A Crooked Mile (Rust Book 1)

by Samantha Arthurs

  “Thanks for this,” she told them both, picking up a mug and holding it between both hands. She took a sip and let the warmth spread through her, laying her head back into the sofa cushions “You didn’t have to leave your game, Alec. You’re going to get in trouble now.”

  Alec shrugged, grabbing a sugar cookie and dunking it into his mug of cocoa. “So what? They won’t do anything to me; maybe make me sit on the bench for a game. They need me though, so I’ll be alright,” he reassured her, nudging her gently with his knee. “I wasn’t going to let her do that to you without consequences, okay? She deserved worse, but I didn’t want you to have to stand there freezing and embarrassed while I kept reaming her out. I’m just so over all that, and they won’t let it go. It’s like they all think I owe them something, and I don’t. I’m only obligated to the people who want to be obligated to me in return. You and Bryson are the only people I care about, and I’m not going back to pretending otherwise.”

  “She was horrible to you,” Bryson said with a soft sigh, putting his own mug aside. He turned sideways on the sofa, resting his bare toes under Ramona’s leg, pulling up his legs so he could rest his chin on his knees. “It wasn’t right, and everyone else knew it but they’re all to chicken shit to say or do anything about it. This place is full of backstabbers and phonies, and we have to stick with each other if we’re going to make it here. That includes standing up to people like Casey, who’ve had it coming for a long time. I mean, you know, she’s not nice to me either. She’s not nice to anyone who she thinks can’t give her a leg up, and that’s her problem. It means that nobody in her life is real and eventually when she needs someone she’ll come up short.”

  “Still, you guys didn’t have to stand up for me and you did. It’s just so weird to think back to September, which really wasn’t that long ago. I hated you, Alec, and I didn’t even know you. I judged you based on your friends, and on the fact that when they would bully me, call me names, yell at me, that you sat back and did nothing It seemed just as bad to me as the actual name calling and tormenting. You could have stopped them but you didn’t and that made me resent you,” Ramona finally confessed, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. She had kept that, by and large, to herself for all these weeks. “I just figured you were like them and that I was just Stuttering Sanders.”

  Alec swallowed the bite of cookie in his mouth, exhaling very slowly. He rested his mug against his thigh, his thumb tracing the rim as he calculated out what he wanted to say. “In a way I was like them, to a degree. I didn’t join in, no, but I didn’t have the guts to make them stop either. Then we got partnered in class, and I figured we’d just make short work of it, get it done, and that would be that. It wasn’t like that though, because you weren’t anything like I imagined. You were smart and funny, and that first day when you put me in place? That impressed me. You don’t have fear inside you, Ramona, not real fear. I mean everyone gets humiliated, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually afraid of something. I mean you turned around to face Casey, and most people would have just ran. You’re the most impressive person I’ve ever met.”

  “What do you think will happen tomorrow at school?” Bryson asked, biting his bottom lip in worry. It was already chapped and messy, but he ignored the hurt and worried over it with his teeth anyway. “Do you think people will say anything?”

  “Probably,” Alec nodded, finishing off the last of his hot chocolate. “So let them talk. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  In all honesty, school wasn’t half as bad as any of them anticipated it would be. Cameron, Casey, and the others asked Ramona if she was feeling blue every time they saw her that morning, but her lack of acknowledgment one way or another made the joke go stale fast, and they dropped it without further prompting. At one point Cameron shouldered Alec hard in the hallway, and they stared at each other for a long moment with impressively flaring nostrils before they both moved on quickly.

  Lunch was probably the worst time, because everyone kept staring and whispering. Whenever Ramona or Alec would look up from their table the gossipers would quickly turn away, as though that would somehow prove that they weren’t talking about them. Still nobody spoke up, poked, or prodded at them during the entire thirty minutes. At the basketball table Casey sat sulking, but even she knew better than to try and stir the pot again Alec would make good on his threat, of that she had no doubt, so it was better not to push her luck.

  That afternoon before Alec drove Ramona and Bryson home he’d faced down a meeting with the coach in the locker rooms. He knew that he should probably feel nervous, but he had decided not to sweat it. Instead of the situation bogging him down, upping the ante on his anxiety, he seemed to be a little bit lighter. It was almost as though standing up for her, and for himself to a degree, had made him feel that much better.

  “See, Sanders?” Alec grinned as they pulled into her driveway, sliding a bit in the packed down snow. “Sometimes things go on the up, and they stay there for a while! Maybe this is it. Maybe things are finally turning around for both of us.”

  Ramona was grinning as she bid them both farewells, sliding out of the SUV. She made her way up to the door, turning to wave as they backed out of the driveway. Behind them the winter sun was already dropping a little low in the sky, back lighting them both brightly so that they looked like nothing more than dark silhouettes against a vibrant backdrop. If only any of them realized then, in that moment, that this would somehow be one of the last good days that Alec would have before he was just suddenly gone.

