Chapter 5 - A Million Rainbows

Kyle was waiting for me by the entrance. Just standing there waiting for me when I exited the building.

I wasn’t sure what I expected, but not that.

Hanging out after school meant maybe meeting at the park later. What the hell was he doing?

“Hey,” he said, running to catch up as I slunk along the side of the school with my head down, pretending I wasn’t with him.

“Maybe we should meet up later,” I said. “Charlie doesn’t even get out for another hour.”

“Well, what are you doing until then?”

He wasn’t taking what I thought was an obvious hint. “I was going to wait for her. Maybe get some homework done,” I said, throwing him another one.

“Is she over at the elementary?” He pointed down the parking lot toward the back road that led to Charlie’s school.

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“I’ll just go with you,” he said. “I can help you with your homework.” He playfully nudged me with his elbow—Oh. My. God.

I did a quick check over my shoulder to see who was around. The answer to that was everyone. Everyone was around. Great.

It was a sunny day, and we sat on the grass under a small maple tree just along the edge of the parking lot near Charlie’s school. I pulled out my math book because I didn’t know what else to do or say.

Kyle took his book out, and I helped him with a couple of problems he said he was having trouble with. Then he just watched me, making it impossible to get any actual work done.

“Is your tattoo real?” he asked after a while.

I twisted my wrist, rubbing my thumb over my tattoo the way I always did when I felt anxious. “Yeah. My friend Emily did it for me last summer.”

“She did it herself?”

I pulled my shoulders in. “Yeah, well, I’m not eighteen, so …”

“It looks good,” said Kyle. “What does it mean?”

I had kept my tattoo so small on purpose. I didn’t want to answer questions about it. It was so personal. So painful. I tried to leave my emotions out when I answered him. “Um … it means strength.”

“Girl on fire,” said Kyle, enunciating “fire” like Fi-yah. He nodded approvingly.

“Well, it’s more like a source of strength. You know, something to draw strength from. It’s placed directly over a pressure point, one that’s supposed to calm anxiety and shit. It’s probably just the placebo effect, but it seems to work.” I covered my tattoo with my thumb and pressed to show him what I meant. I shrugged. “It’s stupid. It was just something I felt like I needed.”

Kyle nodded. “Does it work when I do it?” He reached and touched my wrist, gently pressing my tattoo with his thumb. I pressed my lips together and looked away, definitely feeling something … but it wasn’t calm.

Kyle smiled at me and moved his hand, his expression sobering. “Why’d you feel like you needed it?” he asked, digging into dark corners of my life he didn’t want to go.

I paused on Kyle for a second. Him sitting there all beautiful and perfect, waiting to hear that awful answer. I must have been PMS-ing because all I wanted to do was cry. Looking at his flawless face, his flawless life, he didn’t want to hear this crap about mine. “Look,” I said, staring at my lap with misty eyes. “I can’t talk about my life with you. Sorry.”

Kyle was leaning back, resting on his elbow, his legs stretched out in front of him. He crossed them and sat straight. “I can tell you something about mine.” He made an audible smacking sound with his lips like he was deciding something. “If you can keep a secret, that is?”

“You’re going to tell me a secret?”

He squinted playfully. “Yeah, I think I can trust you with this one.”

“You know, you could trust me with all your secrets. I don’t talk to people.” I shook my head, not really sure why I said that.

“I’ll have to remember that,” he said, an amused smile dimpling his cheeks.

His expression straightened again, and I waited for Kyle to tell me the secret he was willing to share.

“The guy I saw …” He paused for a second. “It was my older brother, Chris. He died a couple of years ago. In a car accident.”

“God, Kyle, I’m so sorry.” I tried to think back a couple of years, wondering how I didn’t know. We lived in separate worlds, but something so major would have filtered through the school. I was feeling a little heartless for not knowing about it. “Sorry. I had no idea.”

“Chris was older than me by ten years. He moved to California for college. Not too many people realized I had a brother.”

