by Shaun Plair
“You don’t have to do all of this. Throwing out ideas is fine, but I can handle myself.”
“Anything to get me out of the house.” He looked at me and smiled before reverting his attention to the warm hash browns he would soon attack. “And I want to be one person you can actually rely on, you know.”
The realization hit me like a bullet and I tensed. I leaned all the way back in my chair. “I don’t want to depend on you.”
“What do you mean?” He stopped chewing and glared at me.
“You can’t get attached,” I said. He could still ruin everything. All he had to do was tell one person the truth, and Ana was gone. Sydney—mortified. All he had to do was tell me one lie, and everything would crumble.
“I need to go,” I said bluntly and stood to leave. I grabbed my half-empty juice bottle and bag, throwing the bag away as I walked toward the exit.
Eric stood abruptly, finishing a bite, and rushed after me. Speed walking, I got all the way out of the Wal-Mart before he caught up to me and grabbed hold of my elbow.
“So this is what you do, huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“You pull me in, and you give me just a taste. Just enough to make me ask for more, and then you run again.”
“I’m leaving, Eric.”
“I come, you run, right? You’re used to running.”
“I have to run!” I yelled at him, turning to face him as he wiped the last of the hash brown crumbs from his face.
“No you don’t.” he pleaded, and it was instantly fact. “And I can tell you’re getting tired of it. I’m not here to screw you over, Ana, I promise.”
I crossed my arms and hugged my waist. “Don’t promise me anything.” My voice was stone yet my eyes deceived me as they quivered, threatening approaching tears.
“Ana, what …” His voice was frustrated, but for whatever reason his facial expression took pity on my conflicted mind. “I’m driving you home, you don’t even know where to go from here.”
He let go of my elbow, letting his hand slide down my forearm in the process, only to let it slither between my fingers at the bottom of the descent. He held firmly and led me—the unwillingly willing tower of pudding I was sure would topple over any second—to his car parked a few rows to the right of the entrance and a few spaces back.
“You know I just let a lot of perfectly good hash browns go to waste for you.”
He opened the passenger door and I sat inside. I looked at him but he wasn’t looking back. He closed the door, and I stared out the window to the right of me as he circled and got in the other side. We sat silent for a moment. He didn’t turn the car on just yet.
“What do you want me to do, Ana?” he asked, almost yelling it, exasperated.
“Just take me home.”
“I want to help you–”
“I’m screwed up. No one should be pulled into this … this place I’m in right now. Not for any guilt, or charity, or crush or whatever this is.” He saw the bubble of water that floated above my bottom eyelids, and stared at me for a moment without speaking, hands firm on the steering wheel even though the car still wasn’t on. His hands were sweating, as was the rest of him. I let my eyes trace the veins that showed through the skin on his hands and arms. I then noticed the sweat drizzling from my own forehead, the usual with him, only partly provoked by the steaming air outside.
“This is none of those you just listed off,” he said.
The ignition was cranked before I could say another word. Backing out of the parking spot, he replaced his jazz CD with a rock one and turned the volume up so loud I couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore. It made me forget whatever it was I was so upset about. I watched him listen, sipping the screeching sounds his speakers spoon-fed to him like cough medicine. He laid his head back against the headrest and took long, slow, breaths. Noting his newfound serenity, I followed his lead and relaxed my neck, letting it cradle into the shape of the seat. Then I turned to watch the trees pass by again.
“Oh … shit” I heard him say.
“What?”
We were pulling up to the shack when he turned down the blaring screech of electric guitar and drums.
“What is it?” I begged again, and then thought to check out our surroundings. A red car sat parked some way ahead, but right beside the road, in the corner of the intersection. Its lights were off, but a black shadow of a person was visible inside.
“It’s okay,” Eric said, to comfort me, but I didn’t hear him. I was busy scanning the shack with my eyes for any sign that someone else had been inside it.
“Oh my gosh, what are they doing here?”
“I don’t know. No one’s usually around here, right?”
“No, never. What’s around here? Oh this is just perfect.”
I pressed my hands into my forehead and stared into my lap. Entangled trees covered each side of the road except where the shack stood; okay, it probably wasn’t anything to worry about, but what would any person need to stop on this road for?
“If people come around here, this place is too dangerous for you to be staying.”
“Oh, thanks Eric. I had no idea people seeing me would be dangerous. What am I supposed to do?”
“Look, I’m just saying. I don’t think you should go in now. They might see.”
“Well, where can I go?”
“I’ll just drive someplace. You’ll have to stick with me for another hour or so.”
I glanced at him when he said that, but he kept his eyes focused on the bright red car ahead of us as we drove closer to it.
“You really think it’s that big a deal?” I asked as we approached and passed the shack. “Can’t we just … circle around and hope he leaves?”
We were passing the car then, and I could see the man inside much more clearly than before. He was unfolding a large map that he’d spread over his lap and dashboard.
“He’s lost,” Eric said.
I shrank into the seat and looked away from the man while Eric nodded and smiled at the man, who must have noticed us passing.
“We better wait a while to come back. All it takes is one person to think something’s suspicious enough to call the cops.”
