"No asking about my past."
Vince considers this for a moment, his eyes trailing over my face. And then he half smiles, rolling a piece of grass between his fingers. "Fair enough," he says, straightening his baseball cap on his head. A drop of sweat rolls down his forehead and he swipes it away impatiently.
"Anything else?" he inquires, dipping his head.
"If I start, um, puking again, like ever," I say and he raises an eyebrow, amused, but doesn't look at me. "Leave. Like seriously, just get right out of there."
A bark of laughter leaves his lips, and it's this excited, unhidden peal of laughter that I can't help but want to make it happen again. It's an unsettling feeling so I shove it down, far enough that I forget about it. He grins down at me. "Alright. I'll give you some privacy to chuck your guts everywhere. Scouts honor, and all that." He holds up a hand to his heart and my eyebrows raise.
"You were in the boy scouts?"
He laughs. "I was until I became too shitty at it. I couldn't tie knots for shit," he says.
I can't help the smile, or the warmth pooling in my gut because for a second I'm happy. "Can't all be perfect," I say and his smile is appreciative and soft, and it's too much so I look away.
We walk in quiet silence, his shoes making the sidewalk pavement crunch underneath his feet.
"Damn," he says as he lights a smoke with a purple lighter that has the words fucker written hastily on it in permanent marker. "Nasty habit," he says on an exhale and a stream of smoke follows. I shrug.
He grins down at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling, the sun making his brown eyes look golden around the edges. And then he chews his lip, turns his head like the sun behind my head hurt his eyes, and stands up straighter.
"We're here," he announces.
Here, turns out to be an abandoned house. I stare at the looming white house in front of me, shrubbery and long grass covering the front yard. The staircase leading up to the door is crumbling, the pavement old and worn down from years. "You're kidding."
"No way!" he says. "Come on."
I follow and wonder again, for like the ninth time how I got here, to this place, with this boy leading me into an abandoned house. But then I figure there's nothing else I could do other than this, nothing I really want to do anyways, so I follow after him.
I walk cautiously while he carelessly lumbers through the threshold, his cigarette burning brightly. He holds it between his index and middle fingers, and turns to me, holding out his arms in a behold manner.
"Nice place," I say sarcastically and he laughs in that pleased, surprised way again that I'm beginning to think I'll never quite get used to. He laughs like he'll never stop, like he never wants to stop.
"I swear I didn't take you here for no reason other than to show you a dump of a house," he says. "C'mon," he says and jogs up the steps.
I follow slowly, cautiously, and then halfway through my tiptoeing, I figure I don't give a shit if I fall through, and I sprint the rest of the way to catch up. He steadies me when I reach the top, puts his hands on shoulders firmly, and then exhales a bunch of smoke into my face. I cough as he grins apologetically.
"Sorry miss—" he catches himself, winking at me, his grin still in place.
"Okay," he says and puts his smoke out on the ground, clapping his hands together to dust off any possible ash. "I just figured, Caroline, that since you aren't into sharing the past, I could show you some of mine, right?"
I'm wary and I tuck hair behind my ears, my skin hot from being outside most of the day. Living near a beach my whole life has given me something of a natural tan. My skins already dark, freckles scattered across my arms. I brush my hands down my shirt smoothing out wrinkles that aren't there.
"Why are you doing this?" I ask. He doesn't really look surprised, so I keep talking. "Why? Seriously, I don't get it. You don't even know me. Don't get me wrong, you're cool. But." I stop.
He stares down at me and a long while passes. "I'm not going to say there's just something about you," he says with a hint of a smile. I was beginning to see that he almost always looks amused, even if he finds nothing funny. "I just knew someone like you once."
"And now what?" I ask him. "This is some kind of weird payback thing? Some repent your sins shit?" I couldn't even help the slight anger to my voice, or the way my shoulders stiffen defensively.
He shook his head once, calm. "It's not like that, Caroline."
I must've looked unsure because he leaned down and his eyes were at level with mine, "I swear," he said, "it's not like that. This isn't a charity case or some repent my sins thing. I just want to help you out, alright?"
I press my lips together, shrugging. "Whatever," I say, "fine. So what's this house about?"