  If only that empowered feeling could have lasted a little longer, for any of them. If only one of them had known something, anything, the future might have been swayed. Or maybe it would have stayed the same no matter what, but that is something no one will ever possibly know.

  Chapter Twenty: A Source of Little Visible Delight

  The presentation of their projects would be the week before finals, and it seemed to just sneak up on them despite all of their preparations. They had spent their last weekend before everything was due writing down what they would say in their introduction and when they wrapped everything up, taking careful notes on lined cards in case they forgot something.

  That last weekend was spent at Ramona’s house, their things spread out across the dining room table. Bryson had shown up with his laptop computer so he could show them the final edit of their project and make any small, last minute fixes that they might want. Ever since the basketball game where Alec had walked out while defending her, things had been tense everywhere but the Sanders home. It was so frigid at the Davis house that Alec was afraid he and Bryson might freeze to death, and school was little better. He had been more or less shunned by all of his former friends, especially his teammates, and he spent his lunch period huddled in the corner with Ramona. In class he could at least keep himself occupied, even though he still felt the chill every time Cameron or one of the others looked his way.

  Things with his father were, at least, better than usual. After the initial blow up Alec II had cooled off a bit, and had gone from screaming at his oldest son to not speaking to him at all. It was the way Alec preferred it, and he was reveling in the peace of it, even though the tension was so thick in the air it would have made a tuning fork hum. So maybe it wasn’t exactly perfect, but it was a nice Band-Aid on things and it was something he could definitely live with.

  Once, and only once, his mother had told him that she was proud of him. It had been a quiet conversation, whispered over hot mugs of cocoa in the kitchen a few nights after it had happened. She had always wanted Alec to be the type of man who stood up for others, who was able to put someone else first, and he had done it. It made her heart swell with pride, even if she couldn’t bring it up in front of her husband. It made him feel better to know that at least one half of his parental unit appreciated what he had done, and didn’t see it as some adolescent attention grabbing scheme (which was the theory his father preferred to employ).
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br />   It was different at the Sanders house, where he was treated like a hero for standing up for Ramona. She had been bullied for as long as she had been in school, and nobody had ever really taken the leap to push back on her behalf. As she had gotten older she had built a thicker skin, become somewhat immune to their usual taunts and torments, but that didn’t always make it easy. Sometimes it stung, sometimes it hurt just as badly as it had when she was six, so to have someone like Alec Davis finally intervene? It meant something, especially when the fall out had landed so squarely on his shoulders. He had given up friends, upset the family dynamic at home yet again, and casually tossed aside his social status without a second thought. It was a testament to the person he really was on the inside, the person he wanted to be very openly now.

  Alec Davis was a very different person than he had been even just a couple of months previous, and he liked the new version far better. It was like being atoned, and he was basking in it quite happily.

  So they wrote notes, jotted down memos to themselves, and approved Bryson’s final cut of their video. All that was left was to stand before the class, say their introductions, and let the DVD player do the rest. It was a very nerve wracking thing, especially when it was tied so heavily into their final grade. They felt ready though, or at least as ready as they could ever be. Twelve weeks of hard work, of intense reading, note taking, and long conversations about Linton, Heathcliff, and Catherine. Beneath the nerves was also a layer of excitement, of readiness that came with the end of something a person has worked so hard for.

  The Wednesday of their presentation dawned cold but clear, the sun reflecting off the rolling banks of snow that seemed to cover the world as far as the eye could see. It was supposed to warm up a little later in the day, which meant some of the snow could possibly melt. It was both a good and bad thing, in that it meant less snow for the moment, but that it also meant ice whenever all that melted wetness froze again in the night. Neither of them was thinking about the forecast though as Alec pulled up in front of the Sanders home and honked the horn, fidgeting in his seat like an excited toddler.

  Ramona practically bounced out of the house, her backpack over her shoulder and the DVD case with their project inside held tightly in her left hand. She slipped and slid her way to the now very familiar SUV, easing into the front seat with a grin. She turned around to wave at Bryson in the back as she buckled up her seat belt, taking in a deep breath to calm her nerves.

  “I can’t believe this is it,” she announced, clapping her hands together out of sheer excitement. “It feels like we’ve worked on this for no time at all. How is it possible that we’re really presenting this in first period? I mean that’s less than an hour away. Way less than an hour, actually. It doesn’t seem real!”

  Alec laughed as he turned at the end of Route Four, heading toward the high school. “Well believe it, because it’s happening! I double checked that I had my note cards this morning, because I’m seriously afraid of screwing up the introduction. I’m never afraid in front of crowds, but I’m pretty shook about this. I just want it to be good, since we put so much time and effort into it. I think Mrs. Bond is going to like it, but I’m remaining skeptical until it’s all over.”

