Crossing Six
Robert J. Wilson
Copyright 2011 Robert J. Wilson
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Prologue
All I can see in the rearview mirror is my stuff shoved in the back of Dr. Hart’s SUV that I shouldn’t even think of driving. One box has my sheets, comforter and pillows, another has my summer clothes, a third one has my winter coats and boots. As soon as my mom gets home from a half day’s work at the hospital we’re leaving Ohio for Providence. Sherri was the one who was supposed to go far away to college, and I was the one supposed to end up at one of our safety schools, Toledo or Bowling Green. But everything changed long before I lost Sherri and got my surprise acceptance letter in April.
I stare at the side mirror and hope I don’t run over the trash can as I back out into the street. The van is amazing: gray leather seats; touch screen DVD; built-in navigation system which will be especially useful because I’m one of those high school seniors guidance counselors warn people about—I’m going to a college I’ve only visited on-line. But Sherri and I had talked about Brown ever since we read The Giver and found out Lois Lowry was an alum, even though she dropped out, and from then on Brown was our dream school. No grades. Take whatever you want. Live next to the ocean. Forget Dr. Hart—my three swimming suits are in one of the boxes in the back.
I drive through downtown, pass the school, pass the pool and the park, and go just past Dollar General and the bridge over the river before I turn left onto a gravel road that leads into Dunn Memorial Park Cemetery. Sherri’s headstone is next to a smaller stone only the size of a shoebox but decorated with a red pin wheel and artificial red flowers. No one else is around so I park in the middle of the lane, step out of the SUV and walk to the letters that read Sherri Louise Powell 1991-2009.
I’ve only come back twice since the funeral and today I’m just here to say good-bye. I’d like to believe that she’ll go with me to a place I’ve never been and be my guardian angel or my friendly ghost or my spirit guide rather than just my memory. But I’m going to Rhode Island alone. A year ago, a summer ago, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere alone, but I went from being voted the junior attendant for football homecoming to being Facebook friendless my senior year. I lost Sherri and I lost myself and I don’t care if Brown has the ugliest colors—brown, red and white—of any college in America, Seventeen says the 2nd happiest people go there and I’m going to be one of them.
Chapter 1
Sherri’s first car was a blue Miata. The day she got her license we were on a tired country road and came to an intersection with Highway 6 and we were laughing and crazy and the music was loud and Sherri started to cross. And we were into the intersection and we both turned to the sound of the semi’s horn and for an instant Sherri took her foot off the accelerator and she was thinking of hitting the brake and we were both going to die.
“Go, go,” I screamed and she did and the truck squealed its brakes and Sherri went into the berm on the other side of 6 and she stopped before she went into a ditch. The semi stopped too, pulled off by the side of the road with its hazard lights blinking and the driver opened his door and stepped onto the road staring at us.
“Sherri, we’ve got to get out of here,” I said, but she was bawling so hard she couldn’t move so even though I didn’t have my license I got out, ran across to the other side of the car hoping it wasn’t still in drive, got back in, moved Sherri over and sped away. I stopped almost in Defiance in an empty parking lot of the Faith Baptist Church, turned off the car, and Sherri was still crying so hard she barely had time to breath.
“Sherri, c’mon, get out of the car,” I said. “Just walk around a while. We’re ok now.”
We stood together and held one another and neither one of us was Baptist and Sherri finally pulled away because we had to go on.
“I’m never driving again with you in the car,” she said. “I’ll kill myself, that’s ok, but if I ever hurt you I’d kill myself.”
We turned around and I drove us back home. When we came to 6 that truck was still by the side of the road and Sherri ducked in her seat and started to cry again. A string of about ten cars went past, each one just a little too close to risk it to the other side and I was sure the driver would recognize us and call the cops. Finally, though, I held my breath and sped across the intersection which felt like swimming across the deep end for the first time when the bottom is 12 feet but might as well be the center of the earth. You know you can’t touch and if you hesitate you’ll drown.
Sherri had driven across 6 100 times since then and we were together as usual on a shoe shopping trip in July our junior summer. I felt the familiar pull of panic in her: she stopped breathing, she squeezed the steering wheel, she froze.
“Just go with it,” I reminded her. “When you know it’s clear you just have to trust that nothing bad will happen and you accelerate. Hey, you can cross 6 and you can do anything.”
