A Crooked Mile (Rust Book 1)

by Samantha Arthurs

  Janet returned then with the chair, and Margie was right behind her. She ran around the table and carefully placed little cards in front of Alec and Bryson, their names just garbled scribbles since she had no idea how to spell either of their names. The gesture was appreciated, and it was Bryson who leaned down to give her a tight hug. She blushed furiously and ran back to her own seat, feeling pretty pleased with herself.

  “Alright,” Janet laughed, winking at her husband across the table. “Let's try this grace thing one more time!”

  For the second time all the heads in the room bowed down as they said the blessing a second time, this time all the way through. Just before it was over, right before the amen, Alec reached down and took Ramona's hand in his. He squeezed it gently, thankful when she squeezed in return. He let go again just as everyone looked up, her father standing to carve the turkey and start the meal officially.

  It might have been the best Thanksgiving meal of Alec's life. Nothing came from a box, and everything had been cooked to absolute perfection. It reminded him of the time they had gone to Fort Benton for Thanksgiving once, and had eaten their meal in a restaurant. Only this was still better, because this was food made with actual love and care. It was a corny thought, he felt lame even thinking it, but that didn't make it any less true.

  The brothers insisted on helping to clear away the dishes, while the younger kids brought in paper plates for dessert so they didn't double the amount of dishes. Ramona helped her mother bring out the pumpkin pies they had made, along with the two store bought Dutch apple pies that the boys had brought and that they had quickly heated in the oven. Everyone got a little bit of each and settled in to eat, drinking milk and coffee and talking much more slowly now that they were so full.

  When nobody could eat another single crumb of pie, the table was cleared off for the final time. While Janet and Ronald, Ramona’s father, worked on putting away all of the leftovers, which would now double as school lunches until they were gone, the kids all filed into the living room. The youngest kids settled down with Apples to Apples, while Ericka convinced Bryson to play her at Mario Cart on their ancient Nintendo 64.

  Ramona settled onto the sofa with Alec, who lay down sideways and put his feet on her lap. She didn't complain, just made a face and covered both his feet and her legs with a throw off the back of the sofa. He grabbed a throw pillow to prop his head up, speaking softly though everyone else was occupied anyway and not paying them any attention.

  “We had a blow up earlier when I got back from the grocery store. I tracked water through the house and he went psycho on me. He was just looking to pick a fight, and when I didn't cow to him he busted my mom's big crystal serving bowl that we had the cranberry sauce in. It was a mess, just glass and gore everywhere, and when I still wouldn't cave he came at me. I cracked him with the broom, grabbed Bryson, and we ran,” Alec whispered, resting one arm behind his head and the other over his painfully full stomach. “I'm sure we'll get hell when we get back, but I don't care. It was worth it to actually have a good day.”

  “That's sad,” she whispered back, shaking her head a little. “Why does he do this to you? I mean especially knowing what you went through you'd think that he'd be a little more kind toward his own children.”

  Alec let out a heavy sigh, shrugging one shoulder at her. He wished that he had a better answer than he did, but the truth of the matter was that he would never really know for sure. “I guess it's just a control thing. He wants to control every aspect of his life, and we're a big part of that. I think it's ramped up so much lately because reality is setting in. Pretty soon I'll be gone to college, something he's been pushing for my entire life, and it's becoming apparent that once I'm gone he can no longer control me. I'll have to work to pay for some things I need, yeah, but an athletic scholarship means most everything is paid for. I'll be out from under his thumb, and he won't be able to do a thing about it.”

  “Yeah, but then I'll be left here,” Bryson pointed out, having been listening with one ear to their quiet conversation. He glanced back at them and then focused back on the game, a heavy sadness to his own voice. “Without Alec home he'll be focused on me, and I do not want that. I mean at least you like sports, and you're good at it. It kills him that I can't, and won't, be the son he wants me to be. He'll be forcing me to play ball again, and we see how great that went this time.”

