County Line Road

by Marie Etzler

She laughed. “I have the same initials.” Her smile created deep dimples in her cheeks.

  He stared at her, mesmerized by her beauty and his luck to be here talking to her and it was happening in front of everyone.

  “Wow,” was all he could think of to say. Then he started talking fast. “I know your name – Anna Alvarez. I mean, not that I’ve been stalking you or anything.”

  “You don’t look like the stalker type,” Anna said. “But then again, you never know these days.”

  “You’re perfectly safe,” Double A said. “All I do is study. I’m really boring.”

  She laughed at him.

  He realized how he sounded and looked around to see if anyone heard.

  “Let’s see if we can have some fun then,” she said. “I’ll help you mark the race.”

  “Okay.” He stood there, smiling. He was the kind of kid with a studious look, but when he smiled, it transformed his whole face, revealing a bright, good-natured person.

  He snapped out of it, and they jogged down the sidewalk together.

  Jimmy watched Double A and the girl. He smiled because he knew Double A had been wanting to talk to that girl for about a year. Sometimes it takes the girl to get things started, he thought. He also felt a pang of emptiness. He had a strange sensation that someone was standing next to him. The feeling was almost electric. It ran down his arm and gave him a chill. But no one was there. He rubbed his arm, feeling like a hallucinating idiot. He turned his attention back to the challenge at hand.

  Jeanie put the finishing touches on the finish line with the toes of her jingling sandals and said, “Are you ready?”

  The two boys stretched a little, and Dion took off his sneakers.

  “Don’t want sand in my new Nike’s,” he said. “But yours – who cares!”

  Jimmy looked down at his old running shoes. They might be a disadvantage in the sand but not on the sidewalk.

  Dion put his game face on. Jimmy knew Dion talked big, but he’d seen Dion crack and Jimmy was about to do it to him again.

  Jimmy’s fingertips touched the line in the sand as his body was poised in the race stance, ready.

  “Ready to lose, Country Boy?” Dion said, trying to sound cool. “There ain’t gonna’ be no scholarships for you when I beat all the records next season. I got a secret plan.”

  He turned his head to Dion and gave him a smile, wicked as an executioner licking the axe blade, just to mess with Dion’s head a little bit.

  Jimmy’s trademark grin — that girls loved and parents distrusted — conveyed more than anything Jimmy could say. Dion stopped joking when he saw Jimmy’s face; he went back to focusing. But it didn’t matter to Jimmy; he knew he was faster and so did everyone else. He was going to win this one and every other race — it was his ticket out of his father’s house for good.

  “Ready, Set, Go!” Jeanie called. She clapped her hands on “Go” and the race was on.

  To Jimmy, the clap was like the sound of the starting gun at the track, and he took off running. He always had good form coming out of the starting blocks. Every coach told him that. And he was intense, they said, ran each race like it was the finals at the state championships.

  And it was for Jimmy. Every race was a race for his life. The faster he ran, the faster he got away from everything. Almost.

  They both struggled with the sand, their feet digging in and the sand holding on like glue. Dion was half a stride ahead as they approached the band shell. Double A waved them left like he was signaling a jet landing on an aircraft carrier. The girl with him did the same thing.

  Dion cut left first and reached the sidewalk. Jimmy turned and felt the solid pavement under his shoes. He started gaining on Dion. They dodged tourists and roller bladers as they made their way back to the life guard stand where the girls were cheering.

  Jimmy thought for sure Dion would step on a piece of glass or something, but he didn’t need Dion to make any mistakes. Jimmy was gaining on him surely as he always did. He could feel his competitors get tired, and it made him faster.

  Side by side they got closer to the finish, and Jimmy could feel victory was his. He knew this feeling well; he’d had it many times before. Victory doesn’t care who takes it across the finish line, he always thought. It just went with whoever was fastest, like a beautiful girl who only wanted to be on the arm of the best looking and richest man in a fancy restaurant. Victory was his until he felt her hesitate, as if to speak, and part her lips just enough to say, Oh no.

