After Nothing Read Online Free Page B

table in the cafeteria instead of meeting him by the hidden door of the old gym.
     
    On the Friday of that week, school broke up for the summer. I got up early the next day. There was a tattooist in the city that didn’t care how old you were. Everyone at school knew about her, knew you just had to forge a signature on the consent form and she’d ink you outside normal hours.
    That morning there was no one but her and me in the tattoo studio. I picked the lettering I wanted. She pulled on gloves.
    She wasn’t big on talking. She was big on piercings. She must have had twenty in her face alone. There were eight through the white freckled skin on her shoulder. I counted them a few times while she did my tattoo.
    The needle stung and burned at the same time. For what I was wanting though, it didn’t hurt nearly enough.
     
    I went over to Kane’s, but he wasn’t home. The basement was locked but the key was where he hid it. I didn’t go in. Just sat on the cold concrete in the shadow of the house and watched the sunlight tiptoe across wet grass toward me. After an hour he appeared, dressed in sweatpants, a tank and running shoes. The top half of him was drenched in sweat. He was breathing hard, and his hands went to his hips as he leaned forward to catch his breath.
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘You haven’t been at school,’ I said, standing up.
    ‘My uncle’s out. I needed to get my fitness sorted.’
    I didn’t get it, so I didn’t say anything. Kane pulled his sweat-soaked tank off and threw it toward the shut sliding door of his room.
    Down the side of his torso, marring a sketch-like tattoo inked into his skin, were three large dark bruises. I asked him how he got them.
    ‘How you think?’ said Kane, frowning at me.
    ‘Your uncle did that?’
    ‘Yeah. Nothing to what I did to him though.’
    ‘You beat him up?’
    ‘What?’ I must have been looking at him just as blankly as he was looking at me, because then he said, ‘You know I’m a fighter, right? K-1?’
    ‘What’s K-1?’
    ‘This is bullshit,’ said Kane. ‘You don’t know that? Why do you think I couldn’t ever hang late with you?’
    ‘I thought you had other things you had to do.’
    ‘Yeah, like training. Like spending my fucking life at the gym.’
    ‘That’s not all you do,’ I said quietly.
    ‘So now you know my business?’
    ‘I’m not questioning you about it. You can do what you want.’
    ‘Yeah, well I want the rent paid so I’ve got somewhere to live. That way you can come over all the time till you get knocked up.’
    ‘I told you, I’m not pregnant, and I don’t want to get pregnant.’
    ‘Bitch, you said you were on the pill. You looked me in the eye and you said it.’
    I answered that by saying, ‘I am on it now. I can show it to you. I’ll take it in front of you if that’s what you want.’
    Kane shook his head, muttered, ‘I don’t get you,’ and turned away.
    He walked partway down the slope and stood looking down at the oversized concrete drains. I could see the outline of every single muscle in his back and arms, and when he turned back toward me the lines of the tightly packed muscles of his chest and abdomen stood out in relief.
    I knew his body was hard; I was touching it all the time. But it’s not like I’d ever been with anyone else, so how would I know the difference between a normal lean and muscular body, like the guy who sat next to me in English class, and a fighter’s body? It wasn’t like he’d told me he was a fighter. When I thought about it, though, maybe there had been some clues. Next to a whole lot of weights in the corner of his room was a box with a heap of padded gear in it, and once when we’d come back to his place there’d been some long, elastic blue bandages lying on his bed. Also upstairs, where I only ever went to use the bathroom, there was a line of boxing gloves hanging from nails in the living room. I guess I could’ve asked Kane about all of that. I could