Painted Boots

by Mechelle Morrison

  painted boots

  m e c h e l l e m o r r i s o n

  p a i n t e d b o o t s

  for ray

  Text copyright © 2013 Mechelle Morrison

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise not yet invented—without prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be sent to: info.mechelle@gmail.com

  ISBN: 1484102002

  ISBN-13: 9781484102008

  All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. The characters and events are not based on persons alive or dead. Any similarity to real persons or real events is purely coincidental. In other words, this is a story. I made it up.

  p a i n t e d b o o t s

  “So many people spend their lives wishing they could take the past and paint it fresh. Avoid that way of thinking, sweet. If you can.” — Maddy Brand, the summer before she died.

  1

  WHEN DAD PULLS alongside the parking lot curb I have two things on my mind: it’s warm for the first day of school and my armpits are sticky. I open the door as a few girls draw near, chatting and swishing their hair in the morning light. They smell like Vogue perfume ads—Chloé or Jimmy Choo—and remind me of the friends I left behind in Portland. One girl glances at me so I shrug. “Hey,” I say. “I’m Aspen.”

  Another girl, with wavy blonde hair and sparkling earrings, says, “What, like the tree?” Everybody laughs.

  Dad pats my back and I twist round to face him, feeling stupid that he heard the whole thing. I’m not used to his new look: white shirts and khaki pants, wire-rimmed glasses and short-cut hair. After taking a long slurp from his coffee he says, “Don’t let stuff like that bug you.”

  Over my shoulder, I watch the girls walk toward the school.

  I don’t know anyone at Tower County High—or in the whole of Gillette, Wyoming. So today could be rough, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Everything is rough just now. Since moving here Dad has spent his time settling into his office on the other side of town while I unpacked: dishes and books and shoes, laundry stuff, bathroom stuff, clothes. When I finished with the house I thought we’d talk or something, but Dad only said, “You should get out. Maybe hang at the mall?” as he gave me money and access to the car.

  But Gillette has no mall. And as for the rest of it, well, Dad should know. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, Mom would have insisted I get ready for the school year the way I always got ready. So like I used to do when she was alive, I combed every estate sale and yard sale and consignment store I could find and put myself together—though it was a challenge. I’ve never had to do it all alone.

  Dad asks, “Do you want me to walk you in?” and I roll my eyes. I’d shave my head before I’d let him walk me into class like a kindergartner. I mean, I’m seventeen.

  “I’ve got it,” I say, and climb from the Jeep, hitching my over-sized bag to my shoulder. Then I walk away, moving in a long diagonal across a parking lot filling with more beater farm trucks than should legally exist. My new used cowboy boots sound good against the asphalt. Bold, even. Like they’ve been here before, and know the way.

  These boots are my favorite find, ever. I left the leather scuffed and natural, beaten soft by some other girl’s adventures. But I painted the heels and soles a silvery sage-brush green. Freshen things in a way that makes them yours, Mom used to say. And so I did.

  To go with the boots I found a layered short skirt sewn from sheer lengths of muted, floral fabric. The hem taps the back of my thighs as I walk, airy and comfortable. My sweater is tight-fitting, a grayed-green cashmere. It’s too warm for this weather, but I don’t care. I love this sweater. It came from an estate sale run by three chain-smoking grannies who clung to me like shadows, begging to buy my mother’s necklace.

  Reaching up, I adjust the beaded strands. Mom always wore this necklace. Just four months ago she was wearing it, still. It’s easy to picture her, standing in front of our big hallway mirror, fastening the looped clasp behind her neck.

  It’s painful, too.

  When I pass the flagpole, where two guys in western-style plaid shirts make a ceremony of hooking the stars and stripes to a rope pulley, I feel like I’m the only one walking solo. So I hesitate before the plate-glass entrance, my reflection waiting while I check my hair and the fit of my clothes. Then I grab the handle, pull the door open wide, and step into the building.

