Read The Way We Bared Our Souls for Free Online Page B

junior lacrosse player named Simon, and it was the second week of school.
    I’d never revealed this to Alex and Juanita, but Kit and I had kissed a little bit before that summer was over. I’d never kissed anyone before and . . . maybe I needed someone to practice on so I wouldn’t embarrass myself at the high school parties in my fantasy future. I admit that sounds awful, really mean-girl of me. But it’s the bitter truth. One day I just grabbed Kit in the pool and got to know his lips. They were soft, eager, and tasted a little like sunblock and chlorine. It was nice, but I didn’t feel that spark I’d read about in so many nineteenth-century novels, and I didn’t want to go into high school already attached to someone. Still, I thought we’d stay friends after I told him that even though I really cared about him, I wasn’t ready to be his girlfriend, that I wanted to start the new year with a clean slate.
    But he wanted nothing to do with me afterward.
    And though I made small efforts here and there, I all but avoided him because I felt so guilty for hurting his feelings.
    And then there was the second reason Kit was cagey and despondent, around not just me but everyone. He was in mourning. The previous year he’d fallen completely Mohawk over Vansfor Lucita, a beautiful Zuni girl and a recent transplant to our school from the Four Corners area. She had eyes that everybody wanted to wallow in, eyes like the deep end of an inground swimming pool.
    But Lucita died.
    She was driving home to the rez from Kit’s house one night and she ran off the road. She overcorrected and flipped her car. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I don’t think she was texting at the time or anything. It was just one of those stupid errors that inexperienced drivers make, like not yielding to school buses or taking twenty minutes to parallel park. Except this time the mistake was fatal. On a weeknight after school when everyone else her age was joyriding, eating junk food, drinking, evading homework, figuring out what to do next to prolong the bliss of not doing anything much, Lucita bled out on the shoulder of an empty road.
    Gone.
    Ever since Lucita’s death, Kit had mostly isolated himself. I never heard music from his backyard anymore. He barely said a word at school, unless he was in American history class, during which he seemed universally outraged, especially about our government’s treatment of the Indian tribes.
    So I wasn’t all that surprised when Kit started hanging out with Thomas last spring. But it wasn’t as if they were having long, intimate discussions over milk shakes. Actually, I’d never even heard them talk about personal things. They just seemed to be trying to leave all their feelings on the pavement. They were both so distant. I guess I was starting to relate to them.
    I wondered how much Thomas knew about my history with Kit, or if Kit had ever said any resentful things about me. If Thomas thought I was a bad person who broke people’s hearts for no good reason. Well, I truly hoped not.
    I was going to need his help.
    “Kit?” I said now, unsure of my right to be in his backyard. He finally looked up, but he did it with such sluggishness he seemed barely alive.
    “Lo? What are you doing here?”
    “I’m actually looking for Thomas,” I said, “but I take it he’s not here.”
    “Kamara? You guys know each other?”
    “No . . . not exactly,” I said, remembering lines from Thomas’s poem:
He thinks you must be deaf / Not to hear the shots, / See the blood.
For a second I thought Kit was going to give me the third degree, but then he visibly lost the required energy.
    “Nope. I’m alone.” He sighed. “But have a seat. Stay a while.”
    Okay, so maybe he didn’t hate me.
    I sat down on the edge beside the diving board. To populate the silence, I started tossing twigs into the pool, and from there I kind of understood why Kit was wearing that look of fierce concentration when I arrived.