Our eyes met as he finished. For just a moment, an ever so brief moment, I saw something there, a flash of empathy that was quickly replaced by the normal indifference.
It was as if I was as important as a potted plant.
“Thank you again,” I said. “How did you stop in time?”
“Saw your tail light. If you hadn’t already crashed, I would have,” he said.
I smiled to myself. Mom was right there always was a silver lining, at least for somebody.
I looked around the inside of his truck, anywhere but looking at him. It was old, the dashboard was scuffed and scratched. A red pack of cigarettes rested next to the front windscreen. I didn’t know that Johnny smoked.
He most definitely didn’t smell like cigarettes. It reminded me of how much I didn’t know about him. My insides became a little wobbly when I thought about being alone with him. Who was this boy really?
The truck smelled of motor oil, pine trees, and Johnny’s leathery aftershave. I shivered and closed my eyes taking in the strong manly scent.
“Here,” Johnny said as he reached behind the seat and pulled out a gray woolen blanket. The kind you could buy at the army surplus store. He tossed it onto my lap and said with all the empathy of a brick, “you’re probably going to go into shock. That was a nasty crash.”
Wow, what a jerk. I’d felt more empathy from a gas pump announcing my card was approved.
I held my breath as I confirmed I had not said the last thought out loud. Sighing I unfolded the blanket and put it around my legs. I hadn’t even finished when Johnny slammed the truck into a lower gear to slow us down as he muttered, “Uh Oh.”
“What?” I demanded as I tried to swallow.
He nodded to the front as he shifted down to first gear and pumped the breaks.
I glanced forward and almost choked. Another gentle giant had fallen across the road. Another tree, even bigger than mine. Why me? It was impossible to get into two wrecks on the same night, wasn’t it?
The tree was approaching fast as Johnny fought to keep the truck under control. At the last possible moment, we came to a stop with inches to spare.
Sitting there, in open-mouthed shock, we both stared at the new barrier. The branches whipped back and forth by the storm.
What now?
Looking behind him, Johnny slowly backed the truck up next to the cliff face, a good hundred feet from the tree then slowly turned the truck off and killed his front headlights. He left his dashboard light on, bathing everything in an eerie blue glow while the darkness outside engulfed us in a suffocating black blanket.
“We should be safe here, no trees to get knocked down,” Johnny said.
“What do you mean? ‘Safe Here’? I have to get home. My mom’s waiting. I’m already late.”
He looked at me in bewilderment for a second then slowly shook his head. “Sorry Amber, looks like we’re spending the night together.”
Several thoughts jumped into my head. First and foremost was that he knew my name, did that mean he remembered me? The second thought was how many girls at school would have loved to hear those words. Only with their own name inserted instead of mine of course. And third, was. ALL NIGHT. No way.
There was absolutely no way I was spending the night with Johnny Benson in his truck.
My insides turned over and my palms immediately began to sweat. I wiped them on the wool blanket but it didn’t do any good, they were wet again within moments.
“I have to get home. Really Johnny. What will people think? My mom will kill me. I’ll be grounded until I’m thirty-three.”
A sly smile and a raised left eyebrow made me want to choke him. It was a look I remembered from when we were little kids. He’d get it anytime he thought he was getting away with something. For a moment, I wondered if he’d set all this up.
Yeah right, Johnny Benson, who could have almost any girl he wanted. Went out in a raging storm, cut down two trees, almost got in a wreck himself, just so he could spend some time with me. Get a grip on reality girl.
“There is absolutely nothing I can do,” he said. “Sorry, but we’ll have to wait. We’ll be fine here. They won’t send a road crew until the morning and that’s only if the storm has let up by then.”
I looked at him, trying to see if he was serious or not or was this some kind of horrendous joke. Unfortunately, the new, modern Johnny Benson was not known for his sense of humor.
“Couldn’t we hike to some farmhouse? Somewhere with a phone? Surely there should be somewhere close enough. Couldn’t you use that ax of yours to cut a way through the tree?”
He tilted his head, opened one eye and snorted at my obvious joke.
I was so mad I wanted to hit something. Instead, I sighed to myself, closed my eyes, and tried to think of something. I was a smart girl. I should be able to figure something out. Some way out of this predicament.
Looking at him again only made me madder. He’d folded his arms. Leaned back, his head resting on the rear window, and closed his eyes as if he was trying to go to sleep. How could he do that? Couldn’t he see this was serious? Also, how was it possible for him to look so damn hot even when I was mad at him? It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.
The man was devastatingly handsome in that dangerous kind of way. You know the kind of looks that said ‘be careful, don’t touch, may burn your fingers, or ruin your heart.’
Desperate, I retrieved my phone even though I knew what it was going to tell me. Sure enough. No bars. I tried calling my mom anyway. Nothing. Well, at least, I’d be able to tell her I tried.
“And it is John,” he said without opening his eyes. “No one has called me Johnny since fifth grade.”
I swallowed hard, afraid I might have offended him. How was it possible, seconds ago I’d been mad, now here I was worried that I might have hurt his feelings? My emotions seemed to be all over the place for some totally unknown reason.
