That night during supper he told Mom about the unexpected encounter. “Oh, honey, that’s great!” Her eyes sparkled in anticipation. “I know you’ve missed her so much.”
“Is she still your girlfriend, Bucky?” Rachel Marie, her mouth full of mashed potatoes, wasted no time asking the big question.
“No, huh uh.” He shook his head. “I mean, I guess not.” Bucky gave her a kick under the table. “She had a boyfriend last year. And you know I’ve had other girlfriends too.”
“I know, but not as nice as her,” his little sister asserted. “I liked her the best.”
He nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
After supper he sat down at the computer and tried to peck out the assigned story for English class, but his mind was still on Lisa. Every couple of sentences he would stop and relive the afternoon. Even by 9:00 he had less than a full page composed. Scowling, he slid the mouse over to save the document and then backed out of the file. “What a piece of junk,” he muttered to himself, scanning the disjointed writing with a sigh.
Going out to the kitchen and fetching his cell phone, he flipped it open, thinking. Should he try to call her? For a moment, he almost switched it off, but then picked it up again with a grin. “You know you’re going to,” he told himself. “May as well do it.”
But when he dialed the familiar number, he got a “disconnect” signal. Twice in a row, the mechanical voice informed him that the number is not in service at this time.
Mentally he groped for another possibility. Could he track down the Nichols’ home number? He strained to remember Lisa’s mom’s first name, but nothing came to mind. Frustrated, he switched off the unit and set it down. Did anybody else know her phone number? Denise, maybe? Perhaps Sam’s ex-girlfriend would know. A moment later he dismissed the thought. You don’t know Denise’s last name either, he grumbled to himself. Plus it’d make me look like some kind of desperate nerd. Forget it.
For a long time that night he lay awake thinking about his freshman year and that first romance. Every now and then a guy just had to lose some sleep over women, he decided, his mind playing over the times he and Lisa had enjoyed together. Was it God who had brought her back to Hampton Beach? And was he destined to get back together with her after the tumult of the past two school years?
He began to sense something building inside of him that he didn’t know how to resolve. Obviously he was going to try to get her back. That was a given. There was no telling what her situation was with this Steve guy or if she’d be interested anymore. But he had to at least try. It wasn’t any use thinking about whether it was stupid or smart, or if the timing was better now or later. He was going to do it. Win or lose, it was something he had to do.
“Just don’t make a frothing fool of yourself over it, Buck,” he said to himself as he finally drifted off to sleep.
But the next two days at school he simply could not find her anywhere. Bucky had already figured out that Lisa wasn’t in any of his classes. Even though she looked so different now, he’d still have noticed her. But during breaks and in the hallways, even though he kept scanning the crowds, he couldn’t locate her.
“You’re going a little bit nuts, Stone,” Dan teased during lunch the second day as he saw Bucky’s eyes wander throughout the quad.
He nodded. “I know.” Another bite of potato salad. “It’s hard not to think about it.”
The stockier senior wadded up his paper bag and tossed it toward a distant trash can. The shot fell far short, and Dan waved to a friend who picked it up and completed the play. “Thanks, man.” Then he turned back to Bucky. “Listen, you don’t know that she’s going to just come jumping back into your arms.”
“I never said she was.”
“So just hang loose. If it happens, it happens.” He grinned. “I’m afraid you’re going to get whiplash out here craning your neck searching for her. Looks like you’re at a tennis game or something.”
Bucky nodded. “Yeah, thanks a lot, Litton. Coming from one of the great romantic leading men of this campus, I’m just . . . rolling over with gratitude at all your advice.”
A big smile. “You’re very welcome, Stone. Always happy to help.”
“Shut up.” Bucky couldn’t help but laugh – but the abrupt encounter with Lisa still jabbed away at his mind. He just had to talk to her again.
By Friday he still hadn’t seen her. How, in a medium-sized high school like Hampton, was it possible to lose someone like Lisa? he wondered. It didn’t add up. It was as if he had imagined the entire hallway incident.
