In the Middle of Nowhere

by Julie Ann Knudsen

  All of a sudden an arm grazed the side of my head as a hand came to rest on my metal locker above me.

  “Where’s the fire?” the unfamiliar voice asked.

  Unsure, I turned around and looked up. I recognized that smile immediately. Erica was right. Michael was back.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Michael Cooper stood to the side so I could work my combination. I was so nervous; I could barely turn the dial. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him and could feel myself getting flush. I realized that I had only really looked at Michael face to face one other time in homeroom when he sent me the little note with wings.

  It also hit me at that moment that I had never really heard his voice until now, except for when he would announce his presence during Mr. Singer’s roll call with a raised hand and a “Here”. In a way, I felt like I knew him well, but as I stood there next to him, it seemed not at all.

  “Where you headed?” he asked as I finally opened my locker and found my book.

  “History.” I slowly rose and finally looked him in the eyes. My heart started beating faster and louder than ever before. I was sure Michael could hear it. He smiled. I did, too. He looked thinner and paler than I had remembered, but his eyes seemed less brooding and genuinely happy to see me.

  “I’ll walk you,” he offered.

  “I’m already late for class. Aren’t you gonna be, too?”

  “I’m at the nurse,” he winked as he slipped a hall pass out of his coat pocket and showed me. We started down the hallway.

  “Then why are you down here?” I asked as I met his gaze.

  His eyes penetrated me. “To see your baby blues.”

  Embarrassed, I looked away. I could tell he was staring at me. What was I doing? I was already at least five minutes late for class, yet was strolling down the corridor as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back today?” I asked, hoping to end the awkwardness.

  “I wanted to surprise you.” He smiled.

  We finally reached the corner where my class was located.

  “I really gotta go. I’m so late and might even get a detention,” I frowned.

  “See ya’ later?” he wanted to know, his face full of hope. “Maybe?”

  “Maybe.” I waved as I turned, hurried off and ran toward my history class and Mr. Stickler’s room of doom.

  • • •

  Because I was so late to class, Mr. Winkler punished me by deducting five points from my essay grade plus gracing me with an after school detention. Mr. Winkler was more than a stickler; I swear he was a sadist.

  Even though the detention was only for a half an hour, I missed the ferryboat back to the island, which meant that I had to sit around and wait another hour for the next one.

  I never did see Michael in school the rest of the day. I thought maybe I’d run into him during lunch or even as I walked around the hallways after my sentence was served, but I didn’t. Instead, I ended up at my locker and decided to clean it out while I waited for the ferry. I sat on the newly polished tile floor and sorted through my folders so I could throw away old worksheets and quizzes. I hurried when I realized I had only ten minutes until the late bus would be leaving to deliver me and the other misfits back to the Portland pier.

  I crawled around on my hands and knees gathering discarded papers off of the floor. As I went to pick up a pile of old math sheets, a flashy, fuchsia cowboy boot pounced on the top and stopped me.

  I looked up and saw Tessa Anderson staring down at me.

  “Excuse me. Can I please have my trash back?” I asked both baffled and annoyed. She was so rude.

  Slowly she removed her foot. “Sure.”

  I continued to gather my garbage and held onto it for dear life. Why the hell was Tessa Anderson bothering me anyway?

  “Why were you in detention?” she wanted to know.

  “’Cause I was late to a class,” I answered as I stood up. “What’s it to you?”

  “Just wondered what someone like you could have done in order to get a detention.”

  “Someone like me? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked indignantly.

  Tessa flipped her hair and shrugged. “I don’t know. You don’t strike me as the type of person who’d get into trouble.”

  “Well, I don’t think I should have gotten a detention for being a few minutes late to history, but Mr. Stickler … I mean Mr. Winkler is an idiot.”

  “Mr. Stickler, huh?” Tessa teased. “I’m telling him.”

  “Go right ahead!” I said as I slammed my locker shut.

  Tessa smirked. “I just might.”

  I rolled my eyes and walked away. “I’ll deny it,” I yelled over my shoulder as I quickly made my way toward the closest steel door exit and entry back to freedom.

  • • •

  After I finished my homework, I, once again, signed onto my MyWeb account hoping to get a message from Michael. Nothing. I clicked on his page and didn’t notice anything new right away. When I looked under his profile picture, I realized that he had updated his quote. It read, “Stars at night, shine so brightly, but in the day, you’re the beam that guides me.”

  I twirled the end of my hair and thought, was he writing that for me? I couldn’t help but wonder.

  I wished I could have called one of my girls back in Massachusetts to ask their opinion, but I hadn’t talked to them in a while and the one time when I did mention Michael, all they did was criticize him and his appearance. I wasn’t going to set myself up for getting mad at them all over again.

  And what was up with Tessa Anderson? I thought about it all the way on the boat ride home. I knew very well why she was in detention. Everyone did. Erica had told me that she had to serve over a month’s worth for getting caught in the back seat of Connor’s car. Even if I hadn’t known the reason, it never would have dawned on me to ask her and it surely was none of her business how I ended up in there. Anyhow, after thinking back on the whole day, I was completely baffled by everything; Michael’s sudden disappearance and Tessa’s unwelcome appearance.