My insides tumbled in turmoil. Why was I so afraid? Johnny, correction, John Benson, wouldn’t hurt me. The boy I’d known so long ago would never hurt me. Sure he had changed, but deep down, there had to be something left of that boy.
So what exactly was making me so nervous?
Chapter Three
John
Amber Jacobson! Of all the girls, in all the cars, in all the trees in the world. Why did it have to be her?
I leaned my head back, closed my eyes and tried to slow my pounding pulse like that social worker slash shrink slash parole agent had tried to teach me but it wasn’t working. It never worked.
The flush of terror when I saw Amber’s car buried in those tree limbs still pounded inside of me. A thousand grisly pictures had flashed through my mind. I’d known it was her car as soon as I saw the stupid Garfield cartoon in the rear window and held my breath until I knew she was okay.
Why her? Why now? Life can throw you some serious problems, believe me I know. But Amber Jacobson. There was no way I was going to make it through the night. She was the one good thing that had ever happened in my life. The one friend who hadn’t stabbed me in the back. The one person who saw me for who I was and hadn’t run away.
Then everything changed. Then everything went to crap in a handbasket. My dad’s death had torn my world apart in so many different ways.
The one thing I could not afford, could not have happen, would be a look of disapproval from her. Or worse, pity. Pity would kill me.
I’d spent almost four years avoiding her. Amber Jacobson was my talisman my proof that there was something good in this world. If her opinion of me changed then, everything people said about me was true.
I could still remember her walking down the hall the first day of freshman year. Her long caramel brown hair, chocolate colored eyes, and sweet heart-shaped face. It was enough to halt me in my tracks. Like a thunderbolt out of a blue sky. I’d stood there like a lump on a log and watched her walk by. She was like a queen, tall, beautiful, filled with class and grace.
Standi
ng there in the hall I thought of a vocabulary assignment from some long lost detention hall. The teacher had told us that a person with class knew what to do even in awkward situations. A person with grace made other people feel comfortable in awkward situations.
That was Amber, pure class, pure grace. Assured, kind, sweet, super intelligent, and a good good friend. Now she was beautiful in a firebrand yet graceful way that I knew would last forever.
If she ever knew what my life was like she’d feel sorry for me and there was no way that was happening. She deserved a world full of unicorns and rainbows. Not my evil dark moods or screwed up life.
“So why haven’t you been at school for the last couple of months?” She asked, breaking the silence with a simple question that tore at me.
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. She’d pulled the blanket to her chin and scooted into the corner as far away from me as she could get. She’s probably afraid I’ve turned into some kind of ax murder or something. I really ought to talk, try and assure her that everything will be okay.
“They asked me to leave and not come back,”
“Why? Did you get in another fight?”
“Why does everybody automatically assume it was a fight?” I said.
“Who was it with?” she asked, obviously unwilling to let it go.
Sighing to myself I said “Jim O’Neil.”
“Why? What was it about?” Her eyes had narrowed as if she really wanted to know. See this is what I was worried about. She was the type of person who would pester you until she figured out what was wrong and they would try to fix it. What made it worse is I’d never been able to ignore her. I couldn’t just shut up and not give her the information. It was some kind of weird power she had over me.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders. “It might have been about Julie Peterson.”
“His girlfriend?”
“His ex-girlfriend. Or at least, that’s what she told me. Anyway – he saw me coming out of her house early one morning when her parents were away. Put two and two together and after a lot of effort came up with the correct answer. Deciding that he didn’t like guys visiting his ex-girlfriend late at night, he and a bunch of his buddies jumped me behind the gym.”
Her eyes had grown as big as hubcaps and her mouth hung open as if I was some kind of alien from another world.
“I might have gotten away with it,” I continued. “The fight that is, if I didn’t sort of break somebody’s arm. They reported to the nurse, she called an ambulance. Everything got blown way out of proportion.”
Now she was shaking her head in disbelief.
“Anyway. With my record, they refused to believe I hadn’t started it. The police got involved and we sort of all decided it would be best if I stopped going to high school and just got my GED instead.
The silence in the truck was deafening as I waited for her to say something. Even the storm outside couldn’t break through the quietness between us.
“Was she worth it?” Amber finally asked. Shocking me with her question. I thought about it for a moment then smiled.
“Yes,” I answered.
Amber rolled her eyes and muttered something about “Men,” under her breath as she turned to look out her window.
See this was why I couldn’t be around her. Ten minutes and I’d already made her mad. That had to be a new record, even for me.
The two of us sat there in silence. Lost in our own thoughts. I wondered what she was thinking about but didn’t dare ask. Reaching forward I turned the ignition. Amber jumped and stared at me like a lost rabbit. Afraid for some reason.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m just turning the heater on for a minute. I can’t run it all night. I don’t have enough gas. I’d planned on filling up after I dropped off this load of firewood. Don’t worry, though, if we’re careful, it might make it through the night. I’ll have to go out occasionally and make sure the tailpipe isn’t blocked but it should be okay.”
