Both Sides Now

by Shawn Inmon

  That went on for a few days until one day she and I were in the kitchen and out of nowhere she said, “I know you and Shawn went to the concert in Seattle together. I almost made another sandwich for you to take with you.”

  I froze, but I knew that my expression had already given me away more than any signed confession I could ever give her.

  “Uhhh…”

  “Don’t bother saying anything. I just want you to know that you’re not as smart as you think you are. Your Dad and I usually know what’s going on, so you had best remember that.”

  I still hadn’t spoken a word. I was waiting for the next shoe to drop. I figured the next thing she would say would be, ‘And now you’re grounded until you’re thirty,’ or ‘We’re going to take all your babysitting money until you turn eighteen,’ or something else drastic. Instead, she didn’t say anything until Dad came inside. “Dawn, tell your dad that you are sorry for lying to him and for seeing Shawn in Seattle behind our backs.”

  I looked at Dad, who looked a little surprised at this development. I wasn’t sure he was as in the loop as Mom was saying he was.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled and hurried out of the room.

  I should have figured out right then that there wasn’t all that much that they could really do to punish me, but I didn’t. Instead, it just confirmed to me what I had already figured. Somehow, some way, Mom knew everything I did and I couldn’t ever get away with anything.

  It was a mistake going to Seattle to see Shawn. Not because we had gotten caught, since there didn’t seem to be any real downside to that, but because it made it a lot harder to go back to school and be unable to talk to him again. I missed him more than ever, but I didn’t have anyone to share that with, so I kept it inside.

  After riding to school with Shawn the year before, I hadn’t been able to stand riding the bus back and forth to school. Luckily, we only lived a mile away from school, so unless it was pouring, I walked both ways.

  One afternoon in early December it was cold but clear, so I was walking home like usual. I was in the same miserable frame of mind I was always in when I was alone. When I was around Mom and Dad or my friends, I put on a mask of happiness, but when I was alone, I could let the mask slip off and let my real feelings show—to myself, at least, if to no one else.

  When I came to the blinking light where I crossed Highway 12, I saw someone tall and skinny standing in the woods on the other side. It almost looked like Shawn, but I knew he was in Seattle and his car was broken down. When I crossed the road, he stepped out from behind some trees and I saw that it really was him. I felt my heart leap. I ran toward him and hugged him.

  “I only have a few minutes, or Mom will know something is going on,” I said.

  “I know. This won’t take long.”

  He smiled at me and I saw tears in his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that you are the most important person in my life and I don’t get to see you every day, or ever, really. Being away from you these past few months has been the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. Since I saw you at the concert, I’ve spent every day trying to figure out a way so that no one can ever separate us again.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out a small blue box. He pulled it open and I saw two rings inside. They were yellow gold with a small diamond. There was a pattern in the rings so that they fit perfectly together, like a single ring.

  “Dawn Adele, I feel like I can’t live without you. I know I can’t be happy. Will you marry me?”

  I was so torn. All I wanted in life was to be with Shawn. When we were together, I was happy. I always felt safe with him. I felt things I had never felt with anyone else. But as much as I wanted it, I couldn’t see any way for it to happen. Mom stood like a roadblock between us and our togetherness. When I thought of marrying Shawn, all I could think of was “Yes,” but all I could feel was a sense of dread. In the end, everything I felt when we were together won out.

  “Yes, Shawn. I will marry you, but how?”

  “I have a way, but it will take a lot of risk on both our sides. If you’re willing to do it, so am I, but if you’re not, we can just wait. You’ll be fifteen in just a couple of weeks. Right after that, I can come pick you up. We can go get on a plane and fly to Mississippi. Once we get there, we can get married. It’s the only state where you can get married at fifteen without a parent’s permission.”

  “Can you really get us plane tickets?”

  He nodded. “Terri told me that she’ll loan me the money for the plane tickets and everything else we’ll need. We can do this.”

  “OK. I’ll do it. When?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll get in touch with you after your birthday and let you know. I love you, baby, and this is the only way I know to fix it so that we can always be together.”

  “I love you, too, but I’ve got to go, or Mom will know something’s up.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t keep these,” I said. Taking those rings off my finger was one of the hardest things I had ever done. They looked so right on my hand, but I took them off and gave them back to Shawn. I kissed him, turned around and headed for Damron Road.

  My head was spinning. Every step I took away from Shawn, the more unreal it became. By the time I got to my front yard, it almost felt like it hadn’t happened at all.

  When I opened the door, Mom was standing just inside, waiting for me, which she never did.

  “What’s this about a ring?”

  Oh, my God. I would never know what combination of witchcraft and intuition she used to make these incredible leaps, but so often they were right. Did the woman have me under twenty-four-hour professional surveillance? Again I froze, and knew that I had given myself away.

  “Shawn was waiting for me when I walked home. He asked me to marry him.”

  She nodded and frowned, like that was just the answer she had been expecting.