  A kid on a skateboard came out of nowhere and was suddenly right in front of them. Dion pivoted to the side, but Jimmy saw it half a second before him. The kid, wide-eyed, ducked and Jimmy hurdled over him and kept going all in one motion.

  Jimmy heard gasps as everyone stopped and stared. Men and women at café tables sat stunned, forks suspended in mid air between plate and open mouths.

  Jimmy glanced back and thought, They’d show that on ESPN.

  The girls cheered and jumped up and down as Jimmy came across the finish line first.

  Dion came up out of breath and slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Who you calling a loser now?” Jimmy said to him.

  “Cool out, man. I can’t believe you beat me, especially in them old shoes,” Dion said as he pointed at Jimmy’s sneakers, half laughing between gasps. “Next time.”

  Girls grouped around them, some consoling Dion who soaked it up, and the rest admiring Jimmy.

  Double A ran over, breathless. “Did you see that!” He was lit up with excitement like a kid who just hit his first home run or caught his first fish. Double A rubbed his short, curly brown hair that never combed the way he wanted it to. “I thought you were going to cream that kid. Holy shit! Oh, sorry,” he said to Anna.

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  “Anna! Come here!” Jeanie called to the girl and waved her over.

  Anna said, “Bye,” to Double A and joined the girls.

  Jimmy circled around Double A, flapping his t-shirt to cool off.

  “That was a great race,” Double A said, still staring at Anna. “I’m going to tell everyone at Jeff’s party. I wonder if Anna is going?”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “No,” Double A said. “I didn’t even think of it. I was standing down there, trying to think of something to say. All I could think of was that Mars was going to be rising in the Eastern sky after sunset.”

  “Mars? She’s going to think you’re from Mars,” Jimmy said. “Come on.”

  “Where are you going?” Double A said nervously.

  “To give you a chance to ask her.”

  “What? No!” Double A tried to whisper, but it sounded like a hiss.

  Jimmy walked over to the group of girls, Double A trailing behind. They stopped in front of Jeanie who was putting on lip gloss. “You playing hostess at Jeff’s party tonight?”

  “I tried to get you uninvited, but for some reason he likes you,” Jeanie said.

  “You’re going?” Kris asked Jimmy with disgust. “You won’t get me off in a spare bedroom again.”

  “Been there, done that,” Jimmy said. He turned to Anna. She was sitting on a beach towel, looking like a picture from a catalog.

  Double A was hiding behind Jimmy.

  Jimmy turned to her and said, “You going? My friend here is.” He pointed his thumb at Double A.

  Anna shielded her face from the sun with her hand and looked up at them. She smiled and said, “Maybe.”

  “Does any girl ever give a straight answer?” Jimmy said. “I can’t wait to get out of here next month.” Then he said directly to Jeanie, “Go meet some college girls. Let’s go, Double A.” He smacked Double A in the stomach and ran for the water.

  Jimmy dove in the surf like a linebacker tackling a quarterback.

  Double A waded into the surf slowly and stood with the water up to his pale chest. He lifted himself up on his toes to see the girls, but Anna had lain down and he couldn’t see her anymore.
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  “I wonder if she’ll go to the party,” he said more to himself than Jimmy.

  “Forget about her,” Jimmy said. He raised his head from where he was floating on his back. “There will be plenty of girls there, and at MIT or Cornell, or where ever you go.”

  “I’d rather go U.M. and stay down here,” Double A said.

  “Not me,” Jimmy said. “The further away, the better.”

  The bright afternoon sun lit up the waves, glinting off the wave tips like reflected glass. After a while, Jimmy and Double A trudged out of the surf and back to their towels to dry off and pack up to go. Ahead of them, out west, dark clouds formed over their neighborhood, the usual summer rain that arrived every afternoon.

  Jimmy watched three little kids playing catch.

  “What do you think Linda did with that baseball?” Jimmy said.

  Two of the kids tossed the ball over the head of the younger kid who kept reaching for it.

