. It’s common knowledge that, excluding Haven, Luke is alone most of the time; their mother left before he started kindergarten, and their father works odd-end jobs six nights out of the week when he isn’t drinking at Ray’s or spending weekends locked up for petty misdemeanors. Luke isn’t exactly social at school either. He does not eat in the cafeteria at lunch; he does not go to dances. In class, he sits in that back row as though he was born to be there, scratching notes with a chewed-on pencil and picking the next girl he’ll offer to drive home. By seventeen, he does this because it’s what’s expected of him, because he knows that in life there are settlers and there are reachers, and the Elders aren’t exactly pinnacles of success.
Haven, at fifteen, is far worse than her brother and a pint-sized hurricane seemingly ripping the town apart from the inside out. There’s so much information about her, spread by the teachers to the cops, from old babysitters to the clerks at the local corner store, that it’s impossible to decipher fact from fiction. Part of the problem is that she’s beautiful, a spitting image of her mother to any who can remember the late Mrs. Elders, which makes her an easy target for envy and cruelty. But she could be popular regardless of her academics if she wanted to. She’s the one who chooses to slip freely between the boundaries of social groups, insulting and complimenting each at random. So all of Worswick agrees that she’s more reckless than her brother, more impudent.
Nobody knows what Sam Elders is fully aware of, but even Sam knows his daughter has secrets. He’s never had to pick her up from the local station, but more than one neighbor has seen Haven dropped off at night by a police officer. She’s never handcuffed, and they say it’s never the same officer twice. They also say she’s made a porn video. She spends her weekends with the quarterback, Jaime Holster, doing favors for a steady supply of coke, or percocet, or weed. She can’t read. She skips most of her classes. She’s sucked off the entire football team, sometimes even the coach. She had lesbian sex in the freshman bathroom her first year of junior high. She got a nose job for her 14th birthday. She doesn’t wear bras to school because it’s the only way she can secure a passing grade each year. She’s brazen and prone to temper tantrums, which is proof that she once set her house on fire and that’s why the backside is smoke stained. She’ll steal anything she can get her fingers on. She slept with her own uncle. She slept with Betty Fraser’s uncle. She slept with Betty Fraser and that’s why Betty broke up with Luke.
She dates everyone, anyone, all the time, but whereas Luke was once at least clearly linked to Betty, Haven can’t be associated with anyone in particular, not for steady periods at least. Nobody is bothered by it, which is probably the most shocking thing about her. For all her rudeness, for all her inelegance and lack of tact, she is ultimately insidious, an upward creeping vine that tangles around you until her roots take.
Haven is surprisingly disarming that way. Even her history teacher, a likeable middle-aged man with large glasses, didn’t mind when she cussed him out during fourth period. He’d merely told her to go to the office then continued his lecture on the French Revolution. Colin Moorehead, however, had been suspended for the entire week when he’d pulled the same stunt earlier that January. Once, she’d cried for a full half hour when assigned Saturday detention for repeated tardiness. Mr. Hall, the principal, had become so flustered that he’d revoked the punishment only to have Haven show up anyway. She’d wanted to help clean the chalkboards, she’d said. He hadn’t noticed the bruise creeping up the left side of her face because it was half-hidden behind the fall of her hair.
The Elders siblings muddle truth and lies. Haven does it intentionally, letting the gossip spread until she’s protected by a reputation that suits her own purposes. She knows what blackmail is, what fear is, and how hiding the truth is sometimes the smartest thing a girl can do. Luke is collateral damage. He looks at their town as though it’s the problem, not them. It’s Worswick’s ignorance, their simple-minded complacency to rural living. They have small, lonely lives, and the Elders children do not want this, but they don’t want college lecture halls and dormitory rooms either. They wouldn’t fit in there, they think, among all that learning and desire to succeed, to conform to the standards of society’s expectations for greatness. They aren’t normal in that way or in other ways that matter to strangers.
