Crystal Grader, Tag Cavello [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

without me would have killed you.”

He smiled at that. “Then I’m glad you didn’t stay away.” And before she could object, he moved behind her; his hands found the hem of her blouse and teased it up high enough to expose bare skin.

“You still smell bad,” she said, without a look back.

“You want me to wash?”

“It might help your chances later on.”

He made no reply, but lifted the blouse over her ribs. This time Crystal pushed his hands away.

“Down, boy. Hot stove here.” Her head turned as a thought struck her. “By the way, where’s Chubby?”

The face peering back at her went cloudy. “Who?”

“Chubby, Jarett. Your dog? Woof woof?”

“Woof woof, right. He’s staying with…you know, that friend of mine in Norwalk. The one with the pool.”

“Because?”

“Because he’s a pain in the butt, that’s why,” Jarett laughed.

“No he’s not!”

He kissed her on the cheek then, flummoxing her beyond all further response. “Bath time,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

“Don’t rush on my account.”

At first it was like he didn’t hear, given the speed with which he dashed off. Crystal adjusted the flame and then went about setting the table. She thought she could eat well now that the house was clean. A quick search through the cupboards turned up a box of candles and some matches. She lit two, one for each end of the table, then went upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door.

“Jarett?”

“It’s open,” his sleepy voice called back.

She found him sprawled in a tub full of soapy water. Grinning through a curtain of steam, he invited her to step closer. Crystal didn’t refuse. How could she? He was naked beneath the bubbles, and it had been such a long time since she’d seen him thus.

A clean, white rag hung on the towel rack. It was as good a reason as any to touch him. She took a seat on the toilet and began to wash his shoulders and neck. Jarett closed his eyes. His body sunk deeper into the water. Whether or not this was an invitation to proceed with the rag scarcely mattered to Crystal. Her hand plunged beneath the surface to stroke over the broad chest that breathed there, back and forth, while her eyes—playful again for the first time in a year—wandered lower. To her chagrin, nothing poked out at the surface from between his legs.

Ah, but there were such remedies for that. The temptation to have a go at one burned, to the point where Crystal’s other hand actually leaped forward in a zealous haste to awaken what reposed beneath the suds. She stopped herself without really knowing why (hadn’t she been fine with washing him just moments ago?), and pretended to be distracted by a cobweb on the ceiling. It didn’t work. Whatever else Jarett had lost over the summer, his powers of observation were still keen.

“What’s wrong?” he asked with bemused eyes.

The lie she told came out fast. “I was thinking of my mother.”

“Oh.” His head sank back to the porcelain. “Can we not let her come between us right now? Just for a little while.”

“I don’t know, Jarett.”

Suddenly he smiled. “I’m up over two minutes now.”

“Oh yeah? Doing what?”

“Holding my breath, of course.”

She drew a circle on his chest with the rag and smiled back. “Hercules.”

“What about you? Been practicing?”

“Not much. I think I’m still hovering around forty seconds.”

Jarett closed his eyes again, then opened them. “You want to know something, Crystal? I love you. You’re not afraid to show me anything, and I can’t write words good enough to describe how that makes me feel. The mixture of strength and weakness in you is like a storm. You talk brave. You are brave. Never once have you hesitated to tell me what’s on your mind. You’ve shouted it, you’ve laughed it, you’ve whispered it in my ear. You even told me things while doing cartwheels on the railing of my porch.”

“Jarett—“

“But it wasn’t enough. Somehow you knew that. Somehow you knew that to get closer to me would involve pain. Your pain. So you took a deep breath and you held it. And held it. I kept thinking those little cheerleading lungs of yours were going to burst, you looked so desperate.”

“Jarett, why are you saying these things to me?”

“Because I just want you to know: I love you. There aren’t many girls who lay it all on the line the way you do.”

“Was that the way Vicky was?”

“No,” he answered, after a number of seconds. “What you have in common with Vicky is your femininity. She never did anything the way a man would. Neither do you. I noticed that straight away. But you’re a lot more spice than you are sugar, Crystal. While Vicky…”

“Sugar,” Crystal said, picking up the trail.

“Yeah,” came Jarett’s reply. His eyes had gone dreamy, and were fixed on the cobweb, which had begun to tremor on a rogue draft from outside. “I had both,” he added, as if the long departed spider could hear. “I lived my life, and I had both. Sugar and spice.”

“Your life isn’t over yet.”

To that there came not a single word. Jarett simply went on dreaming, until finally Crystal stood up and told him that lunch was getting cold, and that if he still wanted to eat, he should get dressed.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You don’t have to love me back.”

“Are you sure?” Crystal said from the door.

But rather than rise to the remark, Jarett only smiled.

“So much spice,” he told her. “So much spice.”

26

 

Jarett had it all wrong. There was plenty to fear, and Crystal knew it. Over the following week she kept a low profile around the house, weary of her mother’s ongoing suspicion, which for months now had been like a trespasser in the shadows, ill at ease, on the verge of attack. Lately things were even worse. Ever since she’d come home from Jarett’s house on that Saturday, Lucretia had been eyeing her from the side, with the occasional clipped, cool imperative that she be home from school on time, and get right to work on whatever assignments her teachers had given. Too scared to feign innocence by asking her what was the matter, Crystal did as she was told.