He was right. What would I have done if I were alone? Walk back to the gas station? To Radio Shack?
“We’ll just chill a while, he’ll be gone soon I’m sure.”
With that, we turned the corner, and the red car was quickly out of sight. I thought of all my things sitting in the shack, nothing keeping anyone from finding them and finding me out, or maybe worse, taking them. But soon, the resumption of strained voices, guitar, and drums refilled the airwaves in the car and my mind was lost in the music again. I tried earnestly to listen to the lyrics of the song this time, to understand them. Too many metaphors. So we rode, and I watched as tree after tree sped by. Sunlight sprinkled in between tree branches and glared off the cars that rode alongside us.
A few minutes in we passed a young girl, maybe three years old, waving from her car seat in the back of a blue sedan, her orange locks tumbling in front of her face. I waved, and giggled, leaning farther into the soft leather seat of Eric’s car. We passed more cars, one by one, turn after turn, and twenty-five minutes had passed before I realized time was passing at all.
“Eric.”
No answer; I’d spoken too softly to outdo the screams of twenty-somethings yelling atop electric guitar, bass, and drums.
“Eric,” I called again, almost screaming this time. He noticed, and turned the volume down.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re here.”
I lifted my head to look at our surroundings.
The grass around us had definitely not been cut in a while, and all I could see at first other than grass and trees was one barren playground in the distance. He parked the car, and I noticed a basketball court occupied by a family of three playing horse. An older couple walked the sidewalk near the lot that connected to a paved p
athway through the woods, and a brown wiener dog as old as them waddled eagerly by their feet.
Eric cut the engine.
“Do you know this place?”
He looked at me and nodded. Then he smiled. “Yep, I do. Come on.”
And with that he stepped out of the car, and I sat unmoving in the passenger seat. He crossed the front of the car and pulled my door open. I swung a leg out and he stepped back, his hands resting in the pockets of his hoodie, as usual.
“Thanks,” I said as I stood. “And I’m sorry about earlier, I just really, you know …”
He wasn’t listening. When my voice trailed off, he nodded toward the playground behind him and pointed a thumb at it. “You want to go play? Or what?”
His eyes winced in the glare of the sun when he faced me full on.
“Just relax, for one hour,” he said. He must have known the power he had behind that smirk.
“It’s just, it’s scary. I constantly have to watch out for things, anything, everything. It’s just getting to be too much, you know.” My voice was quivering, and I felt my lower lip begin to shake as heat flushed my eyelids.
“It’ll be fine. We’ll chill, you’ll go back, the guy will be gone, everything will be gravy.”
He stepped toward me when he spoke so he could look into my eyes, eyes that were examining the pavement near my feet as I tried to hold back tears.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been pretty mean. And crazy.”
He smiled a little, only to let it fade as he took a step away from me. “I’m sorry I found out.”
I swallowed his words, bitter, stinging words that went down like needles.
He led me down the gravel path that outlined the park in the direction of the playground, and I walked obediently, a step behind him.
“How did you know I was hiding something?” I asked him, brushing back a piece of hair that slipped in front of my face. And he shrugged. He pulled his shoulders up and released them back down, letting the smirk take over his face again.
I blew air through my lips and shook my head, which made him smile. Watching his face transform, I felt mine crack open. Like magic, I was smiling, and when he pulled his right hand out of the pocket of his jeans to extend it, palm facing upward, out toward me, I felt less sad and alone than I had since I came to Greensboro two weeks before. I looked at his hand, and I held it.
Within a minute I was standing on the recycled rubber that served as the playground’s platform with no idea what we were doing and no real intent to ask. He let go of my hand to climb up a rusting yellow ladder, so I followed him up, and across a bridge of wooden panels. Passing a mock ship’s helm we reached the playground’s red tunnel, hunching over to climb in. I was close behind him, and he stopped right in the middle of the tunnel, turned sideways and sat, patting the spot beside him for me to sit next to him.
So I sat, accidentally closer than I’d planned, my knees bent Indian style inside the abnormally large tunnel. Astonishingly, it wasn’t uncomfortable in the least. The shade inside was beyond refreshing from the burning sun. Plus, Eric’s right arm against my left was cozier than the blankets in the shack had ever been. We sat in silence for a moment before he broke it.
“I grew up in a house right down the street from here. Dad didn’t have the Beijing job yet, and he was working around here, still, at the job he had when he met my mom. We lived in that house until I was nine, when we moved to the one I live in now. They just kept having babies, and didn’t have enough room.” He stopped talking to laugh, and I joined him.
“I bet you and your brothers loved it here,” I gestured to show that I meant the park, “it’s really peaceful, not even crowded.”
“It’s perfect. The last year we lived here, Justin was only a baby, but Chris, Joe, James and I ran obstacle courses all through this place. Every once in a while Mom let us come when it was starting to get dark, too, so we’d play hide and go seek. You can probably guess where my signature hiding spot was.”
I looked around the faded red plastic tunnel we sat in and tried to imagine nine-year-old Eric seeking safety in it. “Thanks for bringing me,” I said.