They tell themselves when Luke is eighteen and it’s his commencement ceremony. They watch their peers graduate with beaming, full-lipped smiles. The fresh graduates are greeted afterwards by families with giant, warm embraces. Some of the mothers cry. The students huddle together and take the obligatory photo holding their rolled ceremonial blank diplomas, but it seems less obligatory with these kids and more normal. These kids have high GPAs and money. They have dreams of being doctors, teachers, lawyers, and dental assistants. They have dreams of being good, of behaving. They want large homes and luxury vehicles. Their dark gowns are crisp and represent the possibility of gaining these lives full of promise.
When it’s time to graduate, something she accomplishes seemingly by sheer luck, Haven sees the same type of kids, the same type of parents, the same pride and happiness. She’s genuinely surprised by all of the potential that’s been hiding all around her, in plain sight, all of her life. She never thinks that could have been me. I could have done that. I could have had that life. If she did, those words would click into place like puzzle pieces, and she would be forced to acknowledge them for what they truly represent: the tense of missed chances.
Luke does think it. He thinks it, but he doesn’t say a word. The only sign of his discontent is a crease between his eyebrows, the same crease his father has, and a restless rubbing of his knuckles against his jaw.
During the ceremony, Luke feels grimy, as though he’s caked in mud.
Luke doesn’t speak to anyone when the ceremony is over. There’s a slow directionless anger building in his stomach, climbing up his chest. His anger takes over the small feelings of pride and satisfaction at being here, at having made it, until he feels queasy. When he looks at his teachers, at his classmates, at the parents whom he has known for most of his life, he thinks he understands the way they view him. He is suspicious in everything he does, each of his movements, every shift of his eyes. He’s from a family without friends, a family of misfits. Haven and Luke Elders? A girl like that and a boy like him - all they ever got were pity before pity turned to disgust and distrust and then, finally, to dull apathy.
Sam Elders had made no attempt to celebrate his only son’s graduation. There was no cake, no card, not even a congratulations. Their father was spending the night in his favorite recliner, watching reruns of Friends, and drinking PBR from the can. He’d known that the engine of Luke’s car had died a month ago, but he still hadn’t let them take his truck. The two of them have to walk forty minutes home from the town’s convention center where the graduation had been held.
Luke has removed his gown. When nobody was looking, he’d shoved it into a trash bin. His jeans are ripped and his white Walmart t-shirt is stained at the neckline. There’s already sweat dampening the fabric under his arms. Haven is in shorts and a peach colored tank top, her long hair, beginning to whiten from days in the early summer sun, is caught in a loose ponytail gathered at the nape of her neck. She is fresh-faced but sullen, kicking her dirty sneakers against the pavement, punctuating their unspoken thoughts. Nobody has offered them a ride home.
“Thanks for coming,” Luke finally says. He still has that crease between his eyes and his arms swing with a restless energy.
“You’re welcome,” Haven replies simply, her voice uncharacteristically tight.
As they walk, cheap houses gradually appear out of the grainy dark. This whole area is a square of poverty where the houses have ripped window screens and the front doors are smudged with hand streaks and disappointment. There’s broken down cars in front yards, cigarette butts and beer cans in the gutters. The crab grass is splotchy, but it seems harsher than usual in the dim evening street lights. There’s weeds in the cracks of the sidewalks and running up the driveways, and Mrs. Allan’s front door light, which she keeps on no matter the time of day, highlights the thicket of summer mosquitoes. A clump of birches stand at the far corner of the street, out of place, an odd patch of greenery amidst a row of cheap cement-block homes. Some neighborhood kid once fixed a tire swing to one of the tree limbs, and it hangs still in the night, looking much like a man hanging from the gallows.
“Here’s a landscape I wish we could never see again,” Haven says mildly, pausing at the crooked red stop sign that marks the start of their street. Their house is the last one on the left, 600 feet away.
Luke’s right hand curls into a fist by his side. Uncurls. Curls again. He takes a shaky breath and cranes his head back, looking up at the wide expanse of sky above them. His sandy hair falls into his eyes, the ends already brightening like his sister’s.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing one of Haven’s hands.
