By Way of Accident

by Laura Miller

  I snap out of my trance and manage to grunt a yes or somethin’ similar to that right before I force my eyes to the dirt. I don’t want her thinkin’ I’m a creep or like one of those stalkers on those TV crime shows my mom sometimes watches.

  I stand up and pull the neck of my shirt up over my head, and then I throw the shirt onto a tree branch. I wore swim trunks under my jeans today, so I unbutton my pants and pull them off too and throw them onto the branch next to my shirt.

  She looks back at me once I’ve got everything off and smiles. I really hope that’s a good smile.

  I wade into the water after her. She’s already floatin’ on her back and lookin’ up at the blue sky by the time I get waist-deep. I move closer to her, but she just keeps starin’ up at that sky as if she’s memorizing every inch of it. And the whole time, she doesn’t say a word. It takes everything in me to tear my eyes away from her, but I manage to do it just so I can lie back and stare up at the clouds with her.

  “Do you ever think about dying?” she asks.

  I instantly find my feet again. Sand and little bits of gravel invade my toes as I force my stare in her direction. Nobody ever talks about dyin’ around here—well, except my grandma once upon a time and only in prayers. She always used to say that prayer before I went to sleep—somethin’ about if I should die before I wake. That always used to scare the crap out of me. But no, around here, death is somethin’ you don’t talk about. Hell, people don’t even talk about dyin’ at funerals. And they sure as hell don’t talk about it on a sunny afternoon.

  “No,” I say, inspectin’ her face. “I don’t think about it.” She keeps her eyes planted in the sky.

  “So you never think about what you’ll miss?”

  I look at her one last time before I slowly sink back into the water next to her. “Not really.”

  Her stare grazes me, and I just happen to catch her soft smile. It works to ease me a little. “I think I’d miss the sun...and the way the birds sing early in the morning,” she says.

  She looks away from me and then back up at the sun and the few white clouds as she talks, but I keep my eyes on her. She might be crazy, but I ain’t never seen a prettier face.

  “Brooke,” I say once she’s grown quiet again.

  She turns her face toward mine.

  “I ain’t never heard nobody talk about dyin’ before.”

  Her soft laughter fills the space between us. “I’m not talking about dying, River.” I watch her smile, and then she finds the sky again. “I’m talking about living.”

  Living? Boy, I’ve heard girls are hard to figure out, but this one...

  “River, you live here all your life?”

  After a little pause, I start to nod my head. “Yeah, I have.”

  “What’s it like to live somewhere your whole life?”

  I think what I can about it. It only takes me a few seconds before I shrug my shoulders. I had never really taken any time to think about it before, and I don’t have anything to compare it to anyway, so I just say what I think. “It’s simple, I guess, and maybe a little boring after a while.”

  She looks at me with crumpled eyebrows, so I try to explain it a little better.

  “Well, you know everybody, and you can’t get lost if you wanted to, but...”

  “Sometimes you want to get lost?” she asks.

  I meet her stare, and for the first time, I really get a good look at the color of her eyes. They’re mostly this wild shade of green with specks of gray scattered throughout. It’s as if I’m lookin’ at two pieces of green glass held to the light. I ain’t never known anybody to have eyes like that. There’s something untamed about ‘em—like a feral cat or somethin’.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad sometimes,” I say. “It would be like an adventure, you know—to get lost and try to find your way back?”

  She laughs a little, and at the same time nods her head.

  I listen to her sweet laughter fade until it’s quiet again.

  “Brooke?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What’s it like to live somewhere else?”

  Her smile quickly returns and goes to edgin’ across her pretty face. “Like getting lost and trying to find your way back.”

  I gnaw on her words for a second. Does this girl always speak in riddles?

  “It’s an adventure,” she says, “but it gets lonely sometimes.”

  “Oh,” I say, sadly, because her last words sound so sad. I want to tell her that if she stays here, I’ll never let her get lonely ever again, but I don’t. I just watch her, until her sad face shifts back to the heavens.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asks.

  “I have a sister,” I say.