The Mortensons weren’t looking for a babysitter. And now that stupid, lazy lie she told on Saturday morning lay stagnant between her and Lucretia, a dead animal, growing more rotten by the hour. One phone call, one chance encounter at the grocery store, would blow the whole thing out of the water.

At dinner a week before Crystal’s fourteenth birthday—February 7th—Lucretia turned to her and asked: “Has John or Amy been back in touch with you about the job?”

Crystal’s can of Diet Coke trembled as she put it down. “Who?”

“John or Amy, dear.”

“Oh!” Crystal said, shuffling through names in the back of her head. Who were John and Amy? “No…no, they never did call back.”

“Strange. They’re such a nice couple.”

“Yeah.”

The Mortensons weren’t looking for a babysitter—and even if they were, Crystal told herself in the bathtub later that night, she would probably be the last girl they’d call, right behind more stable individuals like Amanda Bynes and Harley Quinn.

Shampoo bubbles popped in her hair, creating a miniature applause. Way to go, Crystal, you’ve painted yourself into a fine little corner here. Sensible options as to how to escape were few; in fact, maybe there were none at all. If indeed Lucretia decided to call the police and have Jarett arrested, would there be a way to stop her? Crystal didn’t think so, unless she could persuade another one of her friends to commit suicide. Megan Holt, maybe.

Sighing, Crystal lay back in the water. Her breasts, though still small, managed to poke through from under the surface, a feat they had not been able to accomplish until just recently. She took a deep breath, bringing them up even higher, and was instantly reminded of Jarett’s fetish. No doubt that, were he present at this moment, he would request that she take another dive in the name of respiratory torture.

And why not? she told herself.

She had removed her watch before getting into the tub, but it was waterproof, and would easily outlast the lungs of any damsel willing to wear it on a plunge. Crystal clipped it back onto her wrist. She brought up the stopwatch function. A neat row of zeroes appeared on the display, innocent, unknowing. Until she pressed the START button anyway. From that moment on, they were the enemy.

Sixty seconds, girl, she could almost hear Jarett saying. Think you can handle it?

Telling herself that she could, Crystal rolled onto her belly. Water sloshed, ready to take her down. This tub wasn’t as deep as the one at the Jackson Farm, but still plenty deep enough. She took a breath and let it out slow. Despite not being used for cheerleading this year, her lungs felt strong. Eager for a challenge. And really, what was one minute? You couldn’t even cook a bowl of noodles in one minute.

With her thumb on the START button, Crystal gasped in again: Haaauuuhhh!

An instant later her nose was next to the drain. Keeping her lips pursed tight, Crystal waited. Her mind wandered. It wouldn’t do to think about holding her breath; the trick lay in the act of diversion. Favorite foods floated by in the water. Favorite books. Ten seconds…fifteen…twenty.

Pain now. Not much, but enough for her to know that this wasn’t going to be easy. Her lungs were strong. But they were also small. Small, and rather addicted to cigarettes.

At thirty seconds she winced and let out an enormous plume of silver bubbles. Wasted air. Her chest began to throb. Her hands made tiny fists on the bottom of the tub. Thirty-five seconds. Forty seconds.

Crystal’s throat began to emit tiny, tortured little squeaks—the squeaks of a mouse being eaten by a cat—as her hand pounded on the porcelain. Forty-five seconds. Forty-six. Forty-seven.

“GAUUUHH!” she gasped, breaking the surface just in the nick of time.

Chest heaving, her eyes went to the watch. The word shit gusted out of her lips.

“Sorry, Jarett,” she said. “My bad.”

She lay awake that night worrying like a woman much older than fourteen. What, oh what, could be done to cover up that lie and keep her mother away from Jarett? The clock was ticking; she needed to think of something soon.

Out of the water but still holding your breath, girl, she thought.

Still, she nearly escaped the whole mess without anyone else dying. This was due in large part to Miko, who that week had begun walking her home from school. He carried Crystal’s backpack, which was a godsend, especially on Mondays, when the weight of a week’s worth of assignments threatened to break her shoulders. On the days when homework was light he carried Hannah’s books. Chivalrous, Crystal thought, and maybe even medicinal. Miko looked better than he had in months. The dull, vacant look in his eyes had cleared; the slouch in his gait had vanished. Nor was any of this in her imagination. At lunchtime (he and Crystal were sitting together now) he often talked of how things were getting better at home every day. His parents had stopped fretting about doctors and were instead enthusiastic about a test he’d brought home from French class, on which he’d received an A. He also told Crystal that his father, a hotelier, had recently purchased a new building in Manila, and had plans for the family to spend the summer there.

“You’re going to Manila?” she asked.

“It looks that way. Dad wants to teach me the ropes. How to keep books, boss people around.”

It was two days before her birthday—Monday—and they were walking home on what would undoubtedly be the last