Walking Through Needles

by Heather Levy

  The thought of cool air blowing throughout his fixer-upper made him anxious, and his foot grew heavier on the gas. He peeked at his truck’s clock and eased his foot some. He had time and didn’t need another speeding ticket.

  For a Friday afternoon, the bank wasn’t as busy as he expected, but he had to go inside to cash the check since he didn’t bank there. Waiting in line, he noted a dark-headed man trying to corral a toddler. The girl had long chestnut-colored hair, slightly lighter than her dad’s, and bright eyes that peered at Eric from under a table displaying a huge fake plant. Beautiful girl. Eric smiled at her and she released a burst of tinkly laughter before running back to her dad. He watched her squeeze her dad’s legs, almost felt her tiny arms grasping for purchase as she attempted to climb up her daddy like he was her own personal tree. The man pulled her into a hug and the girl nestled against his shoulder. Eric didn’t know he was holding his breath until a teller called out to him.

  Just as he made it to the window with his endorsed check, another head of chestnut hair, long and pulled back into a low ponytail, distracted him. He followed the back of the tall bank employee’s head, her lithe movements somehow familiar as she assisted a teller in the drive-thru. Someone bumped into Eric’s legs, nearly knocking him over, and he looked over to see the toddler running back to her father at the opposite end of the teller windows. Something in the way the man smiled at his daughter, so warm and inviting, reminded Eric of his father and his chest constricted.

  He looked up to see the bank employee with chestnut hair turn around. When he saw her buttermilk complexion, the subtle rose on the high cheeks, and her eyes—God, her eyes—his stomach bottomed out.

  “Sir? How may I help you?”

  The blond teller in front of him looked concerned.

  “I—I’m sorry. I’m not ready.”

  Eric turned and, going the wrong way, ran into an older man waiting in line. He half-stumbled, stopping himself from sprinting out of the bank. Inside his truck, he closed his eyes and knew he was rocking back and forth, something he hadn’t done since he was fifteen. He tried to control his rapid breathing as hot acid rose and seared the back of his throat.

  It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t, but in his gut he recognized her ramrod posture before he even caught sight of her eyes, those infinite pools of black oil, always searching, always curious and playful but never forgiving.

  All those years, wondering but too scared to know, to make contact and be rejected, and she was here. Not teaching Greek mythology or art at some college but working at a goddamn credit union. Oklahoma City was large and spread out, but he still couldn’t believe he hadn’t run into her before now.

  Eric opened his eyes and quickly shut them again, wiping the tears away with his knuckles.

  He started the ignition on his truck and spent another five minutes unable to move. He knew she hadn’t recognized him, or she didn’t act like she did. If he went inside to talk with her she would be upset, and he couldn’t do that to her at her workplace. If he waited a little longer, she would leave and likely go home, and he could follow her. He could leave her a note, maybe. Put it in her mailbox to find the next day and buy him time to think of what he would say to her.

  He knew following her home was creepy as hell, but he wasn’t ready to see her face-to-face. Not yet.

  He turned the air conditioner on full blast, found his invoice pad on his passenger seat. He ripped off a sheet reading Arrow Contracting Inc. and wrote out a note to her. He read it, reread it, balled it up and tossed it onto his floorboard. He tore off a new sheet and wrote out: Please call me. I’d like to talk—Eric.

  Eric sucked in the cold air and felt somewhat better.

  A half-hour later, he watched her exit the bank from the back and get into a silver Subaru. He followed her onto the highway and back into Oklahoma City, surprised when she got off on the 23rd Street exit, the same way he went home. She continued on near an elementary school, turning north into a nice historic neighborhood. He knew this neighborhood well, had done remodels on a few of the two-story houses in the last year. If she lived here, she was less than five miles from his house. The thought shocked him so much he almost missed seeing her turn right onto one of the streets.

