The Cake House Page 11

  As I passed him, my nakedness once again covered, he picked up the thread of his song and I climbed into that big bed so I could watch as he plucked the strings of his guitar.

  “Who was that woman at the mall?” I asked.

  He continued playing with his eyes focused on his fingers switching from one chord to another.

  “It was weird. Like she knew him. Like she knew you. Have you seen her before?”

  He paused, mid-pluck, resting his hand against the wood of his guitar, fingers tapping, pinky to thumb. “No,” he said.

  “What does he do, anyway? How come he always has so much money?”

  “What does it matter?” He got up from the beanbag holding his guitar and came over to sit next to me on the bed.

  “You’re not answering my question,” I said, turning to look at him.

  “Here, take this. I’ll teach you a chord.” He handed me his guitar and guided my left hand to the fretboard near the top and forced my fingers where he wanted them. “This is C major.”

  He took my other hand and scraped across the strings. We strummed a couple of times. Then he forced my fingers into another position. “G major,” he said.

  “Why don’t you want to talk about it?” I asked. The soft pads of my fingers began to hurt. “That woman was so angry.”

  “Stop thinking.” He pressed my fingers even harder against the strings and the wood of the guitar. I tried to pull my hand away.

  “But—”

  Alex kissed me. The guitar banged against my knee.

  Since first meeting Alex, I had wanted this, but for some reason as he pressed against me I remembered a tattoo that José had on his upper arm. José and I used to make out in the laundry room of our apartment building, surrounded by the ticklish smell of detergent as the dryer clanged. On his upper arm he had a tattoo that his older brother made him get, of a skull with a bleeding heart in its mouth. Sometimes I kissed José’s tattoo; I kissed the skull, right on its painted lips.

  I held on to Alex’s shoulders, wondering what tattoo Alex might choose to get. Would it be a different skull, one with flowers in its empty eye sockets or a rose in its mouth?

  He pushed me down, lifting my shirt. His hands were cold, his breath soft and slippery.

  Then his weight was ripped off me, and I gasped to see Claude shaking Alex between his big hands. He stood in the center of the room like a polar bear on hind legs, white and growling.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Claude bellowed so loud I felt it in my teeth.

  Tossed onto his back, Alex stood to face his father. Claude slapped him with the back of his hand. Alex’s head snapped back, and I screamed.

  “Jesus, fuck. Take it easy, Dad,” said Alex, mumbling around a busted lip.

  “What’s wrong with you? She’s just a kid.” Claude had turned a color to match the pink frills in my bedroom.

  Alex checked his jaw. He started laughing, wiping at his mouth. “Aren’t I just a kid?” Alex asked. “Aren’t my friends just kids? And Mrs. Myers, couldn’t she be a kid herself? What about her daughter?”

  Claude lunged at Alex and I screamed louder, but he didn’t hit Alex again. He clamped his hand over Alex’s mouth and dragged him from the room.

  My mother came running but stopped when she saw Alex struggling against his father. She moved past them both, taking in my half-dressed state. I tugged my T-shirt down over my bare stomach.

  “What did you do?” she asked, glancing back at Claude and behind him at Alex, who stood in the hallway, a hand covering his busted lip.

  “Nothing, I swear,” said Alex.

  “Get out of here,” yelled Claude, and then I heard Alex’s bedroom door slam shut.

  My mother pulled me toward her, but when Claude came back into the room, I retreated to the other side of the bed.

  “Claude, leave,” she said, her voice shrill.

  She tried to get in front of him, but he ignored her. He grabbed hold of my shirt and dragged me across the bed.

  “Leave her alone,” cried my mother, pulling at his arm to get him to stop. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”

  But he wasn’t looking at her. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” He was strong enough to dangle me like a doll.

  My breathing was rapid, my heart pounding so hard I felt lightheaded from too much oxygen or blood, panting like a rabbit in the grip of a bear claw, tense and watchful, waiting for when I needed to bite or kick.

