Not Anything by Carmen Rodrigues Read Free Book Online Page A

of his mask.
    “That wig makes you look different,” he says.
    Automatically, I tug on the ends to straighten it. I like the way I look in this wig. My hair isn’t so crazy, and my face looks less angular.
    “No, it doesn’t.”
    “Yeah, it does.” He looks at me, and I feel like he can almost see right through me, which is stupid, I know. It’s just sometimes I feel like I might be able to be comfortable around him, which is a huge step for me. I can barely be comfortable around myself.
    He closes his eyes, rubbing his temples. “Would you mind dimming the lights a little?”
    “Do you have a headache?”
    “Feels like it,” Danny says.
    I turn off the lights, and we sit in the dark. He rests his head on the cushion. With his eyes closed, I take in the contours of his face. I imagine what it would be like to run my fingers through his hair, to inhale his scent, to see if he tastes like Zest, to do all those things that I read about in Leslie’s Cosmo magazines.
    “It’s nothing.” He opens his eyes and catches me staring at him.
    “Huh?”
    “The headache is nothing, really.” He closes his eyes again and massages his temples.
    “Is it a tension headache?” I ask. “Because if it is, there’s this point between your eyebrows here”—I point to the indentation in the center of my eyebrows between my nose and my forehead—“called the third eye, and if you press it just right, the tension should go away.”
    “Yeah?” He shakes his head at me. “How do you know?”
    “It’s called acupressure. It’s ancient,” I say, my confidence in this subject suddenly shaky. “It’s Chinese.” I add for clarity, “Like from China.”
    “That’s like Asian. Like in Asia?” He asks with a smile.
    I nod my head stupidly, even though I know he’s teasing me.
    “Can you do it?” His voice is low and slippery.
    “Me? No…” I shake my head. What have I gotten myself into? “I’ve never actually done it. I’ve just seen it done…to my dad—”
    “By a real doctor?”
    In the family room, Marisol and Lucy are laughing over a Charlie Brown cartoon special, and I wonder why I’m not with them. Why am I here? ALONE? With Danny?
    “No, my mom. She studied holistic medicine in nursing school. She used to do it to my dad.”
    “Used to?” He rolls his head along the side of the cushion and opens his eyes. The noise from the television fills the space between us, and I look away slowly.
    “Do you think you could do it to me?” he asks.
    “Now?” I whisper.
    “Yeah,” he says, his voice catching in his throat. “Now.”
    “I don’t know,” I retreat farther into the cushions of my seat. “It works on my dad, but I’m not sure that it would work on you.”
    “Why don’t we try?” I watch him eliminate the safe space between us. He sits on the floor and, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, rests his head on my thigh.
    We are touching.
    “I…don’t think I can…” The missing pieces of my sentence float out the open window into the cool October air.
    “Here.” He reaches back for my hands. He places them on his forehead between his eyebrows. “Please…” His voice is as thick as honey.
    I press my finger on his third eye and hold. My thighs squeeze together. I think, There is a boy shuddering between my thighs.
    And like that—I stop breathing. My heart stops beating. My body takes one huge pause. And I wonder how things like this, unexpected things, can happen so quickly and make me feel so alive.
     
    that’s how marisol finds us. five minutes later, when the doorbell rings, she passes through our moment and finds Danny still sitting at the base of my feet. When she reaches to unlock the front door, we untangle ourselves.
    I turn on the lights. Marisol takes charge. She speaks to Lucy’s mother, makes the proper introductions, returns Lucy’s wet clothes, and ushers Danny out the door. Then she flicks off the light and tells me to follow her. But I can’t. If