The Body Finder

Instead, he reached out and grabbed her hand. “If it’s all right with you, I think I’ll keep ahold of you anyway. I don’t want to be responsible for letting you fall again.”

She didn’t argue.

The walk home went way too quickly for Violet. Jay had led her through the trees and into the clearing behind her house in no time at all.

Her parents had already gone for the day before she and Jay arrived back at her house. Her dad was working, as he did almost every Saturday, even when it wasn’t tax season, and her mom had rented out a booth at the farmer’s market to display some of her paintings.

Jay insisted on carrying her up the back steps and into the kitchen, and this time Violet didn’t complain when he lifted her. He set her down gently on the kitchen counter, and then he rummaged through the cupboard while Violet told him where the Band-Aids were. He came back with bandages, gauze, cotton balls, antibacterial wash, and two tubes of ointment. It seemed like overkill to Violet, but she didn’t say anything. She wanted to see what he planned to do.

“Okay, this is probably gonna sting,” he warned as he leaned over and began cleaning her wounds.

It did sting, more than Violet let on, and she had to bite her lip as the tears came back all over again. But she let him keep working without even flinching, which was no small feat as he stripped away the layers of dirt from her skin.

The wounds were big, and round, and raw. She thought she looked like a little kid with the giant scrapes on her knees, and she imagined that they were going to scab over and possibly even scar. She felt like such an idiot for falling over her own two clumsy feet.

But Jay was gentle, and he took his time, being careful not to hurt her. She admired his patience and took perverse pleasure in his touch. He didn’t look up to see how she was doing; he just kept working until he was satisfied that her scrapes were cleaned out. And then he picked up the antibacterial wash and some cotton balls.

Violet sucked in her breath when he brushed the soaked cotton ball against the angry red abrasions. Jay looked up at her but didn’t stop dabbing at them. Instead he blew on her knees as he labored over them, just like her mother used to do when Violet was a little girl. She thought it was sweet, and she swore that she was even more attracted to him than ever in that tender moment.

When he finished with the wash, he gingerly patted an antibiotic ointment on her knees before covering them with bandages.

“There,” he said, admiring his own handiwork. “Good as new.”

Violet glanced at the ridiculously huge Band-Aids on her knees and looked at him doubtfully. “You really think so? ‘Good as new’?”

He smiled. “I think I did pretty good. It’s not my fault you can’t walk.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would never have tripped if he’d just stayed the same old Jay he’d always been, gangly and childlike. But she knew that she was being irrational. He was bound to grow up eventually; she’d just never imagined that he’d grow up so well. Instead she accused him: “Well, maybe if you hadn’t pushed me I wouldn’t have fallen.” She made the outlandish accusation with a completely straight face.

He shook his head. “You’ll never be able to prove it. There were no witnesses-it’s just your word against mine.”

She giggled and hopped down. “Yeah, well, who’s gonna believe you over me? Weren’t you the one who shoplifted a candy bar from the Safeway?” She limped over to the sink while she taunted him with her words, and she washed the dirt from the minor scrapes on her palms.

“Whatever! I was seven. And I believe you were the one who handed it to me and told me to hide it in my sleeve. Technically that makes you the mastermind of that little operation, doesn’t it?” He came up behind her, and reaching around her, he poured some of the antibacterial wash onto her hands.

She was taken completely off guard by the intimate gesture. She froze as she felt his chest pressing against her back until that was all she could think about for the moment and she temporarily forgot how to speak. She watched as the red scrapes fizzed with white bubbles from the disinfectant. He leaned over her shoulder, setting the bottle down and pulling her hands up toward him. He blew on them too. Violet didn’t even notice the sting this time.

And then it was over. He released her hands, and as she stood there, dazed, he handed her a clean towel to dry them on.

When she turned around to face him, she realized that she had been the only one affected by the moment, that his touch had been completely innocent.

He was looking at her like he was waiting for her to say something, and she was suddenly aware that her mouth was still open. She finally gathered her wits enough to speak again. “Yeah, well, maybe if you hadn’t done it right in front of the cashier, we might have gotten away with it. Instead, you got both of us grounded for stealing.”

He didn’t miss a beat, and he seemed unaware of her temporary lapse. “And some might say that our grounding saved us from a life of crime.”

She hung the towel over the oven’s door handle. “Maybe it saved me, but the jury’s still out on you. I always thought you were kind of a bad seed.”

He gave her a questioning look. “Seriously, a ‘bad seed,’ Vi? When did you turn ninety and start saying things like ‘bad seed’?”

She pushed him as she walked by, even though he really wasn’t in her way. He gave her a playful shove from behind and teased her, “Don’t make me trip you again.”

Now more than ever, Violet hoped that this crush of hers passed soon, so she could get back to the business of being just friends. Otherwise, this was going to be a long-and painful-year.

CHAPTER 4

THE LAKE HOUSE WAS CROWDED WITH TEENAGERS, and they seemed to be coming and going in waves. The lawn leading down to the water was littered with towels and blankets, water bottles and pop cans, bags of chips, and kids of all shapes and sizes basking in the warmth of the summer heat as they soaked up the last of the season’s sun.

The house belonged to the grandmother of Gabrielle Myers, a friend of theirs from school. Violet didn’t even recognize all of the kids who were there that day, and she doubted that they all knew Gabrielle or her grandmother, but instead were tagging along with friends, or friends of friends, who had invited them to come.

Violet had carefully chosen some long-hanging, loose-fitting basketball shorts to wear over her swimsuit, in hopes of keeping her injuries at least partially hidden. But it didn’t take long before one…and then two…and then at least twenty of her friends had noticed her bandages peeking out from beneath the swishing fabric, and she was forced to recount her morning accident.

Jay loved hearing her tell the story, and every time he heard her talking about it, he would come over so that he could interject, and of course embellish, his role in the events. In his version, he was her champion, practically carrying her from the woods and performing near-miraculous medical feats to save her legs from complete amputation. Violet, and annoyingly every other girl within earshot, couldn’t help but giggle while he jokingly sang his own praises.

Violet happened to walk up just in time to hear Jay recounting his version once more to a group of eager admirers.

“Hero? I wouldn’t say hero…” he quipped.