In the Middle of Nowhere

by Julie Ann Knudsen

  They were mainly of him and his buddies doing stupid things like pouring beer into each other’s mouths while standing on top of the bar. I was thankful that I wasn’t in any of the pictures. I clicked on a few more and was just about to sign off when I noticed that I had an unread message in my mailbox. It must be new, I figured. Unfortunately, I didn’t check to see whom it came from first. I opened the message and never could have imagined the impact of its three simple words: “Happy Belated. Michael.”

  • • •

  Why was Michael wishing me a happy birthday, now, a week after the fact? For that matter, why was he wishing me a happy birthday at all? I hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving nor heard from him since Christmas. Initially, I had thought about sending him a message thanking him for the cryptic Christmas card, but decided not to. What would I have said in the note; thanks for the card with the puzzling message, thanks for never calling me or making an effort to see me in person?

  By this point, I had moved on with my life. Tessa and I were becoming better friends and I had just been to my first real party at the house of the hottest guy in high school. I had no need for Michael or his mysteriousness anymore.

  I almost deleted the message, but thought that I at least owed him a response one last time. “Thanks,” I typed back.

  I forced myself to sign off the Internet because I had to finish my paper if I was going to nap at all. I found the rough draft of my bibliography and started typing. I was just about to finish when my phone rang. I picked up my cell and read the caller ID. It said that the call was restricted so I wasn’t able to tell whom it was. Who the heck could it be, I wondered? Curiosity got the best of me and I picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re welcome?” I was confused. “For what? Who is this?”

  “It’s me. Michael. I said “you’re welcome” because you thanked me for the belated birthday wish.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry it was belated. I didn’t realize it was your birthday until afterward.”

  Michael coughed, but continued. “How was your birthday, by the way?”

  “Good,” was all I could muster. What did this kid want from me?

  “So, what’s going on?” he asked.

  I couldn’t hide the annoyance in my voice. “Why did you call me restricted?”

  “’Cause I wanted you to answer and I didn’t think you would if you knew it was me.”

  So I wasn’t overreacting about him. He must have felt badly, after all, for the way we left things back in November.

  “I sent you a Christmas card. Did you ever get it?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I did, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t have sent one back to you even I wanted to. I don’t have your address, I don’t know where you live, I don’t know why you don’t go to school, I don’t know anything about you, Michael Cooper. So why would I bother with you at all?”

  I couldn’t believe what I had just said to him, but I couldn’t help myself. These feelings had been bottled up for so long and I finally got them out, to the person who needed to hear them. To be quite honest, I felt a sense of relief after I said it.

  I could hear Michael breathing on the other end, but he didn’t respond. I didn’t care. I was not going to apologize for telling him the truth about how I felt. Bottom line, they were my feelings and I was entitled to them.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You’re right. I’ve acted like an idiot and I’m sorry.”

  What was I to say back to him? He was apologizing and I could hear the sincerity in his voice. “Please forgive me.”

  Without warning, I responded, “It’s okay. You’re not an idiot, an enigma maybe, but not an idiot.”

  Michael laughed. I did, too.

  “Listen, Willow. I will tell you all about myself, if you’d like, in person, next weekend.”

  I paused. I didn’t know what to say.

  He continued. “I completely understand if you don’t want to see me. But think about it and if you do, meet me at my house on the island, at 161 Shoreline Drive, next Saturday night at five.”

  I still couldn’t speak.

  “Say you’ll be there.”

  I shook my head and mumbled. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s fine. Just think about it. In the meantime, I’ll wish it upon a star.”

  I could hear my mother’s footsteps coming down the hall.

  “I’ve gotta go, Michael.”

  “Okay. ’Til then,” he said and hung up.

  My mother knocked on my door and opened it.

  “Willow, Brian and I are gonna head over to the mainland for a few hours. Can you stay here with James?”

  I nodded my head. “Sure.” As usual, I had nothing better to do anyway.