  Claude’s eyes grew sad. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “Alex shouldn’t have done that.”

  He let me go, and I slid down onto the plush softness of my new bed. My mother gathered me to her chest.

  “Please leave,” she said to Claude. “I’ll talk to her.”

  Claude took a step toward my mother but stopped when she stiffened. He turned to leave, and I buried my face against her chest.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I wanted to walk down the hallway to Alex’s room. I had wanted to go to him the previous night after Claude had left, but my mother wouldn’t let me. He’d left his guitar and I wanted to give it back to him. She said I shouldn’t allow Alex near me like that anymore, and she took his guitar with her when she said good night.

  Morning light played across the canopy. I slid from my new bed and went to the stereo Alex had given me. The album he had left had a giant purple X on the cover, and the record was still on the turntable. It took a moment to figure out how to drop the needle, but once I did, I turned up the volume as loud as I could stand it. The lead singer was a woman and I liked that. I liked the way she sang, scratchy and loud.

  Maybe the music would bring Alex to me, like a siren.

  As the album played, I dumped the bags of new clothing on the floor in front of the bed, then turned to the dresser and emptied each drawer. Some of the clothing went in my new trunk, some of it I stacked in the bookshelf, and the rest I hung in the closet. The leftover possessions from my previous life—books, magazines, old stuffed animals—went into the dresser drawers. Mix and match, everything in a different place, everything in a weird place.

  When I picked up my father’s camera, I hesitated but then gave it a place of honor in the bottom drawer. It would be safe there.

  With the big canopy bed taking up all the space, my room felt smaller. Before, the room had seemed like acres of space, more than enough for cartwheels. Now there existed a narrow, crooked path around the room.

  A knock on my door made me jump. Before I could answer, Claude entered and walked over to the stereo, where he turned the volume down.

  “You should know he’s forbidden from entering your room,” he said in the sudden silence, and although he wouldn’t look at me, I felt the weight of his attention, the heaviness of his guilt.

  “It wasn’t him—”

  He lifted a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. You’re a pretty girl, Rosie, and all the boys will be after you. That’s fine; that’s how it should be. If you want to throw yourself at them, follow some crazy idea you have that it’s revenge against your mother, or me, nothing’s going to stop you. Although I hope you’ll be smarter than that. But not Alex, and not in my house. Got that?”

  He narrowed his eyes for long sweaty moments, but his face softened as he glanced around the room. “I hope you like your birthday present.”

  I didn’t say anything, and so he left. A few seconds later the house shuddered; Claude had gone to work. A crosswind lifted the fabric of the canopy up like white arms reaching forward.

  It was a pretty bed. But with the bed came new rules. Forbidden from talking to me, forbidden from touching. Had Alex protested? Had he stood before his father, sullen but with that wonderful arrogance that meant he obeyed because he had no choice?

  Alex came out of his room, and I ran to the door to see him. He stopped as he caught sight of me. If he had any bruises, they were hidden in the shadows of the hallway.

  I waved, but the next moment my mother came down from the third floor and
Alex crossed to the stairs and was gone.

  She glanced at where Alex’s presence lingered with the heat. “Leave him alone,” she said.

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  She sighed and held out her hand. “Please, Rosaura,” she said. “This isn’t a game. You’re a child; you’ll ruin your life if you’re not careful.”

  I wanted to ask if she’d ruined her life but said nothing. With both Claude and Alex gone, my mother and I rattled around the house. I took my camera and went out into the garden, and I made her sit on the low brick wall that circled the fountain, taking her picture until she complained of the sun and the brightness and the heat. Toward the evening, she cooked dinner, and from the faint determination in her face, I knew she thought she had to, that Claude expected it. I remembered her many sketchbooks and how she used to draw with her colored pencils in the evenings in those in-between moments when my father’s attention went elsewhere and I went to José’s and left her alone. But she didn’t draw in the evenings anymore.

