Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke Page A

was fourteen at most. He made fun of my boys for a while, but when they ignored him, he started pushing them around, taking their toys and holding them out of reach. 
    River popped the last juicy Kalamata into his mouth and then got to his feet. He went over to the shaggyhaired kid and grabbed his skinny white wrist in one hand. The bully dropped the yo-yo he was holding. River said something to him, and, just like that, the kid ran off into the night without another word. 
    River stuck around, and began to show the boys how to make their toys work. He was good with them, easy and natural,as if he’d shown millions of boys how to play with a yo-yo and could do it with his eyes closed. The kids were listening to what he was saying, so closely that some of them actually leaned toward him as if to hear better. 
    I stayed sitting where I was, watching River, and idly wondering what he was telling the kids, when the girl came over and handed me her hula hoop. She was a laughing little thing, with brown eyes and black curly hair. She held out her hula hoop to me with a grin, and I took it, smiling back at her. I got inside it and spun it around my hips, moving my torso a little this way, and a little that, until my body began to remember that hula-hoop feeling and the thing took off on its own. 
    The girl watched me. Everyone else was turned toward the screen, because the opening credits had started to play. My hips were moving and my yellow skirt was swinging and River glanced over at me, yo-yo in hand. The boys were still staring up at him like he was the greatest person ever—except my auburn-haired kid,who still looked serious. 
    I gave the girl her hula hoop and thanked her for letting me use it. She laughed, and ran back to the boys. 
    River came back and sat down next to me, and started fiddling with something in his hands, just as I spotted Luke making out with Maddy off to the side underneath an oak tree. He had a flask in one hand and was groping her back with the other. 
    Oh, Luke. You are such a disappointment, I thought. And then realized that was a stupid thing to say, even in my head. 
    “Here,” River whispered, because the movie had started. He grabbed my hand, turned it over, palm up, and set something on it.“It’s a bookmark, for your Hawthorne.” 
    I looked down. “No, it’s not,” I whispered back. “It’s a twenty-dollar bill folded into the shape of an elephant.” River smiled. “Origami is cool.” 
    I nodded. “It is cool. But most people fold paper, not twenties.” 
    River shrugged. “I didn’t have any paper. Look, Violet, if you ever run out of groceries or something,and I’m not around, you can just unfold that and use it. All right?” 
    “All right,” I whispered, because I wasn’t too proud. I put the bookmark in my skirt pocket. 
    River nodded at me, and then he bent his knees up, threw one arm around them, and leaned back, ready to pay attention to the movie. He was so flexible and graceful, damn it. I was still haunted by all those boys in my junior high gym class with knees too big for the white legs sticking out of their shorts, their thigh muscles so tight already at fourteen that they moved like someone had taken them apart and put them back together wrong. 
    River was different from those boys. River made my insides slither and slide in that good way. River was . . . something entirely new. 

Chapter 8
    T he kids ran off sometime during the middle of the movie. Back home to bed, I supposed. I got so caught up in Bogart’s sad eyes and Bergman’s pert little nose and the fresh night air and the never-gets-old novelty of watching a movie underneath the night sky that I was kind of stunned when River got to his feet at the first “Here’s looking at you, kid . ”  
    He leaned his head down, so his lips were at my ear. “I’m going to go stretch my legs,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” 
    What seventeen-year-old needed to stretch his legs