I inhaled hard, and found myself leaning into Eric’s torso in an attempt to rest on his shoulder. I had cradled into him again, shocking myself at how easy it was for me. How much harder it had been not to. Though I feared he would, his body didn’t tense in the least, but only welcomed mine.
He turned his head toward me and held it there, until he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against his chest like he had the night before. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to his chest, breathing one, deep and heavy breath before speaking.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Usually that kind of thought didn’t come out audibly.
“I don’t know if anyone does.”
“It’s just like, blow after blow, it’s starting to feel like I’ve just trapped myself. Like I’m just insanely stupid, and every day I stay here I’m proving I’m even more stupid than I thought.”
“You’re not stupid. You can get through all this, if you want. You made it this far, made it out of a worse situation, right?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know if it was worse anymore.” I looked at the bulge my phone made in the pocket of my jeans. “My dad keeps calling.”
“What do you tell him?”
“I don’t answer, I can’t. I’m afraid I’ll just freak out and tell him everything and end up going back home.”
“Sounds like there’s a part of you that wants to. Would that really be the worst thing?”
Maybe not.
In the following silence, I counted his heartbeats and tried to justify myself laying on his chest and enjoying the rhythm of his breath.
“For what it counts, I’d rather you stay here.”
I didn’t respond, fearing the meaning behind the words, wondering what I wanted them to mean. He didn’t press for a response though, and when I looked up to see why, I caught his gaze breaking into me. He surveyed my expression, his cheeks mere inches from mine, absolutely mute as was I. No sound but breaths. He took his hand that wasn’t wrapped around me, and rubbed the hair hanging from my forehead, flipping it backward to leave my face dangerously exposed. The gravity of him struck me, hard, pulling me farther into him.
He closed his eyes as he took a breath and reopened them. I was instantly his. He must have always known I would be.
His face moved forward, and his lips approached mine, but didn’t touch them as they crossed my face. They breathed against my right cheek and hesitated there before his neck creased so they could tease the front of my throat. At this, my head tilted backward, only slightly, as a swift peck pressed upon the leftmost portion of my neck, below my ear. I struggled to keep my sanity as he teased, and without effort my body folded into his and complemented his every move, a silk sheet falling down the side of his face and neck.
He lifted his head again and brushed my cheek with his before his fingertips found themselves on my chin. As he pulled his face away, my eyes slid open after I realized they had been closed, for how long, I didn’t know. Before I could breathe, he was moving back toward me, slowly, taking an audible breath before touching his forehead against mine. My right hand caressed his cheek, and we shared the moment for a time much too short. With a gentle, brief peck on my forehead, he pulled my head into his chest and laid his on top of mine. I don’t know how long we stayed there before we left, not moving, not talking or thinking. It wasn’t long enough.
Chapter 15
“Ana?”
“Hmm?” I turned to see Arianna questioning me from under Brandon’s lanky arm.
“I was asking, what did you do this weekend? Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah um, me and my mom just worked on setting up the house some more. Still getting adjusted I guess.”
“You just completely zoned out on us,” said Taylor, only half laughing.
“Yeah, just tired I guess. You know, Monday blues.”<
br />
“I know. Right?”
But actually, an odd sense of freedom had taken over my Monday mood and I was feeling nothing close to blues. So while the girls stood talking about their weekend fun I struggled to keep my head in the conversation. I gathered they were talking about Brandon and Arianna’s date on Saturday.
“Too bad you guys didn’t get to have that double with Ana and David,” I picked up on Kylie saying, shocked to hear “Ana” spoken when I thought I was safe to be in my own zone.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s happening, actually,” I said, weakly.
“We could tell you guys weren’t really clicking last week. Did something happen?” Brit asked.
“‘Perfect’ isn’t everyone’s type, I guess,” Kylie answered. I pressed my lips together and stood, playing with my book bag straps.
Deciding the conversation was more discomfort than I wanted to bear, I suggested, “I’ll catch you guys later, okay.”
With a wave, I turned and walked to the lockers. I usually avoided the lockers in the mornings, since self-conscious freshmen seemed to claim that hallway as their territory before homeroom. But attempting to escape the girls for the morning, I squeezed between two freshmen’s backs, and then two fronts before I made it to my locker. 22, 13, 33, and with a shake, the locker was open.
I reached for my Physics book. A wide hand slipped around my shoulder and grabbed it before I could. Another hand rested in the crease of my back and I shrieked at the touch.
“Good to see you Ms. Smith.”
“Eric, you scared me.”
“Long time no see. How was your weekend?” He smirked, of course, and ran his hand over his head to pull the hood off it.
“Well, it was …” Unbelievable? Crazy? “Good, I guess.” The smirk faded. “Pretty surprising actually.”
“Surprising, eh? Let’s see …” Behind me, he stuffed the thick textbook in my bag, pulled the zippers from the sides to the middle, and then checked his watch. “Looks like we’ve got eight minutes.”
“For what?” I asked as the bag was zipped shut.
“Come on.”
He led me down the hall and through the doors that went outside. Picking a not-so-optimal spot on the concrete, he sat on the ground, back to the bricks, and I kneeled, then sat beside him. He shook his bag off his back, but I left mine on, a shield between my back and the building.