  Alex returned moments before dinner. He sat down in the seat next to mine and ate everything on his plate, pausing only to take big gulping swallows of water. He didn’t look at me; he didn’t look at anyone. When he finished, ahead of the rest of us, he asked to be excused. Claude was slow to nod, but as soon as he did, Alex disappeared up the stairs and into his room. So I asked to be excused, then disappeared into my room, too, listening until I heard Alex moving through the hallway and into the bathroom. Then I went into the hallway and pressed my ear against the bathroom door, listening when the toilet flushed and hearing the protesting pipes when he started a shower. I imagined him naked in the shower, with cascading water all around.

  When I heard him approaching the bathroom door, I scrambled back to my room to lie on my new bed, staring at the overhead fabric and the shadows it created, remembering the shock of his hand on my stomach. I thought I heard footsteps outside my door, imagining that he listened for my movements as I had listened for his.

  He was going to follow the new rules. He was going to avoid me, no matter that he was the one who had kissed me. I wanted to get up, walk down the hallway, and push his door open, hard, so that it banged against the wall. But as soon as I decided to get up, Alex entered my room, holding a now familiar bag from the camera store. He dropped the bag on my bed, right next to my hand. He paused, and my skin blossomed with goose bumps. I moved my leg, then my arm, but he left, closing the door behind him.

  CLAUDE GAVE ALEX AND ME a ride my first day of school. “I’ll pick you both up. Wait for me.”

  “Yes, sir.” I saluted, but it only made him grin.

  “Don’t be a smart aleck.” He grabbed my backpack, holding me back. “Before you go, Rosie, I want to say something.”

  I waited, one leg out of the car. Alex had bolted the moment Claude shifted into park, sprinting across the parking lot.

  “You’ll do fine,” he said.

  It galled that he thought I needed reassuring. “Not afraid I’ll run naked through the football field?”

  He smiled again, although it didn’t reach his eyes. From his pocket he took out a business card. “If you need anything, that has my office number.”

  I refrained from reminding him that he had made me memorize his cell number. I wanted to refuse the card, but I stuffed it into a pocket in my bag.

  “Go on, get out of here,” he said, waving me out of the car. “Go before you’re late.”

  The air was still, the sky a solid, unchanging ceiling of blue. I turned to face Canyon High School, which consisted of several low, flat buildings that took up the entire block. It was nothing like my previous school, which made it easier to march into the building.

  Alex waited on the steps. “Do you know how to find your first class? Where to go?”

  “I can figure everything out on my own.”

  Students zigzagged past, pushing me closer to Alex. “If you need me,” he said, already walking away.

  “I won’t,” I said, even though I did need him, want him.

  The first warning bell rang and he was gone, swallowed by the crowd of students and backpacks and teachers.

  A big white sign with green lettering swung over a couple of tables set up in front of the building: “Welcome, Freshmen.” I got into the right line for my last name. A woman with a stuck-on name tag that read “Mrs. Chung” handed me my schedule.

  “There’s a map right here,” she said, pointing to one of the sheets of paper she had given me.

  The second bell rang, but I still hadn’t found my class. It was in a building across from the main courtyard, at the end of a hallway. When I got there, the classroom door was shut. I knew my mistake as soon as I pushed the door open. The room fell silent, and the students turned en masse to look at the new intruder. No freshmen, no friendly homeroom, only a rotund chemistry teacher scribbling equations on the blackboard.

  “Sorry,” I said, backing out and shutting the door.

  “Wait,” said a soft voice, and I turned to see a familiar girl get up from her front-row desk. It was Tina, the girl whom Alex had brought to his room, the girl who’d picked him up in the VW Bug.

  “Are you lost?” she asked. The teacher didn’t stop writing on the blackboard, and the rest of the class returned to their notes.