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him ‘no,’” I lied. I was hoping that by confessing the worst of it—that Shawn had been there and asked me to run away with him—that I could hide the most important thing; that I intended to do it if I could find a way.

  She turned away and didn’t say anything else for a while, but I could see the wheels turning. The fact that she had somehow known what was happening when there was no way she could have known scared the crap out of me. How could we ever hope to run away together if she knew all our plans before we did?

  A few days later, she told me that she had talked to my brother Brian who was a cop in Los Angeles, and that he had told her how smart I was to have told Shawn ‘no.’

  “Brian said that if you two had crossed state lines and you even had your shoes off, he could be charged with a felony. Believe me, that’s exactly what we would have done. Instead of being married, he would have been spending a long time in prison. I really have no idea what he’s thinking.”

  I knew he was thinking that he loved me and that we just wanted to be together, but I didn’t say that. Even then, it was hard for me to figure out why they wanted so badly to keep us apart. Shawn and I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, and we weren’t having sex. We ran off to Doss Cemetery and got naked together every chance we could, but even that was innocent compared to what some of the girls told me they did.

  From the moment I told Mom that Shawn had asked me to marry him, something changed. Even during the time we had been separated, she hadn’t really said anything bad about him, just that she thought we shouldn’t be spending so much time together. Now, every chance she got, she said that she thought that Shawn was using me, and I had been nothing but his puppet. Looking back on it, I wonder what exactly he was supposedly getting out of me being his puppet, but at the time I didn’t think to question my mom.

  A few days before Christmas vacation started, Lori and I walked home from school together. As soon as we got in the house, Mom and Dad were wait
ing for us. Mom said she wanted to talk to us. I wondered what new secret of mine she had dug up and wanted to confront me about.

  “We know how hard it has been for you to be separated from Shawn. We are both proud of you that, other than the trip to Seattle, you have stuck to what we asked you to do and stayed away from each other. Also, when Shawn had the silly idea about asking you to marry him, you were mature enough to know that was a bad idea. So, we’ve decided to give you two one last chance to see each other.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I had wanted her to say that for so long that I had given up on it ever happening. I waited for the “But…” to come, and it did.

  “But this time around, there are going to be a lot more rules. For one thing, we don’t want to see or talk to Shawn. He is not welcome at this house or on our property. You two are not to see each other too much, or even every day. Also, you have shown you can’t be trusted, so you won’t be allowed to be alone together. You’ll have to have a chaperone of some kind with you at all times. Finally, you will always have a set time to be home. If you miss any of those times by even a single minute, this will all be off and you will be permanently banned from each other.”

  That actually sounded pretty good to me. I mean, we were already permanently banned from each other, so no matter what, we wouldn’t be any worse off.

  “OK,” I said, trying to keep any excitement out of my voice. “When does this start?”

  Mom looked a little surprised. “Now,” she said.

  “Can I call Shawn and tell him?”

  “Make it quick.”

  I was just happy that she hadn’t thought to ask me how I had Shawn’s number in Seattle memorized when I supposedly hadn’t talked to him months. Even Mom missed a cue now and then. I called Shawn, but because he lived in that rooming house, he never answered the phone. A man answered. When I asked for Shawn, he said, “Well, he’s really not supposed to get calls at this number, but I’ll see if he’s in his room.” I heard the phone on his end clunk down and I started watching the second hand of the clock in the living room sweeping around, ticking off my time.

  I was beginning to think I was going to have to hang up without talking to him when I heard his voice on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Shawn, it’s me.”

  “Oh my God. Hi, baby. Is everything OK?”

  “We can see each other again!” My control had slipped for just a second and I had let my excitement shine through. I looked at Mom. It felt like her eyes were boring into me.

  “What? Seriously? How did that happen? And why?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but we can. Mom just told me. But, she says it has to be different this time. We’ve got a lot more rules and if we don’t follow them one hundred percent, we won’t be allowed to see each other anymore.”

  “That is so unbelievable! That means that we don’t have to run away to be together…”

  I interrupted him by saying “Yeah. OK, I’ve gotta go. I can’t stay on the phone.”

  He got the clue. “Oh. OK, baby, I get it. Can I drive down and see you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, but one of the rules is that you can’t come to the house. Just call me when you get here and I’ll meet you in the yard.”

  “Weird, but OK, whatever, baby. I can’t wait to see you!”

  I saw Mom look pointedly at the clock. “Gotta go. See you tomorrow.”

  I hung up the phone and tried to process everything that had just happened. I couldn’t, so I just went to my room, wrote in my journal, listened to music, and waited for tomorrow to arrive.

  I spent most of the next day hanging out at my window, watching for Shawn. I was expecting him to be driving the Vega, but instead, he showed up in a little brown car.

  I walked as casually as I could out to the living room and said, “Shawn just got home. I’m going to go say hi.”

  “That’s fine,” Mom said. “Just remember the rules.”

  “I know. I know.”