Turtle Lake is tucked in the back of the Carolanne suburb twenty minutes away from their house. It’s about a quarter-mile down a paved path ending in high marsh grass, shadowed on either side by thick trees. A sliver of land separates Turtle Lake from the river and a hiking trail winds through the woods near the lake. It’s usually a popular spot for longboarders and fishers, Boy Scouts and bird watchers. At night, the teens use Turtle Lake for hook-ups and small parties. Luke has taken a few girls here himself preferring the dark slopes of leafy terrain by the trails to his own house, his own bedroom.
All the kids are at graduation parties, so the dock is empty and damp. It smells a little of river water and mud, fresh and rotting at the same time. Haven pulls her hair free from the elastic band holding it at bay and stretches across the dock beneath the moonlight, her sharp face looking sly and expectant. Luke sits beside her, his anger still churning, slow and persistent, inside of him.
He hears Haven slip off her sneakers and socks and then the rustle of denim as she peels her shorts off. He lets her crawl into his lap, her long, young legs wrapping around his waist so that her sharp knees frame his hips. She rocks her hips down without warning, grinding, the friction harsh between their bodies, electric and rough and painful. She licks his neck where he tastes like dirt and sweat.
Luke sighs, tipping his head back. He places a rough hand on the center of her chest and gently pushes. It isn’t shyness that provokes his response, they’ve done this plenty of times before, but caution. “Someone could come. Someone could see.”
Haven huffs, a childish, impatient sound. She moves his hand to her breast. She isn’t wearing a bra and her nipple cuts across his palm. “C’mon. You brought me here. I thought you wanted to celebrate. I can be your present.”
He closes his eyes, and she licks his neck again, her mouth warm and wet against his skin. Haven reaches between them where their bodies are close to joining. Her fingers make quick work of the front of his jeans, and she murmurs a sound of approval when she finds him hard and ready. It’s a sound that makes him shiver with shame, but it’s also a sound he wants to hear for the rest of his life, close to his ear, full of heat.
He doesn’t think about how good she is at this, how there’s such a familiar, an experienced, way to how she works her hand, to her unabashedness. She’ll be seventeen in a few months, and there’s more than one thing wrong with her age, her youthfulness and the subsequent lack of innocence. As if to punctuate his observations, Haven pulls aside the tiny slip of fabric between her legs and guides him into her, sinking down with a force that causes her to hiss. He could listen to that sound forever too, he knows, his hips giving an unconscious buck at the sudden slick sensation, the pull and drag of their skin.
The incredible wrongness of the moment drowns him. Luke’s lust collides with his anger, crashing back and forth in a steady wave, finding a rhythm that matches the way his sister’s hips lift and fall. He places his hands on her sides, steadying his need to flip them and drive into her until her back burns from the wood beneath them. Sometimes his desire to hurt her is stronger than his lust.
“Look at me,” Haven says, moving her hands to either side of his face.
He does. Her eyes are the same shade of blue as their mother’s. Luke groans, and the noise is full of too many emotions; they choke in the humid air. She rests her forehead on his, and he crawls his fingers up her spine, lifting his hips beneath her to match her leisurely pace.
“Fuck them,” she whispers, her eyes bright, voice stuttering around her breaths. “Fuck this town. They don’t matter. We matter.”
Luke tries to duck his eyes, but she’s persistent, holding his face in place.
“Say you love me,” she says. She hasn’t stopped moving her hips, but her pace is still slow, deliberate.
“I love you.” He had wanted to hesitate, but the words came out easily.
Her smile is triumphant.
“You’re the only good thing in my life,” she tells him and feels his body jolt beneath her, his hips sharp between her thighs and chafing against his jeans, her bare feet scratching against the dock.
She notices that his eyes go dark and glassy, as though he’s been shot, but she doesn’t care. Haven runs her thumb across the corner of his full mouth where his lips have twisted into a grimace. He’s breathing loudly. She wants to pull his shirt off of him, to run her palms across his chest and up over his shoulders. There’s scars there that she likes to trace with her fingers, her tongue, her mouth. Instead, she leans in and kisses him, slipping her tongue inside. Luke doesn’t fight it, but she can taste his pain anyway. It’s acrid and bitter, but she likes it.