  Eric eased to a crawl as she continued to her house, which looked to be the smallest on the street but just as well-kept. Like the other streets in the neighborhood, hers was lined with established elm and dogwood trees, crepe myrtles, and colorful flowerbeds his mom would’ve envied.

  He waited until she parked in the driveway and entered the house before he pulled up on the other side of the street. He saw no other car parked at her house, but then he noticed a garage tucked in the back of the property.

  Maybe she wasn’t alone. Maybe she was married and had a family…a kid. The thought forced memories he didn’t want to think about to bloom into full color.

  He pulled out his note and read it again. What explanation would she give if she had a husband who checked the mail and read this? He reached down, running his hand along his passenger floorboard until he found the original crumpled note. He smoothed it out as best as he could and read it again. Without thinking, he kissed the paper. He ran to her mailbox and dropped it in.

  The sun was a finger above the horizon once he pulled up to his two-story Craftsman home. The nearby Plaza District was buzzing with food trucks, live music, and window shoppers for some art festival going on. He could walk there, maybe get a bite to eat, something to drink, but he couldn’t handle being around a lot of people. He never could, even as a kid. His home, even in its chaotic state, was his sanctuary.

  He had bought the house for the businesses sprouting up in the neighborhood and the promise of rising property values, although he nearly changed his mind once he saw the inside. The price was cheap and the original oak wood floors hidden by orange shag carpeting were in good condition. It was one of the many foreclosures from the market crash, and the previous owners had their large dog take a dump in each room as a present for Eric. At least he hoped it had been their dog.

  He walked into the house’s dense heat, his shirt already damp with sweat, but the air condenser had to wait until the next day. Seeing her drained him to nothing. The emptiness was made worse when no one greeted him. No dog, no cat. Plastic covered the parts of the house he was protecting from new drywall and paint. In the living room, there was a flat-screen TV sitting on the fireplace mantel. A brown leather couch sat against the far wall, the middle sagging where he slept on it each night. He figured he would buy bedroom furniture eventually but eventually never seemed to come—just more projects to make the place function. On a rare recent evening of drinking at the bar down the street from him, he had brought a bleach-blonde back to his place. Before giving him the most lackluster hand job ever, she told him he was too old to live like a college kid. She was right, although Eric only had a journeyman’s license and never made it to college.

  Sam did.

  He knew that much about her. He had seen an old friend from Blanchard comment on her Facebook post two years back: Finally have my masters! Eric liked the public post, and Sam must have blocked him shortly afterward because her page wouldn’t show up when he searched for her.

  Maybe she met someone. Maybe she didn’t want him to see what life she had now, that she had finally moved on.

  The more he thought of it, the more his note seemed like the worst idea. She would read it and then what? Even if she did contact him, things would never be the same. Not after nearly fifteen years since he last saw her. Not after what happened.

  “Fuck,” he grunted before grabbing his truck keys.

  Golden lamplight flushed Sam’s front windows as Eric quietly edged to her mailbox. He opened it and circled his hand inside, hunting around in the dark. Then he searched the ground over and over using the illumination from his cellphone.

  The note was gone.

  Chapter 3: Sam, 1994

  S
am couldn’t stop thinking about it, however much she tried. It happened the same day a huge May storm spurring several nearby tornadoes trundled through Blanchard.

  Arrow had stolen Sam’s Nine Inch Nails CD again and she stomped over to his bedroom and entered, no knock, to get it back. Arrow didn’t attempt to cover himself—he stood there naked with his underwear in hand, the tan skin of his chest and arms almost cartoonish against the pastiness of his legs, his bare waist. He gazed at her, face strangely serene, his hair messy from sleep, and Sam couldn’t seem to make herself move to leave his room. In that moment, her body tightened and prickled and every Sunday sermon her mama dragged her to since birth slapped her good and hard in the face.

  The space just below Arrow’s waist was all she could think about the entire day, and she knew he knew it as she drove them home from school, avoiding eye contact.

