Here On Earth

superior look that could make almost anyone feel like an idiot.

It was best not to talk to Hollis when he got like this. March sat down on a wooden stool and picked up a book from a box of her father’s law books that was being stored up here. Criminal Procedure. She wondered if criminals had the same talent she did: to appear to be doing one thing-leafing through an old, dusty book-white you were really doing something else completely inside your mind. In March’s case, she was imagining that she was kissing Hollis as she sat there and dust floated by.

There was a sharp, stinging odor in the attic, as if a trail of sulfur had been poured over the wide pine floorboards. It was probably the scent of fury, which, in Hollis’ case, was often overpowering. The heat had a heavy, yellow cast, and it was oddly exhausting. Hollis lay down on his metal bed and turned his face toward the wall. There were squirrels nesting on the other side of the plaster; their feet skittered back and forth, like drumbeats inside the eaves.

“Go away,” Hollis said. “Get lost.”

March knew he could be cruel, she’d seen it herself. In a fight he was particularly dangerous because his own blood didn’t frighten him; he didn’t care if he got hurt. Boys at school had learned this the hard way; even those far stronger than Hollis were amazed at how much punishment he could take. Alan had given up physically harassing him; sticks and stones were nothing to Hollis. broken bones still less. It was humiliation that did the trick. The supper eaten at the kitchen counter. The bed in the attic. Anything secondhand, second-rate, run-down, charitably donated.

“Fine,” March said after he told her to go. She was genuinely amazed by the cool authority of her own voice. “Your loss.”

March felt as if she were outside of herself, perched somewhere in the rafters of the attic, watching calmly as her earthly form flung the heavy law book on the floor. A cloud of dust rose between them. She would have done anything for Hollis at that moment. Thrown herself out the window. Relinquished every possession. Slit her wrists. But she certainly wasn’t about to let him know.

Hollis turned to look at her as she headed toward the door. When it seemed that, indeed, she truly was leaving, he stood up, confused. “Wait,” he said.

It was probably ninety degrees outside, and much stuffier up in that attic. March thought about that night when she’d watched him cry himself to sleep. She thought about all of their kisses. A single leaf fell from the chestnut tree in the yard, and March swore she could hear it, falling and falling. When Hollis came over to her, March could feel how hot he was. She was only fourteen, but she knew what she wanted. She wanted him to look at her that way.

“Don’t be mean to me,” he said.

March laughed. He always said that. “You’re the mean one.”

“No, I’m not. It’s you.”

She knew what was going to happen if she stayed, and yet she couldn’t imagine leaving. That was when she began to wonder if the scent of sulfur wasn’t fury but desire, and if, perhaps, it might not be rising from her own skin. She’ll never know how she had the nerve to kiss him the way she did. This wasn’t anything like what they’d been doing on the roof on nights when they sneaked out their windows. Those kisses were shy, tentative things, and this was everything; this was what was deep inside. As soon as she kissed him like that, Hollis could tell how far she was willing to go. He didn’t have to be a mind reader to divine that. It was the way she leaned her head back; it was the way she closed her eyes. She thought she was so smart, keeping all her secrets safe, but in a single instant she revealed every one.

Hollis locked the door and they went to his bed, which hadn’t yet been made up with sheets. When he got on top of her, March heard herself say Oh as if she meant to tell him something, but her voice sounded peculiar and he wasn’t listening anyway. He knew how to kiss, he really did; he knew how to touch you in ways that made you feel like crying, and caused you to want him even more. He must have had the ability to make a girl lose her reason completely, because there they were, in the attic, with Mrs. Dale cooking chicken cutlets for dinner in the kitchen and Alan drinking a beer out on the porch, and March wasn’t stopping him when he pulled down her jeans. A truck delivering some fencing Alan had ordered turned into the driveway, but March didn’t understand what the deliveryman was calling out. She couldn’t understand anything, except how hot she was inside. His fingers were burning her up when he reached into her underpants; he seemed to be going right through her, but she must have been crazy, she was crazy by then, because she never once thought to tell him to stop.

Alan was still talking with the deliveryman from the hardware store when Hollis pulled his zipper down. March grabbed her long hair away from her face. There was a wasp hitting against the window, and all that dust, and outside the fencing was being tossed down from the truck. She knew this would happen, back when she was standing in the doorway. She knew once you’d started something with Hollis, you’d better be ready to go all the way.

All the same, March had a nervous feeling in the center of her stomach; she was starting to have pins and needles in her legs, as she always did when she was frightened.

“Maybe we shouldn’t.”

When she closed her eyes and turned away, she could feel him. All that heat, right next to her. “You know we’re going to.” He was whispering, but his voice sounded thick. “You know we will.”

Of course, he was right, and she knew it. She went to the attic every night after that, and now she wonders how they managed to keep their secret. Sometimes they’d do it with their clothes on, hurried and silent, and he’d cover her mouth so she couldn’t make a sound. Don’t say anything, he’d whisper in her ear, when they heard someone downstairs, Judith Dale on her way to the bathroom, or Alan coming home late from a date. Don’t move, he’d say, and he’d make love to her that way, forbidding her to shift her body, not even an arm or a leg, until she was so overcome with desire she thought she would faint.

That winter, they grew even more daring, and March sometimes didn’t get back to her own bed until six or seven. By then the house was already growing light and she had to run through the halls or be found out. Whenever Mrs. Dale wondered about noises in the night, March blamed the squirrels nesting in the wall, or the family of raccoons who had come inside for the winter. Or perhaps it was the wind-that might explain the moaning Mrs. Dale heard, as if someone’s heart was about to break. They were shameless; they did it three times a night, and there were days when March was so exhausted she’d fall asleep in class. At noon, she was often so tired she would put her head on the table in the cafeteria and miss lunch completely. Belinda Cooper, who went to a girls’ boarding school in Connecticut and was only home on weekends, was completely puzzled when March would come over to visit, only to curl up at the foot of the bed, where she would sleep for hours. Of course it was Susanna Justice, who had inherited her father’s talent for judgment, who finally figured it out.

“I don’t believe it,” Susie said after taking a good look at the dreamy expression on March’s face. “You’re doing it with him, aren’t you? Now I know you’re insane.”

Susie went with March to a doctor she’d heard about in Boston for birth control pills. The girls said they were going shopping, and in fact, both made certain to hurriedly buy a pair of shoes before starting for home.

“I wish it was anyone but him,” Susie had said. “I wish you weren’t so stupid.”

They were waiting for their bus across from South Station. The girls had been on hiatus from despising each other, but March could tell they’d be back to hating each other before the afternoon was through.

“Well, maybe love is blind,” March said archly.

“Maybe you are too,” Susie slung back.

To this day, Susie doesn’t understand why March fell in love with Hollis. Susie has always demanded hard evidence and documentation, and there is no explanation for something such as love, considering what grief it can bring. Now, for instance, what would compel March to go up the crooked old stairs to the attic? There’s nothing but junk on the other side of the door, boxes of it, and yet she can’t seem to stay away. The explanation she gives herself is one Susanna Justice would never accept. It is simply that March has discovered that when she kneels beside that old metal bed, she can feel the wind rattling the roof; she can still hear every leaf as it falls from the chestnut tree to the cold ground below.

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