Puddle Jumping

by Amber L. Johnson

  He handed me a note the last day we were there, giving me his phone number and asking me to call him. Asking me to be his girlfriend.

  But it wasn’t right.

  That’s the way it went for the next two years. I met a lot of guys who I thought were nice enough, but they never sparked anything other than platonic interest from me. I focused on being friends with guys, helping Harper get her fill of attention from willing participants in her kissing games. I just didn’t care. Boys were fun, but they were more fun to hang out with. And yet, I constantly felt like there was some sort of unexplainable void inside me.

  Something was missing.

  You know that feeling like you forgot something? When you pack for a trip and it’s not until you’re on the plane that you realize you left one of your most important possessions, like your iPhone, back at the house? Yeah, you do. I carried that feeling around with me for years. Years.

  Then, during the summer I turned fifteen, I found what I’d been looking for.

  One afternoon, my mom dropped me and Harper off at this weird little craft fair held in the next county over. I was just psyched to get to eat funnel cakes. She, on the other hand, was on the prowl for cute boys. We wandered through some of the exhibits, and while I was more interested in the cool stuff people were creative enough to make, she wasn’t.

  Her long blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail and she’d purposely worn this denim skirt that pretty much showed her underwear that my mom had tskd at in the car ride over. She was working on a sucker like she’d been paid to do candy-porn and was as bored as I’d ever seen her. Her blue eyes were rolling as she turned the corner in a tent full of Native American jewelry.

  “Let’s go. Call your mom to pick us up. This suuuuucks.”

  I laughed and shook my head, letting go of the tissue paper flower I’d been studying. “We just got here.”

  “And I’m already bored.”

  “Fine.” I turned to lead her toward the exit when I saw a crowd of people surrounding one of the exhibits. It was brightly colored and there was artwork hanging everywhere in and around the tent. Suddenly, I wasn’t so interested in leaving. Because right smack-dab in the middle of the crowd was none other than Colton Neely.

  He’d grown up considerably. His hair had turned much darker than the last time I had seen him, but I recognized his eyes, even from several feet away.

  They put Rory’s to shame.

  I was sucked into this weird-ass vortex where I couldn’t take my eyes off him, but was too scared to approach because what if he didn’t recognize me?

  Trying to play it cool, I slipped through the crowd and pretended to be interested in the artwork hanging in and around his tent. It was impressive enough to warrant my attention, don’t get me wrong, but just being within ten feet of him made my fifteen year old hormones shoot straight through the roof. From the conspicuous side-eye I was giving him, I could see he was so much more attractive than the little boy who’d saved my life all those years ago. He was taller and leaner, almost too thin. It made my heart hurt to be so close and not speak to him.

  Harper finally found a guy to talk to and I was thankful for her sudden departure so I could walk around Colton’s exhibit. It was beautiful and I couldn’t help but smile as I passed some of his paintings.

  And then . . . like crazy radar in my brain, I stood in front of one spectacular piece, just floored by how gorgeous it was. Thick lines of paint covering every last inch of canvas, running together to create new colors and hues I’d never seen before. I just stared, my mouth probably open in an embarrassing look of quiet disbelief.

  That’s when I heard him speak next to my ear. “Lilly?”

  I have to admit, the sound of his voice made my insides nosedive like an unsteady paper plane. I turned around and gazed into his face and smiled. Probably way too big. “Hey, Colton.”

  God. Do you have any idea what was going on inside my body? It was like Christmas lights dropped in a puddle of water. I felt electrocuted by his gaze. Those eyes, still so trusting, still so observant, raked over my face just to stare silently.

  “These are awesome.” I tried to compliment him. But he didn’t seem to be affected by my praise. “Are you selling them?”

  Yes, stupid question. I was young and intimidated by a cute boy.

  “Yes.”

  “Cool.”

  Ah, yes. I always was a conversationalist at heart.

  It was about that time Mrs. Neely called and waved him over to a potential buyer and I was left standing like an idiot, trying not to lean against anything and take the entire tent down with me in the process. At just the moment I had decided to leave, he suddenly appeared by my side again, his face scrunched.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  Like I would say no. My brain was completely fried in front of him.

  We snuck around behind the back of the tent and between the other vendors until we’d reached the edge of the woods. About fifty feet away were the train tracks that ran through the area. I’d never paid much attention to them before, but after that day, the sound of a train whistle would always remind me of that day.

  “How have you been?” I asked, looking at the trees around me instead of at him because I felt suddenly really insecure.

  He was quiet and I stopped walking, turning back to see where he was because he wasn’t by my side. He was kneeling down, face to face with a tiny patch of flowers. I walked back over and knelt down next to him, checking out the clump of weeds.

  Colton silently focused on them before finally, finally turning to gaze at my lips. “Did you know your name means ‘beautiful’?” My mouth must have fallen open because my tongue instantly went dry and I couldn’t form words. He just looked back down at the plant and whispered, “Beautiful grace. I looked it up.”

  His stare averted so quickly, it made my cheeks burn bright red and my hands go sweaty.

