Ella's Twisted Senior Year

by Amy Sparling

  I don’t know why she wears so much perfume and we’ve been dating for an entire month and I still can’t think of a way to bring it up politely. I blink back tears and lift my chin to breathe in some fresh air.

  “I had to shower,” I say, nodding goodbye to Toby who heads to his truck. She rolls her eyes and pulls my hoody around her body as a blast of cold air hit us. “So you just wanted to make me wait there like a jerk? Thanks, Ethan, really.”

  My eyes widen. Kennedy’s Explorer isn’t parked next to mine like usual. All of the craziness of the tornado in last period totally made me forget that I was supposed to give her a ride home today because her dad stopped by to take her car to get new wheels put on. “I’m sorry. I forgot.” I double click my keys to unlock the passenger door for her. “Let’s go. I’ll make it up to you.”

  Her glare turns sultry as she bats her sparkly eyelashes at me. “Good. And you owe me huge, by the way.”

  We get in my truck and I start driving toward her neighborhood which is on the opposite side of town. “Huge? I made you wait like ten extra minutes to leave,” I say, choosing a radio station that’s actually playing a song instead of covering the tornado. “You’ll survive.”

  “Uh no, that’s only part of why I’m pissed at you.” She fixes her face into that look of disappointment that I’ve been seeing a lot lately and her hand leaves my thigh. So now she’s elevated her mood to being pissed at me? This won’t be horrible at all.

  “What’d I do to deserve your wrath, Ms. Price?”

  She exhales. “The fact that you even have to ask is really disappointing, Ethan.”

  We stop at a red light and I look up at the roof, trying to think of where I screwed up.

  “Seriously?” she says, throwing her hands in the air. “You seriously don’t know?”

  I glance at my phone which is in the cup holder. “Did I forget to text you back?” That was the last time she’d been pissed at me. A forgotten text reply at two in the morning.

  She groans, crossing her arms over her chest. Normally I don’t mind when she does that move because it makes her boobs push up, but this time my hoody blocks everything. Guess I’m such a shit boyfriend I don’t deserve to see anything right now.

  I sigh and grip the steering wheel tighter. “Just tell me, or you’ll be pissed forever.”

  “Ethan, I need a boyfriend who isn’t so damn clueless all the time.”

  If she’s about to break up with me, I probably shouldn’t feel relieved, right? I look over at her. “If you want an apology, tell me what I did wrong. Because I’ve got nothing.”

  She blinks and takes in a deep breath that she then pushes out slowly like she’s doing some kind of yoga relaxation technique in the passenger seat of my truck.

  “That girl was a bitch to me in the hallway,” she begins, still talking with her eyes closed. “And you didn’t even stick up for me.”

  “Oh,” I say, scrunching up my face. That’s all this is about? “Ella? She wasn’t really being a bitch, I don’t think.”

  “Oh so you’re on a first name basis with some loser?” Kennedy huffs again, shaking her head so violently it might just fall off and spew blood all over my tan leather interior. “Who even are you?” she says, her eyes going wide with irritation.

  “Wow, you need to chill.”

  The moment I say the words I know it is a mistake. Kennedy goes off, yelling about how incredibly rude and demeaning it is to tell her to chill when I’m the one being the asshole. I tune it out as I drive because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it all before. We can’t go more than a day or so without her getting pissed off at me for some seemingly pointless thing I’ve done. But it’s never pointless innocent infractions to Kennedy Price. Every time I do something that is less than perfect in her eyes, I am a monster who needs a lecture to straighten me out.

  The thing is, maybe I don’t think I’m a monster at all. Maybe I’m just a normal guy who isn’t a mind reader. But anyway, I tune her out and cruise along, wishing she didn’t live so far away. The tornado clearly didn’t hit this part of town because everything looks fine.

  I’m trying really hard to focus on the car in front of me, of the bright blue sky that’s done a one-eighty after the tornado, of anything except Ella Lockhart.

