Meteors in August by Melanie Rae Thon Page B

and ran. I stood, stupidly staring at the red scar of the setting sun. My eyes burned. I was nothing but a stand-in, a ridiculous failure. Let me try again , I thought. But I was sure she never would.
    I watched Gwen’s hair swing from side to side as she sprinted down the road, so you couldn’t help thinking of a horse’s tail, an animal’s rump. Yes, she could have Gil Harding if she wanted. She could have any boy when she was ready. Soon she wouldn’t have to bother with me and my false, clumsy kisses.
    I ran after her. It was almost dusk, but she wanted to walk downtown. Boys in trucks and souped-up Mustangs dragged Main. They hung their heads out their windows, whistled at every girl they saw. They didn’t care if she was fat or old, pimple-faced or bowlegged. Anything female was worth a blast of the horn. Gwen didn’t seem to notice their lack of discrimination. She grinned every time they hooted, certain that each call was for her alone.
    Later, we lay on our sleeping bags in the trailer. I said, “This is our cabin. We live alone in the woods.”
    â€œI’d be glad to live alone and be rid of my parents,” said Gwen. “Ruby doesn’t do shit now that she’s working four to midnight. She’s a slug all day and gives me hell if I don’t do the laundry and clean up after Zack and Dad. She says it’s high time I learned to do a woman’s job. A woman’s job? Christ. I’m no genius, she tells me, I’ve gotta be able to do something.” Gwen kicked off her shoes and stripped down to her underwear. “Fourteen years old and my mother wants to get me trained so I can marry some fat slob like my dad and wipe up his muddy footprints off the floor when he comes home from hunting and throws a bundle of dead ducks in my sink.” We unzipped our sleeping bags so we could have one underneath us and one on top. “Not this girl,” Gwen said, draping her warm leg over mine, “no sirree. This girl’s going to have a good time before she thinks of promising to love, cherish and obey. Obey? Who thinks up this shit anyway?” She rubbed her leg up and down against mine, and I felt the rough stubble of her shaved calf. I tried to forget our miserable kiss, tried to pretend nothing had happened and nothing had changed.
    I stared out the window, watching the sky. “My parents sure as hell don’t obey one another,” Gwen said. “Dad’s been on her back ever since she got the night shift. She says it’s twice the money, and he says, ‘What’re my wages—chopped liver?’ Same conversation, five times a week. She wants her own money, never tells him what she makes. She’s stashing it and I know where. Makes her feel free to have it. I think she’s getting me trained so she can split. Like hell. If she screws, I’ll be right behind her.”
    I gazed past Gwen. She nudged me. “What’re you looking at?” she said.
    â€œThe sky.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œI’m waiting for the first star.”
    â€œTell me the rest of the story,” she said, “about our cabin in the woods.”
    â€œA crazy trapper built a shack in these parts too.”
    â€œWhy’s he crazy?”
    â€œHe married an Indian girl. They lived near the timberline, but her three brothers found them. They tied the trapper to his own stove and kidnapped their sister.”
    â€œWhere’d you hear this story?”
    â€œEverybody’s heard this story. The trapper struggled for a week. The fire burned out. The wind roared through the cracks of the log cabin and the trapper dreamed he was falling down a crevasse in a glacier.”
    I kept looking out the window as I talked. Already the sky had gone from blue to black, filling with stars that disappeared behind the ragged ridge of the Rockies. “The ropes cut his wrists and thighs, but he was too numb to feel his own