  “Thanks, dear,” she said before closing my door.

  I was completely baffled by my conversation with Michael. What the hell was I going to do; meet with him next Saturday or completely ditch him? I was so utterly confused. My head began throbbing and I started to feel as if I was in the throes of a debilitating hangover all over again. I pushed my books off my bed, crept under the covers and closed my eyes, hoping to wake up and realize that the past twenty-four hours had been nothing more than a terrible nightmare.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  I zipped up my North Face as I left the warmth of my mom’s car and headed for the ferry. It was frigid outside and I was getting sick and tired of having to take a boat to school everyday. Plus, every time I took a deep breath, it felt as though tiny icicles were forming on the inside of my lungs. Normally I liked spending time outdoors, but I was feeling a little too close to nature and could not imagine spending the rest of my life on the frozen island.

  I grabbed a seat closest to the heater and stuck my hands inside my pockets. I spotted Taylor and Erica across the ferry and as soon as they saw me, they ran over. Taylor sat on one side of me, Erica the other.

  “Hey! Why didn’t you call me yesterday? I texted you like a million times,” Erica demanded.

  “Yeah. Me, too,” Taylor added.

  “I was busy. Plus, I had a ton of homework to do.”

  I turned to Erica. “What was so urgent?”

  Erica looked at Taylor, smiled wryly and then looked back at me. “What the hell happened Saturday night?” she shouted.

  “Shhh,” I said and looked around. “What do you mean, what happened?”

  Erica lowered her voice. “I mean what happened to you? At Rocky’s?”

  I was shocked. How did Erica and Taylor find out about the party when I never ended up telling either of them? I had thought about giving them a detailed report at the beginning of the night, but decided against it once I thought about how stupidly I acted. I was way too embarrassed to tell them how Rocky had fondled me and how I hurled immediately afterward.

  I became defensive. “How did you guys find out?”

  “Josh is my neighbor and I’m friends with him on MyWeb,” Taylor said to me.

  “So?”

  “So!” Erica took over. “Taylor and I looked at the pictures Josh posted from Saturday and saw you, smack dab in the middle of all the fun!”

  I was truly puzzled. “I don’t understand. I checked out the pictures, too, but I didn’t see myself in any.”

  “I’m telling you, you were in them. How else would we have known?” Erica sounded very convincing.

  Taylor tugged on the sleeve of my jacket as if to bring me back to reality. “Do you fully comprehend that you went to a party at a house belonging to Rocky, “The God?” Do you?!”

  Taylor’s normally pale face was turning a shocking shade of red.

  “Details, damn it. We want all the details, don’t we, Tay?”

  Taylor nodded in agreement.

  “Calm down, you two,” I said.

  As much as I considered Erica and Taylor to be my friends, I didn’t fully trust them either. The two of th
em made gossiping seem like a sport. Regardless, I felt like I had no choice but to tell them what happened, or at least part of it.

  “Well,” I started. “I was home, bored out of my mind, when Tessa called me and asked me if—“

  As expected, Erica stopped me dead in my tracks. “Who called you?”

  “Tessa. Tessa Anderson.”

  “Yeah, I know which Tessa. There’s only one at our school.” Erica was not amused. “Why did she call you?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. Just did. Anyway she asked me if I wanted to go to a party over at Rocky’s house and I told her—“

  Taylor interrupted this time. “So Tessa just picked up the phone, dialed a random number and got you on the other end?”

  I closed my eyes. I was running out of patience. “Kind of. Who cares why she called me or how I got there. I just did.”

  I could tell that the girls were not happy with my evasiveness and I understood why. I never told them that I hung out with Tessa in the past. Never. Even so, I continued.

  “We got there, I had too much to drink, don’t remember much and stayed in bed with a hangover all day yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but what about Rocky? He was there, right?”

  Taylor was annoying me. “Yes, he was there, Taylor. The party was at his house.”

