“Why?” he asks, scratching his birthmark. God, that birthmark! A drop of water drips over his face and pearls upon his lip.
“Because I want to talk to you, and if I spend one more second on this frozen ground, I’m going to freeze to death.”
“Then get in.”
“I’m not dressed appropriately. I’m wearing clothing, you see.”
“Take them off.”
“Yeah, right.” My fingertips are growing numb, holding them against the ground as I am. “As if I’d jump in in my underwear.”
“I don’t understand the problem.”
He says it so nonchalantly, so typicallyKnox-like, but it’s not Knox. Not really. He’s not himself. His smile looks weird, as if raising the corners of his mouth was difficult, and somehow he seems… I don’t know, as if looking at me was a kind of torture.
“Get out, Knox.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll tell your dad about the candy stash I recently discovered in the linen cabinet.”
I don’t wait for him to respond. I get up, without having seen his reaction, and march back into the living room. The music is so loud that the bass is making my slippers vibrate. By the time I reach the fireplace, my feet have been stepped on twice, some kind of sticky substance has been spilled on my arm, and I have been elbowed by three different people. I have to take a deep breath, close my eyes, and slowly count to ten so as not to lose it.
When I open my eyes back up, I lose it anyway. Knox is in front of me, a step away at the most, drying himself off with a towel. He’s wearing blue-and-white-striped Gucci trunks, and for the first time,I’m aware of his knobby knees. They look like two uneven scoops of ice cream.
“What’s up, Paisley?” Knox shakes his head like a wet dog. He’s sweet and his hair is scruffy, not blond and not brown. Something in between. He flicks his towel against my arm and laughs. A bit soft, a bit raw, a bit too lovely.
“What’s up withyou?” I cross my arms and lift my chin. The fire is defrosting my fingers and making them itch. “What’s this shit all about, Knox?”
He tosses his towel over his shoulders and pulls on it like it was a rubber band. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously?” A group of women walks past—“Hey, Knox”—one of them runs her hand down his back while the other two cast me mean glances. Knox gives them his famousI’m-going-to-eat-you-for-breakfast-babesmile and, in return, their looks make it clear that they’d love to tear off his Gucci shorts immediately.
As Knox makes no effort to interrupt thelet’s-have-sexlooks, I roll my eyes and snap my fingers in front of his face. He turns to look at me and sighs annoyedly.
I wasn’t aware that such small things like sighs carried such weight. Now I know it, for the sound makes me break out in goose bumps even though I’m standing next to the fireplace. It stings, so much so that I put a hand on my chest and swallow a gasp.
Knox is annoyed. By me.Iam annoying him. Of course, I am. I’m his chalet girl, after all. His chalet girl who’s getting in the way of his fun. A buzzkill. I’ve always been one of those. I can hear the voices in my head whispering.Paisley, don’t be such a party pooper. Let Mommy have her drink and go back to bed.
I didn’t have a bed. Our trailer only had one, and that belonged to Mom and her lovers. Sometimes, on good days, I was allowed to sleep with her. Otherwise, my “bed” was the little corner bench behind the little table. It wasn’t terrible, really. I liked it. I could lift up the cushions because they’d come loose from the rivets, andwhen Mom and dude number four, eight, twenty-six, one-hundred-twelve were too loud, I could count the wood grain. The bench was my good friend. I carved my initials into the wood with a rusty breadknife. It belonged to me, and I was proud because, back then, beyond it, nothing belonged to me. I didn’t even belong to myself. If I had, Mom wouldn’t have tried pawning me off to the junkie with the dead cat in our front “yard,” which grew worse day after day.
Now Knox is snapping his fingers in front ofmyface. “Hello?”
“What?” My tone is bitter because I don’t see Knox right now, but my mom, and I hate her, I hate her profoundly for calling me a party pooper, for letting me down, and, quite simply, fornot loving meeven though I loved her immensely. Immensely. “What do you want, Knox?”
“Me? You’re the one who called me over, threatening to blackmail me with telling my dad about my candy.”
True. I did. But I forgot. I even forgot the party going on around us the moment Mom came to mind. But suddenly it all comes back: Knox. The music. All the people. The half-naked women.The zip line. And I’m pissed off,sopissed off at Knox for having thrown the party although I’m tired, although we were on the snowboard together, and I thought that we had shared a moment—a moment where he looked at me and touched me and made metremble. I thought he had changed, for me, and other women were of no interest. But then I come over here and see that I was wrong, so wrong, and that it’s because of me. He wanted things this way. Knox wanted me.I could be ready. He said that, just a few days ago, but now he’s anything but ready, and all because of me. Because I didn’t want it. That’s what’s making me so angry.Iam making myself so angry.
“It’s eleven o’clock, Knox!” I wave my hands around without knowing why. I think it probably looks stupid, but I keep doing it because it feels good. “Eleven o’clock! Do you know what that means?”
“Umm.” Knox picks at the tag of his towel and tries to keephimself from breaking into a grin. “No idea? Is this a new version of Cinderella or something, where, instead of midnight she’s got to leave at eleven, or else she’ll break out in warts or…”
“Knox!” He called me Cinderella.Cinderella. My eyes are burning with tears although I don’t want them to be. It simply happens.
Only now does what he said seem to become clear to him. His amused grin disappears as if the moist gleam in my eyes had come from his. “Shit, Paisley. Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Really, I wasn’t thinking. It wasn’t referring to you, I swear, it wasn’t.”
It takes all I’ve got to swallow the lump in my throat and hold back my tears. I don’t want to cry, not now. I know that I will as soon as I’m under the shower upstairs and then once I’m in bed I know I’ll make my pillow wet and my voice hoarse, but not right now.