  “Maybe she hid it,” Double A said.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. He stopped drying himself with the towel. “In her car? Do you have one of those tools that pops open a lock?”

  “I’m not giving you one of my screwdrivers to break into anybody’s car.”

  “Maybe she stashed it in the house,” Jimmy said. “I know where to look. You ready to go?”

  “Yeah.”

  As they headed home in Double A’s Cutlass, each was in his own thoughts. The yachts in the marinas, the high-rise condos and Intracoastal Waterway mansions faded behind them as industrial warehouses, used car lots, and row after row of terracotta tile roofs of the suburbs took their place. Double A rested his arm on the open car window, getting sunburned by the last of the sun’s rays streaming from a huge anvil cloud. The music from the radio played and mixed the languor of the day with anticipation for the night, giving them a feeling of immortality that said nothing could go wrong.

  CHAPTER 4

  Double A’s Cutlass rumbled as it sat at a red light, waiting. On the corner was a tent displaying Fourth of July banners and selling fireworks.

  “Those are the kiddie fireworks,” Double A said. “Jeff got the good stuff.” He paused and then said, “Hey.” He slapped Jimmy on the arm, waking him out of his doze. “There’s Jeff, talking to that new girl. He must have radar. He can find girls anywhere.”

  Double A blew the horn and called out the car window, “Hey! Jeff!”

  Jeff turned his attention reluctantly from a blond girl swiping a credit card at the pump next to a new blue Mustang. “Hey!” Jeff called out. “See you guys tonight.”

  From the passenger seat, Jimmy sat up when he saw the blonde. “That’s the girl,” he said. He raised his hand and waved just as she turned her head to look right at him.

  The light changed, and Double A pressed the accelerator and listened to the gears shift.

  A row of bushes cut off Jimmy’s view of the girl.

  “Hey, slow down. I’ve seen her driving around,” Jimmy said. “I hope he invites her to the party.” He felt embarrassed when he heard the eagerness in his voice, sounding just like Double A talking about Anna. Jimmy normally kept his cool, but for some reason this girl seemed different to him. When he’d seen her drive past, she never looked at him but was focused far ahead as if she were looking at something on the horizon, a glimmer of something just out of reach. He wondered what it was.

  “Knowing Jeff, he already did invite her. He’s probably hitting on her, too,” Double A said. “You know her?”

  “Not yet,” Jimmy said, craning his neck to see her through a row of barricades marking a turn lane under construction. “I’ll kill Jeff if he tries anything. Damn it. Look, she’s leaving. Follow her!”

  “She’s going the opposite way,” Double A said. “Damn this paving.” His Cutlass bumped over the line between the paved lane and the torn up section that was scraped for repaving. The tires hummed loudly. “I wish they’d finish this. I don’t want any junk on my car.”

  “Oh, man,” Jimmy said. He wrenched himself around in the seat to watch her disappear down the road.

  “There’s a cop anyway,” Double A said. The tires bumped against a cut in the pavement, jolting them in their seats. The construction zone ended, and the tires rolled quietly atop the smooth pavement.

  “I wonder if she’ll go to the party tonight,” Jimmy said, slumping back into the seat.

  “You sound like me,” Double A said.

  “Shut up and drive.”

  Double A laughed at him and gunned the engine. The front end of the Cutlass rose up, and the car launched forward with a roar.

  Later, inside a furniture store called Miami Decor, Allison sat alone in the middle of a big, brown leather couch, flipping her Mustang keychain back and forth across her bare thigh. As she waited for her mother to finish the delivery details with the salesman, Allison thought about the guy in the car she’d seen. Maybe I will go to that party Jeff told me about, Allison thought, maybe that jogging guy will be there. I think that was him in the car Jeff waved to.

  When her mother finished, they left the store through the sliding glass doors, and the heat outside blasted Allison like hot air from opening an oven.

  “Ugh,” she said, putting her sunglasses on. “It’s so hot here. Couldn’t we have moved someplace cooler?”

  “You know your father got a good job here,” her mother said. “What are you complaining about? You just got a new bedroom set.”