  She didn’t wait for my answer but stepped outside the classroom, holding the door open with a foot, and took the schedule from my hand. Glossy lips, hair braided down one side; her eyes were ringed with makeup. I wanted to take her picture. Maybe I could discover her secrets if I had her picture.

  “Mrs. Lombard. She’s just over there.” She pointed down the hallway. “First classroom on the right.”

  I took the schedule back and mumbled my thanks.

  When I located the correct classroom, I found disorder. Conversation crescendoed as I entered, with students milling around a pile of magazines left on a couple of the desks at the front of the room. It took a moment to find the teacher, who was stuck in the middle of the fray.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I’ll mark you as present, but be sure to be on time tomorrow or I will have to mark you tardy. Three marks and you drop one letter grade. Go ahead and grab a few magazines. Your assignment is written on the board.”

  She handed me a used social studies textbook. The assignment was to use modern-day cultural images to create a visual essay, a collage. It was due in one week. Pick a theme and tell a story. It could even be “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.”

  All the good magazines like Vogue, Glamour, and People were taken by the time I picked a desk and set my bag down, leaving several Highlights for Children and a few Time and Newsweek issues. Without caring, I grabbed whatever I could and went back to my desk.

  My new classmates laughed and talked with easy familiarity. They all knew one another already. The Highlights magazines were old, with their covers dangling by loosened staples. I flipped through one of them, stopping when I found the Goofus and Gallant cartoon. They made me think of Alex, but was he Goofus or Gallant?

  THE FRONT OF THE SCHOOL faced a line of rocky hills, left barren and undeveloped. Near the entrance, I sat on the hot cement curb, waiting for Claude to pick me up. My book bag slumped on the ground, full of the textbooks I’d collected throughout the day.

  To pass the time, I took out one of the Highlights. Not far away, Tina also waited, leaning on the chain-link fence that circled the campus. She kept searching the street, shifting weight from one foot to the other. I had my camera and took her picture but from such a distance I lost the details of her face, her freckles, the braid in her hair.

  The camera clicked loud enough for her to hear. I hid it and tried to look like I hadn’t been staring. After a moment, she walked over. “Hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”

  I had to squint to look up at her. She moved to block the sun, then sat next to me on the curb. I shrugged, not knowing what to say. “I found all the rest of my classes,” I said.

&nbs
p; She smiled, moving closer so she could read the Highlights with me. “I remember these,” she said, tracing the Goofus and Gallant cartoon.

  I wanted to say they weren’t mine, I didn’t read kids’ magazines or anything, but the familiar VW Bug spun around a corner, screeching to a halt, the sound of music and laughter braided together.

  Alex sat in the passenger seat. He opened the car door, walking over with a secret smile that made him that much more a rock star. It was the ease with which he lifted his chin to say hi, the smooth way he waved at some other kid who called his name, not important enough for Alex to fully acknowledge. These things made him different from the boy who slept in the room down the hall from my room, who liked only to listen to music, always so silent and withdrawn.

  “Tina,” he said, calling to her as he walked over.

  The smile on Tina’s face slipped away, as if the heat radiating up from the asphalt had melted all the animation in her eyes and lips. “I was waiting for you.”

  Alex shrugged. “I’m here,” he said, glancing in my direction.

  “Come on,” said a black girl from the driver’s side, impatient. She had a wide smile and breasts that spilled out of her halter top as she wormed halfway out the window. The radio blared. “Both of you, let’s go.”

  It could have been a moment taken out of a movie or an after-school television special. I drank it in, transfixed by this picture of the idyllic high school scene, watching Alex—the face I knew, the hands that had touched me—interact with others, with these strangers who claimed him as their own.

  “See you later,” Tina said before climbing into the front seat. Alex bent toward me, and for one wild moment, I thought he was going to kiss me, but he whispered in my ear, “Tell him I’ll be home before dinner.”

  Then he got in the car, and I heard someone say, “Let’s get out of here.” The car rocked down the street, disappearing with another near-capsizing turn around the corner.