Call Me Twice

Chapter 3: Stayin' Alive

Harper

With no job to go to, sneaking out to go swimming with my girlfriend proves all too easy. I take Josie with me, because his cold is better and it would be irresponsible to leave him. Plus I feel bad. I'm supposed to be at my dad's house this weekend so he's gonna be alone while my mom works. Yes, it's Friday night so I should be going over to his house now or something. I don't know it's not like the custody agreement is to do with me. I had plans. He can show up to an empty house and be disappointed. I don't know what to say; nothing is more disappointing than who I choose to be.
So I pack Josie onto the back of my bike and ride the three miles to the nice end of town. Lia's house. All the big fancy houses back onto the forest preserve. My father lives over as well, just on the even richer end of it. His house is on acres, Lia's house is in a gated community where there's a little gap in the fence big enough for a beat up bike and two poor boys.
"He just had a cold he's not going swimming in October," is how Lia chooses to greet us at the door.
"Aw," Josie sighs, but I've got him bundled up in a jacket, "It's okay. I brought comic books."
"Hulk is on TV, come on," she says, leading us in.
"Really?" He asks, hopefully.
"Yeah, you can eat whatever, my mom made Mandoo," she says, showing him to the living room. The house smells of popori, and also just generally money. I kick off my worn shoes to feel the soft carpet beneath my toes. I smile and look up at the ceiling fan. I strip off my shirt to examine my bruised arms, still rife with attempts to get an IV in my vein. I stretch idly. It's warm in here. I kick off my jeans as well. Lia is wrapped in a white robe over her black bathing suit. I have no bathing suit. I'm lucky I have clothes.
"Thanks," Josie says, quietly, sinking down into a blanket on the sofa.
"We'll be outside," I say, messing up his hair.
"Just call," Lia says, going to the door. She's holding a robe for me. I smile and walk out the glass door to the big in ground swimming pool. Edged in rock and cement, and flicker cool in the night, with underwater lights glowing.
I run and jump in, the ice cold water hitting me slap. Lia leaps in after me, starting music on her boom box.
We both surface, laughing. I whoop, shaking my hair out of my face.
Stayin' Alive is playing on the boom box. I kick over to Lia, kissing her lips.
"Oh my god, oh my god it is so cold, it is so cold this was such a bad idea," she giggles, shivering.
"Come here," I wrap my arms around her, "Better?"
"No, oh my god you are like an icicle I want out, I'm out."
"It's not that bad," I laugh but my whole body is shaking.
"Oh my god, Harper you are gonna get pneumonia I swear, get out," she crawls out, sleek black hair shiny on her olive skin, smooth skin now slippery with cold, cold water.
"I'm not that cold," my skin feels like it's coming off. It's great.
"Get out, for me? Just come on get out— don't do it for you, do it for me," she says, wrapping up in her fluffy robe and holding up a black one for me.
"For you," I say, wading out, I take the robe, shivering, and put it on. It's so soft, I don't think I own anything this soft.
"That was a bad idea, I'm so sorry, god I'm so cold," she shivers.
"No, it was a good idea," I say, hugging her tightly, "I'll warm you up let's not go inside."
"Just come back in the kitchen, you can't warm me up, Harper your lips are blue," she giggles. I obediently let her tug me back into the kitchen where we both slip on the marble tile. We laugh, clutching each other's arms.
"You'd fall," she says, as she regains her footing, leaning against the now smudge sliding glass door. She frowns at me, well aware her words are true. It is true of course. I would just fall. She's seen me do it a hundred times. Slip and let myself fall to see how badly hurt I'll be. Walk directly into cement walls, walk off buildings, tumble down stairs. I've never had a care for my own body.
"I wouldn't let you fall," I say, as I hold her up, my fingers digging into her arm as we keep our balance on the wet floor.
She smiles and tips her forehead against mine. Then she snatches a towel from a chair to put on the floor.
"Shit, left the boom box outside, I'll get it, before your neighbors complain to the cops."
"I don't think they care."
"They wouldn't notice us?"
"They're on the city council and they wouldn't inflict you on the cops again."
