by Amanda Foote
“There’s not much to-”
“If you say ‘there’s not much to tell’ one more time I’m gonna sock you in the boob,” Melonie intoned.
I tried to scoot away but the bench was attached to the table so I didn’t get far. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you. Just don’t punch me.”
She grinned. “Okay then. Go ahead.”
“Um, well, to put it simply… I don’t know if Bobby told you, but my parents died in a car accident in March…” Here she just nodded with an emotionless face to confirm knowledge of this, “and he was one of the people in the other car. He was the only one that made it in the whole wreck. Well, they were carrying his stretcher to the ambulance truck and I walked with it to the ambulance and he was barely conscious but he said ‘Heaven.’ And at first I thought he was talking about like the spiritual Heaven or whatever but then later I found out he was just saying my name.” I paused, hoping that would suffice.
Liberty Bell prodded me with her eyes. “Go on.”
“Okay well then at my parents’ funeral I was getting very claustrophobic so I went for a walk and wound up in front of the hospital which is where Dillard was so I went up to see him and the door slammed and it woke him up and he said my name which is when I knew that it wasn’t Heaven like ‘up there’ Heaven when he said my name on the stretcher but it was actually my name so I guess he knew me from school or something but we’d never met. So we talked for a bit about the wreck and then he asked if he could call me so I wrote down my number but he never actually called, then he showed up on my doorstep in Oklahoma and that’s pretty much the whole synopsis of our relationship.” I realized when I finished that I hadn’t been breathing while I spouted this nonsense, so as I took a couple of deep breaths, Melonie and Liberty Bell stared at me with bewildered expressions on their meticulously painted faces.
“Speaking of the devil,” Melonie murmured. I turned around to see Bobby and Dillard skating out of the rink and speeding toward us. Bobby landed next to Melonie on the bench with a loud clank, planting one sloppy kiss on her ear as he did. Dillard slid in gracefully next to me on the other side of the table from them.
“Whatcha girls talkinbout?” Bobby grinned. I’d found during my time in Oklahoma that nearly all locals left the g off their “talkings” and the a off their “abouts,” so I’d gathered that, rather than leave the pause of a space between the two words as would be expected, they simply combined them into one easy, understandable word, “talkinbout.” I had found this to also be true with “I was going to” becoming “I’s gonna,” “coming around” becoming “cominround,” and “I was about to” becoming “I’s fixin’ to.” The last one still evaded my understanding but I suppose it all matters where you come from.
Melonie smiled devilishly, giving him a quick jalapeno peck on the cheek. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
The boys ordered some nachos for “sustenance,” scarfed them down then dragged us out onto the rink. Liberty Bell found a tall handsome guy who’d brought his little brother to skate and talked him up for the rest of the night. Bobby monopolized Melonie while he taught her to skate backwards, and Dillard stayed faithfully by my side as I clung nervously to the rail at the edge of the rink.
“I don’t like this,” I said. He laughed. “I’m not kidding.” He only laughed again.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. “You can’t cling to the sidelines all the time. Sometimes you just have to take the risk. It will make or break you.”
I didn’t release my grip on the rail. “Oh, it will definitely break me. I’m guessing it’s going to be my leg.”
He grinned. “Heaven,” he leaned in. “Trust me.”
For some strange reason, I did.
He tugged me out to the middle of the rink. I felt like I was going to vomit. “If I fall,” I breathed erratically, “I’m taking you down with me.”
“You won’t fall. I’ve got you.” He held both of my hands and skated backwards in front of me, pulling me along. “Use one foot to push yourself,” he said. “Then let yourself glide on that momentum, and do it again.”
I was surprised to find that this method worked. “Hey, I’m doing it,” I smiled.
“Yes, you are!” he said as he let go of one of my hands to high five me. But before I had a chance to, his skate slipped and he went toppling backwards, pulling me down with him. I landed with a thick thud onto his stomach.
“Sorry!” I panicked, trying to get off him but not finding any hold underneath my skates. There was pain on his face but he was laughing through it. I started to laugh too and stopped struggling.