  Seeing her today was like falling into a time machine. I can’t believe I’d asked her what was up like we were friends. It just slipped—one minute I’d been in a haze, my heart still beating like crazy from running drills with Coach and then the next minute I was being told to sit against the wall while alarms pierced through the air.

  Maybe it was from the craziness of the tornado alarms, but when I saw her sitting there, in ripped jeans and a long sleeved shirt with some kind of weird print on it, it almost felt like the old days. Ella was always simple and herself. She did what she wanted, wore the clothes she thought were cute, regardless of how many times she was made fun of for wearing Hello Kitty in junior high. She was just herself and that made her happy. So yeah, in all of the craziness, I ‘d forgotten that we’re enemies now. I’m in the running for prom king and she’s . . . well I don’t even know what she’s up to now. Knowing her, she’s probably still baking her cupcakes and sporting Hello Kitty pajamas. But I know she doesn’t have anything to do with my circle of friends. We are complete opposites now.

  She’d made sure to cut me out of her life, and she couldn’t even tell me herself.

  I remember it all like it’s a home movie that I’ve watched a dozen times. Ella and I had spent the entire summer before eighth grade swimming in my pool and hanging out. Back then we hung out so much that our parents would let us have sleep overs in my rec room.

  That particular day that everything went wrong had started out as the best day of my life. Ella had slept over and we’d stayed up late watching Harry Potter movies then crashed on the floor in our own sleeping bags.

  I woke up with her curled in my arms, only our sleeping bags between us. We didn’t talk about it but we’d both seemed happy to wake up so close together. I’d planned on kissing her that day. Like, I really planned it, right up to exactly what I’d do when I asked her permission to kiss her.

  And then Corey pulled me aside and said she’d asked him to personally tell me to leave her alone. He said she thought I was creepy and didn’t like, like me and that I should back off.

  It crushed me, but I didn’t think it would ruin our friendship for good.

  It’d taken most of eighth grade for me to get over losing her and eventually I’d had to change my entire friend group to find new friends that wouldn’t overlap with her and all of our old haunts.

  Today brought all of those feelings crashing back to me. West Canyon High wasn’t a huge school, but if you tried hard enough you could avoid a person for all four years. I’d almost been successful.

  “Are you even listening?” Kennedy says, poking me in the arm with her long acrylic nail.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” I turn into her neighborhood. There’s already three familiar cars parked on the side of the road in front of her house. Looks like we have plans.

  She flips her hair over her shoulder. “I said the guys want to go to Burger Barn.”

  I pull up behind Toby’s Mazda and cut the engine. I try not to let it bother me that the guys made plans to meet at my girlfriend’s house without telling me first. “Sounds good,” I say. “I’m starving.”

  “I’m still mad at you for not sticking up for me,” Kennedy says, sliding over to sit in the middle of the front seat. The guys get out of their cars and climb into mine. She runs her hand down my thigh and leans in, the scent of her perfume making my eyes water. “But it’s not like we’ll ever see that loser again, so I guess I can’t stay mad forever.”

  Now is definitely not the time to tell her that Ella is my neighbor and I see her all the time. Sure, Ella ignores me and I ignore her on the awkward occasions when we’re both walking outside at the same time. But I am fully aware that pretending she do
esn’t exist doesn’t make her truly invisible.

  Chapter 3

  Mom calls me when I’m walking out to my car and I lean against the hood to answer it. If one of the teachers on duty sees us on phones in our car, driving or not, they freak out like we’re trying to set the world on fire with our reckless decision making.

  Mom’s frantic greeting sounds about normal for her. “Please tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. The whole school is fine, actually. There’s some fallen tree branches but that’s all.”

  “Okay, listen to me,” she says, and I picture her standing at work in her scrubs, her expression serious like she’s talking to a patient that’s about to bleed out. “I need you to drive straight home and call me the second you get there.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  She’s quiet for a moment, the only sound the shuffling of papers and random hospital noises. “Honey, I can’t get ahold of your dad. I tried leaving but they’ve brought in a ton of people who got hurt in the tornado. I can’t leave. I need you to check on him.”