  I closed the front door quietly and then ran as fast I could across the yard. Shawn was standing beside the car smiling, holding his arms open for me. I slammed into him and pushed him back against the door of the car. He laughed and said, “Hey, I’m glad to see you too,” then he pulled me and held me close. We were both aware that there might be eyes on us though, and we didn’t want to blow things before we even got started, so we just held hands and stared at each other.

  “So, I can’t go to your house. Can you come over to mine?”

  “Depends. Is your Mom in the house?”

  He looked over his shoulder, checking to see if her car was in the driveway. “I think so. Let’s go find out.”

  We walked across his yard and into his house. It all felt so familiar, but also so strange. Shawn poked his head through the sliding glass door and called, “Mom? Are you here?”

  She came around the corner from the kitchen. She always seemed to be in the kitchen. “Hi, honey. Hello, Dawn. Haven’t seen too much of you around here lately.”

  We walked inside and Shawn took my coat. We sat down on the same floral couch we had laid on during Prom night. Other than the Commodores concert, we hadn’t talked to each other in almost six months. For once, communication between us didn’t flow easily.

  After just staring and smiling for a couple of minutes, a serious look crossed Shawn’s face.

  “I just don’t get it,” he said. “What changed their minds? I thought they were pretty happy with the status quo.”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe your dad came over and talked to Mom and Dad.”

  “Really? What could Dad have said that would have changed their minds?”

  I lowered my voice so his Mom couldn’t hear in the kitchen. “I think he told them that if they didn’t let us see each other, we were going to do something crazy like run away together.”

  Shawn processed that and said, “I have no idea how he would have known that. I never told anyone other than Terri what we were planning on doing and I know she wouldn’t have told him.”

  I told him the story of how Mom had known about the ring the minute I walked in the door, even though there was no way she should have known.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess sometimes they just know stuff.”

  “I can’t stay long. I want to make sure we can keep seeing each other, and I think Mom’s got us on a clock.”

  Shawn sighed and nodded. He knew it was the truth, but I could see he didn’t like it. “Can I see you tonight?”

  “Probably not. I’m babysitting.”

  “For who?”

  “Sam and Karen.”

  “Garner?”

  I nodded. The Garners lived in the house right next door to Shawn’s parents. I could already see what he was thinking. “You can’t come over. We’re not allowed to be alone together. That’s one of the rules.”

  “I know. Don’t worry. I won’t do anything to blow it for us.”

  He walked me to the front door and out onto his porch. I turned to give him a quick kiss good-bye. When I did, he whispered in my ear.

  “See you tonight.”

  Tonight’s the Night

  Mom was happy to see me back so soon. “Well, that was quick. Are you going to see each other later?”

  “No, I’m babysitting for the Garners tonight, remember? I think Shawn’s going to a movie or something. It was just nice to be able to see him.”

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I knew I wanted to see Shawn, and I definitely wanted to spend some time alone with him, but I was scared we would get caught if he came over. The Garners’ house had a big window that opened out to the road, and you could see right into their living room if you drove by the house. I decided to just take it as it came. If he came over, I could always send him away. Or so I tried to tell myself.

  I got to the Garners’ house a little after dinner. When they left, they said they would be home late, but that I should put their little gi
rl to bed by 8:30. By 9:00, the house was quiet except for the television. I was watching Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, which seemed like a great idea right up to the moment that Jessica had found a body floating in the lake. Then I wished I had found a Gilligan’s Island rerun or something. I heard a rhythmic tapping coming from the back of the house, so I got a butcher knife from the kitchen and went to see what was causing it. Of course, it wasn’t the boogeyman. It was just Shawn, knocking gently on the back door.

  When I let him in, he had that wide-eyed Did I do something wrong? look. He knew I could never be unhappy with him when he had that goofy look on his face. I opened the door to let him into the hallway but whispered, “You can’t go into the living room. What if Mom and Dad drive by and see you?”

  “I have thought of everything,” he said. “C’mon.” He dropped down onto his hands and knees and crawled down the hall, stopping to look over his shoulder and smile. I followed behind, wondering what kind of a man-child I was in love with.

  When he got to the living room he sat down on the floor with his back to the couch and patted the floor beside him. “See? They can’t see.” He was always his own best audience for his jokes, but I sat down close beside him and rested my head on his shoulder. We started out watching the movie, but eventually we figured out that no one was really trying to scare Jessica to death and that it was just a cool-sounding title. Then I realized that I was sitting really close to the person I loved, that I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and that we were basically alone together in the house.

  I haven’t mentioned it yet, but during all the time we were dating, Shawn wore Jovan Musk cologne. Of course, he had put it on tonight and it had mixed with his own scent to make me forget about being afraid of getting caught by Mom and Dad, at least for a few minutes. The summer before, we had talked about sex a lot. We had decided that we definitely wanted to wait, agreeing that it would be the smartest and best idea. That was also before we had been separated and thought we were never going to see each other again. The logical thing would have been to just appreciate the second chance we had been given. We weren’t feeling very logical.