by Jason Zandri
“How about you ask her if you can come to the store to study with me?” Matthew said, looking down at Melissa’s hands still on his arm. “It’s
better than you sitting there at home alone. Your sister’s there. My Dad’s there. And your mom can pick the two of you up at seven.”
Melissa let her hands go. “I thought your Dad closed the store at six?”
Then she turned away from Matthew as the cold wind picked up and blew her loose strands of hair around.
“He does, that’s right,” Matthew said, visibly embarrassed. “I was thinking of the time your mother comes home and not when my Dad closes the store.”
“I guess you really wanted to spend time with me if you forgot when your dad closes the store,” Melissa said quietly, trying to make it sound sincere.
“Would you like to check with your mom and ask?” Matthew looked somewhat withdrawn and defensive. “I could get off at your bus stop and walk with you to the house and wait for you to call her at work. If she says yes, we could walk together to the store.”
“I’d like that,” Melissa said with a smile.
“Okay, that’s great,” Matthew said a little louder and with some confidence. “I’ll see you on the bus.”
Melissa turned to walk back to her friends, and then called out,
“Matthew?”
“Yes?” he answered before he fully turned around to walk away.
“Do you have a nickname or does everyone call you ‘Matthew’ all the time?”
“It’s just Matthew,” he said, withdrawn again. “I favor it that way because … well, I just do.”
“It’s a nice name. My friends call me Missy,” she said, and her smile returned.
“Diane called you that as well. I wasn’t sure if it was something you liked or if it’s something done to tease. Like when my friends are goofing and call me ‘Matty’ or ‘Sandman.’ I was trying to figure that out. Your nickname
—it’s pretty. Like you.”
Carrie and Alecia completely lost themselves on the “pretty”
comment and screamed and laughed. Melissa glanced over at Matthew, who
looked visibly shaken for having said what he’d said and watching the reactions of the girls. Melissa gave the two of them a scornful glare and walked over to him.
“You’re the nicest boy I’ve ever met,” she whispered in his ear, and then kissed him on the cheek. She didn’t want to see his reaction, so she turned and ran from him and her friends. “I’ll see you on the bus.”
“Yeah,” Matthew said as they disappeared up and over the small, snowy hill on the playground. “See you on the bus.” He watched while Carrie and Alecia tried to catch up with her.
***
Matthew took a couple of steps to the side, watching Melissa, and then turned to walk and smacked right into another girl coming his way. She slipped in the snow and fell. Matthew reached down to help her up. “I’m so sorry; that was clumsy of me. I wasn’t paying attention.”
The fair-skinned girl with the red hair smiled and extended her hand to be helped up. “It’s okay. Accidents and all,” she said while she stood and brushed the snow off.
“The snow got you wet; I’m sorry about that,” Matthew said, rather embarrassed. He wanted to brush the snow off her but hesitated on touching her. The girl looked at him, evidently wondering if he’d follow through, and smiled when he finally did.
“Recess is almost over. I’ll be okay. Well, I suppose now that we’ve bumped into one another we could say ‘hi.’ My name’s Elizabeth. My friends call me Liz.”
“Matthew,” he said, smiling. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Well, I suppose knocking me over had a benefit,” she said, then laughed and brushed more snow off her pants.
“Oh?” Matthew turned to walk with her. “Such as?”
“Well, for one thing, I finally got to meet you. You’re new here, and I can’t get your attention from the back of the classroom. That and when you make a mistake, you have only positive improvement from there, for the most part.” Her lips curved up in amusement.
“Well, when you put it like that, I suppose you’re right,” Matthew
said with a shy smile and a glance her way, and then they walked back toward the school building.
CHAPTER FOUR
The school bus pulled up to Ward Street, and only Melissa and Matthew got out at the corner. They crossed the street in front of the bus, and then it continued northbound past Boylan’s corner store on South Cherry Street.
“So, I saw Liz finally got around to saying hello to you,” Melissa said, with her head turned to watch Matthew’s expression while they headed down the street to her house.
“Yeah. I didn’t know her so well. You know, except from class. I thought she lived in this neighborhood somewhere, but she lives over on Blakeslee.” Matthew kicked some of the snow boulders forward on the sidewalk.
“That’s closer to the southeast side schools: Dag, and Lyman Hall.”
Melissa slowed at her driveway cut. “This is my house. I’ll call my mom.
You’ll have to wait on the porch. I can’t have anyone in when no one’s home.
Especially a boy.”
“Have you had many boys here?” Matthew said, and immediately regretted blurting it out.
Melissa thought about the comment for a second and smiled. “No.
You’re the first one I brought home.” She kissed him on the cheek then darted into the house.
***
Melissa closed the front door behind her and blew a lung full of air out of her mouth all at once. I can’t believe I did that. TWICE now! What was I thinking? When did I become this mushy girl? She headed into the kitchen and grabbed the phone that hung on the wall. She dialed the number to her mother’s workplace and stretched the long coiled cord to the phone so that she could look towards the front windows. She watched Matthew pace around on the porch.
“Corametrics—how can I direct your call?” the female voice on the other end of the phone asked.
“Um … Accounting, Mrs. Canton, please,” Melissa asked, unsure of herself.