  He’d inadvertently told me I was beautiful.

  And I kinda believed him.

  Despite the scar on my arm I’d been teased about for years that made me feel like a freak.

  Despite the fact that I wasn’t as pretty as my best friend.

  I like to remember that moment at the fair. How I felt that day.

  Colton was just so quiet and we didn’t talk much, though he stared and watched me for what felt like forever.

  Eventually, I couldn’t take the awkward silence anymore. “So, you’re a big famous artist, huh?”

  I just remember vividly how damn sweaty my hands were at the time.

  Colton stopped walking and was staring into the trees, his hands shoved deep into his pockets while he gazed above our heads. I wanted to touch him or just be close enough to him to feel his arm brush against mine, but was so freaking nervous about it all I couldn’t form a coherent sentence to save my life. For a second he looked like he was going to reach out and touch my arm, but as quickly as his hand lifted, it went right back to his side.

  That was essentially all the time we had together before a short train came roaring by and Colton covered his ears like he had all those years ago in the rain. His eyes were squeezed shut and when it passed, I could hear his mother calling for him. Frantically. He dropped his hands and walked in her direction as if it was what he was expected to do. I fell back, my feelings hurt that he would just run away from me at the first chance he’d gotten.

  Because it was all about me, after all.

  When I cleared the trees, I worked my way back to his tent, my hands yanking on the hem of my shirt and my brain screaming that if I was someone pretty, like my best friend, then maybe he wouldn’t have abandoned me back there.

  Harper was a little off to the side from where I had left her and she was definitely making out with the guy she’d made her moves on before I’d taken a walk. He was skinny and tall and his pants were halfway down his ass while his hand was halfway up her skirt. She was kissing him in that sloppy way that makes me throw up in my mouth a l
ittle.

  I cleared my throat and she pulled the lower half of her face out of his unhinged jaws long enough to smile and pop a bubble with the pink gum from the center of her sucker.

  “You ready to go?” I asked, trying to only look at her and not back at the tent.

  Since it wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone within a five foot radius that I was looking every damn place except the huge tent of pretty paintings set up directly to my left.

  It would have been funny, what with the way I was looking toward it but then above and around until I was sure my eyes had cleared the top so they could land just on the other side. Except, I was trying not to cry.

  Harper introduced me to her new suck-face partner, Clay. And with as much as I didn’t like him then, I’m thankful for him now. Because he had some information I’d been missing.

  Clay looked me over and must have noticed me purposely not looking at Colton’s tent. His stare moved from me to it at least a half dozen times before he licked his lips and nodded toward the art on display.

  “Can you believe this kid?”

  I started to look over my shoulder but stopped in time before I made that fatal mistake.

  “Who?” Harper asked.

  Clay pointed and I wanted to punch him in his junk because now it would be super obvious if I didn’t follow his movement. So we all turned and looked toward the tent and I bit my tongue to stop from saying something stupid.

  “The Neely kid does these crazy paintings that are selling for major cash.”

  Harper’s eyes went wider than I’d ever seen them before as she turned to face me. “The kid who saved your life? Colton, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. He’s some kind of art whiz.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, not because I was an idiot, but because he was being weird about it.

  Clay gave me some stupid look that made me want to shove him in the top of the spin-art machine and watch his head whirl around and around and around . . .

  What? You watched late night movies on HBO with the sound down so your parents didn’t know. Don’t lie.

  “It means he’s a genius with paint or something.” Clay’s eye rolling just added to my mental horror movie.

  “Geniuses are smart, right?” Harper was playing up the dumb blonde bimbo for this moron. I mean, come on . . .

  “Yeah. Smart. He’s also ‘special.’ ” He held his fingers in air quotes.

  “Special . . . like . . .” I was so not following the conversation, you know? “Didn’t your mom ever tell you that you were special? Mine does.”

  “Special like he’s not normal.” Harper answered for him.

  “You’re not normal. Who is normal?”

  Who cared if Colton was? He was golden in my book.

  “He’s autistic.”

  But I heard ‘artistic’ and gave him a ‘No. Really?’ look. “Of course he’s artistic. He sells art.”

  Clay huffed in annoyance and sprinted toward the tent. My entire body flushed hot as I saw him grab a flyer from one of the tables before slipping back through the crowd to hand it to me.

  It was the very first time I’d ever heard of Asperger’s.

  Colton has Asperger’s.

  Asperger’s.

  Say it a million times over.

  It’s such a foreign word, right? And I’m sure there’s a hell of a lot of people that know about this stuff from the get-go, but I wasn’t one of them. It’s not like, at the age of fifteen and in the midst of my daily gossip sessions with Harper, we’d suddenly stop to wax philosophic over the different types of Autism and spectrum disorders in the world.

  We were more into talking about Fashion Police and stuff.

  Not Colton and his diagnosis.

  I mean, clearly he was high functioning, and his art was ridiculously good. But I also kind of felt like Googling information about the subject would be a little like cheating in this case.