He seems happy enough. At least the smile is back in place, whatever that may be worth. He leads me into a room and there's a small mattress on the floor. "My room," he says.
"What..." I pause and look around, and see more than I did on first glance. On the lower part of the wall, pictures and paintings that looks like a young child's work are taped and stapled there.
"This was my old house," he explains. "It's a long story. I don't even know why I took you here," he says, looking troubled. The first time I've seen him since that night on the beach, he looks less than happy. He hunches his shoulders, and then sits down on the mattress, the springs making noises underneath him.
I sit down next to him. "It's cool," I say. He doesn't smile but his eyes are gentle again, and I feel like I did something right.
He rubs his hand down his face, sighing tiredly. "Caroline, can I ask you something?"
"What?" I ask warily.
"What was it like? Drowning," he clarifies before I can ask. "I know," he says with his eyes trained on the ground, "I know there are rules. If you don't want to answer—"
"It was like gasping for air and there's none," I say. And then feel stupid, scratching the back of my hair, and try to explain better than the obvious there isn't any air. Obviously there isn't air. You're underwater. "It was like, someone was throwing me back and forth and I was letting them and..."
My throats closing up, the air in the room suddenly gone, so I stop and stand up, and shake my head. "No more, please. Please."
He stares up at me, his face calm and serious and too knowing. Too something. Like he knows me, or something and it's confusing. The only way to explain how he looked at me then: like he'd been drowning with me. And that made...no sense."It's okay, you don't have to... the rules. It's okay, no more," he says. "No more."
The "alright" I give in reply is barely comprehensible and I collapse down next to him on the mattress, both of us on our backs, staring up.
* * *
There'd been a little girl who'd immediately caught my eye when we'd entered the park and sat in front of the playground. She was sitting on the ground, and was surrounded by rocks she'd found. She was stacking them on top of one another, a sense of determination in her movements.
I watched a drop of sweat roll down her forehead and her swipe it away as I said, "This could be considered the activity of a pedophile, you know."
He shrugs, turning his cap backwards and slumping down on the bench. He's rolling a smoke between his fingers, has been since we left his old house, and it's already fraying and worn.
"We're sitting in front of a children's playground, watching them," I say. "Play." He turns his face towards me, his brown eyes looking golden, a hint of smile that seems to always be there on his face. He blinks at me.
"You can leave," says Vince, "If you want." Without elaborating on why he's sitting here, why he made me sit in front of a playground for the last hour, he turns back towards the playground, facing them once again. The little girl carefully places another dark rock onto her castle of them, and then, without seeing it coming, a kid with bright orange hair kicks over the careful rock castle she'd been creating herself.
She stared at the knocked over rocks, that had tumbled and spread around her. Without crying, even angering, she simply started to repile them onto eachother.
I stared ahead, pulling my legs up so my knees were pressed against my chest, and rested my chin on my kneecaps. I shot Vince a subtle side-glance, wondering if he'd seen it.
His gaze was on the red headed boy, who looked frustrated. He was sitting alone on the swings, staring impatiently at the little girl, waiting for her to burst into tears or get angry or seek revenge. Vince smiled, just a little and looked nostalgic.
I decided on whether I should get up and leave. Maybe he was just this weird, fucked up guy who I should just leave alone. I mean, he was sitting in front of a goddamned playground.
And then I sighed, make myself more comfortable, and train my eyes on the side of Vince's face, the little girl forgotten. He was watching a little boy slide down a bright yellow slide, a grin spreading slowly across his lips as he slid down, and at the end, he hollered "Mom!" and a woman came racing towards him, swooping him up to rest him at her hip. She pecked at him with her lips, and his laughter resounded around the park, his eyes closed.
I looked towards Vince again.
Maybe he simply misses innocence.
* * *
It's dark when we do leave, my legs aching from sitting so long, and Vince's shoulders are hunched, already lighting a cigarette. He matches his pace to mine, saying nothing.
"Want food?" he asks me, and a breeze rolls through the air, cold on my bare legs and arms. I shake my head, realize he's not watching me, and say "no," quietly.
He opens his mouth to say something, and a noise breaks out from behind us, a man's voice, and I realize he was saying something. I half turned, my eyes widened.
"You're...Caroline. Caroline, right?" a man asks, someone I've never seen before.