“One moment, please.” The line went on hold.
Too many last names, Melissa thought with a slight frown as the hold music filled her ear. Diane Wakeford, Melissa Bancroft, Karen Canton, wife of Joseph Canton … ugh! I miss Dad. I guess Diane feels the same way. I know Mom just wants to be happy and have someone in her life …”
“Hello,” the woman on the phone said on her return. “Mrs. Canton is unavailable to take a call at the moment. May I take a message for her?”
“Um … no, thank you. I’ll try her later.” Melissa hung up. She hated to leave messages despite her mother asking her to call once she got home from school, especially now with Diane not around because of work.
What could I say? She thought as she rummaged through the drawer in the kitchen for a pen and a piece of scratch paper. “Can you tell her, her daughter called, and leave her the message that she’s going up the street to do homework with a nice boy?” I hate that. It’s stupid to call, and I’m going to get her yelled at and into trouble at work. Melissa looked back to the front windows while she started the note to her mother. Still, he is a nice boy. I wouldn’t mind getting yelled at if it meant spending time with him. I wonder what music he likes. Melissa looked down at the little heart shape she’d drawn on the piece of paper. “This boy is making me brain damaged!” she said aloud and with a huff. She crumpled the paper, tossed it into the trash, and started a new note:
“Mom—I went up the street to Colony Convenience, where Diane works, to study with Matthew Sanford.” Melissa paused her writing for a moment. “I need help with Geography, and Matthew is a wiz at it. I will come home with Diane when the store closes around six. Love you—Missy.”
Oh, that sounded ridiculous, Melissa thought, dropping the pen on the table and walking away from the note. It serves the purpose. It communicated where I am, whom I’m with, a
nd how and when I will be home, even if it sounds dorky.
***
Matthew peered briefly in through the window to check how far into the house he could see. It was too dark to make out much more than a hallway into the house going past a flight of stairs. The room at the far end might be the kitchen. He could see Melissa’s outline in the poor lighting.
From where he stood, it looked like she’d taken off her hat and pulled the phone from the wall to place a call. With the tiny amount of light coming
from the kitchen, it was hard to make out much, but she did shake out her long black hair.
I never really noticed how long it was, Matthew thought. She always has it pinned up or under a hat. The bangs look cute. Matthew pulled his face away from the window and walked back and forth on the porch, shaking his head like a puppy might. When the heck did I become a girl’s hair expert?
A few moments later, after thinking about Baseball cards, Styx, and whether it would be cool to have cable TV and thirty-six channels for the first time, Matthew stopped walking when Melissa came out of the house.
***
“All set?” Matthew turned to step off the porch but stopped short.
“Yep, all set. I called my mother.” Melissa turned to him since he’d stopped. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” Matthew said, waving his hand forward in a partial motion to the stairs. Melissa stepped forward and realized he was letting her go first.
Once she appreciated that, she simply stepped off and walked at a normal pace. “So, your Mom was okay with things?”
“Well,” Melissa admitted, sheepish, “I didn’t reach her. She couldn’t take the call, and I hate leaving a personal message like that with the woman who takes the calls, so I hung up and wrote her a note.” Melissa turned half a step in front of him. “It’s not a huge deal.”
“Of course not.” Matthew nodded. “I leave my Dad a note all the time when I take off to do something. It’s so he knows where I am and that way he doesn’t worry.”
Matthew slipped on an icy patch but caught his balance. Melissa stepped forward with her head turned back and snorted with a quick laugh then slipped herself. Matthew reached forward and grabbed her, one hand low on her waist and another on her shoulder to stop her fall. He held her effortlessly while keeping his stance on the remainder of the ice. The cold winter air escaped both of their open mouths as the two of them stood looking at one another. A look of uncertainty overtook Matthew’s expression as he held her, and he stood her up to let her go.
Keep breathing, Melissa said to herself. Saying something now would be cool. “Thanks for catching me. No point in cracking my head open; I
could ruin the rest of winter that way.” Oh my God! Stop talking. The remainder of the walk. Say nothing!
“Uh, yeah. No problem. Sorry. I didn’t mean to grab at you.”
Matthew sounded nervous.
“Oh yeah, well, anytime,” Melissa said, stepping forward. Oh God, maybe I can get out into the road at the corner, and a car can hit me.
“Anytime?” What is wrong with me? He caught me and couldn’t wait to let me go. He had such an awful look on his face.
Matthew became quiet and said nothing further, and the two of them continued over the next few blocks to the store in silence.
When they came up alongside the building of his father’s store they each looked up at Diane, who stared back at them through the glass. Matthew confidently stepped ahead of Melissa to open the door for her. She jittered just a little but then immediately calmed down once she sensed that strength of character coming from him again.
Melissa stepped in and took her hat off, and Matthew pulled the door closed. Diane waved over to them. “Hi.” She looked surprised to see her little sister. “What are you doing here?” she mouthed silently to her as Matthew turned his head away and toward the glass windows of the garage area.
“Just a second,” Matthew said, touching her softly on her lower back and over her heavy winter jacket. “I want to see what my Dad is doing and then I can introduce you.” Matthew stepped away, and Melissa felt a tingle from his light touch.
