Fragile

she’d rented and turned off before the bloody conclusion. If she didn’t think about it, it wasn’t real. She could do that. Always had been able to. But her body was disloyal, puking by the side of the road, sobbing. Now her hands were shaking, adrenaline pumping for no good reason.

“Sorry,” she said again. “I’m not having a good night.”

But he didn’t say anything, just kept driving. Well, fine, fuck you, too, she thought. When the cold air got too much, she rolled up the window and leaned her head against the glass.

“Should we put on some music?” she asked.

“Radio’s broke.”

Her mother insisted that there was no way Charlene could remember her father. He’d died when she was very young, in a car accident on his way home from work. But she did remember him-how it felt to hold his hand or ride on his shoulder. She knew his face, a lot like hers, from the photographs she had of him. But that was not how she remembered him. Nor were there particular events in her memory of him. It was an essence, a feeling- just a good, warm feeling, a safe, secure happiness. When she was younger, she could access that feeling simply by holding his picture to her chest and closing her eyes. But as she grew older, she couldn’t do that anymore. It became elusive, a shadow slipping around the corner while she gave chase. How could she ever get it? That wonderful feeling? The safety of being loved by someone who didn’t want to violate you in return, who didn’t want to take something that didn’t belong to him?

She’d thought Graham was all right at first. She was nine when he and her mother married. There were fun times-a trip to Florida and Disney, a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. She couldn’t say she’d ever loved him; but she remembered feeling okay when he was around.

But Charlene had gotten her period when she was ten and started developing early. By age eleven, she’d needed a bra. He’d started looking at her differently then, averting his eyes, shrinking from her embraces. She felt the sting of a rejection she didn’t really understand. Around the same time, his marriage to her mother started to go sour. The good times were over; there were only fights and tears and slamming doors.

Then a few years later it happened. She awoke in the night and went to the kitchen in her underwear and a tank top to get a glass of orange juice. On the way down, she passed by the family room without even glancing inside. She might have done the same on the way back if he’d been quiet, but as she passed by the darkened room, she heard a low moan. The sofa bed was out, and Graham was on top of the sheets, wearing just a T-shirt, his bottom half exposed. He was masturbating. She stood staring, stunned. When she looked at his face, he was watching her. He didn’t try to cover himself. He just continued pumping his hand, watching her. She couldn’t read his expression-something between need and anger. She felt her face start to burn and her throat go dry. She backed away until she hit the wall behind her. It must have been seconds, but it felt like hours that she stood there, mouth gaping-disgusted, ashamed, and oddly fascinated.

Finally, she broke into a run for the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. All night she waited for him to try to turn the knob and get in, but he didn’t. She thought about telling her mother, but she couldn’t imagine the conversation, the words she would use to say what he had done. Her mother was so sad already, so unhappy. Charlene knew she remembered Dad, too. I shouldn’t have bothered trying to marry again. I was lucky to have love like that once. I didn’t deserve him in the first place, the things I’ve done.

The next morning, Graham was sitting at the kitchen table with his paper and a mug she’d given him one Father’s Day-WORLD’S GREATEST DAD. She hadn’t even meant it when she bought it; she was just trying to be nice. Now she wanted to smash it across his stupid face.

“Good morning, Charlene,” he said. His expression, when he peered at her over the paper, was a dare.

“Want some eggs, baby?” her mother asked. A cigarette burned in the ashtray, the coffeepot gurgled, and morning show hosts bantered on the television. Outside, there was a depressing drizzle.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “I may never eat again.”

Graham held her eyes.

“Oh, stop it,” her mother said. “You’re a skinny minny. Toast?”

“Sure, fine. Toast. Thanks.”

Her mother popped the bread in and then went upstairs to get ready for work. For a few minutes, they sat there. Graham pretended to read; Charlene listened to the television but stared at the wallpaper.

“I was thinking on the way home tonight I’d pick up a DVD player, get rid of that old VCR.”

She’d been begging him for one for months. You could only get VCR tapes from the library. It was embarrassing not to have a DVD player.

He put the paper neatly on the table in front of him and folded his hands over it. His hair was still wet from the shower. The denim shirt he wore brought out the blue of his eyes. She shrank back from him when he leaned toward her slightly. She saw remorse on his face, something sad.

“What do you think about that, Charlene?”

What was he offering her? Was it an apology? A bribe? She was nearly fourteen at the time; she knew what he’d done was wrong. Her mother would leave him. He could go to jail. She was old enough, smart enough, to know these things. You learned about it in school, what was okay, what wasn’t. So why did she feel dirty and small inside? Why did she feel ashamed and afraid? She kept thinking of him lying there, that hungry look on his face. But if she told her mother, the whole world would come crashing down around them. It wasn’t as if he’d touched her.

She turned her eyes to his and held his gaze, even though the act made her stomach cramp with nerves.

“That would be great, Graham,” she said. “But we really need a new television, too.”

Now the road stretched before them, and Charlene watched it disappear under the hood of the car. She found it hypnotic, the way the car filled with orange light when they passed beneath the tall highway lamps, then went dark again for a time. After a while, adrenaline abandoned her, leaving her weak and exhausted.

She dozed once, nodded awake with a start, feeling suddenly, deeply afraid. But she willed herself to be calm. He’s waiting for me, she thought. He got my message and he’ll be waiting. Everything is going to be fine. She thought of Kat Von D from LA Ink, who’d left home at fourteen and now was on TV, a famous tattoo artist. Everything had turned out all right for her. With those thoughts, she started to drift again.

A bump in the road brought her back. It was dark, except for the glow of the dashboard lights. It took a few seconds before she realized that they’d left the highway, were driving along a deserted rural road. Not a streetlamp, not a house in sight. Just the black shadows of trees against the sky. She felt a thump of fear.

“Hey,” she said. She tried to sound casual. “Where are we? Where are we going?”

The old analog clock on the dash, lit in a dirty yellow light, read 12:32 A.M.

11

Jones Cooper had been a beautiful boy-lacrosse star, straight-A student, crown prince of Hollows High. And Maggie Monroe, though she’d never have admitted it, had spent her high school years admiring him from afar. His body was a study in perfect form. He was fast, agile, powerful-every inch of him exactly as it should be.

But this wasn’t why Maggie found herself daydreaming about him, watching him secretly from beneath the bleachers. It was because beneath all those golden layers, there was a place where the sun didn’t reach. There was a place within him that saw. He knew that there was a world beyond The Hollows, the town that stood in his thrall. And that it could be ugly and frightening. There was something dark about him, or maybe just something that acknowledged the darkness.

At least that’s what Maggie thought she saw when she watched him. She was the geek in black, with black fingernails and eyeliner, the brain, the poet, the freak. His eyes had never rested on Maggie in high school, though he claimed differently now. I always noticed you. I thought you were too smart for a stupid jock like me.

But Maggie remembered his gaze always drifting over her to the prettiest or most popular girls, girls who shone a bright reflection back at him. Maggie didn’t mind. He was a star in the sky; she never expected to touch him, only to gaze at him in admiration and wonder.

Anyway, she didn’t have time for boys. She needed to study, to do well, knowing that an education was her