“You know what planet I can see right now with the naked eye?”I ask.
Clementine looks at me again.
“If you sayUranusI swear I’m leaving and hiking nine miles back to civilizationright now,” she says, but there’s laughter in her voice.
“I was gonna say Mars,” I say, pretending to be offended.“I’m not thirteen.”
I was absolutely going to say Uranus.It’s always funny.
“Sure,” she says, putting her head back.
There’s another silence, and I look at the stars hovering near the horizon.
“This is different,” she says.
“It is?”I ask.
It doesn’t really feel different.It feels like we could be in the back of my pickup truck, or in her basement, or in my bedroom after my parents went to sleep and she sneaked over.
“No one’s gonna catch us,” she says.“And if they do, it doesn’t matter.”
I’ve started playing with her hair without noticing what I was doing, the slippery dark strands coiling through my fingers.
“Does that make it less exciting?”I ask.“Are you saying you miss thethrill?”
She laughs.
“The thrill of nearly getting busted by the cops that one time?”she says.“Or of Mrs.Hudgins finding us on what wastechnicallyher property and reaming us out?”
“Did she have a shotgun, or did I make that up?”I ask.
“I think it was a BB gun,” Clementine says.
“I’d rather her shoot me than tell my parents,” I say.“A couple years ago, I sort of let it slip that I wasn’t exactlysavingmyself anymore, and I don’t think my mom’s forgiven me yet.”
“But you live with them?”
“I stay in the guest house for half the year,” I correct her.“And I don’t...entertain guests there.”
In high school, Clementine and I were in a slightly weird situation.I heard plenty of stories about dads in Ashlake, Montana answering the door holding a shotgun, threatening boyfriends who’ddareto touch their daughters.
But Clementine’s parents were relatively cool.I mean, they weren’t nearly as permissive as we’d have liked, but they never threatened me with a shotgun.It wasmyparents who were the strict ones, who were vigorously opposed to us ever being alone together, lest we be tempted bysin.
It didn’t work.Not by a long shot.Sin won, hard.And fast.And deep.And as often as we could possibly manage.
“This is nice, though,” she murmurs.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree.
In a few more minutes, she’s asleep on me.I’m tired as hell, but there’s no way I can fall asleep sharing this two-foot-wide cot with her, so I stay awake for a little while.I listen to her breathing.I slide my fingers through her hair.
I think that maybe,maybe, this time will work out differently.
After a while I’m beyond sleepy and also beyond uncomfortable, so I gently get out from under Clementine, then climb gingerly over her until I’m off the cot.
She wakes up when I try to roll her onto her sleeping bag.
“You leaving?”she asks, barely awake.
