Курок Дуглас Пенелопа

My stomach sank.

Who the hell had grabbed me out there? Had Rika seen where I’d gone? Oh, my God. I whipped around, feeling for the door and finding it just a few feet away. But when I pushed on it, it wouldn’t budge. Laughter spilled in from the other side, and tears sprang to my eyes as I pounded on the door. It gave way just an inch, I thought, more giggles filtered in from the outside, and then their weight was against it again, keeping me in.

Goddammit. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn’t in the locker room. I closed my eyes, praying. Please tell me I’m not in the locker room.

“Need a shower?” a male voice said behind me.

“I think she needs a cold shower, man!” another guy called from farther away.

Laughter echoed around the room, the noise level stinging my ears as more people turned their attention on me. I turned around, holding my hands up just in front of me a little, but blinking away the tears and straightening my shoulders.

The less I reacted, the less they’d react. There had to be a coach in here or a teacher or something.

Stupid me. I knew the teasing or pranking or even bullying was a possibility of someone in my shoes, but I arrogantly thought my status protected me. Or my father’s status, anyway.

But whoever pushed me in here thought of something I didn’t. If I couldn’t see them do it, there was no one to punish.

“Damn,” someone said, and I turned my head toward his voice.

“Is that…?” Another voice trailed off. Younger, like he was my age, maybe.

“Yeah, it’s the mayor’s daughter,” a raspy voice added. “The blind one.”

“Oh, shit. I heard she was coming.”

“She’s cute.”

Heat covered my face, but I kept my jaw locked to keep the panic from rising. I spun around again and tried the door.

I pushed my body into it, it gave way, but it was pushed closed again by the same weight. More cackling from the other side.

I shook my head. I was going to kill them. Whoever they were, I was going to kill them. I wanted to scream—to demand they open the damn door and let me out—but it would just entertain the boys behind me even more.

“It’s okay, babe. You can stay,” one of the same voices told me. “Not like you can see our shit anyway, right?”

“Shower’s all yours, babe.” A towel hit my body, and I caught it on reflex. “Unless you don’t want it all to yourself.”

Heat rose to my cheeks, and I swallowed a couple times to wet my throat. “Hello?” I called, hoping to alert a teacher that a girl was in the room so I could get some help. “Hello?”

“Hello!” a voice called, mimicking me.

And another. “Hello!”

“Hello!”

“Hello!”

Male voices around the room laughed and joked, and I gritted my teeth together, aggravated. I didn’t know why I was surprised. The guys in this town…

“What the hell’s going on?” someone asked.

“Winter Ashby wandered in, man.”

I backed up to the door, my hands at the ready as it sounded like more guys came in from the showers or the gym, I wasn’t sure.

But before I hit the hard doors, I hit something else. I stopped, feeling a body behind me.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m Simon.”

I jerked, but there was suddenly a body to my left and in my ear. “I’m Brace.”

And then another one in front of me. “I’m Miles,” he said, and I sucked in a breath and held out my hands.

I tried to slip in any direction I could, but they were everywhere.

“Guys, come on, leave her alone. Get her out of here!” someone barked from farther away.

“Oh, come on, Will…”

I stepped to my left, but there was someone’s bare skin there. I shot to my right, and I ran into someone in a towel. I growled and darted out my hands, pushing at the body of the boy who said he was Miles in front of me.

“You guys are assholes,” I said. “Let me out of here!”

Suddenly, a hand swung into me from the front as Miles grunted, and the boy behind me shoved into me as he was pulled away, knocking me forward a little. I lost my breath and held out my arms to brace myself, but they were suddenly gone. All three of them.

Someone took my hand, and I jerked on reflex, about to pull it away, but then he asked, “Are you okay?”

His tone was light and gentle and immediately put me at ease. Or at least more ease than I was. I stopped, letting his fingers hold mine by the tips.

It was a small gesture, but it didn’t scare me. Just more reassuring.

“I’m Will,” he said. “I’ll find someone to get you out of here, okay?”

I inhaled the fragrance of body wash and fresh laundry on him and nodded, his presence helping me calm down a little.

But then our hands were knocked apart.

I went rigid, stunned for a moment. What the—

“What?” Will asked someone.

“Get off her and go get dressed,” the new voice said. “I got it.”

I got it? Who was this?

“I wasn’t on her,” I heard Will say, but his voice faded away anyway.

Wait…

I backed up, pressing the door again and finding it still not giving way.

“Are you hurt?” the dark voice asked me.

I shook my head. His tone wasn’t taunting like the others, but there was something about it that gave me pause.

“Are you going to class?” he pressed, his voice growing closer. I couldn’t back up anymore, just kept putting all of my weight into the door.