  “Younger or older?

  “Younger. Five years younger. She’s eight.”

  “And...that would make you...thirteen?”

  I nod my head, scared she might think that’s too young or somethin’. I study her, preparing for the worst. Instead, she just smiles.

  “I’m thirteen too. I’ll be in eighth grade this year.”

  Immediately, I let out a sigh of relief. “Me too.”

  Her eyes go to examinin’ me then. It makes me a little nervous.

  “What about you? Any brothers or sisters?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Only child.”

  I smile a little, even though I’m thinking that’s got to stink. I mean, my little sister is practically good for nothin’, but every once in a while, she’s at least good for a game of Go Fish or Battleship or somethin’.

  All of a sudden, Brooke stands, and it stops my train of thought. “I’m glad you came back today.”

  My mouth cracks open, and I find my feet. I want to tell her I wouldn’t miss seeing her again even if my grandpa told me I could trade in my work boots for Disney World today. And I ain’t never been to Disney World.

  “Why wouldn’t I come back?” I hear the words leave my mouth, but I’m not sure it’s really me who said them. And I’m definitely not sure where my sudden burst of courage comes from.

  She gives me a soft look and then goes back to her floatin’ and the blue sky.

  “You hungry?” I ask.

  Her eyes land on mine.

  “I’ve got some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

  “What kind of jelly?” she asks.

  “Strawberry, I think.” I don’t know why I say I think because I know. These damn nerves make ya plumb stupid.

  Either way, she shows off her pretty white teeth. “My favorite,” she says. And with those words, I feel as if I’ve just won the world.

  “Come on,” I say, wading back through the water to the bank.

  After a couple steps, I turn around to see if she’s following me. And I don’t know why my heart jumps when I find out she is.

  I dry my hands off on my tee shirt hangin’ from the tree and find the paper bag. “Here,” I say, handing her the sandwich. She’s already found a spot on the grass.

  “You make this for me?” she asks.

  “I might have.”

  She laughs and buries her face in her bended knees. I just stare at her. I wish I knew what she was thinkin’. What is she laughin’ at?

  “Thanks,” she says, taking the sandwich. “I’ve never had a boy make me a sandwich before.”

  I just smile as she takes a bite. But then she stops mid-chew and looks at me. “You didn’t poison it or anything, did you?”

  “What?”

  “I know your name. I know you’ve lived here your whole life, and I know you’re not a thief, but I don’t know if you go around poisoning people.”

  I chuckle to myself and lower my head. But she’s still lookin’ just as serious when I lift my eyes again, so I lean into her and take a bite of her sandwich. “If you’re poisoned, I’m poisoned.”

  She looks me square in the eyes. I can tell she doesn’t quite know what to do. But eventually, one eye narrows, and she takes another bite.
“It’s good,” she says. It looks as if she’s trying to squash a smile.

  I take a big bite of my own sandwich, and I swear I just grin the dumbest, goofiest grin known to man.

  “Oh,” I say, remembering, “your necklace.”

  She shakes her head and puts out her hand. “You can keep it.”

  I pull out the necklace from underneath my shirt, and its little prisms catch my eyes. Surely, she’s just messin’ with me. I start to pull it over my head as she lays one of her soft hands on my arm.

  “Really,” she says. “It’s yours.”

  Her soft hand distracts me for a second. And a warm feeling courses through my veins, startin’ at the base of her touch and movin’ to the tips of my fingers and toes.

  “But it’s yours,” I manage to get out.

  She shakes her head. “Not anymore.”

  I slowly let the necklace fall back under my shirt again. I want to ask her why she’s giving it to me, but at the same time, I don’t want her to change her mind because I know when I wake up tomorrow mornin’ I’m gonna need somethin’ to remind me that I’m not crazy thinkin’ a girl like this exists.

  “It’s quartz crystal,” she says.

  I look at her and then pull the necklace and its heart back out from underneath my shirt.

  “Ancient people used to believe it was alive.”

  I focus my attention on the heart. “Alive?” I ask.