That day we found a parking space right away at the Defiance Mall. Defiance is the biggest town, the only town, close to us, and the Mall was filled with the usual crowd: retirees power-walking up and down the mallways; 14 year old gangsters dressed in chains and hoodies lurking by the fountain; mothers pushing strollers into Sears. We passed Circuit City and both laughed again; last spring Misty, out auxiliary friend who lived out in the country, was with us to buy her iPod. A cute clerk with short brown hair and a leather band around his wrist asked for her phone number at the check-out and she looked up at him.
“I’m not going out with you,” she said.
“What?” he said.
“I’m not giving you my phone number. I’m not going out with you.”
The guy stared at Misty like she was retarded, which she is.
“It’s company policy. I’ve got to write your phone number on the receipt.”
Sherri found her shoes right away—blue and white New Balance. She wiggled her toes and made me measure the room in the front of the shoes as if I were her mother.
“Just right,” I said. “I think they’re pretty cool.”
“I think so too,” Sherri said, and we went to check out.
I always have blisters on the ends of my toes because my shoes are too small on purpose. If I wore shoes that actually fit I’d look like a clown or Big Foot. So now my big toe has this gross callous on the tip and my second toe curls under; I practically end up on the bottom of my feet when I use nail polish. Sherri had these small, pretty feet with really tiny toes. I convinced her to fit her baby toe inside a thimble one day and at first she thought I was making fun of her. But I would do anything to have her feet.
“Do you want to look in Old Navy?” Sherri asked as we left Foot Locker.
“Sure,” I said, because I know Sherri liked that store. It reminds me too much of a garage sale though, too random with all those racks of clothes, bins of sweaters and pants, nothing folded, people just holding shirts up to their bodies and faking like they’re trying them on and then tossing them wherever.
“You like this top?” Sherri asked me. She wore size 0 pants and her shirts were dolls’ clothes. She was holding up a turquoise polo shirt, not her color.
“Sure,” I said. “It looks good on you.”
She carried it with her as we walked slowly through the other aisles using the shoppers’ pace that makes your feet and back hurt. We were in the jeans row when Sherri’s cell rang. Her step-mom, Annette.
Sherri stared at the floor as she listened. After 30 seconds she ended the call and dropped the phone in her over-the-shoulder bag from Mexico.
“I’m on my own for dinner,” she said.
“No you’re not,” I said.
Sherri smiled at me and after she bought the shirt we went back to her car.
“What are you hungry for?” she asked.
I didn’t have much money. “How about Steak and Shake?” I said.
We drove to the restaurant, parked, and once inside an old woman with gray hair pulled back tightly in a pony tail who was playing hostess took us to a booth in the back. Just as we predicted on the way over, Mary Ann Louis was our waitress.
“Hi guys,” she said wearing her black and white stained uniform.
“Hi Mary Ann,” I said. “You still working here?”
“You kidding,” she said, setting two smalls glasses of ice water in front of us. “I’ll be here ‘til I’m dead.”
She graduated last year and lived with her parents and her two year old son. She won the pageant during Dunn’s Heritage Days Festival when she was a junior while she was pregnant which was against the rules. I wouldn’t have cared except the Eagles had sponsored Sherri who finished first runner-up. I’ll admit that Mary Ann looked better in a swimsuit—after all Sherri had basically no figure and, at the time, big surprise, Mary Ann’s boobs were mammoth. But Sherri played the piano 100 times better than Mary Ann twirled a baton and Mary Ann actually said during her on-stage question that in ten years she saw herself as the president of a big company like Donald Trump. Well, two years down and eight to go and so far she was still serving hamburgers and breast milk and hadn’t taken the first step on the corporate ladder.
“Can I start you guys off with something to drink?” Mary Ann said.
“We’re ready to order,” I said. I had a double platter and a chocolate shake, and Sherri had a junior orange freeze and some fries.
“Ok guys,” Mary Ann said. “I’ll put this in right away for you.”
Sherri and I watched as she headed for the greasy kitchen.
“I wonder,” I said, “if she ever wears her crown to work.”
Sherri laughed. “That stupid pageant, she said, tearing the paper off one end of her straw. “I’m glad Rory Gibaldi won this year, though. I liked her song.”
“I guess,” I said. “But why do the stupid girls always win?” Rory got her hand caught reaching for a cue ball one night when we still played pool in Tracy Zeigler’s basement.
“I still feel sorry for her,” Sherri said. Rory’s boyfriend cheated on her at church camp.
“She still dresses like she buys her clothes at Crayola,” I said.
