Page 33

“Why? Because your mom would kill him?”

“Uh, no, because he’s a good guy,” Isaac says, tossing his beer can into the plastic sack. “That so hard to believe?”

“No,” I say carefully, watching him as the shadows of the trees around us lengthen. I have never met his parents and don’t intend to because I can’t imagine a future for us. One where we have to get into an argument when we move in together because my antique bed won’t fit through the door of his trailer.

“My parents like each other,” Isaac goes on. “So much that I’ve gotta be careful not coming home unexpected, you know?”

“Nice, that’s . . . great,” I say, trying to summon enthusiasm for his sexually active parents. If I can get them out of the picture though, I mean, we do have a blanket. “So, your text said you had something you wanted to show me?”

I say it just right, so that he knows what I mean. He smiles and picks up the rest of the trash first. “Littering is bad, remember?”

I smile and lay my head back to see the first of the stars coming out, pinpricks of light. My head swims a little, and I know it’s going to be very easy to let Shanna have her way this evening. When Isaac comes to me I’m surprised when he pulls me up instead of joining me on the blanket. He leads me down the glyph, where the shadows have already fallen.

“All right, so. Before I show you this . . .” Isaac takes a deep breath. “What you said before about your dad having an affair, how do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Bad, I guess.” And I think I did at first, before I realized I could use it to my advantage.

“Bad,” Isaac latches on to that. “So, I’m kind of feeling the same way.”

“Why?”

“Really? Sasha, I walk past you in the hall every day with him, and it’s like, yeah, I’m banging the valedictorian and her dick boyfriend doesn’t know it. And I should feel good, like he’s the system and I’m fucking his girl, so, whatever. But really I just feel like shit. Like you’ll hold his hand and let people see it, but me, I’m the guy you screw in the dark and don’t tell anyone about.”

I shake my head. “It’s not like that. What am I supposed to do, Isaac? Tell everyone about how Shanna needs you? They won’t understand.”

“I don’t understand,” he yells, his voice bouncing back at us from the glyph wall.

I don’t like being yelled at. Sasha Stone does not stand in mud and get yelled at by Isaac Harver. “You said that if I told you that was the deal, then that was the deal. That I’m smart, and if I say Shanna is real, then she is.”

“What about this?” Isaac asks, his voice softer now, his body coming closer to mine, his hands capturing my fingers so that I don’t know where my sister ends and I begin. “You’re saying this isn’t real? Because this is you here, right now, with me.”

“I don’t know,” I say, those words always bubbling to the surface when he’s around, my voice losing conviction in his presence.

“Know what I think?” Isaac goes on, his hands now crushing mine. “I think you want me to be stupid, do whatever you say and believe whatever you want. Me for the night, him during the day.”

“Isaac . . .”

“What about what I want?” he says, letting me go and fumbling in his pocket for a lighter. “Maybe I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t like cheating. Maybe I’m a better person than you thought. Maybe I’d like to hold your hand in the hallway and have people see us together. Maybe I want to try being good.”

“That’s just . . .” I don’t get to finish my sentence, because he flicks his lighter and I see what he wanted to show me.

ISAAC & SASHA is scored into the rock, right under the fish glyph. I wipe my hand over it, once, twice, frantically. But it’s no use. He used a knife, scratching deep into the rock and leaving something permanent and profane alongside the ancient and sacred.

“What did you do?” I seethe, cupping handfuls of water and tossing them over the letters. It only makes the rock around them darker, throwing our names into bright relief.

“I put it out there,” he says calmly.

My fingers trace our names, running over the fin of the fish left behind by another hand from another time. “This is bad, Isaac.”

“I guess that’s just what I am,” he says, and turns to leave.

I spend a few more moments trying to undo what he’s done, but it’s no use. As the moon comes out and I hear him start his bike and drive off, I’m left staring at the new carving. A boy and a girl, etched in stone, together forever.

It would be so sweet if he had gotten her name right.

fifteen

When I get home I collapse onto my bed and stare at the clarinet case jammed under my desk. Last Christmas Mom and Dad sprung for a second one so that I could have one at school and one at home. It was the most exciting thing to happen to me since they redesigned The Phantom of the Opera stage, but now it’s resting beside a lone sock I can’t find the mate for and a pamphlet from a second-rate music school I wouldn’t go to even if they offered me a lifetime supply of reeds.