The Boy by Lara Santoro

Author:Lara Santoro [Santoro, Lara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780316206235
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

She emerged from sleep the next morning in a different skin, both lighter from the touch of the boy’s hands and heavier with the awareness of some ineluctable slide. She turned to face him and recoiled. She’d never seen him asleep before and she was out of bed before she knew it. This was not the integrated man-boy she had fallen for, not the thing standing loosely in his body; this was a child pushing up from childhood, a changeling called upon to impress a tender geography of bone and memory into the cramped, unyielding mold of manhood.

She was in the kitchen staring at nothing when he came in.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You’re a child,” she said.

He said nothing. He took her by the hand and pulled her back to bed, covering her body with his, pinning her head between his elbows, letting his mouth fall open slowly against hers. In the silence of the ripening day, she traced every ridge, every curve of the boy’s body, committing to memory not the body but the soul before its sure alteration.

“The die is cast,” she said.

“The what is what?”

“One die. Two dice.”

“One die, two dice. I see. What about the die?”

“It’s cast. Alea jacta est. I had to study Latin, long story. Do you know who Caesar was?”

“Yeah, the Roman guy.”

“The Roman guy. Do you know what he did?”

“He got stabbed.”

“That too, that too. But before that, he took his army across this river called the Rubicon and marched on Rome. His chances of success were ridiculously low but, like he said before crossing the Rubicon, the die was cast.”

The boy ran a slow hand through her hair. “Good attitude,” he said.

“Can you blame me?”

“I can and I do.”

Anna let her gaze drift to the window. “Your father is going to flay and quarter me.”

“My father,” said the boy, “needs to learn how to mind his own business.”

“He’s your father.”

Leaning back against the pillows, folding his face into a caricature of distress, the boy raised his voice to a falsetto. “Are you okay, buddy? You okay? Should we cut down that tree you keep falling out of? Eat frozen food so you don’t burn your hand? Get rid of that second story so you don’t keep going down the stairs on your fucking head while I’m doing little Bunny over here doggy style in the next room?”

Anna stared, her breath caught in her throat. “Your father raised you.”

“My father did no such thing. Age four, I packed my own lunch.”

Anna cleared her throat. “Your father was younger then.”

“Age four. If I didn’t pack my lunch, no one would pack my lunch.”

“We make mistakes,” Anna said.

“I don’t give a fuck. Mistakes, no mistakes, that’s in the past. But this, this is my business, okay? My business. Not his.”

“He’s worried about you. Your father is worried about you.”

He sank his fingers into her arms. “Don’t you get it? I’m in this. I’m in this for real. I’m never letting go.”

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