We sat there watching goofy people coming and going until Mary Ann brought us our food and drinks.
“There you go, guys,” she said, and walked away.
“She calls us guys again I’m gonna punch her in the face,” I said.
Sherri sipped her freeze and nibbled her fries like a bird while I piled lettuce, onion slices and tomatoes on my burger.
“Guess what Annette gave me today?” Sherri said.
“What?”
“Two giant plastic tubs. She said I should start weeding through my clothes, that I should take what I haven’t worn in the last year to Goodwill.”
Sherri’s real mom died seven years earlier on Christmas Eve of breast cancer, and Donald, Sherri’s dad, a lawyer in town, rebounded with Annette, a true trophy wife whose head should be mounted on the wall over the fire place. They already planned to move to Florida after graduation to be close to Annette’s daughter. Sherri and I talked about everything, but we never talked about life after June 2nd. In a few months everyone would be signing yearbooks and senior pictures with BFF and I’d been thinking of writing Call Me Tonight because if Sherri ended up in Florida or Seattle or Rhode Island and I’d still be in Dunn she would still call me everyday if I didn’t call her first. There were best friends and then there was Sherri and me.
I speared the cherry in my shake with my straw and lifted it to my mouth. “You want I can go through your clothes with you,” I said. If I were sorting through my clothes I’d go to Plato’s Closet, not Goodwill.
As Sherri nodded and dipped a French fry in her orange ice cream I thought about taking those plastic tubs home with me and adopting her castoffs which were more expensive than any clothes I’d ever worn in my life, but as I finished my food and half of Sherri’s fries I knew once again I’d never fit in her body, which is the kind anorexics dream about. The kind that still fits in a car seat. The year before everything she ate except yogurt and strawberry jello made her sick. The doctors said it might be allergies, her periods, or colitis. I thought it was Annette, that Annette made her sick. In a word, Annette was a bitch, and not the good kind.
“You guys save room for dessert?” Mary Ann asked staring at our glasses. Three years working here and she still didn’t recognize ice cream as a dessert. She left one check and I did the math so we each paid our share. How weird is it to leave a tip for someone you sat next to in Spanish I. I did take 50€ off the table though when I noticed she’d written Thanks Guys! in her unmistakable special ed signature.
Sherri dropped me off at my house after we drove through Dunn a couple of times. The duplex where I lived with my mom could fit in Sherri’s garage which had three bays, one for Annette’s Freestar, one for Sherri’s Focus, and one for Donald’s Crown Victoria. I had chores like vacuuming and dusting. Annette had gone through all the cleaning ladies in Dunn and was on her second housecleaning service out of Defiance, Heaven Sent Maids. Angels, welcome to hell.
“Tomorrow morning, right?” I said, starting to get out of the car.
“I’m so out of shape,” Sherri said, but I just closed the door and waved. Sherri was born in shape.
Chapter 2
Donald, Sherri’s dad, was the type of man who argued with his Tom-Tom when he was given directions. He was also hated by his homeowners’ association. Ignoring the Summerset Villas restrictive covenants he trimmed his shrubs every two weeks in the summer and pruned his trees once a season because he didn’t trust the hired lawn service. The neighbors stopped inviting the Powells’ to their 4th of July party at the clubhouse and Annette stopped playing tennis across the street, droving instead to the Defiance Country Club. The day after Sherri and I went shopping she stepped into her Freestar when she saw me riding my bike up the driveway, then waited to see if I would park in the grass rather than bruise her asphalt.
“What are you doing for senior pictures?” she said.
She wore a white tennis skirt, white top and white court shoes. She even had on a white headband. She was perfectly, evenly tanned. She’d been a hygienist for Dr. Palmer before they married and had a daughter, Bridgette, who lived in Florida now and had a little daughter of her own. After the divorce, she dated Donald for less than a year after Sherri’s mom died when they married and, along with her expensive jewelry, brought all her card tables with Palmer labeled on the bottoms in black felt marker with her. Sherri and I both knew the marriage was cursed because the wedding photographer’s files somehow were corrupted and there are no surviving pictures of the ceremony.
“I had them taken last week in Pittsford,” I said, “from that one woman in the country.”
Annette shook her head and at first I thought she disapproved of the photographer, probably beneath her standards. Instead she was upset with Sherri again. “I’ve tried to get Sherri to make an appointment. I really want to get it over with before school starts.”