  My mom works twelve hour shifts at the hospital which is an hour away so she’s gone fourteen hours a day. Even after her longest, most nerve-wracking shifts, she’s never sounded this stressed out.

  “Dad’s probably asleep,” I say, drawing shapes in the water droplets on the Corolla. It’s Mom’s old car that I got after she upgraded to a Lexus. “You know how he is on his days off.”

  Dad’s a paramedic and his shifts are even weirder than Mom’s. Sometimes he works half a day, other times it’s twenty-four hour shifts. When he’s home in the daytime, he’s usually sleeping.

  Mom sighs. “Just hurry home and call me. And be safe, Ella. I can’t get ahold of Mrs. Poe next door and I can’t get ahold of your father. It’s a madhouse here, and I’m going insane right along with it.”

  “Mom, everything is fine,” I say. “I’ll call you as soon as I get home. Now go fix some people.”

  The drive home takes forever. Once I’m out of the school zone, Main Street is backed up for a mile. I peer out of my window and see the blinking lights of a road crew hauling broken trees off the road. The fence to my right is busted up and there’s an old canoe upside down in the middle of the ditch.

  As I drive along, I can see the path the tornado took as it ripped through Hockley. On one side of the road, everything looks fine but on the other, debris litters a roughed up ground. It’s eerie, almost like I’m driving through some post-apocalyptic version of my town.

  The traffic gets a little better when I turn down Cheery Street, but the damage is still everywhere.

  A small trailer house that used to be a real estate office is in shambles; the owner, a middle aged man, stands in the parking lot with his head in his hands.

  The destruction continues in a wavy line, downed power lines and crumpled cars. I pass the cemetery where those little plastic flower markers are all upturned and strewn around and my stomach sinks.

  Half an hour later than usual, I reach Canyon Falls, my little circle of a neighborhood that borders a massive horse ranch. Our neighborhood was a planned community that apparently pissed off the ranch owners because they wanted acres of beautiful land instead of a bunch of houses. Luckily for us, their ranch gave us a beautiful view of the horses out of our back yards.

  Canyon Falls has a man-made lake in the middle of a circular road. All the homes are technically “lake front” homes, but it’s not like we can swim in the thing since it’s fenced off and filled with water fountains.

  My parents bought one of the first homes to be built here and it was when I was a baby. When you turn into the neighborhood, our house is the first one you see if you look straight across the lake.

  Only now it’s gone.

  Everything doesn’t quite register at first. My car rolls to a stop in front of the playground that Ethan and I used to play on as kids. I stare through the monkey bars, across the lake you can’t swim in, and straight into the sky that replaces where my house used to be.

  And then everything hits me at once, a massive explosion of fear that lodges in my throat and makes me shake so hard I can barely drive.

  My tires peel out as I race around the circle, slamming to a stop at the end of my driveway.

  My house is a pile of bricks and wood. Shingles and pipe. All out of order.

  My phone starts ringing but I barely recognize it. Another horror makes my eyes fill with tears. I leave the phone in my car and run toward what used to be my front door.

  “Dad!”

  My feet crunch over a piece of roof. I stumble through a sideways door frame. The right wall of my house is still standing, kitchen cabinets open and dishes still in place, as if waiting for dinner to be served. “Dad!” I scream, over and over, praying to hear his reply.

  Please be okay.

  I hear a siren in the distance and I trudge on, kicking and moving stuff that used to be my house. The couches sit in the middle of the living room as if nothing happened. But the good thing is that Dad isn’t in here. He might be somewhere else, still alive and waiting on me.

  “Dad!” I yell again and I stand still in the wreckage, hoping to hear something in reply. The sirens get closer. Car doors slam. Across the lake I hear people shouting and I look over and see that two other houses have been demolished as well. People gather around them, but no one gathers here.

  Maybe dad got out safely. Maybe he walked over to help out the other neighbors.

  I bend down and pick up a game controller and water pours out of it. Video games are my dad’s favorite past time. He’s a mega nerd in that way. PC games, Xbox games, he likes them all. And now they are all gone.