Afterwards, Haven ties her hair up, removes the rest of her clothes, folds them into a neat pile, then slips waist high into the river water. It’s warm and clean, and she rubs the water between her thighs, up and over her sticky skin. The moon makes her shimmer like a nymph.
Luke sits on the dock, watching, catching his breath. He doesn’t feel angry anymore. He feels empty, which he guesses is better than what he was feeling before, but he isn’t sure. He doesn’t think about it - he keeps his mind blank.
“We need to start using some protection,” he says after a moment, voice pitched low.
Haven doesn’t look at him, but her mouth flips into a smirk. “You worried about mongoloid babies?”
Luke winces a little, just around the eyes, and retrieves a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jeans. He lights one and inhales, shaking his head.
“You could just come on my tits.”
“Haven.”
She rolls her eyes and wades out of the water. “Calm down. I’ve been on the pill for two years. Hand me those.”
He pushes her clothes towards her and watches as she gets dressed. There’s nothing childlike about her body - no remnants of baby fat, no softness. She has slim hips, a long midsection, and small, high breasts. Her shoulders and arms have the lean definition of a runner’s. Her skin is the color of tea thanks to recent mornings spent bathing in the sun, her nipples the pink of seashells. He thinks she’s always looked like this, and it doesn’t seem right. She should have something of adolescence to mar her, a cluster of pimples across her jaw or a gangly unconfidence. Instead, Haven watches Luke watching her and seems to preen. She pulls her clothes on over her wet body, not minding how they stick and scratch, and winks at him playfully.
“School is going to suck without you next year.”
Luke shrugs. “You’ll be fine.”
“We could leave now, you know. Hit the road. Never look back.”
He shakes his head, standing slowly. “One more year.” Luke pitches his cigarette into the river bank where the mud catches it.
It’s Haven’s turn to shrug now. She bends down to pick up her sneakers, the socks tucked into them. She walks home barefoot until she’s tired, and then Luke lets her climb onto his back for the last two blocks, her legs framing him for the second time that night. Luke realizes that he can smell her on his skin - musky yet sweet - but against him, her damp chest pressed to his back, she still smells of the river, of rot and salt, like she’s a creature of it.
When they get home, their father is already asleep in his recliner, a six pack of PBR by his feet. Haven covers him with a blanket while Luke trudges to his bedroom. He doesn’t protest when Haven slips inside half an hour later, the damp river smell replaced by the more familiar scents of her nighttime routine - mint toothpaste, citrus body wash from the shower, a mild, fruity body lotion. She’s in one of his large oversized t-shirts; the hem skirts the tops of her thighs, and here, finally, Haven looks her age. Something about that twists his gut.
Luke is stretched out on his back in his twin-sized bed, and he tells her to close the door. She does, flicking the lights off too before sliding into her brother’s bed. He’s grateful for when she drapes herself over him, her lithe body perpetually hot. He doesn’t have to move much to make room for her; she seems to fit naturally against him, easily. Her hair tumbles into his mouth as she crawls into the crook of his arm, her legs tangling around his like ivy, one of her arms tucked over his chest.
In the morning, Haven will ask him to make her toast spread thick with nutella. She’ll drink milk from the carton, standing in front of their old fridge, a hip cocked out and Luke’s too-big shirt tucked into a pair of shorts. Their father, having at some time gone to his own room in the middle of the night, will sleep until noon. At this moment, the kitchen will still be theirs. Haven will have a hum of excitement about her, the start of summer break too great of a pull for her to ignore, and she’ll stretch out one leg across the cheap vinyl flooring, touching her bare foot to Luke’s as he stands by the toaster, big toe to big toe.
This mundane moment in their kitchen will shine lightning bright to Luke. Years of yearning had made him sensitive, the way a starving dog twitches its nose at the faintest scent of food. The nudge of her foot against his, the sweep of her toes, and the amused, secret way she will grin at him while wiping milk from her mouth with the back of her hand, these are all the discreet ways she has of telling him she’s his, of making him hers. It’s her way of telling him, bit by bit, moment by moment, that this, that them, is not his fault.
Such ordinary, small acts will wind around his heart, binding tighter over the years, until they slice into his flesh, and he will be unable to remember the exact meaning of right and wrong.