For a long time after Sherri’s mom died Sherri pulled her hair out one strand at a time. Annette threatened that she’d go bald. Sherri would constantly sit on her feet; Annette forced her to wear her left shoe on her right foot and her right on her left as a reminder to stop her nonsense. Sherri was only 10 when she lost her mom; she practically lived with us for months afterwards. For a while after her dad remarried she sucked her thumb. Josh Donaldson made fun of her one day in the hall and I kicked him in the nuts then had to talk with Miss Grossman the middle school guidance counselor who went to Canada to marry her girlfriend and was never heard from again.
“I’ll make her get them taken,” I said to Annette.
She checked her watch and looked over at her expensive racket sitting in the passenger seat. “Ok,” she said, and drove off.
“Better buckle her in,” I said, pointing at the racket, but Annette didn’t get it and drove away.
I walked on the porch for some shade, and looked up at the cloudless summer sky. Even though it was only 9:30, it was already hot, at least to me. Although Sherri was a hot weather runner, by the time we’d finish I’d be sweating through my shirt, my shorts, and even my socks.
“What did Annette say?” Sherri said, coming out of the house in bare feet. No one in shoes walked on Annette’s white carpet. The first cross country practice was in a week and after all summer we finally got around to running. We started cross country in seventh grade. Neither one of us was the rah-rah cheerleader type and we weren’t good at volleyball so we went to the first practice and we walked most of the way but we finished first and second at our first meet and we got our picture in the middle school yearbook, just the two of us, the only ones on the girls’ team, and we’ve run ever since.
“Nothing,” I said.
Sherri nodded and sat on the step to put on her shoes, pulling the laces as tight as she could and ending with a sharp tug on the bunny ears.
We started out slowly, following the sidewalks through the subdivision side-by-side without bumping elbows we’d run together so often. I felt the cool shade underneath the giant trees vanish to summer heat when we ran the streets in the sun. Sherri moved with long, easy strides, breathed silently, glided like a ghost. She was smooth, a natural. As freshmen we all thought she’d make it to the Olympics by the time she was a senior, but her times only improved a little each year. I could stay close to her the first mile of the race (“Kendall, you’ve got guts,” Coach Armstrong always told me), but then she’d pull away. For three years I never heard my name for being our top finisher on the morning announcements.
We stopped once at the park for water at a fountain by an empty playground, and the other time to see Marcia Lilly’s new car parked in front of Kaye Kimmick’s house. On the way back to Sherri’s I could tell I was holding her back; she had to chop her strides to go slowly enough to stay with me.
“Go ahead,” I managed to say.
“You sure,” Sherri asked, not even breathing hard.
I nodded.
A block after she left, an old couple who walked every morning together passed me going the other way. The man who had a limp and carried a red water bottle just smiled, but the woman with her thin hair up in a bun shook her head at me.
“Be careful, it’s heavy out here,” she said, meaning the high humidity. I’m sure she didn’t worry about Sherri.
By the time I caught up to her back at her house, the sun was glaring at me, I had cotton mouth, and sweat was stinging my contacts out of my eyes. I headed for the shade of the porch while Sherri stood in the sunlight reaching for her ankles to stretch the backs of her legs. I felt empty, trembling in the knees, light-headed, as I watched her. When we were freshmen we’d go in Sherri’s basement on the hottest days of summer and take turns on Annette’s treadmill while we watched TV and drank orange Gatorade before we’d jump in the pool. Our routine only lasted through July because Annette sold the treadmill to Play It Again Sports in Defiance because it took up too much room even though the only furniture in the whole basement was a couch, the TV, a small table, and a bar with only two or three bottles of booze behind the counter. Sherri and I figured Annette just wanted to keep plenty of room in the basement in case Bridgette came back home. Annette named her Bridgette hoping her real daughter would turn out to be a fair-skinned Irish girl who would have freckles as a child she would outgrow, someone who would play the lute and get a scholarship at Norte Dame to be a doctor or interior decorator. Instead the reigning queen of Summerset Villas raised a daughter who left Dunn with a diesel mechanic and together they had their baby in Florida. Less than a year later Bud, Bridgette’s boyfriend, left their trailer in Jacksonville to build pools in Las Vegas and Bridgette started working at Long John Silvers. Sherri and I agreed that the job fit her perfectly because she looks so much like a pirate with her long loopy earrings, nose and eyebrow piercings, and unfortunate moustache. The last time we saw the baby we thought the name should be changed from Samantha to fruit salad because she had a head the size of a watermelon and she smelled like an overripe cantaloupe.