  The sky had an ominous green tint as rain lashed at the car. Then the rain turned into a solid sheet Sam couldn’t see to drive through, so she pulled to the side of the road to wait it out.

  She looked over at Arrow leaning away from the passenger window as if it would protect him from the storm. His mouth was tight with worry. It was strange. When she saw people worrying about things, it automatically made her calm.

  “Were you in a tornado before?” she asked, trying to distract herself from thinking of that morning. “Is that why you don’t like storms?”

  She had been in two tornados, though the farm had suffered only minimal damage. Arrow stared at the radio, his knees bouncing and almost hitting the dashboard.

  “No, not a tornado,” he said.

  “But you don’t like storms.”

  “Who does?”

  Sam knew plenty of crazy people who chased tornados for fun, something she would never understand.

  “Some people like them. Grandma Haylin says storms clean out bad energy.”

  Arrow’s eyes widened as if she’d said something magical. “My mom used to say the same thing.”

  Arrow had never mentioned his mom before, and Sam always avoided the topic. All she knew was that she died from cancer when Arrow was thirteen.

  “Do you miss her?”

  Arrow gave her a look like she’d asked the dumbest question in the world.

  “I mean,” she quickly said, “what’s it like without her?”

  Sam couldn’t imagine not having her mama and Grandma Haylin. She never thought about them dying, not even after her grandma’s stroke.

  “What’s it like without your dad?”

  Sam looked out at the rain starting to subside.

  “It’s different from your mom. He’s not dead. At least, I don’t think he is.”

  “Isn’t it worse, though?” he asked. “Not knowing?”

  She didn’t know how he had turned the question around on her. Frustration erupted before she could push it back down.

  “What’s worse is having strangers move into my house and no one asking me if it was okay.”

  Arrow chewed on his bottom lip, and Sam felt her anger fade as fast as it had come.

  “No one asked me either.”

  Sam looked him in the eyes for the first time since walking in on him dressing that morning. He did feel the same as her. Trapped in other people’s decisions and without a voice.

  She reached out and took his hand, which was warm, not clammy with nerves as she expected. He started at her touch. A little smile touched the corners of his full mouth and he returned the squeeze she gave his hand.

  “Let’s get home before our parents freak out.”

  Arrow nodded, his hand seeming reluctant to let her go.

  The storm continued to move over the farm that evening, the windows clattering with every gust of wind. Sam hardly heard the knock on her door. She twisted on her bed, quickly turning down her stereo and ready to get a tongue-lashing from her mama for playing The Smiths too loud. Her mom hated anything but Glen Campbell and Rich Mullins, but she didn’t complain much as long she didn’t have to hear it.

  Arrow hovered in the doorway for a moment, the shadow of his tall form spilling in before he shut the door behind him. He latched the hook lock, and Sam instantly sat up in her bed, tense, laughter seeping out as fake and high as the freshman girls at school.

  “Your daddy’s going to kill you if he catches you in here again.”

  Isaac, for some reason, didn’t like Sam and Arrow being in each other’s rooms. He was always onto Arrow about something, flashing glimpses of a rage she hoped would never be directed at her.

  Arrow leaned against her door, arms crossed. “He went to town. Said he needed a drink after tracking your dumbass goat through the rain today. Maddie got loose again.”

  Maddie was her favorite goat on the farm, and she was a total diva. Sam had raised her, had helped the mother goat give birth when Maddie was stuck. Maddie was the only animal she hadn’t named after a Greek god or goddess. She had named her after her best friend from elementary school, the friend who moved to Colorado before junior high and promised to visit Sam during each summer. She never did.

  The thought of Maddie giving Isaac trouble made Sam smile.

  “Like your dad needs an excuse to go to the bar.” Sam heard herself mimicking Isaac and Arrow’s drawl and cringed. “Seriously, you should get out.”

  She thought of Arrow locking her door, the latch she added as soon as Isaac and Arrow moved in, and she couldn’t help thinking of her conversation with Chrissy the week before.