  “Trust me, Brys, I think about that a lot. I don't want to leave you behind, but I can't exactly pack you in my luggage and cart you off to school with me,” Alec answered, feeling rather apologetic about the entire thing. Leaving his kid brother was not ideal, but there was no other way to go about it. He'd just have to tread water like Alec did until he could make his own great escape.

  The topic faded quietly, nobody wanting to ruin the perfection of the post-Thanksgiving dinner moment by dragging out something so heavy. Alec slowly fell asleep to the sounds of Mario Kart and kids bickering over board games. He felt like he could have slept forever, stretched out on that worn sofa with a throw pillow under his head. In reality it lasted just over an hour, and he woke up to Bryson shaking him gently on the shoulder. Some of Ramona's siblings had disappeared, and Ericka had put down her controller to curl up and read instead. Ramona was slumped over the arm of the sofa, fast asleep herself with her mouth slightly open.

  “We should go,” Bryson whispered, looking sorry that it all had to end, but they both knew that they couldn't stay forever. Outside the snow was falling again, harder now, and even though they only had to go a mile it was better not to risk it being worse.

  The two of them slowly slipped on their shoes and found their coats, bundled up against the cold. They were about to slip out when Janet appeared, holding a paper plate covered in tinfoil. She gave them a soft, sad smile and hugged them both before pressing the plate into Bryson's hands.

  “For your mother,” she whispered, giving them a little nod. They both nodded back and thanked her, before heading out into the snow and into the frigid SUV.

  Alec gave the vehicle a moment to warm up, defrosting the windshield before he finally started to back out. He paused for a moment though and gently tapped the brake, spotting a sleepy Ramona in the living room window. She gave him a little wave and he waved back, watching as she lowered the curtain back down and disappeared. That had made it all the more painful to back out and turn toward home, creeping along at just a few miles per hour. It took them ten minutes or more to make that mile, pulling up the snowy drive and back into the space that they had abandoned hours before.

  The house was quiet as they let themselves inside, slipping off their shoes and leaving them to dry by the door. Bryson headed straight upstairs, but Alec crept quietly toward the kitchen. The water and mud was mopped up, the floors sparkling clean. In the kitchen the mess of glass and cranberry sauce was also gone, though he could see a faint hint of pink near the bottom of the cabinets.

  He put the plate on the island and shed his coat, leaving it in the laundry room so he could dry it out later. He got into the cleaning supplies and found a magic eraser, wetting it in the kitchen sink. Sliding down, Alec situated himself on the floor in front of the cabinets and began to quietly clean, only getting up every now and then to rinse and start again. Slowly the pink began to fade away, giving way to stark white underneath.

  At some point his mother emerged from upstairs, tired but not sporting any obvious injuries. She patted his head before pouring herself a glass of milk, sitting down at the island. She pulled the tinfoil off the plate and quietly began to eat while he cleaned. They kept each other silent company for well over an hour, neither bringing up what had happened because neither one of them needed to. This was their reality, at least for now.

  Alec, for one, had hope that reality could be changed. That this, all of this, was only temporary.

  Chapter Nineteen: Backlash

  The coming and going of Thanksgiving meant that Ramona and Alec had less than four weeks left to complete t
heir project and prepare for their presentation to the class. They had given everything over to Bryson once they had finished filming, and he was spending as much time as he could diligently editing the material into one cohesive video. They had mocked up some note cards for the presentation itself, just things they would say to introduce their project, and a brief overview for the end. Until they had the video completed though, so they could practice properly, there really wasn’t all that much to do.

  They still kept meeting up after school though. It was a habit now, one that neither of them particularly wanted to break, and so they found ways to work around Alec’s practices and games and Ramona’s hectic home life. Time was primarily spent at the Sanders home since the last big blow up at the Davis house, and they both seemed to prefer it this way. Sure, there wasn’t much privacy to be had in such a busy household, but neither of them particularly minded. Sometimes Bryson joined them, determined to beat Ericka at video games and enjoying the home cooked meals whenever they were able to stay. It was a nice arrangement, or at least one that made all parties involved happy.