“You ok?” she asked when she walked up to me. “I’ll get us some water.”
She went into the house and came back with two cold bottles of water. We both lowered our heads after taking long drinks, the water tasted so good. The heat and humidity grew in mid-air; the water bottle in my hand dripped with condensation. The air conditioning unit by the side of the house whirled trying to keep up.
“I shouldn’t have eaten that chocolate chip muffin,” Sherri said. She came out of the sun to stand with me in the shade. Her forehead had broken out again but the blonde streaks in her hair still looked good. “Are you ready to swim?”
By chocolate chip muffin she meant one of those packaged mini-muffins that came a dozen to a box. People sometimes asked me if I thought she had an eating disorder but I always said no. I mean, she ate, just not very much; besides we knew all the girls in the school who really were or had been anorexic and neither Sherri nor I could stand the drama. Teri Pelligrino told us all about being in the hospital where a nurse sat next to her while she ate and then monitored her so she wouldn’t throw up. She was in there for at least two weeks during the summer going to counseling sessions, losing her tan. Pass the chips, I say.
After I grabbed my tote bag which was next to my bike we took off and carried our shoes as we walked into the house through the living room where issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Southern Living were fanned together on a glass topped coffee table. We took turns changing into our suits in a small bathroom off the laundry area. Every Kleenex looked as if it had been ironed, every decorative bar of soap had been carved by elves in Switzerland, every hand towel perfectly placed over every brushed nickel rod was not to be used. The backyard was filled with ornamental trees and bushes and the oval pool was surrounded by a tall wooden fence. One of Sherri’s chores was to sweep and hose down the patio and brush away any spider webs from the outdoor furniture and around the windows and doors. Ken’s Lawn Service mowed the grass every Tuesday morning, and Annette made sure all clippings were swept and carried away out of the country. She only smoked her women’s cigarettes outside and the perfumed scent hung faintly in the air, a nice touch with the wind chime.
Before we went in the water we checked the skimmer baskets: no dead, bloated frogs or, thank God, no drowned mice. Then we spread our towels over lounge chairs, and I walked to the deep end to jump in and get my whole body over the shock at once. Sherri waded in slowly from the shallows, torturing herself one step at a time, hopping her little dance as the water rose higher until she finally took a breath and submerged. After we climbed out on the steps in the shallow end and combed out our hair, I lay on my towel while Sherri wrapped hers around her shoulders, still shivering. I tried hard to make out Annette’s clay outdoor thermometer shaped into a smiling sun hanging across the yard on the fence.
“They off center?” Sherri asked.
She never swam in contacts; I always did. I tested one eye, then the other, and waited for the blur to dissolve. “No, they’re ok.”
“You talk to Brad last night?” she asked me. He wasn’t only a football star, but he wrestled too. We’d been together the last two years.
I nodded. “He said Kyle Redinger got picked up again for speeding.”
“That’s twice this summer, isn’t it?” Sherri said.
“Yes,” I said. “He’ll lose his license for sure now.”
“And he just got his truck fixed,” Sherri said.
“Well, he’s not the best driver anyway,” I said. “Remember, he backed into a light pole while he was parallel parking during his driving test.”
“Even though he got straight A’s from Mr. Landes the whole term,” Sherri said and we both laughed at the thought of Mr. Landes our Drivers’ Ed teacher who got fired for having his students go to Michigan all the time to fill up the trunk of the school car with cases of beer.
Goose bumps appeared on Sherri’s legs and she brought her knees up to her chest. “So does Brad think the team will be any good this year?”
“C’mon, this is Dunn,” I said. “We might win one game.”
Our football teams were as bad as every other team in the school. We made USA Today once for breaking the state record for the boys’ basketball losing streak. We hadn’t had a JV softball or baseball team in our four years in school because we didn’t have enough players. Cheerleaders had to make stuff up because Go, Fight, Win sounded ridiculous.
“The band marched down our street yesterday,” Sherri said. “Kimberly McKelvey was playing the bass drum. Wasn’t she supposed to graduate last year?”
Every summer during their practice camp the band marched through the rich parts of town. Kimberly McKelvey failed government twice, science 9 three times; she was coming back the first semester to try to pass again. If the whole graduation thing didn’t work out her dream of becoming a brain surgeon would have to be put on hold.