  Linoleum floors and painted cinder block walls stretch away in all directions. I’m not sure where to go so for a moment I stand in the lobby, listening. The first bell rings and everyone hurries: guys in jeans and tee shirts, a lot of the girls wearing miniskirts similar to mine. People wave to each other, shouting, “Hey.” Some laugh. A few glance at me and smile.

  I hope all they see, from the outside looking in, is a girl who’ll fit in with this place.

  2

  THERE’S A HUGE cobra painted on the far lunchroom wall—Tower County’s school mascot, I guess. I clutch at my elbows and study the thing, inching forward with the line. I’d ask someone Why a cobra, but the people in front of me are locked in horse-and-plow conversation. The people behind me suddenly laugh.

  I fiddle with Mom’s necklace.

  It’s hard to believe that my senior year has been grafted onto this cobra-happy school in a rural, dust-blown state. In my other life, the one I had before Mom died, I was at the top of my game: swim team, editing the school paper, a cappella club, track. If Mom were alive I would be in Portland, right now, settling into Lincoln’s lunchroom with Jen and Bridget and Thérèse. I might still be hanging with Adam. I would have gone on our summer friends’ trip to Big Sur. Instead my friends went without me and I, well, I’ve rounded Gillette’s population to an even thirty thousand seven hundred.

  It’s weird, but I might have relatives here. Then again, maybe not—Dad left Wyoming when he was fourteen and by now, his family could be anywhere. I’ve asked for the details hundreds of times, but he would never talk about them. Mom wouldn’t either. All they ever gave me were stories—of rodeos and swimming-holes and night-games in a barn. Stories, I guess, that are true enough to have drawn Dad back to his roots.

  I take my time picking out cheese pizza and iceberg lettuce salad, an apple and milk. Then I stand by the side of the food service like a hitch-hiker, scouting out a place to sit. Everybody’s eyes dart elsewhere the second they meet mine.

  It’s awkward that they ignore me, but I don’t care. I mean, lunchrooms are so predictable this could be my old lunchroom in Portland—the only difference is I’m a stranger. The clear-skinned pretty girls are together here, like they are everywhere, probably. The starry-eyed girls are obvious, eating off their boyfriends’ spoons. The jocks are in a chow-huddle, talking loud and laughing. It’s easy to spot the people I’d define as my own, but after what happened this morning I don’t have the will to walk up to them and say, Oh, hi again. We started off wrong, but really. I’m one of you.

  I could break form and eat elsewhere, like the library or in a bathroom. If I made it that far I’d lock myself in a stall. But the idea of that is impossibly gross, and not just because plumbing and edible food are a bad mix. Someone would see me, for sure.

  A shudder, like an uninvited cold finger, rattles my spine.

  I make my way to a table near the cobra wall and plop down on an end-seat, leaving a wide swath of nothing between me and a guy I recognize from AP English this morning. His name is Kyle, I think, and he’s crave-worthy: first, for his unusual eyes—they’re different shades of blue—and then for his fabulous hair. It’s thick and dark and ends in a fray just above the collar of his shir
t. I’ll concede his body’s hot, all lanky and slouched over his lunch. And his face is gorgeous. Beautiful, even. He glances my way and then zip—right back to his knot of friends. I grab for my mother’s necklace, twisting the strands. For some stupid reason I feel tears.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  I bolt upright, bumping my tray and making a frantic grab for my milk before it spills. Then I lock eyes with a girl standing on the other side of my table. Her brown, flat-ironed hair is held from her face by a neon yellow band. She’s wearing jeans and a bright yellow tee. The band and the tee aren’t the same shade of yellow, but that’s not the point. I only looked at Kyle for a second. Maybe two.

  I don’t know why, but all I can do is stare. Behind the lenses of her tortoise-shell glasses, the girl’s eyes seem huge. While I wonder where she came from her skin pinks at the crest of her cheeks. She shifts her weight and adjusts her fingers on her tray, like she’s tuning it. “Do you care?” she asks again. “If I sit?”

  “I don’t care.” The minute I say this I see my mother’s grimace, that look she always gave me when I didn’t properly engage. It makes me wish I could gather up my words and form them into a friendlier invitation.