  Sam had told Chrissy about Arrow coming into her room often, how they’d talk about music and books, even her Greek mythology collection, and how she didn’t mind him so much now. She didn’t tell her best friend how Arrow really seemed to listen to her and care what she had to say, unlike many of her closest friends, who weren’t into discussing much outside of who were the hottest guys at school. Chrissy got this worried look when Sam talked about Arrow, told Sam to be careful.

  Chrissy heard Arrow spent time in juvie after raping some girl two counties over in Anadarko.

  Sam had heard the same whispers about Isaac and wondered how much her mama knew. Sam used to lie in her bed, dreaming up a hundred scenarios where she’d out Isaac to her mama as a rapist, but those thoughts dried up the more she got to know him and saw how hard he worked to provide for the family. He didn’t seem like someone who would rape a girl. Sam always pictured rapists as creepy, ugly men who lived in their mamas’ basements. Isaac was the most attractive man she’d ever seen. He wouldn’t need to rape someone when half the town’s women would probably willingly have sex with him.

  Arrow and Isaac were new to Blanchard, and people in town never trusted anything new. Sam had told Chrissy it was a dumb rumor and that people went to prison, not juvenile hall, for rape. Even as she spoke the words to Chrissy, Sam knew rumors usually contained a pinch of truth. Still, she didn’t believe the stories. Not really.

  Sam pushed her thoughts aside as Arrow moved closer to her bed.

  “You know,” he said, “you should really knock before you go into people’s rooms.”

  Sam’s face instantly burned with the memory of seeing him naked. Arrow being so close to her bed made her stomach flutter even more. She pulled her hair back at her neck, tugged the thickness hard, making it hurt until it steadied her nerves. Arrow eyed her white tank top, making her fully aware she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts, already tender from her period, seemed to grow more sensitive the closer he got to her.

  “You better leave, Eric Duane.”

  Arrow grinned and narrowed his eyes at her. “Make me, Samantha Grace.”

  “Fine. Guess you’ll learn the hard way.”

  She tossed the covers off and dove for Arrow’s legs like she was about to rope a calf. Only, she forgot Arrow did, in fact, rope calves down at the Stewart farm for the hell of it, and within seconds he had her right wrist and ankle in a vice-grip, pressed against her back.

  Heat stirr
ed sudden and sharp between her legs at feeling his weight on her and not being able to move.

  “You’re as slow as that old ass dog of yours,” he said, pushing her stomach into the hardwood floor when she tried to rear up. He sat on her back, bouncing up and down on her pinned wrist and ankle enough to make her cry out, the heat between her legs growing, pulsing.

  Sam pushed up as much as she could, but Arrow wouldn’t budge. “Let go, you sadistic motherfucker!”

  Arrow laughed, his voice growing deep like Isaac. “You don’t even know what sadistic means.”

  “Neither do you!”

  He bounced a little harder on her back as she tried to jerk out of his grip.

  “I swear to Jesus, Eric Walker, I’m going to castrate your balls with a rusty nail, nice and slow!”

  “I don’t think Pastor Doss would like that dirty mouth of yours. Shit—actually he probably would.” He pressed on her more and she thought her wrist, ankle, or both would snap. “I know your mom wouldn’t.”

  “At least my mama’s alive to care what I say, you pansy-ass scared-of-thunder baby!”

  Arrow released her and stood up fast as if she’d tossed ice-cold water on him.

  Sam stood up too and rubbed her wrist, afraid to look at him. She was always doing that, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. She didn’t want to see his face, didn’t want to see the hurt in his eyes, but she felt his pain reaching out to her.

  “Arrow, I—I didn’t mean…”

  She couldn’t tell if it was her breath or his, but all she could hear was the loud inhale and exhale of air as Arrow stared at her, the heat at her center still pulsing, needful. Morrissey’s plaintive singing of “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” purred from the stereo, and Sam would’ve laughed from the absurdity if it weren’t for her heart threatening to rupture through her ribs.