  There have been a lot of words to describe me over the years: precocious, hard-headed . . . indestructible. But I’ve never been known as nosy. There was a pamphlet lying in my hand explaining the smallest bits of information I could possibly have, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to validate it. He’d been a regular little boy when we’d met. How was it possible that something was different about him?

  I know better now. I’m not that naïve any more. But at the time, I didn’t want to. I just felt drawn to him and like I wanted to know him better. Unlock his mystery on my own.

  I think sometimes we’re presented with the truth but we don’t want to believe it. We see things the way we want to see them. Sometimes, we choose to live in denial.

  * * *

  After the fair, I waited until my parents fell asleep, which was probably eight o’clock because, let’s face it, they’re old, and then snuck out of the garage. The entire way to his house on my bike, I wondered what I was going to do. I just needed to see him. Don’t ask me why. I just did. I remembered the way.

  I crawled through the bushes around the side of his house until I was standing under the room I recalled was his.

  It was the same room I’d taken the mattress from.

  The lights were out and my heart kind of died right there inside my chest at the same time I had this horrible feeling of an over-full bladder that should have made me run away.

  You know how hard it is to move when you have to pee that bad? Stupid nerves.

  Instead, I moved around to the other side of the house and pressed my back against the far wall to see if the light was on in the room above the garage.

  It was.

  At fifteen years old, I was contemplating climbing the lattice that ran up the side of his house and swinging like a monkey over to the tree limb closest to his window. Just to get a glimpse of him. Just to be close enough to him to feel even a tenth of the kind of heart racing, blood-pumping excitement I’d felt in the less than ten minutes I’d been with him that day.

  I wish now I would have done just that.

  But I chickened out. Instead of being that badass girl I’d dreamt of being before I got hit by lightning, I turned around and went back home. To my room, where all my questions were still unanswered. Where my heart felt numb and empty all at once because I liked this boy and I knew nothing about his situation.

  I just knew what it felt like when he’d said my name.

  What it felt like to stand with him by the train tracks.

  What it had felt like to have him walk away from me and leave me more confused than I’d ever been in my entire life.

  That was the night I’d vowed to forget about Colton Neely because I was scared of what I might find out. My young brain came up with a million excuses as to why I was doing it, but I am honest enough with you now to say I was scared. It was within three months of that night that I met Joseph through his sister Tracy, and we started dating. Because he was interested and I thought he was cute.

  He was my first real kiss and we had fun together, though nothing inside of me tingled or lit up like it had the day at the fair. In essence, I just went with the flow, ignoring any information about the artist I had known once upon a time, in another life. Here and there, I would hear he was opening an exhibit somewhere amazing. I would catch glimpses of his artwork as I turned the newspaper over to the comics to eat my cereal on Sundays.

  That void . . . that damn hole in my heart . . . it never really closed. Even after starting high school and becoming a member of the Debate Team so I could decide if being a lawyer was what I wanted to do. Even after helping Harper plan the school dances. Babysitting as much as I could to make extra money. Even after all that, there was still something missing.

  I focused on trying to become a better person than the mean little girl who told a talented artist to color inside the lines all those years ago. It was kind of like floating in the middle of a swimming pool on a raft. Complacent. Happy because it was routine. It was life.

  Harper and I hung out.

  Jos
eph and I made out.

  Homework assignments were handed in.

  I was just there.

  But life isn’t really about just getting by. Right when you’ve lulled yourself into a false sense of security, it likes to throw in a plot twist. Keep you on your toes.

  I had specifically not looked into Colton’s ‘condition’. And yes, I’m using finger quotes.

  There was something inside me that didn’t want to know. Something that made me think if I knew exactly what it was he was experiencing, then it would change my memories of him or sway me to look at him differently. And I didn’t want that because the ones I did have of him, even when coupled with my near-death experiences, were pretty good. I felt good when I thought of him.

  To have the knowledge of what was ‘wrong’ could have caused me to second-guess and analyze every last move he’d ever made. My interactions with him. His mother’s sanity.

  I was really, really good at pretending and ignoring things.

  Weren’t you?

  Anyway. I’d had this misconception it meant he was handicapped. Obviously there would be a stigma attached to him, right? What I didn’t know at the time was there are so many people on the spectrum that we’re familiar with.

  Like, celebrities.

  You can look it up.

  Would you ever know it? Probably not. But if you did, would it make you look at them differently? Would you scour their body language and everything to see if you can say, “Oh, yeah. That totally makes sense.”

  This is why I didn’t want to know. I thought maybe I’d never see Colton again, and therefore, didn’t need to spoil any of my precious memories of him.

  I was a moron who feared knowing the truth would make things different in a negative way instead of positive. That it would be more than I could handle. But something I forgot about myself is that I’m pretty stubborn and loyal. Tenacious to a fault, in fact.

  Later on, I figured out very quickly I’d do anything for him.

  Anything.

  I know it to be fact, because as soon as I’d nearly forced myself to forget about him, Colton Neely stepped through the doors of my high school on the first day of my senior year.