"That could be true," hell it probably is.
Harper. Age 6 and a half. Crime? Standing in the middle of the road and refusing to move for cars. Just balancing on the double yellow lines, laughing, as cars raced past me. I lived the feeling of the wind in my hair. Death so terribly close to me. It was the first time I could remember feeling really alive.
Anyway Pine Hollow PD hasn't exactly been fond of me since. That's okay I can live with it.
I remember that day. It was the day my father got half custody. Visitation rights. He didn't want them. But it reduced the child support he hadn't been paying. It was a high school party and my mom was drunk. And he was a college student. She told him she was having me but he wouldn't return her calls. Eventually she got with Josie's dad and he helped her find a decent lawyer and now he pays child support. And to reduce it he has visitation and custody. He's made it excessively clear he doesn't want me. That's okay. I'm not the sort of thing anybody wants.
"Come in the kitchen, it's warmer, you're shaking," Lia says, soft cold hands in mine as she leads me into the kitchen. "There's left over pizza."
"I'm not gonna say no," I say, fiddling with the boom box. 'The Right Stuff' is now playing on it. I smile, nodding my head.
"Are you gonna come over on Sunday?" She asks.
"I'm with my dad," I say, frowning, "I go home late."
"So? Say you're going to study, we can do whatever," she says.
"I don't know," I have no idea what I'm going to do.
"It's your birthday Monday," she says, "We're not not doing anything."
"Yeah, we are, 'cause I don't care. It's—shocking I lived this long," I say, as we get out pizza boxes from the fridge. She fiddles with the oven to heat it up.
"Yeah, so we're gonna celebrate, aren't you and your mom doing anything?"
"Oh we had an agreement not to do anything for either of our birthdays, which means we're both gonna break it because we never keep our promises to each other," I say, grinning. Sweet sixteen. My mother spent hers in the hospital with a premature newborn, and parents who didn't come to even visit her because she was refusing to give the baby up for adoption. Me. I was born a week before her sixteenth birthday. And so she sat in a hospital bed calling aid places to see where we could go as soon as the doctor said we could leave. My father wasn't returning her calls. In the end a sympathetic teacher took her in. With my father twenty two and her fifteen at my conception I'm fully aware that it was a hell of a lot more like rape than a drunk hook up. But we don't talk about that. We don't talk about those things why would we? We already know they're there.
"Let's go to the movies or something after school?" She says, tucking my wet hair out of my face, "Okay? I want to have fun with you."
"Yeah okay, you think of something we'll do it," I say, leaning forward to kiss her.
She lets me, kissing my wet cold lips as we lean against each other in the now warm kitchen. We're soaking wet and still shivering. I wrap my robe around both of us and kiss her again.
"Seriously though, I really don't think I'm going to stop loving you. So you'd better get used to it," I say, cupping her face in my cold hands, "Gonna marry you someday. If I keep on living."
"You'd better," she says, nose against mine as she looks into my eyes.
"Marry you? Or keep on living? Cause I can promise the first not the second," I say.
"I like you living, Harper Miller," she kisses me again.
"Would you murder me if I went and jumped in the pool with you in my arms?"
"Yes, they would never find your body, come on, we'll go upstairs to the den and watch Jurassic Park, right?" She asks, smiling.
"Yeah, whatever you say," I say, hugging her tightly one more time.
Pizza warm, we go disturb Josie and his comic books. He hasn't seen that movie we wouldn't let him. Too scary. Now we're letting him because we forget why we were against it. We go upstairs and curl up under blankets and on mounds of couch cushions we tug onto the floor. Lia crawls right underneath my arm. Sticky warm pizza. Gooey cheese on our fingers. People screaming on the television. Red couch cushions on a hardwood floor. Blankets from colleges we'll never go to. This is enough for tonight. Just enough for tonight.
I lie there with my arm around my girlfriend. My face in her soft cool black hair. And I count the freckles down my arm and watch the way our fingers tangle together. And knowing some peace I do sleep.