On his way to work that afternoon he stopped off at the registrar’s office. Forcing back a bit of a blush, he asked the student assistant if she had a phone number for a Lisa Nichols.
“Oh, I think I remember that one,” she responded, “Is. she new this year?”
“Yeah.” He shifted his weight nervously to his other foot. “Well, she was a freshman here three years ago, and now she’s back.”
“What was that last name again?”
“Nichols.”
The clerk scanned through a databank of names on her screen. “Yeah, here, we have it.” She opened up the file. “Senior. Nichols, Lisa. Home phone . . .”
She pulled a post-it note out of her top drawer and wrote down the number. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” He stuffed it in his pockets with a sense of relief.
That night he waited until almost 9:15 before dialing the number. Rachel Marie, more of a chattering noise - maker than usual after supper, had finally gone to bed, leaving the downstairs quiet at last. Mom was still in the kitchen working on a Bible lesson for her kindergarten department, so Bucky could count on some privacy. He felt his nerves tingle again as the phone line buzzed.
But no one answered. He let it ring for twenty seconds before finally hanging up. No answering machine, no anything. As he went upstairs to bed, the words to a song ran through his mind. So near and yet so far, babe. And now not here at all.
Sunday afternoon he and Dan helped Sam load a year’s supply of clothes and possessions into Dan’s blue Camaro. “Not much of a trunk in this sucker,” the college student complained as they stuffed some additional packages in the back seat. He disappeared into the house to say a private good-by to his parents. Standing outside by the car Bucky remembered how shy and reserved Sam’s Vietnamese parents had seemed the couple times he’d visited their home.
“How are you going to get around without a car up there?” Dan wanted to know as the sports car motored up toward Angwin.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Bum rides off other guys, I guess.”
“Not much to do unless you drive into Napa,” Bucky observed, shading his eyes from the September sun. “Nearest Taco Bell is thirty-five miles away. That’s a bummer.”
Following the map Pastor Jensen had carefully drawn for the boys, Dan pulled into the parking lot at Grainger Hall just before 3:00. Bucky looked with admiration at the hillside campus with its dormitories, huge church, and neat row of tennis courts across the road.
“You want to look around after we unload Sam’s junk?” Dan pulled out a pile of books from the trunk.
“Sure.” It took nearly forty-five minutes before they had everything out of the car and unloaded on the floor of Sam’s assigned room.
“No roommate yet?” Bucky asked.
“Huh uh. Not till tomorrow,” Sam grunted, pushing a bag of clothes over against the wall. “Some guy named Manuel. And maybe a third guy depending on how full they are.”
“Man, that’s kind of weird. Moving in with somebody you never met before.” Dan sank down on one of the three bare mattresses. “‘Course, next year it’s Litton, Stone, and Mr. Minh ruling this luxury suite here.” He laughed. “Come on, let’s go see how the rest of the place looks.”
They strolled past the library and toward the gymnasium as Bucky tried to picture himself attending classes a year from now. “What’d your mom and dad think of this place?” he wanted to know.
“I mean, you guys came up here once this summer to check it out, didn’t you?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. They thought it was OK, I guess. They didn’t look for more than about an hour. Dorms and stuff.”
A short laugh from Dan. “I’d have thought that would sink the ship right there. Dorms are a pretty rotten way to live.”
“Aaah, it’ll be great when all three of us are here,” Bucky asserted. “We’ll fix it up like the Bellagio Hotel.”
The three of them watched an informal game of basketball going on in the gymnasium. “You going to play any ball up here?” Dan caught a stray basketball and tossed it back to the sweating athletes.
“I doubt it. Except for required P.E.”
“Are you for sure taking a physics major?” Dan still couldn’t believe Sam’s choice.
“Yeah. For now. Maybe mix it in with something else. Biophysics. Or computer science and physics together. In pre - med you can kind of write your own program.”
Sam led the way as they hiked up the hill before heading back. “I guess over here is where the girls’ dorms are.”
“Now you’re talking.” Dan picked up the pace a bit and actually pretended to jog. “Let’s check out the dating prospects.”