  They talked over one another all the way to school, with Bryson joining in every now and then to compliment himself on his excellent editing skills. They were still talking as they made their way into the building, stopping at their respective lockers to grab what they’d need for the first half of the day. The two of them were the first ones to arrive in English class that morning, their excitement putting them way ahead of schedule. They sat in the back row, Alec’s preference, and went over everything one more time. They couldn’t have been any more prepared, so they tried to relax and wait for Mrs. Bond to start announcing the projects

  Alec and Ramona ended up going third, and despite a glitch with the DVD player not wanting to connect right away, things went smoothly. Alec gave an introduction that talked about the book, their video, and how they had chosen Wuthering Heights above all the other books on the list. Their video, which was just over eight minutes long, had been put together beautifully by Bryson. He had put in a nice stylized introduction with the title of their project, and had added soft music into some scenes. The video itself ended with the shot of Alec beneath the big tree in the Sanders yard, reading aloud the musings of Catherine and how she loved both Linton and Heathcliff.

  “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary,” Alec spoke from the screen, raising his eyes to look directly into the camera. He quoted the rest of the verse, but it was those first lines that Ramona liked the best. The way he raised his eyes from the book he was holding, the way he spoke so softly but with so much passion and assurance in his voice. It was the perfect ending, soft music fading into credits that Bryson had tacked onto the end.

  Mrs. Bond flicked the lights back on, as Ramona quickly read a few lines from the note cards that wrapped up their project. There wasn’t much more to say though, and when she was done a few kids clapped politely while others, mostly girls, stared at them curiously. Or, rather, they stared at Alec who had clearly stolen the show with his commanding presence and ease in front of the camera. He was smiling now, taking a playful bow before they headed back to their seats.

  “Wonderful,” Mrs. Bond grinned, giving the two of them a wink as she went over her roster, calling the next pair up to the front.

  They should have been paying attention, really, but it was hard to ignore the high they were now riding after a job well done. Neither of them had a doubt now that they had done well, and that their grades were not in mortal jeopardy. Alec felt silly with relief, and Ramona felt like she could curl up and finally get some real sleep. They had both put a lot of work and effort into their project, while juggling their busy lives and schedules. It certainly hadn’t been easy, but it had more than been worth it.

  When the bell rang they were the first ones out of the room, jubilant and clearly pleased with themselves. Alec did a little shuffle dance down the hallway to Ramona’s locker, leaning up against the one beside it with a little laugh.

  “We survived,” he grinned, brushing a few strands of dark hair back off his forehead. “We not only survived, but we totally killed it! Mrs. Bond was impressed, you could tell, which means we’re totally getting close to a perfect score. I also have developed a new skill through all of this! I’m pretty sure I can quote almost that entire book out loud without having to look at the pages. I may take my show on the road, what do you think?”

  “I think you’ll sell out every night,” Ramona beamed in return, opening up her locker to put her English things away so she didn’t have to carry them along all morning, tucking the DVD in its case onto the top shelf. “Think of all the free time we’ll have now too! I won’t know what to do with myself at all.”

  Alec turned sideways so his shoulder was pressed into the metal front of the locker, studying her fixedly before he spoke again. “You know, I was thinking about that. This project sort of brought us together, and it gave us a reason to see each other. We don’t need a reason anymore though; we can see each other just because we want to. We don’t need the moors of Yorkshire to be an excuse, not anymore. Don’t you think?”

  “Well, I mean, sure,” Ramona nodded, closing her locker and turning to face Alec. “I’m sure we can get together sometimes, just to hang out. We’ll drag Bryson along too, even if it’s against his will. I think he secretly loves that we keep making him participate in things with us, even if he won’t admit it.”

  “Sometimes we can take Bryson along, yeah, but other times I was thinking it could just be me and you,” Alec told her softly, his tooth hooking his bottom lip. “Next Saturday night, after finals are over, is the winter formal, and I was wondering if you’d maybe want to go with me
? I know it’s kind of short notice, but I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask. We never talked about things like dances or any of that, but then I decided to just go for it. I mean it would be a lot of fun, I think. We’ll get all dressed up, I’ll buy you a cheesy corsage, and we can get dinner at the diner before or after, whatever you want. I’m not really the world’s best dancer, but I’m not awful either. I won’t step on your feet or any-”

  “Alec. Stop.”

  Ramona spoke softly, like she was trying to very carefully choose her words to make things less upsetting. As if that was somehow a real, actual possibility there in the moment. She reached out to put a hand very gently on his chest, looking up to meet his eyes with her own. She looked a little sad, or maybe she just looked sorry, but both possibilities made Alec’s heart sink.

  “Thank you for asking me, it really means a lot, but I’m going to have to turn you down. It’s been really great hanging out with you, and working on our project together, but I’m just not ready for dances and going out and all of that. You’re a good guy, and I used to think that wasn’t true. I know now that I was wrong, and that I never should have judged you before I got to know you. I just...I can’t, alright? I can’t, and I’m really sorry. It sounds like you made a lot of plans,” she told him, voice soft and cracking a bit. It was hard for her to turn him down, but she felt it was probably the right thing to do.