“Heaven,” he said, a laugh still lingering in his eyes, “it’s okay.” He sat up, and I scooted onto my knees in front of him.
“Did you hit your head?” I asked nervously.
“No,” he beamed. “I caught myself.”
“Good,” I said, attempting to get up again. His hand stopped me.
“Hey,” he said. His smile was gone.
“What?”
“There are tiny flecks of green in your eyes,” he said. Then he grinned.
I blushed. “Um, okay.”
“Heaven,” he started again, as he helped me up then got up himself, “we should have dinner tomorrow night. After you get off work.”
In my head there were a million excuses rushing around and my tongue kept trying to land on the right one, but I heard myself inexplicably saying, “Okay.”
“Okay,” he said, still smiling. Then we skated back to the table, where the others had begun taking off their skates and gathering their things as the closing announcement rang out.
Melonie gave me a smug look.
“Shut up,” I said.
“What?” she shrugged. “I don’t even need to say anything.” She laughed and grabbed her purse, bounding to the door with her deep red hair flying out behind her like an evil cape.
✽✽✽
“Do you like seafood?” Dillard asked me the next evening as we got in his car.
“Uh, sure, I suppose. I always liked Bubba Gumps in California. My parents actually took me there every year for my birthday.”
He frowned. “Well, they don’t have a Bubba Gumps here.”
“I know,” I said. “I checked.”
“Since I don’t really know what’s around here I asked Bobby where was somewhere nice to take you and he suggested Red Lobster. They have some in California but I’ve never been, so I don’t know how good it’s going to be. Not to mention being in a landlocked state…”
“Dillard,” I started, causing him to glance at me from the driver’s seat. “You really don’t need to go to any trouble. Anywhere is fine with me.”
“Well,” he said, “The way I see it, fine isn’t good enough.”
I laughed. “Okay.” I made a quick reflection check in the side mirror to make sure I wasn’t sweating off the layers of makeup Cadence had insisted on coating my face with. I barely even wore mascara most days, but she wanted to apply foundation, and powder, and blush, and eyeshadow, and eyeliner, and lipstick, and a lot of other things that I wasn’t even really sure what they did. I had to admit, I looked pretty damn good. But it felt very… not me. And it was making me as nervous as a pig being sent to the slaughterhouse. Liberty Bell’s phrase, not mine.
I’d been so nervous dressing up because Cadence tried to convince this was a date and I wasn’t sure I was ready to call it a date. But I had pulled on my only pair of cute underwear, my lacy blue ones, the ones no seventeen-year-old should own, the ones Lila had dared me to buy two years ago at a JC Penney’s in the mall. The just-in-case ones. My hands were shaking while I did, and I wondered if I should even be wearing them.
Cadence had picked out my dress. It was plain, and black, and made me look curvy. “It’s not the one I wore,” she had said, “you know, to their funeral.”
“Okay,” I’d said.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew. This is a different black dress.”
/> I stared at myself in the mirror, studying my wide hips and ample breasts, my slender legs and flabby stomach. The black dress kind of cinched everything together, and I had to admit, I looked amazing. But the longer I looked at the dress, the more it looked like the one hanging in the back of my closet, the one that visited my parents’ funeral with me inside it. “I think I should wear that red skirt instead,” I told her. It was what I wore now in the passenger seat of Dillard’s car. Red skirt, white blouse, black ankle boots, Cadence’s makeup.
“You look awesome,” she had beamed. The outfit wasn’t me, but I couldn’t take away her smile so I wore it anyway.
Dillard’s reaction to the complete Heaven makeover? “Um, you look nice.”
Which in Heaven Brain meant, “Ew, you look weird.”
We arrived at the restaurant and were seated at a tiny table in the middle of the room with two tiny chairs. We ordered our food and we waited quite some time for it, making small talk about the weather and LB & Bobby. When it was finally brought to us, Dillard said to the waiter, “You know what? Can we get this to go?”