  Something about the holiday had changed things, for both of them. Neither of them could put a name or word to what it was, but it was nice. Things just felt different, in general and between them. It made Ramona feel a little cautious, though happily so, but it made Alec feel spontaneous and wild. Sometimes he just appeared at her locker between classes to see how she was doing, and since the snow was really flying the two Davis boys picked her up every day to spare her the horrors of the bus. They rode to and from school together, accepting the whispers and looks they received as they headed into the building every morning.

  Alec didn’t care. He was beyond the capability to care about such frivolous things. Whatever had taken hold of him during that first week of the season was long gone, and he was in no hurry to find it or get it back. His life was different. He was different, and he knew he would never go back to being the boy who had sat idly by while everyone around him scrambled to be at the top of the food chain. He was no longer a stepping stone for them and it felt good to be free of that. How in the world had it taken him this long to realize that one of the keys to actually being content with life was to stop trying to impress everyone and just do whatever the hell you wanted?

  Ramona didn’t show up at his first home basketball game after Thanksgiving break, but she came to the second. She sat a few rows up from the gym floor, this time alone with just a book to keep her company when things got dull. Alec wasn’t sure how anyone could be bored at a sporting event, there was so much going on that he couldn’t imagine being so distracted from it, but at least she was there and the thought alone made him satisfied.

  Of course, it also caught the attention of his former clique. It was hard not to notice Ramona Sanders sitting four rows up behind the bench with her head lowered over a paperback. She was wearing a baggy black sweater and a pair of faded jeans, her work boots traded for snow boots. Her unruly curls hung wild and free around her face, and when she lifted her head she had to push her glasses up over her freckled nose. Every now and then, when the announcers boomed out Alec’s name, she would glance down at the court and smile. Once or twice they waved at one another, like they hadn’t just been in class with each other just hours before.

  Casey King saw Ramona there, because she saw everything. She made it her business to know the business of everyone else, and this? This really bothered her. She didn’t know how any of this had happened, she certainly didn’t understand why, but she knew she didn’t like it. Alec Davis was slumming it, and in her mind that made the rest of them look bad by proxy. If one popular, handsome boy could fall victim to something like this, then who was to say the others couldn’t either? It was in her best interest to protect her friends, even Alec who was wholly undeserving at this point. It was just time that somebody did something, and she was just the girl for the job.

  Maybe if it hadn’t happened in front of the entire school it wouldn’t have been so bad. Maybe Ramona could have swallowed the humiliation down and found a way to keep holding her head up. It did happen in front of the entire school though, and a good portion of the town too. The RHS gymnasium was always packed on game nights, and that was something that would likely never change.

  She was reading through Wuthering Heights again, almost out of sheer compulsion at this point. She wanted to make sure that they hadn’t missed anything major, anything that would be worth talking about and that might assure them a top grade on the assignment. She was whispering lines aloud to herself, running her thumb over the pages until she found her favorite passages and quotes. By now her book was scarred, marked up, and had half of its pages dog eared for easy reference. Normally she treated books with a little more regard, but this one had proven very useful and she would retire it to the shelf where it belonged as soon as December 21st had come to pass. After that she would likely not read about Catherine and Heathcliff for a good many years going forward, though they were so committed to memory she wasn’t sure if she’d ever have to read it again.

  Her head was bent low over the book, which rested against her knees. She had a hair tie wrapped around one wrist, and for a moment she contemplated trying to wrangle it around her thick curly hair. It kept getting into her face, and she kept having to pause to brush it away. Sometimes it got tangled with her glasses, and then she had to fight to get them free again. Down on the court the buzzer sounded, which meant it was half time. She glanced up to see Alec standing at the bench, talking to Bryson who was sitting directly behind it. His broken ankle was still keeping him out of the game, but he still showed up with or without their parents to be there for Alec.