  “Thank you,” Allison said as she clicked the remote to unlock her blue Mustang. They got in quickly, and Allison turned the air conditioning on full force. “It’s boiling in here. I should have parked in the shade, if there were any in this state.”

  Allison backed up and raced out of the parking lot into traffic. Her mother gripped the dashboard.

  “Slow down, Allison, or your father will take this car away.”

  They didn’t talk for the next 15 minutes or so until Allison had to ask for directions. “Is it this street or the next? They all look alike to me here.”

  “This one,” her mother said. “What’s wrong with you today?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing,” her mother said. “I swear, Allison, ‘nothing’ must be your favorite word. You’ve been moping around since we moved. Except for meeting Cassie next door, you do nothing.”

  “There’s nothing to do,” Allison said.

  “Didn’t you just get invited to a party by what is his name, Jeff?”

  “He’s just trying to –” Allison paused. She almost said ‘get me in bed’ but she thought that wouldn’t be good to say to her mother. “He just wants a lot of girls there so he feels popular or something. Cassie told me about him.”

  “It’s too bad she’s away now,” her mother said. “Turn left here. No, here!”

  Allison braked and made a hard right turn. The car handled it fine, but her mother didn’t.

  “Damn it, Allison.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  Once at their house, her mother got out to check the mailbox, and Allison parked in the garage.

  Her mother walked through the kitchen behind her, sorting through the letters. She dropped all but one and tore it open.

  “These damn people,” she said.

  “What?” Allison said. She heard a different tone in her mother’s voice, not typical aggravation, but a cry that caught in her throat.

  “I wish they’d stop sending these,” she said and tossed the letter in the trash can. “If they’re going to follow us here, at least get it right. I told them already.”

  Her mother stormed out of the kitchen.

  Allison picked out the letter and read it. It started, “Dear Michelle, …”

  Allison skimmed rest of the letter. The Special Olympics was inviting her sister, Michelle, to participate in the track and field events again this year.

  They still hadn’t updated their records since Michelle died a year ago.

  Allison folded the letter ca
refully and tried to put it back in the envelope her mother had torn. The letter wouldn’t fit. Allison ripped the envelope and letter in half and then again. Then she tore the return address label into shreds until she couldn’t read the Special Olympics name or logo. She threw the pieces in the trash.

  Allison opened the fridge and grabbed one of her dad’s beers. She stared at it a minute, feeling it cold in her hand. She put it back.

  She went to her room and looked out the window. A Blue Jay sat on a nearby branch, looking right at her. Allison didn’t know why, but the bird surprised her. The way it was looking at her, it seemed like it had something to tell her.

  Allison pulled herself together, thinking it was absurd that a bird would talk. “I gotta’ get out more,” she said and shut the window blinds.

  CHAPTER 5

  No one was home when Jimmy got back from the beach. No cars in the driveway, no TV sound when he walked in the door. He stood for a second to listen, and then announced he was home loudly. Nothing. He felt relief, but then a pinpoint of tension began to rise in his stomach as he started on his mission – looking for the baseball. He searched the hall closets and the kitchen cabinets above the refrigerator, even though he figured it probably wasn’t there. He was working up the courage to go where he knew he needed to look.

  He stopped in front of the closed door to his father’s and Linda’s bedroom.

  As a kid, he never went in his parent’s room. The one time he’d taken coins from his father’s dresser for the ice cream truck, his father caught him and yelled at Jimmy so badly, he almost peed his pants.

  He was only 6 years old then. Jimmy remembered the feeling of fear now as he stood in front of the bedroom door. Then he remembered this was not his parents’ room; it’s only his father’s and Linda’s. And she was trying to ruin his life.

  He took a deep breath and tried the doorknob.

  It turned.

  He opened the door and paused to listen. He couldn’t help feeling like a scared kid again, so he told himself to get a grip. He left the door open behind him and went in.

  The room was dark, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The blinds were closed, allowing only an amber haze to permeate the edges of the window.