I opened my mouth. “I have—I have lunch.”

He leaned in close, his body brushing mine, and I sucked in a breath and put my hands up.

“Let me get the door for you,” he said in a low voice.

“I…” I planted my hands on his chest to keep him away from me, feeling a crisp shirt, stiff collar, and skin. I let my fingertips linger a moment too long in the strip of bare chest where his shirt wasn’t buttoned.

Shit. I moved to pull my hands down, but just then, my thumb brushed an object—a little ball or…bead—peeking through the opening of his shirt.

Dj vu washed over me.

Grazing it with my finger, I felt another and then another, tracing the beads on the chain—warm from his skin—down his torso where the two strains joined into one as it draped down his stomach.

Wood. I could feel the grooves under the gloss coating.

My stomach dipped. No, no, no…

I couldn’t help it. I followed the line of the beads, feeling his stomach tighten under my fingertips, and his breathing quicken.

Reaching the crucifix I hoped wasn’t there, I pinched it between my fingers, my nerves firing hot under my skin as I instantly recognized the carefully crafted definition of the fingers attached to the cross.

Oh, my God. I let the rosary go like it burned my fingers.

But he grabbed my hand, pressing it back on the beads and his skin.

“Oh, why stop when you were doing so well?” he taunted.

“Damon,” I murmured, trying to pull my hand away.

“Mmm,” he affirmed. “Missed you, kid.”

I tore my hand free, clenching my jaw.

Jesus. In my head, I still saw him how I last saw him. A kid, not much bigger than me, with a lanky body and a shaky voice.

But everything had changed. His hand in mine was bigger than I remember, his voice was deeper, he was taller, and he had a voice now. He wasn’t eleven anymore.

Why did I feel like I was just now realizing that?

And any hope that he’d forgotten about me was now gone, too. He knew exactly who I was.

But before he could say anything else, the door behind me gave way, I fell back, and he caught me, pulling me forward again and into his body. I didn’t have time to push him away before someone grabbed my hand, pulling me off him. I stumbled.

“Winter,” my sister snapped. “What are you doing?”

But she didn’t wait for my response. She hauled me out of the locker room and into the hallway, and the door slammed shut behind us as a trickle of sweat glided down my back. My head was swimming, and I could still feel him near me.

I jogged to keep up with my sister as my heart pounded painfully.

But my body buzzed with warmth, too. I frowned, rubbing my fingertips over my thumbs and still feeling the beads between them.

 

 

Ari was probably the one who stuffed me in the damn locker room in the first place. Or she had her friends do it. How else did she know where I was?

She was probably just pissed when I didn’t make it back out right away and she had to go in there and fetch me. Were she and Damon friendly?

They were in the same grade, but I had no idea if they hung in the same circles. My parents would’ve advised her to stay away from him, but it wasn’t like she would listen unless she wanted to. I had absolutely no idea what he was like anymore or about my sister’s life at this school. The former I couldn’t admit I wanted to inquire about over the years, and the other, I really didn’t care. My sister and I had been struggling through our growing pains for about ten years now, and I wasn’t sure why. There just seemed to be a layer to her I couldn’t crack, and we didn’t have much in common, either. Especially not anymore. She’d gotten used to life as an only child while I was away and obviously liked it.

“God, he’s looking at her,” Claudia, one of Rika’s friends, said across from me as we sat in the lunchroom.

I perked my ears, an earbud still stuck in one as I half-listened to music and half-listened to the conversation. I didn’t want to be rude, and I should’ve been concerned with making friends on my first day, but after the locker room debacle, I needed to recharge for a few minutes.

“Who?” Rika asked.

But no one answered her—at least not verbally. It was times like this when I realized how aware people were of my disability. Answering with nods or body gestures I couldn’t see.

My disability.

I hated that word.

But it was what it was, and people, without meaning any harm, used it to their advantage. They could communicate with their eyes, their hands, their gestures…all in a possible attempt to keep me out of the loop.

Who was looking at who? Someone was looking at me?

“His attention has been on her for longer than seven seconds,” Noah, another of Rika’s friends commented, “and longer than seven seconds is not good.”

Who and who?

But Claudia cursed in a whisper. “Oh, shit.”

Rika sifted on my left, and the next thing I knew someone sat down on my right, their knees blocking me in, like they were straddling the bench and facing me.

“What are you listening to?” a deep voice asked.

I had a moment to process whose voice it was before the earbud was plucked out of my ear.

Damon. They’d been talking about him. He’d been staring at me in the lunchroom. The scent of tobacco and cloves wafted off him, and I searched for ways to get rid of him.

He was bold. A lot bolder than I remembered, and I wasn’t used to it.