I gave Dillard a look of surprise. The waiter was a little stunned but agreed and returned five minutes later with our food in three to go boxes and our ticket. Dillard left two twenties on the table with a note on the receipt that said “Keep the change” and a smiley face, then we bagged our boxes and took off.
“Where are we going, Dillard?” I asked him as we got into the car.
“It’s a surprise,” he grinned. He drove down the main road in town for a couple of miles before turning right onto a poorly-lit street called Benedict. It was surrounded by neighborhood houses for a mile or two but soon the land stretched out around it and we were driving through farmlands, fields and woods.
“Dillard, if you’re taking me out here to murder me, I swear in the name of me above I will end you.”
He laughed. “No, Heaven. I would never. Bobby just showed me this spot the other day and now I want to show you.” I hadn’t realized they had been spending so much time together away from me. It seemed odd to me, that my friends were friends with each other. It’s kind of like how I used to think teachers were, when they weren’t with you they didn’t really lead their own lives, they just sat in a corner and waited until class started again the next day. It felt kind of the same with friends. If they weren’t hanging out with me, they were sitting and waiting around for the next time they got to hang out with me. I realized how selfish that seemed, so I made a mental note to find out more about what my friends did in their own time.
After several miles of dark woods and farmland, we came to a gated area. Dillard got out to check it and he gave me a thumbs up when he found the gate to be closed but not locked. He pushed it open and I drove through. He closed it behind us. After Dillard got back in the car and drove us around a short bend to a small parking lot under the heavy cover of trees, I said to him, “Dillard, this is really weird. Why are we here?”
He parked and placed his hand over mine. “Heaven, please trust me.”
I stared at him warily. “Okay. But I’ve got mace in this purse Cadence made me bring.”
He laughed. “Good. Safety first.” He grabbed the bags of food and got out of the car. I followed, keeping my purse close to me and my hand inside wrapped around the pepper spray can just in case. As I got out I noticed that there were a few other cars parked there as well, and I could hear faint music and laughter coming from somewhere near us.
I followed him out of the parking lot and onto a sandy area still covered in trees with picnic tables scattered around. “Where are we?” I whispered. He motioned me forward a little more. I emerged from under the tree cover and was met with the beautiful sight of a dark lake lit up by the stars. “Oh,” I said.
We slipped our way down a slightly steep sandy hill and could see two groups of people sitting around campfires in lawn chairs. The nearest group had a stereo, and Garth Brooks poured through the speakers like whiskey.
Dillard had grabbed a blanket from the back of his car and now laid it down in front of us, as close to the water as he could get without getting the blanket wet. It was a cool gray and was embroidered with the letters “CSU” in gold, which I could only assume stood for California State University. He sat down at the edge of the blanket and placed the food in the center of us, and started pulling boxes out of bags. “We forgot silverware,” he laughed.
I smiled and sat down. “Oh well, we’ll just have to eat with our hands then. Forks didn’t exist for eating until like 1700 years ago so we can channel our ancestors.”
He laughed. He pulled out his phone and opened an app that simulated the sounds of a campfire and set it between us, and I giggled.
“So,” I said, digging into my shrimp scampi with my fingers, “are you planning on going to CSU, Dillard?”
He looked confused. “How did you-” I pointed toward the large embroidered gold letters bright under the moonlight in the corner of the blanket. “Ah. I see. Well, no, my dad went to CSU. That’s where he wants me to go to. He went into law, he wants me to go into law, you know. The whole father-son-argue-over-college sob story.”
“What do you want to do?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Err-” he stammered.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I do want to tell you. I want to study art history.”
I laughed.
“What?” He looked hurt.
“No, I’m sorry. That’s not funny at all. I just half-expected you to say something like, I don’t know, rock star. Or astronaut. Or actor. Or something equally unattainable. But art history - that’s easy. Why are you ashamed of that?”
“I guess it’s not that weird. I’m just a guy, you know, and I have a certain reputation to uphold…”
I laughed and so did he. “Reputation, schmeputation. You should do what you want.”
He grinned. “Thanks Heaven. I am. I enrolled in California College of the Arts earlier this year and got in.”