  I decided I had nothing to lose and sent Michael a message via MyWeb. I gave him my cell phone number and told him to call me “whenever.”

  My stomach growled loudly, so I signed off my computer, left my bedroom and headed toward the kitchen in search of something to eat. On the way, I passed by my mom’s room and peered through the cracked bedroom door. It was only eight o’clock, but my mother was already in bed asleep.

  I tiptoed and held onto the railing so the old stairs wouldn’t creak underneath me and wake her. When I reached the bottom, I found my brother sitting in front of the television, eating a bowl of cereal and watching cartoons.

  As much as I wanted to strangle him sometimes, I felt kind of sorry for him. He had to fend for himself at such a young age because my mother wasn’t very attentive. He was a sweet kid most of the time. He looked cute and cuddly in his Sponge Bob pajamas.

  James looked a lot like my father when he was a boy. Like my dad, James, too, had dark brown hair, but his eyes were a lighter blue. James’s face was covered in freckles and he had the thickest eyelashes ever. He was scrawny and short for his age. I wondered if he would look exactly like our dad when he grew up and became a man. A part of me hoped so.

  “James, do you want me to make you something else to eat?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  I went into the kitchen and searched the cabinets for a snack. I couldn’t find anything to munch on because there was hardly any storage room for anything, especially food, in the little house. Because my uncle’s house was only a summer place for him, it was on the smaller side, more like a bungalow than a house.

  The main floor had a tiny bathroom with just a toilet and sink, an eat-in kitchen, a small family room and a small area off the kitchen for the washer and dryer. Upstairs there were three small bedrooms and a full bathroom for all of us to sh
are.

  Even though the bathrooms and appliances were updated, the house still had a musty smell to it, which I would only notice when I was away from it for a long period of time.

  The whole inside of the house was painted a boring white. My uncle wanted all his walls to be as pure as an untouched canvas. He felt it was the best way to showcase his treasured collection of photographs and paintings done by local artists.

  The overall drab décor consisted of uncomfortable furniture in outdated, bold plaids, as well as Early American furnishings scattered throughout.

  The house itself seemed as though it was sagging on one end and when you walked toward the left side, felt as if the whole foundation sloped downward. Some days I felt sorry for the old place. It seemed to feel as weary and defeated as I did.

  As much as I hated to, I opted for some Coco Puffs like my brother. When I went to grab a cereal bowl from the shelf above me, my arm accidentally knocked over the box that had been left opened on the counter top. The little puffs of cereal quickly scattered to the floor below.

  “James!” I yelled.

  “What?” he innocently called from the family room.

  “Never mind.” What was the point in scolding him now? I bent down to clean it up. My tabby cat, Princess, ran over to smell the mess to see if it appealed to her. It wasn’t Fishy Puffs so she turned her little black noise up at it and sauntered away.

  Just then my cell phone rang. I quickly stood up to grab it off the counter and smacked the back of my head into the sharp corner of the opened cabinet door.

  “Damn it!” I screamed as I simultaneously hit the talk button. Reflexively, I grabbed my head.

  “Hello?” I managed. I plopped down on the floor and leaned forward, feeling dizzy.

  “Damn what?” the voice asked.

  I winced in pain as I gently rubbed the wound. “Owww,” I moaned. My head was killing me. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Michael. You told me to call you, so I thought now was as good a time as ‘whenever’.”

  I couldn’t believe Michael was on the other end and was suddenly overcome by a rush of adrenaline. I quickly sat up. Miraculously, the throbbing in my skull subsided.

  “You all right?” he asked, concern in his voice.

  “Yeah. I’m fine,” I convinced myself and proceeded to stay on that dingy linoleum floor, surrounded by a sea of smashed, chocolaty bits of cereal and had the first real conversation with a boy I barely knew.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Michael Cooper and I stayed on the phone for over three hours that first night. We laughed a lot and discovered that we had the same weird sense of humor. I managed to clean up the cereal while talking to him and completely forgot that I had ever been hungry or hurt. We finished talking right before I fell asleep, as I lay all warm and cozy in my bed.

  I learned quite a lot about Michael that evening; how his family used to live full-time on the island, but for some reason had to relocate in order to be closer to Portland. They still owned their house on Pike’s Island and used it mainly on the weekends during the summer.

  Michael’s father was some hotshot attorney in the city and his mom stayed home and took care of him and his brother.

  He loved his BMX bike and skateboarding and his golden retriever, Scooby, which he named after his favorite childhood show, Scooby Doo. He admitted he’d still watch an episode from time to time if he was laid up and completely bored.

  I wanted to ask him why he’d be laid up, but I couldn’t bring myself. There were so many other questions I wanted answered: why did he miss so much school and why had he been in the hospital and almost died like Shawna had reported? He obviously was ill, but with what?

  Instead, I told him all about myself, how my dad died when I was young and how my mom lost her job and we ended up living at my uncle’s. I told him that I really missed Massachusetts and all my friends back there, but that I was slowly getting used to living on the island with my mom and brother and glad to have a roof over our heads, even if it was covered in hundred-year-old moss.