He was quiet for a minute, and I guessed he was probably checking out my playlist. The oldies I listened to when I needed something fun, light-hearted, and peppy to get me out of a mood. The same mood he put me in this morning.

The earbud dropped back in my lap, and his voice was low but sure. “It won’t be like that with us.”

Like that?

Like what?

And then I realized what song had been playing. “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals.

He and I weren’t going to be like that couple in the song?

I tightened my jaw. Yeah, no shit. There was no ‘us’.

“Leave her alone, Damon.”

“Suck me, Fane,” he shot back.

I stopped breathing for a moment, registering the sudden sharpness to his tone. God, he was different.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t want to talk to you. And you’re not supposed to talk to me.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and he didn’t move. Was he staring at me?

I faced forward, ignoring him.

After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. “I was Winter’s first kiss, ladies,” he told everyone, despite that we had another guy at our table. “I was eleven. She was eight.”

I felt him nudge closer, and his voice dropped a hair. “I wonder how many guys have kissed you since. But then, I guess I don’t really care, because I was first, and that’s all that matters.”

I balled my skirt in my fists. I wanted him to go away. “Don’t think for a second that you were any good at it, either,” I replied.

“And don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because you’d trip over a speck of dust if someone wasn’t holding your hand to walk ten steps.”

I heard a snort from somewhere farther away, my lips tightened. “I’m not scared of you.”

“It’s early.”

I shook my head. “What do you want?”

“To pick up where we left off.”

Where we left off? He nearly killed me when we were kids. There was no moving forward.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” he mused. “I have a short attention span, and you interest me at the moment. I have questions. Like, can you see anything?”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Anything at all?” he pressed. “Shapes, light, dark, blurs…? And is it true that when you lose one sense, the others heighten? Your sense of smell, hearing, …” he paused, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “Your sense of touch?”

The little hairs on the back of my neck rose up, and my blood heated under my skin. Everyone was watching us. I knew they were.

Just ignore him.

“And since you don’t have the use of your eyes,” he kept going, “do you have the reflex anymore to squeeze them shut? Like when you’re in pain or…when you’re excited?”

Another little laugh somewhere down the table. I turned away a little, worried they could all see how hard my heart was beating.

His words were filled with innuendo. I almost forgot he was older for a moment, our age difference at eight and eleven seeming much bigger now that we were in high school. I was too young, and he was being inappropriate. I kind of got the impression—judging from how he spoke to Rika—he was like that with everyone, though.

“Do you remember what I look like?” he asked. “I’m bigger now.”

I turned toward him, knowing my eyes wouldn’t meet his. “I remember everything. And I don’t hurt as easily anymore.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

The edge back in his voice spread chills up my arms, and every inch of my skin felt electrified. I could feel his eyes on my face, watching me, and there was a mixture of dread and anger inside me, but also anticipation.

Excitement.

While he hurt me years ago, and there was no doubt he was now ten times the asshole I knew back then, a small part of me liked that he didn’t tread softly around me. He didn’t coddle me. He didn’t ignore me.

He didn’t act nervous, scared of me, or treat me like I was fragile. Maybe he thought I was an easier target, or maybe he didn’t scare as easily as some. Whatever it was, part of me kind of liked it.

And part of me wondered how he would respond if he found out I didn’t scare so easily, either. It was obvious from the others that no one liked to deal with him. He was used to having things his way.

“What are you doing?” someone spoke up, making me blink.

I turned my head away, coming back to the moment and registering that Ari had come up behind me. Before I could figure out who she was talking to, though, Damon slowly rose from where he straddled the bench next to me.

“Just saying hi to your little sister,” he said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice.

I felt him leave, and Rika shifted next to me, blowing out a long breath like she’d been holding it.

“He’s not supposed to come near you,” Arion said, and I guessed she was talking to me.

“Tell him that,” I muttered, feeling for my sandwich where I’d left it on the table. “I didn’t make him come over here.”

“Don’t tell the administration or Mom or Dad. The basketball team needs him, and I’m not having him get in trouble because you can’t deal.”

I picked up a half but didn’t take a bite.

“He was here first,” Arion pointed out. “You get him expelled, and everyone will hate us.”

Yeah, no doubt. I knew about the order Damon got to stay away from me this morning before school started, but I hadn’t entertained the possibility he’d actually disobey it. Was he stupid?

Or maybe he just thought he was that untouchable. He came right over here and sat down, knowing that at least half the eyes in the cafeteria would be on him and witnesses to what he was doing. And he did it anyway. Maybe he was overly confident, purposely reckless, or…uncontrollable.

Uncontrollable. That was the boy I remembered.

But my sister was right. He’d been here longer, and no matter what he did, they’d blame me if he got in trouble. For now, I’d handle him myself if he didn’t quit. And I’d do it quietly.