Quite a few girls were unpacking cars and standing around in the lobby of Andre Hall in tank tops and shorts. “There you go, Sam,” Bucky nudged. “Go help that girl carry her suitcase. You can make some points with her the very first day.”
“Shut up.” His friend burst into laughter. “I’m going to wait until the Funnybook comes out.”
“What’s that, the dating guide?”
He nodded. “Has pictures of all the girls, everything.”
“Man, this place is a supermarket of women,” Dan grinned. “What do you think, Stone?”
“Just remember, those Funnybooks have our pictures in them too,” Bucky reminded.
“Unfortunately.”
“Yeah, that wrecks it. You call some girl up for a date, and she can look you up before she decides.”
After a light supper at the cafeteria, Dan and Bucky said goodbye. “Good luck, shorty. We’ll see you in three weeks when you come home for a visit.” Dan gave him a vicious squeeze of a handshake.
“Yeah.” A temporary look of uncertainty crossed Sam’s usually even features. “Thanks for bringing me up.”
“No sweat.” Dan tossed his car keys in the air, “And once your new roommate gets in, you’ll kind of feel more at home.” He had noticed the lonely expression as well.
Both guys were unusually quiet as they drove back down the hill and got on Interstate 80 toward Hampton Beach. “Pretty nice place,” Bucky said at last.
“Yeah.” Dan turned down the car stereo. “Hope Sam does OK.”
“Are you kidding? Wilh that GPA of his?”
“I mean with the other students and everything,” Dan responded. “Last couple years you and I have kind of been his only friends. He might be a bit alone at first.”
The younger boy shook his head. “Naaah, he’ll be fine.”
His thoughts turned back to Lisa. The sight of all the girls unloading their stuff had made him remember her again.
That night after worship he dug out Lisa’s new phone number and dialed it again, feeling the familiar flutter in his stomach as the line began to ring.
“Hello?” Even after the lapse of time, he recognized the sound of Lisa’s mom. His heart skipped a beat.
“Hi, is Lisa there?” Hopefully he could get away without announcing who he was.
“Yes, she is.” Mrs. Nichols hesitated a moment, as if deciding whether to ask whom was calling.
Mentally Bucky toyed with a response. This is Fred Smith from Timbuktu, lady. What’s it to you? But the older woman simply said, “Just a moment.”
“It was nearly a minute before Lisa came on. “Hello?” Her voice had a question in it.
“Hi. It’s . . . this is Bucky.”
“Hi.”
Somehow even hearing her voice again caused a sudden awkwardness in him. Always before she’d been so comfortable! At least for the moment, that had certainly changed.
“I . . . I guess I thought I’d just call again and say hi and stuff.” The laugh he managed came out sounding horrible. “I didn’t see any more of you at school after Monday.”
A short pause. “Well, I had to take off two days for some stuff,” she told him.
“Oh, I see.” How could a guy’s mind go so totally blank in one quick instant? “Are you . . . I mean, are you getting kind of settled in? And everything?”
“Yeah. I guess. I’m behind in my classes because I missed the two days last week and a couple of days the first week too. We were still getting moved.”
“Huh.” Stone, you are one brilliant interviewer. It actually did feel like a television interview in which you asked a question, got a clean, sterile answer . . . and then had to think of another question. They talked for a couple more minutes, but it was a labored effort. Why were things so hard now?
Finally he took a deep breath. “Look,” he managed, “I guess I really called just to kind of get acquainted again. I mean, I know you’re going out with this Steve guy and stuff like that. I assume so, anyway. But you and I have been friends for a long time. If we’re going to go to school together, I’d hope . . . we could still be that anyway.”
Another pause. “Sure. I guess.” Her voice had no warmth in it, but nothing too abrupt either. He decided to go on.
“Any chance we could just, I don’t know, get together sometime? Not a date or anything. But just, you know, to visit?” He wanted to add something, but he didn’t know what, so decided to leave it.
Lisa thought for a moment before answering. “I suppose. I just can’t . . . start up anything. I hope you understand that. It’s too hard to explain.”
