Heart Bones

Samson pulls the rag from his nose and narrows his eyes at me. “The boy?” he whispers.

At least he has a good sense of humor about this.

“Maybe you should go,” I suggest. “This is getting too embarrassing.”

Samson nods, but my father is back in the doorway. “I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to have sex. You’re almost an adult. I just want you to be safe about it.”

“I am an adult. There’s nothing almost about it,” I say.

Samson is standing near my father, but my father is blocking the entire doorway as he speaks to me. He doesn’t notice Samson attempting to squeeze by him to escape.

“This is my only way out,” Samson says to my dad, pointing over his shoulder. “Please let me out.”

My father realizes he’s blocking him and quickly steps aside. “Sorry about your nose.”

Samson nods and then leaves. I wish I could escape, but I’m pretty sure there are tentacles still embedded in my leg and it hurts to move.

My father returns his attention back to me. “Alana can take you to get on the pill if you aren’t already on it.”

“We aren’t…Samson and I aren’t…never mind.” I push myself out of the tub and stand up. “This is a really intense conversation and my thigh feels like it’s melting off my body. Can we please do this later?”

They both nod, but my father follows after me. “Ask Sara. We’re very open about this stuff if you ever want to talk about it.”

“I’m aware of that now. Thank you,” I say, heading up the stairs to my room.

Wow. So this is what it’s like to have involved parents? I’m not sure I like it.

I walk straight to my bedroom window and watch as Samson enters his house. He turns on his kitchen light and then he leans over the counter and folds in on himself, pressing his forehead to the granite. He’s gripping the back of his neck with his hands.

I don’t know what to think of that. Is that a sign of regret? Or is he just overwhelmed because he got punched twice and refused to fight back? The way he’s reacting right now fills me with so many questions. Questions I know he won’t likely answer. He’s a vault and I really wish I had a key.

Or some explosives.

I want an excuse to go over there so I can get a closer look at him and see what it is exactly that’s bothering him so much. I need to know if it’s because he almost kissed me.

Would he try it again if I gave him the chance?

I want to give him the chance. I want that kiss almost as much as I don’t.

I do have his memory card. I could take it back to him. I haven’t looked at the pictures yet, though. I really want to see them before I give it back to him.

Sara has a computer in her bedroom, so I fish the memory card out of my backpack and go to Sara’s computer.

I wait several minutes for all of the images to load. There are a lot of them. The first ones to load are all pictures of nature. All things he said he takes pictures of. Countless sunrises and sunsets. Pictures of the beach. But they aren’t necessarily pretty pictures. They’re soothingly sad. Most of them are taken with the focus zoomed in on something random, like a piece of trash floating in the water, or seaweed piled up on the sand.

It’s interesting. It’s like he puts the focus on the saddest part of whatever is in view of his lens, but the picture as a whole is still beautiful.

The pictures he took of me begin to load. There are more than I thought there would be, and he apparently started snapping pictures of me before I even moved to the front of the ferry.

Most of the pictures are of me on the side of the ferry, watching the sunset alone.

He put the focus on me in every picture. Nothing else. And based on all the other pictures he took, I suppose that means he thought I was the saddest thing in his frame.

There’s one picture in particular that strikes me. It’s zoomed in and the focus is on a small rip in the back of my sundress that I didn’t even know was there. Even with his focus on something as sad as my dress, the picture is still striking. My face is out of focus, and if this were a picture of anyone else but me, I’d say it was a beautiful piece of art.

Instead, I’m embarrassed he paid such close attention to me before I even noticed he was there.

I scroll through every picture of me and notice there isn’t a single picture of me eating the bread. I wonder why he didn’t photograph that.