  Ramona wasn’t paying any attention, and by and large she would blame no one but herself for that part. She was watching the brothers Davis, one finger pressed into the book to keep her place, when something cold and wet suddenly slid down her neck and into her shirt. It was liquid, whatever it was, and it was frigid. She jumped up with a shriek that echoed through the gym, above the noise of players shuffling off the court and spectators heading off the bleachers toward the concession stand. People stopped to stare at her, and a few of them pointed. Then the laughter started

  Reaching for the back of her head, Ramona’s fingers ran over her now damp hair. When she pulled her hand back she saw drops of blue, and she knew then what had happened. Someone had dumped an entire blue slushy drink all over her back. She sent blue droplets flying everywhere, much to the chagrin of the crowd around her, turning fast to see who it might have been. Casey King stood above her, holding an empty cup in her hand.

  “Oops,” Casey said with a smile, looking very smug and full of herself. “Guess I tripped. You understand, don’t you Mona? I mean, these things do happen. Not to anyone who matters, of course, but they do.”

  “HEY!”

  Alec and Bryson had still been deep in conversation when Ramona had let out her piercing scream, and both boys had looked up quickly to see the source of the noise. They could both very clearly see Casey, looking like the cat that ate the canary and holding an empty cup, and Ramona who looked to be on the verge of tears. Bryson had staggered to his feet, the walking boot he now sported clunky and awkward, but he wasn’t as fast as his brother. The crowd parted for Alec who took the steps two at a time, approaching the girls with a murderous look on his face.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” He asked Casey, ripping the empty cup out of her hands. He threw it toward the stairs, where it bounced its way all the way to the floor with a plastic, hollow sound. “What’s your damn problem, King?”

  “My problem?” Casey asked, trying her best to look like she wasn’t at least a little bit afraid of him. “My problem is you, Davis! It was bad enough that you were fighting with Cameron, and acting like some kind of damn sad sack all the time! Then you had to start hanging out with this freak, just totally wasting all of your potential! Why can’t you be normal, huh? Like what is so damaged about you that you’d
throw away everything for this loser?”

  Alec sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep his cool as he leaned in closer to Casey. He lowered his voice, and when the words came out they sounded quiet but dangerous. “My damage is that I’m sick of bitches like you thinking that they’re better than everyone else. I learned that lesson, Casey, I’m not better than anyone. Clothes, cars, money, they don’t change that or make it true. I got over myself, but the problem is that none of you did. Not you and not Cameron. I chose to give up all that fake bullshit for someone who actually cares about me as a person, and not about what I can give her. So back off. If you touch her again? Being a girl won’t save you from me.”

  He turned to Ramona then, looking apologetic and sad all at the same time. He reached out his hand to her and was relieved when she slipped hers into his, starting down the bleachers carefully. Bryson met them at the bottom, and the two brothers wordlessly sandwiched her between them, starting out of the gym. Their coach had emerged from the locker room to see what was holding him up, and Alec heard his name being called. He didn’t care though, and he didn’t turn back. They just walked straight out of the gym and the parking lot, where their mother’s vehicle was waiting for them.

  Ramona held her tears in until they were at the Davis house, and she was in a hot shower. She cried there, letting the steam fog everything up while she sat sobbing on the bottom of the tub. Despite the blurriness of her tears she could see the blue dye running down the drain, and that just made her cry even harder. She thought she might actually be sick from it all, but she managed to keep everything down which was a minor miracle. By the time she was done the water was going cold and her head hurt, but letting it out helped at least a little.

  She dried herself off and let a towel soak up all the water from her hair, pulling on a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt that Alec had given her. Everything was comically big on her, so she had to roll up the bottoms of the pants just so she didn’t trip and break her face on anything. Feeling more human now that she wasn’t covered in someone else’s beverage she made her way downstairs, finding the brothers in the living room. They had made steaming mugs of hot chocolate, arranged on a tray with some sugar cookies. It was sweet, and she actually managed a smile as she sat down between them on the overstuffed sofa.