Bucky winced at the words. He’d hoped that maybe Steve had moved to Africa or something, but there was still clearly some hurdle in Bucky’s way. “Oh, that’s fine,” he managed, not meaning at all what his voice was saying. He took another breath. “Can I buy you a pizza some night? I’m pretty rich from working at the bank now.”
“Yeah, that’d be fine.”
“You say when, and it’s a . . . deal.” Just in time, he managed to leave off the word date.
“I don’t know. Saturday night?” She hesitated. “I could go then.”
“Yeah. Awesome. Saturday’s great.” Obviously, asking her to come back to church was not an option. “Is 8:00 OK?”
“Sure.” Briefly she gave him the directions.
“All right then.” He tried to keep a casual sound. “Hope to see you at school.”
“Oh, you will.” She gave a little laugh, but it was awkward, not at all the giggle he’d always liked so much. As he hung up the phone he felt the dampness of a sudden flood of flop sweat. When had a phone conversation ever been such misery? For a moment he was tempted to chuck it all, call up Tracy Givenchy, and ask her to marry him on the spot. Abjectly he walked over to the kitchen. “I’m going to bed, Mom.”
Chapter Four: Not the Same Girl Anymore
“Sl-a-a-a-a-m DUNK!” A perspiring Dan Litton gave Jonesy Wilson a high five after the big center mashed another lob pass through the net. “That oughta strike some fear into the hearts of the other team!”
“Thanks, man.” The new ballplayer flashed a huge smile at the Panther forward. “Good feed.”
Even though varsity tryouts were still two weeks away, Coach Brayshaw had called an unofficial session of his regulars. “Plus this gives you boys a chance to meet our new Mr. Big,” he laughed. “And for the next few months I don’t think any of us should drive over to Walnut Creek no matter what. For sure you don’t walk down any side streets over there after dark. Those Tornadoes are pretty steamed about us stealing away their prize player. I was on the phone to their assistant coach last week, and the guy just about hung up on me.”
Jonesy was a solid 6’ 7” center who, despite his 2
30-pound frame, had amazing quickness under the basket. Dan and Bucky both whistled in awe as the newcomer dropped in turnaround jump shots and short hooks in addition to his “monster slams.” “Man, this is going to be one fun season,” Dan marveled as he watched his new teammate take the ball coast to coast after a steal.
“We still need a point guard, though,” Bucky put in, lowering his voice so that the substitute guard, Brandon, wouldn’t hear him. Despite the little guy’s hustle and good attitude, the Panthers were clearly going to miss Bill Volker’s deadly shooting touch from long range. Brandon just didn’t have the precision or the ball - handling skills that it took to really dominate at the varsity level.
After about an hour of drill, Brayshaw motioned the squad over. “Not bad,” he praised the sweating athletes. “I appreciate the way you guys come back from summer still in shape. That’s awfully rare for high school players, and I want you to know that your good attitude means a lot. As far as I’m concerned, that means we’re instantly ahead of the pack even before our first practice.” He looked at Bucky and Dan as he spoke.
“Wilson, my man, you are an answer to prayer.” He glanced over at Dan and Bucky again. “I mean, you probably are an answer to prayer. Knowing these guys.” Everybody on the team laughed. “And we’re real glad to have you here in Panther country.”
Dan pulled up a sagging sock. “It’s amazing,” he said, turning to the new center. “Man, we used to hate you. I thought you were the biggest turkey in the league.” Then he grinned. “Funny thing, I can’t for the life of me remember now what it was I didn’t like about you.”
Everyone laughed again. The tall center seemed to have an easygoing cheerfulness that was more relaxed than Andy Gorton had ever demonstrated. But Bucky could still remember the finals with the Tornadoes the past two seasons, and he knew that Jonesy Wilson could turn on the intensity when it came time to play a championship game. Last season in a semifinal game he had poured in thirty-eight points all by himself . . . “and wasn’t grinning at all when he did it,” the newspapers had reported.
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 84