I hesitate before answering, "I'm Caroline, yes." His eyes seem to soften, and his expression is sad and I feel sick to my stomach again, the same way I did with the woman who knew.
They always get this look about them, the people who lost the same person, but not in the same way, never in the same way. They're a mix of sympathetic and also sad, and you want to shake them, and scream, I lost them. Me! Not you, never you, you could never know this pain. This endless, never ending pain.
Instead I let him stare at me, sympathetic and sad, but also strangely urgent too. "Your father," he said. "There was something he said, before he..." the man trailed off.
My heart drops into my stomach, and I feel my ears ringing.
"Stop," Vince says with a sharp note to his voice. "Stop, can't you see you're bothering her? Let her breathe for a second."
The man bristles at Vince's tone, but does pause and stare at me, his expression cautious. I stare at my hands, and I don't feel anything anymore. I look up.
"What about my father?" I say and my voice is a whisper. Barely a whisper and the man squints his eyes before his mind processes what I said.
"There's a note, Caroline."
That was enough to have me shoving at the man, the tree nearest to us a good place to pin him, my forearm against his collarbone. "What do you know about a note?" I say and I'd never heard my voice so low and angry before. He stares down at me and I know I don't have the control in this, being that my height is significantly less than his, and he outweighs me by at least forty pounds. But he lets me keep him there.
"Tell me," I half shout. "What do you know about my father?"
He looks so sad, so pitious, staring down at me. "He loved you so much," he started to say, his eyes on mine, and that was just too much—
"Don't," I say, "Don't say that."
"He did," the man protested. "The way he used to talk about you," the man said gently. "He talked about you like you hung the stars in the sky."
"Stop," I say and my whole body is shaking. I barely register when Vince pulls my arms down, keeps them at my side, stands in front of me like a shield.
"Can you not see what you're saying right now, that it's killing her?" Vince says in a very low voice to the man, his head bent.
"She needs to know!" the man says. "Her father would want her to know about," he's cut off by Vince putting a hand to his shoulder and stepping away from him.
A piece of paper is shoved into my hand, a number I realize with a start, and the man is striding away. He turns back to me, to give me a sad look, and then keeps walking. I feel numb.
Vince walks me home, smoking one and a half cigarettes on the way, his shoulder brushing mine. "Caroline," he says. "I know I said I wouldn't..."
"Don't," my voice is raw and hoarse. "Please, please. Don't." The paper that I'd shoved far down my pocket is burning a hole through it, and my fingers itch to rip it up or hold it to my chest, the possible key to a note, my father's last words.
"I just think you shouldn't be alone," he says very gently. I look up towards him. My reply was going to be "I'm not alone," until I remember that I am, I really am. My mother is not here. My mother is not home.
"Why do you care?" I say very tiredly, already leading him into my house, his sneakers making squeak noises on the wood floor. We sit down side by side on the floor of my living room, the lights off. He doesn't try to start conversation and I don't look at him, can't look at anyone.
My head droops at some point, onto his shoulder, I faintly realize because my nose is filled with the smell of smoke and summer, if summer had a smell, but it does really—the smell of ocean and fresh air. I almost think I feel a hand stroke my hair, once, gently. The more I drift off, I put it to my imagination.
Every night, I feel it. The guilt. And I let it consume me, even if I tell myself in the daytime I couldn't have done anything to stop my dad. And it's here again, that feeling of, he is dead and you are not.
I suck in a breath, in my half asleep state and feel Vince's eyes on me.
My father is dead. I am not. And for that, I should pay. I do realize that I'm shaking and crying, and that Vince is pulling me towards him in a quick and sudden movement, and when my face is pressed against the collar of his shirt, his arms pressed around me in a constricting but comforting way.
"Shhh Car," he says. "It's okay. It's okay."
It isn't, and when I open my eyes in this bleary state and see him with his head tipped back and his eyes closed tightly, his arms around me, I think maybe he knows too, that it's not okay.
I fall asleep again, sometime later. When I wake up, it's morning, my cheek is pressed against the side of the floor and there's a jacket on top of me. Next to my face is one of Vince's cigarettes.
I hold it between my fingers, and it feels like a promise.