her eyes as she receded. ‘He doesn’t talk to me any more,’ he said.
‘But he’s pretty sensitive inside.’
‘Maybe everyone is, I guess.’
She laughed. ‘You two are a lot alike.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Like what?’
‘For one, you both look that same way when I say something that you disagree with. You tighten your eyes like that. And your nostrils.’
He concentrated on relaxing his face.
‘Do you think it’s possible to think too much?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ Ellis said. ‘Sometimes all I want is to be able to stop thinking.’
‘Dad says I think too much about things like my mom did. My mom is dead, you know.’
‘From thinking too much?’
‘She had cancer. In her boob.’
He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I hardly remember her. How old are you?’
‘Fourteen.’
She said nothing. A set of flashing lights moved down the street. The siren was off, so the lights passed silently. Ellis moved a inch or two nearer to Heather’s path of motion.
Rising, she said, ‘I don’t want to kick you.’
He stepped back again. Then he circled and took the swing next to hers, pushed off, pumped his legs. He tried to swing side by side with her. The chains of his swing squealed where they were bolted to the crossbar, a noise that paused at the suspended zenith of the swing’s motion. ‘I haven’t been on a swing in a long time,’ he called.
Stars then trees then earth. Earth then trees then stars.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked.
He swung to and fro once, before he admitted, ‘No.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
She slowed, then hopped off her swing in mid-air. Her silhouette floated against the stars before dropping.
‘Should get back,’ she said.
He went backward and forward. He liked the cool of the air. He felt he did not want her to leave. He pulled hard and swung his legs.
‘Are you coming?’
He pushed off at the top of the swing’s motion. The atmosphere felt thick. Then he landed suddenly and tumbled forward onto his hands.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ But his hands and knees were scuffed, and remembering what she said about boys, he revised. ‘Not hurt bad, anyway.’
She started toward the street. ‘Smells like rain,’ she said.
The air did offer up a faint mineral odour. As they passed under the poplars he watched the vague form of her back, the pendulum swings of her arms. They were nearly to the street, where they would be under the street lamps, out of the concealing darkness, and he felt a dread that caused him to reach to touch one of her swinging arms.
She stopped to peer at him. ‘What?’
‘Want to hear a joke?’
‘I guess.’
‘Knock knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Fuck.’
‘I can see where this is going.’
‘No, it’s grammatical.’
‘What?’
‘Just say it, “Fuck who?”’
‘All right.’ She smirked a little. ‘Fuck who?’
‘No, it’s fuck
She laughed. He plunged ahead. ‘Do you really want to know what I think?’
He could not see the expression of her face clearly. They both stood as if waiting for the other, until finally she said, ‘OK.’
‘I like you a lot.’
He feared she would laugh again, but she did not. She did not move or say anything, and that perhaps was worse. The leaves above collided against one another with soft noises and a few cars moved by with throbs of sound.
‘Thanks,’ she finally said. ‘But I have a boyfriend.’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
And now she laughed. She stepped close and pressed her face into his shoulder and turned her head from side to side, a warmth and movement so unexpected that it hardly seemed credible. Clumsily he reached to the back of her neck, but already she was stepping away.
When they reached the entrance to the subdivision she said goodbye as though she expected he would go in, and he did. He glanced back, and she was walking quickly away. Yet as he continued around the curve of the street toward home he had a slippery sense of accomplishment. He glanced up and saw clouds obscuring the stars in the west. In bed, he lay turning his thoughts and waiting to hear the rain. He lay awake until late, but he didn’t hear any rain, and then he slept.
And after this, he still felt prevented by Christopher’s presence from speaking to her. To go through him to Heather appeared as impossible as building a V-8 from the contents of his bedroom – the task made a mockery of his resources and his tools. He listened to them from his room, but he never could make out words. Their laughter made him upset and anxious; he could not think what they might be laughing over together, unless it was himself. He found a few doodles that she had done, on a corner of a magazine, on the back of a piece of junk mail. They were of random objects. A shoe. An egg. A hand. He stared long at these. At the places where he knew she had been – the living-room sofa, a chair at the kitchen table – he put his face to the surfaces, and smelled for her.
Then one day he went up the antenna. He had no particular intention of spying: he didn’t even know that anyone was home. His father had had cable TV installed a couple of years earlier, and the antenna hadn’t been used since, but it still stood beside the house on a structure of steel tubes. The crossbars happened to form a kind of ladder, and Ellis liked to go up to see the horizon and watch the traffic in the street, to be alone and above things.
A rain had fallen earlier in the afternoon, leaving the bars of the antenna tower cool and moist. He paused at each rung to be sure of his grip. At the second floor, at Christopher’s window, a narrow vertical gap remained between the shut curtains, and in this gap he saw a movement, the colour of flesh, perhaps an arm rising. He looked away, to the concrete below. A low chorus of engines muttered at idle in Main Street, on the other side of the fence. He listened for a few seconds. Then, leaning precariously, peering through the opening between the curtains, he saw Christopher, shirtless, facing him, and he feared that Christopher could see him, but Christopher made no sign of doing so. In front of Christopher stood a desk chair. His attitude and posture seemed odd. He twitched. Also, someone sat in the desk chair with a head of brown hair, Heather’s, and she leaned toward Christopher. Briefly, Ellis thought they were talking, but then he saw that this was incorrect. Heather faced Christopher – who faced Ellis – with her head at the level of his hips, and he had his shirt off, and his pants were down. Heather moved slightly, put a hand on his naked hip, and he rolled his head. Ellis adjusted his hands, looked again down at the concrete. She was giving Christopher a blow job. Ellis felt a weird laugh rising but swallowed it. Christopher made a meaningless vowel sound, loud enough to be heard through the window, and Heather’s head inclined. Christopher took a small step backward. Heather turned and moved and Ellis couldn’t see her any longer.
