Read Online When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord - Free Book Online Page A

holding the baby while the father sits proudly by—but this one was the opposite. In it, my father, looking lean and dapper, had me bundled up in his arms. He was sitting in the easy chair we still had downstairs in the living room, and next to him was my mother, perched upon the arm of the chair, looking radiant and aloof, the skirt of her dress draped perfectly over her knees. Her smile was something I couldn’t describe, except to say that it seemed to be queenly in the way that queens remind you of situations grander than your own puny life could conceive.
    “She looks like you,” Peter said.
    “Does she?” I was pleased. “I think we have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why she died.”
    “Huh?”
    “I mean, I know it’s morbid, but I think that sometimes. Maybe she had to die because we were so alike that the world couldn’t tolerate both of us in it.”
    “That’s…” he said, looking uncomfortable. “That’s a really weird thing to say, Lumen.”
    But it didn’t seem weird to me at all, and I was hurt by his response.
    “Anyway,” I said.
    We were quiet for a moment. Then he said:
    “So what do you have in common? I mean, other than your looks.”
    “Well, she didn’t go breach—and I’m not going to, either.”
    He looked at me sideways with suspicious eyes.
    “It happens,” I went on. “Not very often, but it does happen. My father says she was all lit up—he says she carried the daylight with her. The moon, it couldn’t have any effect.”
    “I never heard of that.”
    “Well, it’s true—whether you’ve heard of it or not. Some people just aren’t the same as other people.”
    “Hm.” I could tell he still didn’t believe me. “And how come you think you won’t go breach, either?”
    “We have the same blood. It stands to reason. Plus I can just tell.”
    “But your father, he went breach.”
    “Yes.”
    “So you could be like him.”
    “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I can just tell.”
    It is always a young girl’s dream to have a boy believe in her most colorful fantasies. You paint landscapes with your humble heart, then you seek to populate them with boys who will understand.
    But then he underwent a quick change—as though he were brushing off the topic altogether. He clambered around so that he was on his hands and knees in front of me. I sat with my own knees pulled up protectively to my chest.
    “Let me see,” he said.
    “See what?”
    But he didn’t answer. He was looking at my eyes, examining them. He moved his head from side to side, as though to get multiple angles on the subject of my eyes.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    “Shh.”
    He kept looking, then he seemed to spot something—as though he had discovered a minuscule village somewhere in the core of my retina.
    “Huh,” he said.
    “What?”
    “You’re right. Daylight.”
    That’s when he kissed me. At first I held my breath, unsure about what I should do. Then when I finally breathed, I wondered if I should keep my eyes open or closed. His eyes were closed, so I closed mine. That’s when my other senses took over. I could smell his skin and that boy shampoo that smells like mowed grass. He pushed himself against me, and I touched his arm with my hand—squeezed his arm as if it were mine, as if our bodies were forfeit to each other’s—and then my hand was even on his neck, where there were little hairs, and I was allowed to touch them. I heard a tiny voice, like that of a squeak-mouse, and then I realized it was my own voice, and I thought how beautiful that sometimes your body knows what to do on its own.
    At that time, I had a way of thinking of myself as a castle or a tower, something with many spiraling cobblestone steps that became secrets in themselves, winding around each other like visual illusions. The pleasure was in the climbing, the intricate architectures of thought and purpose. But it was on a rare occasion such as this when I could feel something else,