  I make my way through to what used to be the hallway and some of this part of the house is still standing. There’s walls and doors but the roof is gone. The entire second floor is gone, so everything that was my bedroom is now just open air.

  I hear a groan and pray to God that it’s not just my imagination.

  “Dad!” I call out, shoving a piece of drywall out of the way. Then I see it. The hall bathroom has a mattress over the bathtub. And it’s moving.

  I rush over and push the mattress up and out of the way.

  Dad looks up at me, his forehead all bloody and swollen.

  “Punk?” he says, staring at me with wild eyes.

  “Oh my god, you’re alive.” I drop to my knees and grab my dad in a hug, not even caring that something sharp stabs into my knee.

  The sirens are suddenly right behind me. An ambulance arrives and Marcus, my dad’s coworker, jumps out.

  Normally you can’t see the front yard from the hall bathroom. Now you can see everything.

  I yell for Marcus and he rushes up and pulls my dad out of the tub.

  More paramedics arrive and neighbors walk over. I let them handle my dad and I make my way back to the Corolla to call Mom. Everything happens in a blur as my brain starts to make sense of what’s happened. I can almost close my eyes and pretend that everything is fine.

  But our house is gone.

  I’d left this morning with my bed unmade and my laptop charging on the desk. I had brand new bottles of nail polish and now I’ll never get to use them. My expensive icing spatulas and spring-form pans, now bent up tossed around debris.

  It’s all gone.

  A sob rises in my throat as I grab my phone out of the car and stare at the screen.

  Someone pats me on the back as they walk by, neighbors pretending to be friendly but they’re really just sharks wanting to gawk at the carnage.

  This morning started out like every other boring school day. And now my house is a pile of trash.

  My hands shake and a tear rolls down my cheek. There’s five missed calls on my phone, all from my mother. How am I supposed to tell her that everything she calls home is gone?

  Chapter 4

  The Burger Barn is nearly empty when we arrive and the employees don’t seem too thrilled to have to peel their eyes o
ff the TV to help us. Kennedy laces her fingers into mine while we stand in line behind Toby and Keith.

  She makes this little pout. “You’re buying my food, right? I don’t have any money.”

  “Sure,” I say, looking over her head to see one of the TVs on the wall. They’re showing a destroyed trailer house and interviewing some panic-stricken old man about it. A marque at the bottom of the screen says that so far there haven’t been any deaths, just a lot of injuries.

  “Dude, Ethan should buy all of our food,” Toby says, turning around and wiggling his eyes at me.

  I look at the woman behind the counter who’s taking the orders. “No.”

  She laughs and Toby reluctantly pulls out his wallet. “Ethan is an ass, you know that?” he tells her. She gives him his change and he moves over to let Keith order. “The bastard could afford to take us all out for steak dinners but he’s only going to pay for his girl. That’s screwed up, man.”

  Keith takes a sip from the drink the cashier just gave him. “If you don’t want him to be so rich, stop buying his shirts.”

  Kennedy narrows her eyes at them. “Keep buying the shirts, boys.”

  One of the guys behind us calls her a gold digger and she makes this little curtsey that I’m sure she thinks is cute. It kind of rubs me the wrong way.

  We all come from families that are fairly well off, but we have parents who want us to earn money ourselves. Everyone except Kennedy has a job and while yeah, I’m happy to pay for my girlfriend because it’s the southern gentlemanly thing to do, she could at least say thanks once in a while.

  The guys actually have no idea how much money I’m making and my job is so great it doesn’t even have me reporting to a boss every day after school. While Toby and Keith both work at the Car Check for minimum wage, changing oil and inspecting cars, I work from home, off my computer.

  It started out as kind of a joke. I’d drawn up this funny design of our school mascot, the shark. He was waving pompoms and had bloodied teeth with a speech bubble that said the sharks never lose. The whole thing was satire really, but the teachers loved it and wanted it on T-shirts for the next pep rally. I found out you can upload digital art online to this website and they’ll let you create a storefront website where you earn commission on every shirt sold. People order the shirt online and the company makes the shirt and ships it out. I don’t have to do anything but keep coming up with artwork.