cold enough to make cuddling together under the blankets logical, sensible, practical.
She glanced up through the trees to the cabin on the far end. Wickie probably hadn’t seen the spray paint on the back door yet.
That Kevin, he could be really disgusting sometimes. She could remember him doing things clear back to the first grade, breaking people’s windows, vandalizing schoolrooms. He’d never got caught. Nobody turned in Kevin. They thought it was funny. Sometimes they helped.
Davey had found a piece of wood and was drawing channels for the mountain water, prying rocks out of the way. Where did he think the water would go, she wondered. No matter how hard he tried, it would eventually return to its channel again.
The day after that celebration up on the mountain, Kevin had invited Davey up to his house. Bethica had found him with a bunch of the boys, spinning a blindfolded Davey around and around, edging him toward the Hodges’ swimming pool. Kevin knew Davey couldn’t swim. He thought it was funny. She had looked into Kevin’s eyes over the head of her foster brother and seen only anger at having his game frustrated.
She and Kevin had broken up that day. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d taken Davey to Wickie, who would never allow anything to harm him, and told Wickie never to allow Kevin anywhere near Davey again. She didn’t have to explain why. She’d been so angry with Kevin—She could still remember the look in Wickie’s dark eyes—relief, perhaps, that she’d finally grown up.
Now she was older than she’d ever intended to be. Her hand rested on her belt buckle, and she wondered what she was supposed to do. She might tell Wickie she had things under control, but really, Rimae was going to be so mad at her—
That stuff in Wickie’s living room, that was the worst. How could Kevin do something like that? She could feel herself gagging again at the memory, and hastily placed a hand over her mouth.
The worst part was, she was pretty sure he wasn’t finished, either. He was angry with her for breaking up with him, and he blamed Wickie. That business about the keg just made it that much worse. Wickie wasn’t afraid of Kevin, but he didn’t really know how bad he could be. He never gave up, never ever. And he was really angry about that keg.
Wickie acted like he didn’t care at all what Kevin did.
He was different. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he was definitely different. When he first came to Snow Owl, he’d looked at her with those dark, dark Indian eyes—they used to be blank, indifferent. As if he didn’t know who she was and didn’t care. Not just her, either; he looked at everybody that way.
Everybody except Davey. Wickie had always been really good with Davey. And ever since that day, he’d looked at her like a person, a real person. She’d gotten to know him better in the last few weeks than she ever thought she would. All the kids made fun of him, called him a dumb, drunk Indian who worked at the bar for free booze. He wasn’t that way, she knew for sure. He was smart and he was kind, even if he never talked about the future and school the way everybody else she knew did. Well, he wasn’t one of them, after all.
She looked around. Davey was sitting cross-legged in the mud, drawing lines with his stick. A blue jay was screaming at him. He didn’t notice. She got up and stretched and walked over to watch. Davey never looked up.
She couldn’t figure out Wickie and Rimae. Wickie didn’t care about Rimae, not really. He’d never looked at Rimae the way he ought to. He never talked about her. She asked him about her once and he just looked at her, his eyes back to being flat and cold all of a sudden.
She could feel herself blushing.
And then she remembered how it felt to be folded up in Wickie’s arms, and she wondered if that was the way
Rimae felt about him, and she blushed even worse, and kicked really hard at a rock and missed, and had to grab at a tree trunk to keep from falling in the stupid creek.
A curl of birch bark dug into her fingers. Catching her balance, she looked to see if her hand was covered with blood. There wasn’t any, and she experienced a vague regret. If Wickie held her head while she threw up, he’d pay attention to a bloody hand, wouldn’t he?
But there wasn’t even a bruise, and she sighed.
She ought to go home. Fix lunch for Davey.
There was supposed to be a party tomorrow night up at the clearing. She wondered if Kevin would get his keg this time. Probably; Rimae had been selling to him as soon as he turned nineteen last February. She wondered if Rimae would have changed her mind if she knew what Kevin and Bethica had done up on the mountainside six weeks ago. Would Rimae care? Would she blame Kevin, or her, or the beer?
Yes, she acknowledged. She’d be mad about it, but she would care.
She had to tell Kevin about the baby. He was the father, after all. He deserved to know.
And maybe that would take his mind off Wickie.
She could tell Kevin, and then tell Rimae, and then what? Get an abortion?
She shivered and pressed on her belt buckle again. Maybe Wickie was wrong?
But Wickie wasn’t wrong. Her breasts were getting larger, more sensitive; she was getting sick in the mornings; her period hadn’t come; her moods were swinging wildly all over the place.
She didn’t want to be pregnant. She wanted to be a kid for a while longer, go to parties like the one tomorrow night up on the mountainside, pretend nothing had happened.
She’d go. Just because Kevin was a jerk