She nodded in understanding. “Why are you delivering firewood so late?”
“I got off late from my regular job. I’m a mechanic at E.J.’s Auto Repair and was late getting out of there. I live with my uncle now and was helping him out with a delivery.”
Oops, too much information. Her brow narrowed and I could tell she was going to ask about why I wasn’t living with my mom. Change the subject, John. Ask her something, anything, quick.
“So you and Tony Hansen?” I said before I could think things through.
Her face went blank for a moment then her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? I went out with him one time months ago. A mistake, I might add. Ranking right up there with driving on back mountain roads in the middle of the night.”
“What happened, why was it a mistake?” I asked, my pulse quickened. If he’d hurt her …
She snorted, “Let’s just say it took a gentle elbow to the throat to remind him where his hands belonged.”
Okay, that made it official, Tony Hansen was now on my short list of guys who needed an attitude adjustment. Something I was more than willing to help with.
“Anyway,” she continued. “How do you know about me going on a date with Tony Hansen? I mean. You’ve ignored me for years. It’s not like you’ve been stalking me. Girls like Julie Peterson have kept you way too busy for that. So what gives? Why do you even know who I’ve dated?”
Shrugging my shoulders, I said, “It’s a small town. People hear things. Besides, I haven’t been ignoring you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Johnny … Sorry, John. You haven’t said one word to me in four years of high school. We’d pass each other in the hallway and you’d hurry past as if afraid you’d catch Ebola or something. Come on, we used to be friends, very good friends. I realize I’m not in the same league as your many, many girlfriends but you could have smiled, maybe nodded. Anything to let me know that you knew I existed.”
Wow, where did that come from? She was really pissed. An angry Amber was something I wasn’t used to seeing. She was cute when she got angry. Hell, she was cute when she wasn’t angry.
“What about you? You never said hi,” I said. “Never deemed me worthy of your acknowledgment. Were you too afraid what people would think if they saw you talking to the wild and dangerous John Benson?”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Me? … That was different.”
“Why,” I asked. Curious now.
She paused for a moment as if trying to gather herself. “Because you were the wild and dangerous Johnny Benson. Not because I was afraid of what people would say, but because I thought you didn’t know me, didn’t remember me.”
She looked at me with concentration, obviously trying to determine if I understood her. I could see her point and didn’t really blame her.
Silence once again settled between us like a giant lump of Jell-O. I had never felt more uncomfortable in my life. Usually, when things got stressful I had something to fight against or on those rare occasions walk away from. This was different. There was nothing to hit, nothing to wrestle with. Just an awkward feeling of inadequacy. The truck felt like it was closing in on me.
I’d never known that she thought I’d forgotten all about her. How could she think that? I couldn’t let her think that she wasn’t special. My guts turned over. The thought that I might have hurt her was so wrong on so many levels.
“I never thought you weren’t as good as other girls. I always thought you were better. Way better,” I said before I realized what I was saying. “You have to know that. Right?”
Her scowl once again turned to questioning eyebrow look. A stray wisp of hair had fallen forward to lay against her cheek. I so wanted to gently reach over and tuck it behind her ear. I swear she read my mind and blushed, quickly moving the strand of hair behind her ear.
“Then why?” she asked. “Why the cold shoulder. I swear there were times it felt like you were an iceberg. The temperature would drop at least a
dozen degrees if we were in the same room? We were sort of special once. Trusted each other. At least, I had thought so. You were my best guy friend. What happened? What did I do?”
I could tell she was hurt bad and my insides tied themselves into a knot. I’d hurt her, the one thing I’d promised myself I would never do. I wanted to explain. For the first time in my life, I actually wanted to tell somebody my story, the truth.
Shrinks and social workers had tried. Teachers and even the principal Mr. Jones had tried to figure out what was wrong with me. But until now I’d never wanted to tell anyone. Even now I wanted to avoid the whole situation. That way led to a path of pity or scorn. I couldn’t go there.
Chapter Four
Amber
I wanted to strangle him. Or at least, hit him in the arm. How dare he say something sweet like I was better than the other girls? Which, come on, was obviously so not true. But still. How could he say that but not tell me why he ignored me? Treated me like a non-existent leper all those years. It didn’t make sense.
Of course, I didn’t strangle him, didn’t hit him. But believe me, it took quite a bit of self-control. Instead, I sulked.
I’m not really good at sulking, it takes too much energy and I’ve got better things to do. But then, at that moment, I became a championship sulker.
I turned my back on him and stared out the window. The wind was starting to let up but the snowfall had picked up. If this kept going, we’d be buried by the morning. Big white fluffy flakes appeared out of the dark sky. It might have been sort of pretty if I wasn’t stuck there with Johnny - now known as John - Benson.
The silence between us seemed to weigh on me like a two-ton pillow. This was so wrong. We should be talking. Catching up on each other’s lives. I wanted to know everything about him. I was driven to find out. I know he didn’t want to talk about it, but tough. I did and when it came to things like this I usually got my way.
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