“So what do you want to ask him?”

“Uh, well, I don’t really want to ask him anything. I just wanted to tell him how much he meant to me. My parents went through kind of a rough patch when I was a kid. My dad worked all the time, works all the time. They’re divorced now, but back then, my mom was busy screwing around with a bunch of assholes to get back at him. It was a mess for a while and Chris just kind of took over. There was a good year there where he pretty much raised me. We grew close because of it. I loved him. A lot. But I never really told him.”

“So he raised you?”

“Yeah, mostly. You know. He was more like a fun uncle, but …”

“Well, that gives me hope for Charlie. That’s kind of how it is with us. I don’t know how fun I am, but our mom’s not really around. I mean, she’s there. But not there. You know?”

“Is she screwing a bunch of assholes?”

I laughed. “Um … yeah, probably. But she prefers her bottles.”

Kyle narrowed his eyes. “Charlie will be all right, Bree.”

“Yeah, hopefully. I mean, you obviously came out okay.”

His dimples pinched. “You think I came out okay?”

No, Kyle, I think you came out perfect.

“Yeah,” I said. “And your brother knew you loved him.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I mean, Charlie doesn’t tell me all the time. But I know she loves me. He knew.”

Kyle was staring past me, his sad eyes lost in some thought.

The school bell rang, cutting into this very personal moment we were sharing, leaving me wondering how we had gotten here.

I got up to meet Charlie, her little bouncy body bubbling forward when she spotted me.

“Bree! I made a picture!”

She waved a drawing in the air. It was a picture of me, her, and mom wearing her blue house robe.

Mom was always included in her drawings.

I smiled at the drawing. “Very cute.” I took her hand, leading her across the parking lot to where Kyle was waiting. “Charlie, we’ve got a …” I stopped on Kyle, trying to figure out what he was to us. “A friend,” I said, but I wasn’t sure.

Charlie jumped up when she saw him, her smile maxing out, and she actually clapped her hands together.

“Pumpkin Patch!” shouted Kyle. He lifted his hand to give her a high-five. It was too high for Charlie, and she giggled and jumped up on her tiptoes to hit it.

“Kyle, do you mind if we stop at the library before—” I mouthed the word “ice cream” since Charlie wouldn’t be able to focus and pick out any new books if she had sugar-brain.

Kyle got the message, and we headed over.

We entered the small library, Kyle having held Charlie’s hand the whole way, and now he was holding the door for her, and I realized how much easier all this would be with two people.

“Brianna,” Mrs. Laurie whispered as we passed the front desk. She pointed at an unoccupied computer. “Three’s available.”

My gaze flitted to Kyle. “Oh, no. I guess I won’t be needing it today.”

“You can use the computer,” said Kyle. “I can chill.”

Ha. No. Concentrating on my report about The Civil War with him here wouldn’t be happening. “No, that’s okay.” I placed our return books on the counter and waved a thank you to Mrs. Laurie.

I looked at Kyle standing beside me. The feeling of having Mr. Popular with me outside of school in such a familiar place, kind of surreal.

“So we’ll just pick up a couple of books for Charlie and then we’ll go,” I said, jostling my head.

“You’ve already finished The Catcher in the Rye?” Kyle was eyeing the stack of returns.

“Yeah. The Great Gatsby is next,” I said, very unenthused over the idea.

“What are you doing? Reading the most boring books ever written?” Kyle brought a finger to his head pretending to shoot, his go-to move, apparently.

I matched his dreary tone. “It was pretty boring. Hopefully, there are a few good ones on my list. Otherwise, I’m in for some fun nights.” Reading was my only entertainment at home. I usually read for hours after Charlie went to bed.

“What’s the list?” asked Kyle.

We found ourselves in the children’s section. Charlie was rummaging through books, handing me her picks.

“Oh, it’s just a goal of mine. A list Mrs. Ninn gave me for English. Old Classics. She said she’d give me extra credit if I did book reports on them.”