  Erica tried to sound casual. “Did you hang with him at all?”

  I shook my head and lied. “Not really. He was busy hangin’ with his usual posse.”

  “So, what’d you do then?” Taylor wanted to know.

  I was forceful. “I told you. I don’t remember!”

  Taylor recoiled from my nastiness. I felt badly and softened. “I should’ve just stayed home that night and avoided the whole situation. That way I wouldn’t have felt like I had been run over by a tractor trailer and wouldn’t have wasted my whole entire Sunday trying to recuperate.”

  I hoped my last answer would stop the two of them from asking any more questions because, this time, it was the absolute truth.

  • • •

  I was never more excited to climb the steep steps and enter the front doors of Portland High. It allowed me to get lost in the hallways and escape from Taylor and Erica and their bombardment of questions.

  As I headed to my locker, I saw Rocky walking toward me in the opposite direction. For once, he was alone. I stopped at my locker, turned around and faced him as he walked by. Our eyes met. I smiled my prettiest smile. I waited for his. Instead he stared at me, quizzically, as if to say, “Do I know you?” Embarrassed, I whipped myself around so my back was to him as he finished waltzing by.

  I was so humiliated! Rocky totally didn’t remember me and basically looked right through me. How could he forget me, I wondered? Aside from the fact that I didn’t leave Tessa’s side all night long, except for when I passed out drunk in one of his hundreds of bedrooms, he tried to feel my up, right before I threw up in his mom’s matching, striped red and gold garbage can.

  It was probably for the best anyway, I decided. I didn’t want to be known as the naïve girl with the pretty eyes who couldn’t hold her liquor.

  I grabbed my books and headed to homeroom and seriously tried to forget that the previous weekend ever happened. It seemed as if Rocky already had.

  • • •

  The first part of Monday flew by in a blur. I still didn’t feel one hundred percent. I wasn’t sure if I was coming down with something or if I was still hungover. Could a person suffer from a hangover for two straight days, I wondered?

  Besides suffering physically, I was preoccupied mentally. I couldn’t get Michael out of my head. Why did he always inconveniently pop back into my life right after I successfully forgot about him?

  I tried to visualize Michael and his facial expressions when we had spoken on the phone Sunday. I had barely ever been with him in person. I was beginning to forget what he even looked like. Michael’s face was fading fast from my memory the same way my dad’s did soon after he died. It was an overwhelmingly sad feeling.

  I had a tough decision to make. I could bring Michael’s face back into my mind by meeting him at his house on Saturday, or I could tell him “no” and let it continue to fade forever.

  I was so confused. Michael had said that he would tell me all about himself if we met up. Did that include his mysterious illness and lack of school attendance? I was sick of playing games with him and wanted the truth, once and for all, even if I ended up walking away and saying good-bye to him for good.

  I unloaded my books, grabbed my student ID card and slammed my locker shut. I had to think long and hard about what I was going to do. I was hoping that I’d be able to think straight during lunch and that Taylor and Erica would be done grilling me about my infamous night at Rocky’s. The two of them didn’t even know the half of it. I could just imagine how quickly their tongues would start wagging if they knew I had spent the entire night there. As I walked toward the lunchroom, I said a quick, silent prayer, hoping they’d never find out.

  • • •

  I slid my slice of cheese pizza onto the table and took a seat next to Taylor. I couldn’t wait to eat. All of a sudden, I was starving.

  “Hi guys,” I said to them both as I unscrewed the top to my water bottle.

  “Hey,” Erica replied, so unenthusiastically, as if she had just lost her best friend. I knew that wasn’t the case because Taylor was sitting right across from her. At least Erica said something. Taylor barely gave me a nod.

  I motioned with my head over to Taylor. “What’s with her,” I asked Erica, not caring that Taylor was right next to me.

  Erica looked at Taylor. Taylor gave a slight nod and Erica went for it. “Taylor and I discussed it and we don’t think it’s right for you to hang out with Tessa. She is our arch enemy after all.”