  She squints one eye to block out the summer sun peeking its way through the trees. “Yeah, they believe it takes a breath once every hundred years.”

  I furrow my brows first at the heart and then at her. Is this girl serious? It’s a damn rock. And it sure as hell ain’t takin’ a breath anytime soon.

  She must read my face or somethin’ because she looks at me and laughs. “I’m not kidding. It’s what they believed.”

  I keep a watchful eye on her, but I return my attention to the heart again and on the way it changes colors in the light.

  “Quartz crystal is supposed to hold your dreams until they come true,” she says.

  She goes back to eating her sandwich, and I just stare at the heart. This rock might just be a rock, but there’s a part of me that hopes Brooke is right. I silently recite a prayer—a dream—before tucking the necklace back into my shirt. Then I bite into my sandwich again just as she’s taking her last bite.

  “Thank you,” she says, brushing her hands together.

  “It was nothin’.” I say it with a mouth full of peanut butter.

  She lies back against the soft grass then. I watch her rest her head on her hands as I stuff the rest of my sandwich into my mouth and decide to do the same. There’s only about a foot in between us, and I’m aware of every heated inch of it.

  “You have to bale hay today?” She rolls her head to the side.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Yesterday, that’s what you were doing.”

  “Oh, yeah. No, not today.”

  “Tomorrow?” she asks.

  I feel one corner of my mouth twitch up. “Yeah, tomorrow,” I confirm. “And the day after that. And the day after that, and if it doesn’t rain, the day after that too. And if I’m still kickin’ when I turn ninety-seven, then probably that day too.”

  She smiles wide, but she keeps her eyes on me. It prevents me from breathin’ normally, and I swear, my heart hasn’t stopped racin’ since I found her hoverin’ over me earlier. God, this girl is gonna kill me one way or another; I just know it.

  “Can I help?”

  I instantly feel my forehead fill with little wrinkles.

  “Help?” I ask. Surely, I heard her wrong.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Bale hay.”

  “You wanna help bale hay?” I ask.

  She shrugs her shoulders and nods. “Yeah.”

  People don’t want to bale hay. In fact, they don’t even want to think about balin’ hay.

  “Have you ever done it before?”

  She shakes her head no.

  “Then, naw,” I say, “you don’t want to bale hay. Believe me. And plus, if they catch wind that you can do it, they’ll have you doin’ it for the rest of your life. Believe me on that one too.”

  She laughs. “You make it sound like it’s a death sentence.”

  I just look at her with the most serious face I’ve got. I’m hopin’ it gets the point across. Instead, she just looks at me and laughs some more.

  “Brooke, you don’t want to bale hay.”

  “River.” She sits up. The new tone of her voice makes me take notice all of a sudden. “You’ve known me for barely a day.”

  I sit up too and just study her. I think I’m still in shock, but I don’t think it’s a bad kind of shock. I’m shocked I made it through nearly a day before pissin’ her off. That’s got to be some kind of a record for me. And I’m shocked and half amused by her desire to do farm work. That proves it; she must be crazy.

  “Fair enough,” I admit. “You can help. We’ll probably start after the hay dries around noon.”

  Her serious expression melts to happy again just as I catch a glimpse of her shoes restin’ at the edge of the bank. “Do you have any other shoes besides those?” I gesture with my eyes toward the not-quite-tennis-shoes shoes of hers.

  She nods her head. “Yeah, I’ll try to find something.”

  I suck in a breath and then force it out. “And you might want to wear a pair of jeans—a little longer than those.” I glance at her little shorts now lying against the weeds a few feet away. I already can’t believe what I’m sayin’. I’m askin’ her to cover up her legs. I must be crazy too.

  She looks at me with arched eyebrows. “It’s almost a hundred degrees out here.”

  “Trust me,” I say. “You’ll want to wear jeans.”