Maybe I should have been happy for him but I was surprised to find that my heart sank a little. “Oh yeah?” I said. ‘That’s great.”
“Yeah, it is. But I’ll be sad to return to California, too.”
“Why?” I asked. But he didn’t get to answer, because suddenly a sharp blast of thunder rang out above us and rain started to pour down from the sky. We laughed as we gathered up the trash and threw it away and raced to the car. Inside I glanced in the mirror to see that most of Cadence’s makeup had washed away in the rain and my hair she had tenderly curled was matted to my head with rain water.
“Hmm,” Dillard said.
“What?”
He smiled at me from the driver seat. “It’s just - it’s not every day you see it rain on Heaven.”
I smiled. “Let’s go, arty boy.”
✽✽✽
“That was a date, Heaven,” Marlene insisted when Dillard dropped me off and I told her about our night.
“But we’re just friends,” I countered.
Cadence, listening in on our conversation from the den, shouted, “Marlene is right!” Not wanting to exclude her, we joined her on her bed where she was watching more Frasier and cuddling a sleeping Bliss. Marlene perched on the end of the bed with her wine glass in one hand while I climbed up next to Cadence and stole her cuddle partner. Bliss barely stirred when I pulled her into my arms. Her curly blonde hair was matted in the back from sleeping on it and there was snot dripping down her nose as she breathed steadily, but she was still quite possibly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
“What makes you think this was a date?” I asked them.
Cadence paused her show and turned her head toward me. “Well he didn’t say,” -here she lowered her voice and tried to imitate Dillard’s happy-go-lucky persona- “‘Hey guys, let’s grab some grub together tomorrow night like one big happy family.’” Marlene chuckled into her gl
ass. “No, Heaven,” Cadence continued, “he said, ‘Heaven, we should have dinner tomorrow night, after you get off work.’ Then he asked Bobby for a suggestion on what nice restaurant to take you to. Then he paid for dinner. Then he left said restaurant to take you to a romantic spot on the lake. Then he told you about his hopes and dreams. Then I bet he almost kissed you, didn’t he?”
“No,” I said. “Actually, he didn’t.” I chose not to mention the fact that our “romantic” night on the lake had been interrupted by the rain.
“Well,” Cadence shrugged, unfazed, “he was probably just nervous. Maybe he thought you didn’t reciprocate his feelings.”
“There aren’t any feelings to reciprocate,” I insisted.
Marlene laughed. “Come on, Heaven. Even you know that’s not true.”
“Whatever,” I said, and went upstairs to shower and go to bed. I tried to be frustrated with them but I couldn’t seem to stop smiling, and even while I showered I smiled, while I changed into my PJs I smiled, when I laid down to sleep I smiled, and as it turns out, when I woke up in the morning, I was still smiling.
Chapter Seven.
“We close up at 9,” Joann said to me as she showed me around the library. Her straight black hair that nearly reached her hips flowed out behind her as we paraded through the aisles. “And we come in at 8:30 in the morning. We don’t unlock the front doors until 9:00 though.” She traced a long dark finger over the spines of the books in Mysteries as we passed them. She turned to face me and the yellow light from the overhead lighting panels cast a warm glow on her chestnut skin and deep chocolate eyes. Gold eyeshadow coated her dark eyelids. “What you’re wearing now is good. Dress similar to that every day you are here. You need to look professional but approachable. We just ask no tank tops, no shorts, and no flip flops.”
Lately I had become Cadence’s personal plaything when it came to fashion, but I was enjoying the time with her and she certainly did know her way around a closet. Today I’d picked out a simple outfit of a slightly frilly sleeveless maroon blouse and a pair of plain black slacks, but she sprucedup the outfit by lending me a wide gold bracelet, a rose gold watch, making me change into a pair of white skinny jeans, and her dark brown lace-up ankle boots. The girl loved her ankles boots, I had come to learn. She put my long brown hair into a neat top knot. Then she tried to talk me into allowing her to do my makeup again, but this time I refused. I didn’t want the library to expect me to wear heavy makeup every day, so I stuck with my usual makeup-only from the get-go.