It still pissed me off that my own sister’s first instinct was to protect the basketball player, though.

I lifted my chin a little. “Thanks for your concern,” I told her. “It’s touching.”

“Oh, gimme a bre—”

“You can go now.”

“What are you—”

“Jesus, you’re still here?” I blurted out, cutting her off. “Well, make yourself useful then and open this.”

I reached for the bottle of O.J. on the edge of the table where I’d left it, found it, and handed it to her over my shoulder.

Juice splashed out from where the cap wasn’t tightened properly, and I heard her gasp.

“Ugh, Winter!” she yelled.

I winced. “Oh, it was already open? Sorry. I’m so blind.”

Laughter broke out around the table, and she let out a growl, her mumbled curses fading away as she stomped off. Or I pictured her stomping off. Not sure if she actually did.

“Oh, shit, girl,” Noah said, knocking me lightly in the arm. “You are my hero.”

I gave a half-smile, a little pleased with myself. Also a little aggravated that Arion and I were at war at all, but like Damon, I kind of appreciated the normalcy of it. Arion didn’t put on airs to protect my feelings. She just treated me like I was stupid, as if learning how to live all over again six years ago didn’t make me tough and quickly adaptable to change and new challenges with a hard heart ready to fight for all the things they told me I couldn’t have and couldn’t do.

Maybe that’s why Damon treated me like I wasn’t made of glass. Maybe he knew.

I thought back to the boy in the fountain, bloody with a silent tear streaming down his face, because something—or many things—happened to him that he didn’t want to talk about, and now he was nearly a man who would never cry again and only made other people bleed.

I hated him, and I would never forgive him, but maybe we had that one thing in common. We had to change to survive.

 

 

 

Winter

 

Present

 

“Arms up!” Tara called out.

I reached up, leaping across the floor, the muscles in my back and shoulders stretching tight as I tilted my head back and my face toward the sky.

“There’s the energy!” she shouted. “Let me see it again! Good!”

I exhaled as I hit the ground again, my right foot landing on the border of sandpaper lining the perimeter of the “stage” to signal when I was within two feet of the edge. Beyond that, there was another six-inch-wide border to alert me I had no more room and to stop.

Sweat trickled down my back, and I swung around, veering right again as I stepped, glided, and then arched my back before coming up on one toe and stretching high for a moment’s pose and coming down again to continue the dance.

The music filled the room, my unconventional number of Nostalghia’s “Plastic Heart” choreographed by me and soon-to-be performed at nowhere for no one.

No one would hire me. I tried to stay positive, especially since I needed out of here more than ever, but it was getting harder and harder to not feel stupid for leaving college.

Tara was one of my instructors growing up, and I continued to rehearse at home, but I also came to the studio from time to time, since my father had paid for five hours a week for room rental until the end of the year. I didn’t want to use anything he left for me, but I sucked it up as an excuse to get out of the house. Damon hadn’t been back since the wedding days ago, but it was only a matter of time.

And I loved it here. I only thought about dancing here and nothing else.

This was where my earliest memories of dancing were, and I guessed I was luckier than some. There was a time I could see, and I’d had four years of ballet training before I lost my sight. I knew how plis and arabesques felt and looked. I knew movements and steps, and I knew a little technique. I’d continued with a private trainer when I went to Montreal, even though I knew my prospects weren’t good for a career later on. I’d always known the reality.

I’d have a hard time in a chorus with other dancers and especially with a partner. It wasn’t impossible, but everything took longer to learn and not many would accept that challenge.

And I certainly wasn’t the first ballet dancer with a visual impairment, but I was the first in a five-hundred-mile radius. I held out hope. Someone had to start the phenomenon in other parts of the world. Why couldn’t we have it here, too? The only major problem was finding a company and a coach to take on the work.

I slowed with the music as the song ended and finished, bringing my arms down, wrists crossed in front of me, and fingers displayed gracefully. At least I hoped they looked graceful.

“Here,” Tara said. “Stay like that.”

Walking over, she ran her chilly fingers over the bend in my wrist.

“Straighten them,” she instructed. “Like this.”

And she took my hands and placed them on hers, which were in my ending pose. I ran my hands lightly over hers, feeling the bends in the joints of her fingers, the tendons on the backs of her hands, and the smooth line down her wrist to her arm, so I could emulate it.

“Thanks,” I told her, breathing hard.

I put my hands on my waist, my light, billowy top falling off one shoulder and baring some skin to the welcome cool air of the old, drafty building.

“Again?” she asked.

“What time is it?”

She paused a moment. “Almost five.”

I nodded. I had a half hour, so may as well soak it up before the money ran out.