“What are you doing here?” Diane whispered sharply. “No way Mom said this was okay.”
“I called her. She couldn’t come to the phone, so I left her a note on the kitchen table,” Melissa said in a hushed tone, looking back over at Matthew, who’d stepped into the garage area.
“What if Joe sees the note? He’ll go ballistic!” Diane said as her voice began to come back to a normal volume with Matthew out of hearing range.
The sounds of the power tools going on and off would certainly drown out their voices.
“You worry too much about stepfather Canton, Diane,” Melissa said, cracking wise. “You’re twenty-four; if I were twenty-four, I wouldn’t let him
push me around the way he does you and Mom.”
“Well, you’re not me. And you’re not depending on him for a place to live like I am. You’re still a minor and Mom’s daughter. If she’s there, he sort of has to keep you. He can remove me at any time.”
“You know he works until eleven and doesn’t get home for half an hour after that. Longer if he stops at the club to play cards.” Melissa’s irritation showed in her voice.
“He’s a cute boy,” Diane said, trying to change the subject to something more light hearted.
“I suppose,” Melissa said, attempting to sound indifferent.
“That was a miserable effort to sound uninterested in him,” Diane said, giggling. “Fifth grade ...” She gave a sigh. “What a wonderful time of change.”
“Is that when you started liking boys?” Melissa asked.
“It might have been over the summer,” Diane said. “It might have even been the start of sixth grade, but it was Danny Quintin. I’d had a crush on him since second grade. It blossomed into something around then. Well, for me at least.”
Melissa looked over at Matthew talking to his father. He motioned over towards the two of them. Noticing they were looking at him, Matthew waved to the two of them, looking directly at Melissa. The blood rushed to her face, turning it red, while Diane waved back.
“My God, you’re blushing. You must really like him,” Diane said with a smile.
“I do.” She bit her lip, nervous. “I don’t think he does, you know, like that.”
“Why would you say that?” Diane asked.
“Well, I slipped on the ice earlier and he caught me before I fell. He barely said anything to me and then couldn’t wait to let me go,” Melissa said with a sad tone in her voice, looking through the shop window at him.
Diane countered, “Well, he asked you to study with him, and he could study and do homework by himself or with one of his other friends, but he asked you instead.”
“He also said we might listen to some music. I assume if we finished early,” Melissa responded, and glanced at the floor shyly.
“An invitation to study and then listen to music too?” Diane said.
“When’s the wedding?”
“Stop. Please. Tease me any other day like a sister might but please not today. Yes. I do like him. He’s nice. He’s polite. He talks to me like I’m anyone. He knows I’m a girl, but he treats me the same as any of his friends.
I like that. All the way home on the bus I talked, and he listened and he talked and I listened. It was better than talking to Carrie or Alecia.” Melissa turned to look at him again, and then turned around and looked at Diane. “I know I give you a lot of flak about Steve. I’m sorry. He treated you like crap as if he owned you. I’m not sorry to say I was happy when he kicked you out because that meant you got to come home and be with us. I like having you there.”
She closed her eyes as tears welled up in them. “I’m sorry I was hard, saying what I felt, while that was all happening and when you first came home. I could have found a better way to tell you.”
“I know, Missy, and I understand,” Diane said. “That’s your style.
<
br /> Straightforward and from the hip. Someday, when I grow up, I want to be like you.”
Melissa wiped a stray tear away as the garage door opened, and Matthew and his father walked into the store area.
“Missy,” Matthew called out to her, “this is my Dad. Dad, this is Melissa, Diane’s sister.”
“Hi,” Mark said as he brushed his hands on his work pants. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m a little dirty, sorry.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Sanford,” Melissa said with a smile.
“Did you want a soda or anything before you go study? Matthew said that he asked you here and that no one was at your house.” Mark motioned toward the coolers.
A car pulled up to the fuel pumps, and Mark turned his head to look out.
“You seem to get a lot of cars through the fuel pumps,” Melissa said, looking out the windows as well. “I saw a few coming and going last week when I stopped in here with my Step Dad. He says you have the cheapest fuel
in town.”
“Well, we have the location here on Route 5 and it’s on the corner; that’s certainly a traffic pull, but the main attraction is that we do have the lowest cost for fuel in town. It’s because we did away with the full-service pumps and have people pump fuel themselves, unlike most of the other stations, so we’re able to shed that cost and pass the savings along to the customer.” Mark gave a gentle laugh. “Honestly, I’d like to sell more coffee.
I earn more per unit.” Mark looked over at Diane then back to Melissa. “The work I’m doing out there …” He pointed over his shoulder. “… converting two of the bays into more store space; I’m going to sublet that out. Your sister gave me that idea.”
“She’s smart like that,” Melissa said with a wide smile and turned toward Diane. “She’s pretty and kind, too. When I grow up, I want to be like her.”
***
The words from Mark and Melissa overwhelmed Diane, and she began to cry a little, so she turned her head away and tried to look busy.
Matthew went over to the display of paper products and grabbed a small box of facial tissues for her. “Thank you,” she said, then sniffed and dried her eyes.