“Do you need extra credit?” Kyle sounded doubtful.

“I need whatever I can get.” I blew a weary breath, puffing out my cheeks. “I want out one day,” I said, more to myself than to Kyle.

“Yeah, I want out of this shit hole town one day, too,” he said.

“It’s not really the town.” I chewed my cheek, not sure how much I wanted to say. I sighed. “I guess I should have said I want up one day, you know?” I didn’t need to pretend to be anything better than I was. He could see my goddamn shoes.

Kyle looked away for a second, letting that sink in. He nodded, his gaze falling back on me. “So what would you be reading if it wasn’t for school?”

A dreamy smile pulled on my lips. “Stephen King.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, have you ever read The Shining?”

“No, I’m not much of a reader. But I like the movie.”

“Yeah, I like the movie, too. But it’s different from the book. I think the book’s better. Not everyone agrees. It’s sort of controversial.”

Kyle laughed. “I’m gonna have to get it then and see what I think.”

With a hand on her shoulder, I redirected Charlie, and we made our way over to the fiction section. There were two copies of The Shining on the shelf. “Do you want to read it with me?” asked Kyle, picking up both copies.

I smiled. The idea of forgoing my list for some good ol’ Stephen King felt really freeing. I snatched up the copy. “Yeah, screw my list.”

“So what do you want, Bree?” Charlie had already decided on her order, a sundae topped with strawberry sauce.

“Oh, no that’s okay.” I looked down, embarrassed because I think he had seen me drooling over the poster for the Oreo Blizzard.

“Come on,” he said. “I can’t eat alone.”

The teenage girl waiting to take our order was staring up at Kyle like he was some kind of god; I didn’t blame her. And no, I couldn’t answer her unsaid question of why I, a mere mortal, was with him.

“We’ll take two Oreo Blizzards and …” Kyle hit the counter, drumming a beat, checking with me again. “Do you guys like burgers?”

Food for Charlie? I was going to have to swallow my pride. I nodded.

“And three cheeseburgers and three fries.” Kyle whipped out a Visa, and I fell a few notches, kicked back down to the ground with the commoners.

Charlie and I fell quiet while we ate our food.

We were outside sitting at a small iron patio table, letting the sugar and sun take us away to sweet, dreamy heaven.

I glanced up at Kyle, catching him looking at me. He was just staring, his face completely straight and expressionless.

“What?”

He slowly shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, but there was a small smirk on his incredibly cute lips—I couldn’t resist that thought. And he made it way worse by taking a bite of his ice cream and licking them.

“So I guess you want to go soon?” I turned to Charlie. “Charlie, we’re going to go to the park. Kyle wanted to see if you could talk to his brother.”

Charlie was trying to wipe a smear of sticky ice cream off her face using dry napkins. “He’s not at the park,” she said.

“Here.” I grabbed a wad of napkins and poured some of my water onto them. “She always says it has to be somewhere they used to go or would likely go,” I explained to Kyle. I wiped the strawberry off Charlie’s nose and handed her the napkins. “Some place they frequented, maybe.”

Kyle nodded. “Oh right. Yeah. We never went to that park. What about my house? My mom got the house after the divorce. We both grew up there, and it’s where I saw him that day.”

My breath caught. “Oh … no. I don’t know if we should go to your house. Is there another place? Somewhere public?” Somewhere in my world?

“Why? No one’s home.”

“Your mom’s not home?” I really, really, really didn’t want to meet his mom.

“No, she goes to the country club for dinner on Thursdays. Today’s Thursday, right? She’ll be gone for the rest of the night.”

I stared at Kyle, my jaw slack (I didn’t even know we had a country club anywhere near us). “Man, you have a totally different life than me.”

Oh no. I accidentally said that out loud.

There was a funny glint in Kyle’s eye. “Not so different, Dover. Same school. Same town.” Kyle held up his copy of The Shining. His cute smirk was back. “Same book.”