  She narrows her eyes at me and then nods her head—almost in a surrendering kind of way. It’s kind of cute. But then she’s grinnin’ from ear to ear in no time. This girl has no idea what she’s gettin’ herself into, and she’ll probably change her mind tomorrow mornin’ after she looks up balin’ hay or somethin’ in the dictionary, but as for right now, I’ve got this moment. And I ain’t lettin’ it go for nothin’.

  “So, you’re balin’ hay with me tomorrow?” I ask, with a wide grin spreadin’ across my face.

  She rests her head sideways on her bended knees. It looks as if only her eyes are smilin’. “Yep.”

  “You got any more torture-ridden interests I should know about?” I ask.

  Her lips edge high up her pretty face before she shrugs her shoulders.

  Oh, boy. What in the hell have I gotten myself into? I lower my head and just laugh to myself. Somehow, I know I’m in way over my head with this girl. But I guess I’m already in too deep to turn back now. In for a penny, in for a pound. That’s what my grandpa says. And anyway, it would be like findin’ a treasure in a field somewhere and then burying it and actin’ like you never found it in the first place. You just don’t forget somethin’ like her. And maybe if I would have known she’d be here yesterday, I never would have come to this creek at all. I would have saved myself from knowing the coolness her absence would inevitably leave on my skin and also in my heart just a few short months later. But then, I guess, I never would have experienced her fire either, and most importantly, I never would have known her at all. And in the end, I think that just might have been a greater burden to bear.

  Chapter Three

  Who the Hell Is That?

  It’s probably only a few minutes past noon, and I’ve got the wagon hooked up to the tractor, ready for the field.

  “All right, son. You ready?”

  “Yep,” I say, kicking the wood block away from the wagon’s wheel.

  Grandpa slowly makes his way into the tractor seat. He’s not as quick as he used to be, but he can still climb onto a tractor and chuck a bale farther than I can when he wants to. I follow behind him and climb up onto the wheel guard. And in no time, we’re headin’ down the path to th
e county road. We stop when we get to the road, and my cousin, Tim, hops onto the wheel guard on the other side of Grandpa. Tim is always late. Hell, I’m pretty sure he’d even be late to his own funeral.

  “Phew, you ever gettin’ rid of that thing, Grandpa?” Tim waves his hand in front of his nose. Grandpa just chuckles to himself and then sets out toward the field.

  Grandpa has worn the same old black leather cap probably all his life. It doesn’t matter if it’s winter or summer, he’s always got that same darn leather cap on. And apparently, it’s acquired a certain odor over the years. Tim describes it as a combination of smelly feet and skunk, but it’s never really bothered me. And plus, right now, all I can think about is Brooke. All last night and all this mornin’, she’s all I got runnin’ through my mind. In fact, I damn near almost put my boots on the wrong feet this mornin’ just thinkin’ about her. There’s a part of me that feels as if she won’t show. But then I keep tellin’ myself that she showed yesterday and that if she’s as crazy as I think she might be, she’ll be there waitin’ in the field when we get there.

  “It’s hot already,” Tim shouts over the tractor’s engine.

  Grandpa doesn’t seem to hear Tim. Instead, he blinks an eye and just keeps drivin’. The jury’s still out on whether Grandpa’s trouble with hearin’ is mostly selective. But I think it is.

  I notice Tim starin’ at me. “Yep,” I agree, simply to please him. That would be Tim’s first hot complaint of the day. I’m prepared for about nineteen more. They’d come as sure as the sun was gonna rise in the mornin’.

  We race down the dirt road. In a car, I guess we’d barely be movin’, but on top of a tractor with the wind in your face, you feel as if you’re flyin’. We eventually slow when we get to the two treads of flattened dirt that lead into the field. I grip my fingers tighter around the edge of the wheel guard as the tractor maneuvers its way over the uneven path.

  “Who the hell is that?” Tim shouts all of a sudden.

  Even before my eyes rush upward, somethin’ tells me I already know. And soon enough, I spot her. There she is. She’s sittin’ on a mound of dirt off to the side—just a girl with pretty long, brown hair tied back into a ponytail sittin’ in a field waitin’ to do somethin’ she thinks is gonna be fun.