Part 13 (1/2)

I said, ”No, you didn't lie for long.”

”The next time you see me, things aren't going to be like this.”

She looked around the room when she said that, and I thought that's what she meant: that the three of them weren't going to be living in that house much longer, that she was going to make a move. She didn't say that, but I was sure she meant that.

She pa.s.sed the bong back to me then, and that's when I looked past the ring and saw her fingers. Each one was bitten down to the quick of the nail. They looked like baby fingers, all pink and without even the thinnest thread of white nail showing. When I saw that, I knew I had no idea, really, of how things were with her.

”You know more about me than anyone, Vangie,” she said then.

”More than Luke?”

”Probably. You know different things about me, Vangie. You know me longer, too.”

I could tell by the way she kept saying my name that she was high, high, high.

”You know me pretty well, too,” I said.

We stopped talking then, and June filled the bong a second time. The ticking of the clock and the whirring of the refrigerator seemed loud, the way they always did when I was stoned. To keep from staring at June's fingers as she packed in the pot, I studied the kitchen table. Along with salt and pepper shakers and a napkin holder that I remembered us making in seventh grade shop cla.s.s, two bottles of Jim Beam were out on the table. There were a few gla.s.ses with the whiskey, and it looked like it was just where the three of them kept it. Handy-like.

”Do you know what's funny?” June said then.

”What?” I said. ”What's funny?”

”It's funny you and I never kissed. I thought so many times when we were talking, Vangie, that we'd kiss. But we never did.”

I looked at her after she said that, and she looked like herself, but she also looked like a stranger. She was someone I loved and did not know at all. It was the way my mother looked to me right before she left, and the way Del looked when he came home from treatment. Strangers all the more strange because I loved them.

”I didn't know you thought about that,” I said.

”Didn't you ever think about it?”

It was the first time in a long time that I wanted to tell the truth, or what I knew of the truth.

”No,” I said. ”Or if I did think of it, I didn't know it.”

”It's all right,” she said. ”It doesn't hurt my feelings if you didn't think about it.”

We sat there, not talking, and I felt the same way I felt the night I told her I wanted to be her boyfriend-even though she was the one who spoke, who said words that couldn't be taken back. I thought we would go on sitting there, not talking, but June said the next thing. Took the next chance.

”Do you want to kiss now?” she said.

I didn't answer, but I didn't move when she got up from the chair or when she smoothed a piece of my hair back from my face.

”Hey friend,” she said. Then we were kissing.

It was not like any kiss I ever had. There was no insistence in it, no next step. Her mouth tasted cloudy. When June made a small noise into the kiss, I did, too.

”It's hard,” she said when she pulled away. ”Both of us wanting to be the girl.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. If there had been a time to kiss, it was the night I told her I wanted to be her boyfriend. But I had backed up a million miles from that place. I could not keep letting her touch me.

”Do you ever think about leaving, Vangie? Going someplace else and starting over?”

”All the time.”

She told me again that the next time I saw her, things would be different, even though she really did love Ray. Then she told me about the kind thing Ray had done for her. I was hardly there and could hardly hear the things she was saying, but I made myself listen.

When her allergies were bad at the end of the summer and her eyes burned and itched, Ray would make her lie down on the bed, and he'd put his mouth over each of her eyes. He'd lick gently at each lid, at the little bit of red rim, and at the eyeball itself.

”He said that his mom used to do it for him when he was little, whenever he got something in his eye. He said it always made him feel better.”

”And that's why you love him.”

”That's not the only reason,” she said. ”But what you said before? About how it can't go on? I know it. I keep meaning to leave. And I don't.”

And even though I was hardly there in the room with her anymore, I made myself say, ”You can leave anytime you want to.”

I said it, but I didn't believe it. I believed things were the way they were with Ray and Luke because June wanted them to be that way. She was right in the middle, at the center, and she didn't want to swim to sh.o.r.e. Just as I was thinking that, Luke walked in.

”What's this?” he said when he came into the room. From the way he looked at me, I knew he was trying to read my face, but I pulled that door closed. He stood watching us awhile, then he walked toward the table and reached for one of the bottles of Jim Beam.

”Guess I'll join the party,” he said, but I was already pus.h.i.+ng back from the table.

”Stay,” June said to me. ”My two favorite people. I want you two to be friends.”

I said, ”Luke already is my friend.”

”I always tell him you're like a sister to me, Vangie. No, I tell him we're closer than sisters. I told him you know everything.”

”I don't know everything.”

”You know everything about us,” June said, and even though she was talking to me, she was looking at Luke when she said it. I could tell from the way her arm s.h.i.+fted that she was touching him under the table. Rubbing his thigh and c.o.c.k.

”I bet you hear more than you ever wanted to,” I said to Luke.

”No. But I hear a lot. See a lot, too.”

When he said that, his face went cold, and I knew I wasn't the only one in the room who could shut the door tight on what was inside.

”You've been a stranger out here,” he said then. ”Have a drink?”

He was reaching for another gla.s.s, but he wasn't asking me to stay. It was all a sign that I should keep on moving and become the stranger he just called me. I wondered when he'd come home and how long he'd been standing outside the kitchen, looking in at June and me. Long enough to see our kiss and all that sisterly affection was my guess. I stood up.

”It's good night for me,” I said.

”All right, if we can't persuade you,” June said, and downed the shot Luke had poured for her. Then she pushed the three joints toward me.