  The girl sets her tray on the table and settles in. “So I’m Gwen Anderson,” she says. “I noticed you, in the lunch line.”

  “’Cause I’m the token new girl?” I ask.

  Gwen laughs. “It’s that you’re wearing Gram’s sweater. Gram loved that sweater. It’s too small for any of us, so my mom sold it. But Gram once told me she’d saved that sweater ‘cause she was wearing it when she got her first kiss.” Gwen takes a big bite from her pizza. “Great button update, by the way.”

  My fingers trail the little pearl buttons I added only yesterday. “Thanks,” I whisper, but I feel ridiculous. The one thing I didn’t consider, as I spent almost five hundred dollars on old clothes and old shoes and old jewelry, is that this is a small town where everybody knows everybody and their dog’s dog’s dog.

  “You look right piqued,” Gwen says.

  I’d call it peeved, but whatever. “I guess I’m wondering if you want the sweater back.”

  Gwen chews a bite of salad then points her empty fork toward me. “It’s your sweater now. It’s perfect on you. The exact same color as your eyes.” Stabbing at her lettuce, she gathers another forkful. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Aspen Brand.”

  Gwen smiles a sparkly, orthodontic grin. It’s almost contagious. Almost.

  “So how’d a girl like you come to be in Gillette?” she asks.

  “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “One who is oh-so obviously not from these parts.”

  I pick at my pizza then set my fork on my tray. “First tell me,” I ask, knowing already that if Gwen says ‘yes’ I might cry. “Do you recognize any more of my clothes?”

  3

  WHEN I FIRST entered Tower County, had anyone told me I’d be dreading weekends I would have choked from laughter. I would have busted a gut and bled out, as Dad used to say when he thought something was hilarious. He doesn’t say things like that anymore.

  But now I’ve got a whole weekend to get through before I can slide into English and my pink Melmac chair, the one three rows over and two back from Kyle Thacker. Just thinking his name makes my heart cartwheel. By Monday I’ll probably be in cardiac arrest.

  Weird, how my grief for Mom just stepped aside and let that boy in. At first I blamed his eyes, which remind me of water-colored blues. Then it was his mouth. I mean since Wednesday I’ve been aching to know how soft his lips are and if he tastes different from the boys in Portland, more rural maybe, like raw honey or wild mint.

  Yesterday he wore a gray long-sleeved collarless Hilfiger knock-off, the cuffs pushed part-way up his perfect and muscular forearms. I spent the entire hour of physics sitting behind him, hung up on the way his dark hair curls around his ears. When the teacher dismissed us I groaned out loud, though other people did, too. That’s when I realized we’d been given an assignment.

  Part of it, I know, is that he’s a cowboy, belt-buckle, boots and all. And yeah, he’s easy on the eyes. But it’s his comments in class that reel me in like a willing fish. Today, as we discussed the poems we’d written in English, he said, “Mrs. Martin, ma’am, it’s the harmony in Bethie’s poem draws my attention, the way she’s wrapped her words with soul.”

  I’d pretty much crawl over broken glass to hear him say that again.

  I have an Everest of homework this weekend so I linger, emptying my locker of everything I’ll need. When I’ve stuffed it all into my bag I shut the door, twisting the combo this way and that. My hair’s caught under my bag strap and I grab its length, pulling it forward. Its color seems different here, more chestnut than mahogany brown. Maybe it’s the elevation—I’m four thousand feet higher now and breathing thinner air. Or maybe it’s the way Gillette’s sky can’t hold on to clouds.

  My phone vibrates in my bag. I ignore it. I mean, the only person with my number is Dad and I already know he’s waiting, so I head out. But I don’t get far.

  Kyle is standing near the massive paned glass window at the top of the hall, talking with someone. He’s framed in light and laughing while he gestures with one hand, keeping the other stuffed in the front pocket of his jeans. The tail of his denim cowboy shirt drapes over his butt.

  My phone vibrates, again.

  Kyle nods to his friend and turns, the afternoon sun like molten bronze in his hair. He’s walking my way. I feel stupid gawking at him, so I take a few steps forward, and then a few more. I tell myself this moment is ordinary, though I’m filling with fireflies.