  At one point I brought up the note that he flew my way that first day and asked him what it meant.

  “To be honest,” he chuckled, “I don’t remember what it said.”

  I reminded him as best I could, but wasn’t one hundred percent sure either since I had been so quick to throw it away.

  “I’ll have to think about it and get back to you.” I could tell he was smiling on the other end.

  “So, are you gonna be there tomorrow?”

  “Be where?”

  “In school.” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “For sure,” he said and proceeded to have a coughing fit.

  I was concerned. “Are you all right?”

  He caught his breath. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Michael continued to cough, but in between managed a, “See ya’ tomorrow.”

  “Kay,” I said and we hung up.

  I felt so badly for him. I wondered if his coughing attack had something to do with his illness or if he just had a cold. It seemed like everybody was walking around sneezing and coughing. I guessed it was that time of year. Either way, I was content and easily fell asleep knowing that I would definitely be seeing Michael the very next day.

  • • •

  When the clock ticked and the minute hand landed on the fifty-nine, it sounded, to me, as if someone beat loudly on a steel drum. One more move and homeroom would be over. And still no sign of Michael Cooper.

  Maybe he’d be coming in late, I thought. I felt so stupid because I had gotten up extra early that morning to accessorize a cute, new outfit I had bought at the outlets on the mainland earlier in the month; a pair of skinny jeans and a girly, floral top. I also straightened my hair and even put on blue eyeliner and mascara. I looked pretty, but was beginning to think that I had gone to all that trouble for no reason.

  The minute hand moved and the bell rang more deafening than ever before. Homeroom was over. I grabbed my books and headed out the door. Just as I entered the hallway, Tessa Anderson sidled up beside me.

  “What’s the special occasion?”

  I turned toward her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean why are you all dolled up?”

  “’Cause I want to be,” I answered meanly.

  “Well, you look nice,” she answered and scooted away.

  I stopped in the middle of the hall and shrugged. “Thanks,” I said out loud, to no one in particular, while the others ambled all around me.

  • • •

  The rest of the day dragged on and I didn’t pay attention during one single class. Instead, I stared out the little glass windows that were built into the middle of all the classroom doors, hoping to catch a glimpse of Michael walking by. But I never did. If he wasn’t going to be in school, why didn’t he call or text me? And why did he even say he was coming in at all?

  Lunch wasn’t much better either. Almost immediately Erica and Taylor could tell that I was preoccupied. Erica got right to the point.

  “What the hell is wrong with you today?”

  I was so deep in thought, I didn’t even hear her question. She waved her hand in front of my face.

  “Hello? Earth to Willow.”

  I snapped out of it. “What?” I felt like I was in a daze.

  “What’s up with you? You’re acting so bizarre today.”

  “I don’t know. I’m just not feeling well,” I lied. I didn’t have to consider it really lying, I reasoned, if my heart was aching.

  Erica and Taylor ignored me, ate their lunch and gossiped as usual. My ears didn’t perk up like they normally would have. As I sat there and picked at my salad, I wondered if Michael was okay and angry with myself for even caring.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Thanksgiving, and all the holiday craziness that followed it, were upon us. Originally we were supposed to drive to my grandparents’ condo in Massachusetts, but my mother insisted on host
ing it, calling it the first holiday in her new home.

  My Uncle Ron came, too, driving all the way up from New York City the night before and picking up my grandparents on the way. My uncle stayed overnight in James’s room and James slept on the floor in my bedroom. My grandparents took over my mom’s room and my mother slept in the family room on a pullout couch. I offered to sleep on it, but she insisted she wanted to. She was going to get up early anyway to stick the turkey in the oven and didn’t want to wake any of us.

  Even though we were all cramped, the meal was delicious as we gathered around the small kitchen table. My mother laid out a festive gold and green tablecloth and decorated the top with honey-colored gourds and a miniature bouquet of burgundy mums.

  Beyond the kitchen doorway, a fire blazed in the family room. Between that and the heat from the stove, we were all toasty and warm on the cold and snowy day.

  “Glad to see you using the fireplace,” my uncle said. “Make sure you hire someone to clean out the chimney and flue at the end of each year.”

  “I will, Ron,” my mother promised as she stood and carved some more of the turkey.

  “I just installed an expensive, gas-burning fireplace in my penthouse. It looks so amazing. I even placed fake logs to the side to give it more of an authentic feel.”

  My uncle was a wealthy restaurateur and made his money as the owner of some of New York’s finest and trendiest restaurants. He had even offered to bring the Thanksgiving dinner along with him.

  “I could have had my sous-chef, Luis, make the turkey and all the sides, Laura,” he said as he sliced into a juicy brown turkey leg. “His homemade cranberry sauce is to die for and you wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble.”

  My mother smiled, proud as a peacock, as she spooned steaming peas and carrots onto James’s plate. James plugged his nose and looked at me. I giggled. My mom noticed.

  “James! Stop it! And you, too, Willow.”

  She turned her smile back to my uncle.

  “It’s no trouble at all, Ron. I’ve always enjoyed cooking a turkey and love how it makes the whole house smell.”