  “She’s whose arch enemy?” I wanted to know.

  “Ours. Mine and Taylor?”

  “And why is that, by the way?” I was pissed. “What has she ever done to you two?”

  Erica looked at me as if I had two heads. “She’s a stuck-up bitch, a slut and has the worst reputation in the whole damn school.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” I replied calmly. I looked at Taylor, then across at Erica and pointed to them both. “What has she ever done to either of you?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether she’s done anything to us personally or not. We just don’t like her and cannot understand how you can associate with someone like her.”

  “I like her and she’s not as bad as you think she is,” I said as I leaned back and took a bite of my pizza.

  Erica actually pointed her nose up in the air. “Well, neither Taylor nor I would ever lower our standards and hang out with Tessa Anderson.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said smugly as I took a sip of my water. “I highly doubt you’d ever have the chance, even if you wanted to.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Erica asked indignantly, “and why is that?”

  I started to seethe and couldn’t control the words that were going to come out of me. I looked across the table and stared into Erica’s equally hostile eyes. “She probably doesn’t even know you two exist.”

  As Erica’s face turned beet red and her eyes began to bulge, Taylor abruptly pushed back her chair and stood up. Erica thought better of it and followed suit. Without another word, they both grabbed their lunch trays and stormed away from the table, leaving me alone in the big, noisy cafeteria with my half-eaten piece of pizza.

  • • •

  As soon as I said it, I knew I had hit below the belt. But I was upset with Taylor and Erica and wanted to say the meanest thing I could think of. They were the one’s who started it, I thought to myself, as I tried to justify my nastiness.

  Taylor and Erica had it out for Tessa no matter what she did and I couldn’t understand why. Maybe they were just jealous of her, especially because of all the male attention she always got. They also probably knew she would never give either of them the time of day
and were mad about that. The more I thought about it, I still couldn’t understand why Tessa befriended me. Probably because I was the new girl, had no friends and, therefore, no extra baggage.

  As I finished my lunch, I tried to look at it from Erica and Taylor’s perspective. Maybe they were just upset because they were afraid that Tessa was going to steal me away from them. Well, that wasn’t going to happen and I would make it a point to tell the two of them as soon as possible, if they ever decided to talk to me again.

  I picked up my cell to see if I had any new messages. I was sitting alone after all. I wanted it to look like I had some sort of communication going on with another human being, even if it was somewhere out in cyberspace.

  Just then Tessa brushed by me with her lunch tray, stopped and backed up.

  “Hey, there.” Tessa looked around. “You look like a loser sitting there all by yourself.”

  I put my phone down and looked up at her. “Thanks.”

  She pushed her shiny, blonde hair away from her face. “Why don’t you come and sit with me and the boys.”

  I was about to object, but figured why not. What did I have to lose, although I was nervous about hanging out with all the guys, especially because Rocky was there, too. I quickly thought back to the morning and concluded that either Rocky didn’t recognize me from his party or didn’t remember me at all. I was hoping it was both.

  Impatiently, Tessa chomped on her gum. “So what’s it gonna be?”

  “Sure,” I said, as I stood up, shocked by my newfound braveness. I grabbed my tray, joined Tessa, the boys and “The God” and never looked back.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  I was so unbelievably thankful that neither Erica nor Taylor was on the ferry ride back to the island after school. They were pretty pissed at me and wouldn’t even look at me in the hallways for the rest of the day when I walked past them. It didn’t help that they saw me move over to the popular jock table with Tessa after they abandoned me.

  I know I shouldn’t have said what I said to them, but who did they think they were telling me who I could or couldn’t hang out with, whether it was with Tessa or anyone else? Plus, who designated them to be the holders of the moral compass by which everyone else around them was judged? I wasn’t perfect and was sure neither of them was either. Taylor and Erica needed to lay off Tessa, especially if she wasn’t bothering them.