  A couple of guys, football players maybe, come up alongside me then move past, giving Kyle a fist-bumping “Hey.” I walk faster.

  He raises his eyebrows, locking me in on his shades-of-blue radar. My nerves tingle until I think they’ll short-circuit. But he seems calm; in total control. His mouth hints at a smile.

  Out of nowhere a girl yells, “Kyle!”

  We both jump like startled frogs.

  Kyle veers left, moving for a tall girl darting from the door of room 124B. I’ve seen her before—she’s a cheerleader, or even an SBO. The load of books she’s carrying rests on a blue school sweater draped over her arm. “I’ve been looking for you,” she says, poking one finger into Kyle’s chest. “Where have you been?”

  He gives her a hang-dog grin and the shallow dimple, the one that makes me want to squeal like those girls in old Beatles clips, darts the flesh just above his jaw. “You stay,” she commands, thumping his shoulder while pivoting on the heel of her polished black boot. My gut screams flight or fight, like I’ve come between a bear and her cubs.

  “Hey, you,” she says. “Retro.” The girl strides toward me and pushes my shoulder hard enough that I step back. She flips her sand-colored hair from her face then rests one hand on her hip. She jabs her index finger into my arm. “I see you, you know. Today it’s April Ann’s old jeans and grandma earrings and a black tee that leaves nothing to the imagination.” She smiles, though it isn’t sweet. “Yesterday it was some old skirt and a scarf you probably dug out of a bin.” The girl points behind her, to Kyle. “He’s my eye-candy. Get it?” She shoves me and I bump against the lockers.

  My breath catches. I feel it, snagged and waiting, deep within my lungs. But nothing like this has ever happened to me. I don’t know what to say.

  “Knock it off, Em.” Kyle grabs Em’s elbow and whispers, “Sorry,” at me, barely meeting my gaze. Em pulls free of him, her movements as fluid as a choreographed dance. She takes Kyle’s hand and tugs him into motion.

  And I remember her.

  She was one of the girls who walked past Dad’s Jeep on the first day of school, laughing with friends I thought might become my own. She’d been pretty, then, with long hair and long legs and a summery tan. It’s odd, because she’s not pretty now. Not at all. Her hair is dull as dried gr
ass underfoot. Bland, even. Her clothes are a bore.

  Kyle and Em are about to turn the corner when he untangles himself from her hold. He mumbles something I don’t quite hear. Em stops short, looking back at me. I push off the lockers and walk away fast, clutching my bag. The joints in my hips feel rusted, like I’m made of old pinwheels and screws.

  Outside I pause in the bright September sun, breathing too fast and shivering despite the warm air. My phone vibrates, again. Dad’s navy blue Jeep is the only car parked against the curb and I start for it.

  I don’t care if Monday ever comes.

  4

  I WAKE UP early, since my run-in with Em. At first I made a habit of staying in bed, thinking, until my alarm rang at six-fifteen. But it’s been three weeks and all my thinking hasn’t changed anything. Em still calls me Retro. Kyle is still her guy. So today when I wake I give myself a few minutes to dwell on the obvious then roll out at four-forty five. I shower, scrutinize my naked body in the mirror and comb my hair smooth. I tell myself Things are what they are.

  In my room I drop my damp towel to the floor, swing my closet doors wide, stare at my consignment chic and let my favorite defeat scenario—the one where I beg Dad for access to his VISA—flood over me. Just last night I spent three hours window shopping the net, browsing Anthropologie and Zappos and Banana Republic. But I decided not to buy. I mean to show up at school in things off the rack, now that Em and her murder of friends keep tabs on me to see who can guess whose clothes I’m wearing, would be like blinking first.

  That’s how I see it, anyway.

  Gwen told me “Em’s got maturity issues.” She insisted “I’m lucky Em doesn’t know me.” She went on to tell me Em can get real personal, that the girl is a beast. I changed the subject after that. I didn’t want to admit it already feels real personal from where I’m standing.