“She’s on the five year plan,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Brad said Ryan Nelson might have broken his ankle yesterday at practice. He got it x-rayed in Defiance.”
The football team was practicing twice a day. Their last scrimmage was Saturday and the first home game was the first Friday of school.
Sherri chipped at the pink nail polish left on her toes. “I haven’t seen Ryan all summer,” she said.
She liked him as a sophomore until he started seeing Heather Alvarez.
“I wonder if he got his scorpion fixed,” I said. At the end of school last year he had what was supposed to be a scorpion tattooed on his back but it turned out to look like a crawdad. That’s what he deserved going to Needles-N-Ink, a tattoo parlor on Main Street in a building the creepy owners shared with the Greene County Republican Party.
Sherri gave up on her toe nails. “I wonder if his hair is back to normal,” she said. On the last day of school last spring he colored his hair red the night before and was sent home. Hair has to be a natural color, and red is considered unnatural in Dunn.
“I wonder if he makes it through the school year without getting kicked out,” I said.
“How’d he make it out last year?” Sherri said. He was caught with a can of Skol in study hall and came to a school dance drunk. The teachers and principal never did learn that he’d been the one who set off a fire extinguisher the day before spring break.
We lay out for a while longer before Sherri went inside for two Diet Cokes. When she came back out she wrapped up again in her towel, shivering, until the sun fought through a lone, giant black cloud and the pool water lightened back to chlorine blue. We drank our cans of Coke and listened as occasional lines of bubbles sprayed over the top of the water’s surface which smoothed just below the filter outlet.
“You hungry?” Sherri asked, looking over at me.
“A little,” I said.
She smiled. “Wait right here,” she said. “I’ll steal some frozen cookie dough before Annette gets home.”
I watched as she hurried in the house, then reached over and lifted her drink. The can was almost full, and warm; she must have only had one cold one left in the refrigerator, and she gave that one to me. And she didn’t even like cookie dough. I told myself I was going to take her out and buy her some new toe nail polish, and maybe I’d try to set her up with Ryan. I could tell by the way she talked about him she still liked him. I planned to start a rumor about Heather Alvarez, like she was pulling her eyelashes out again. Nothing against Heather, but I would have done anything for Sherri.
Chapter 3
Richard Armstrong taught math at the middle school. He was tall and pale; had a bald spot on the back of his head that turned red after the first practice in the sun; ran cross country and track in college; started smoking but quit last year; and lived in the basement of the school when he was going through his divorce. He’d been our only cross country coach, the one who drove the gray van to away meets, set up our work-outs, begged the Lions’ Club for money to buy us water bottles and waterproof warm-ups. In cross country, five from a school are needed for a team, or runners compete as individuals. Our sophomore year we had three girls until Holly Lincoln quit after the first meet. Otherwise, during the last six years Sherri and I were the girls’ cross country team for the Dunn Raiders.
We drove to the school a week before classes began and walked in the cool, hollow gym. The boys’ team—four wrestlers and two basketball players forced into it by their coaches, plus two actual runners, Joel Steel and Frank Carey—were throwing a football that smacked Sherri in the back. I picked up the ball and tossed it in the girls’ locker room.
“C’mon, Kendall,” Gene Shaffer said. “Go get it.”
“You go get it,” I told him, “you jerk.”
“Hey, there they are,” we heard a familiar voice say from behind us. “You two been running?”
Sherri and I turned to Mr. Armstrong. He stomach was pudgier than a year ago, he wore a Cleveland Indians baseball hat that made his ears stick out, and—swear to god—he had braces on his teeth. Standing next to him was a small girl with dark brown skin and black hair.
“We’ve got another runner this year,” Mr. Armstrong said. “This is Esperanza. She’s an exchange student from Paraguay. She’s staying with the Cleary’s.”
Esperanza came out as Es-pear-enzha.
“Hello,” she said, keeping her hands stiffly at her sides. She was flat-chested and sleek. Her legs were thin and strong.
We started to speak when Travis Walters, one of the basketball players, blurted, “Hey, how’s it going Espresso!”
I motioned for her to follow us as we stretched away from the others to avoid an international incident. “So what grade are you in?”
“Freshman,” she said.
Mr. Armstrong watched as we went through the routine. The girl could basically touch her toes, legs straight, with her elbows. “So do you like it here so far,” Sherri asked.
“It’s so sweet,” she answered. Neither Sherri nor I had ever heard Dunn called sweet. She told us she’d be here for the school year, and that she’d already visited New York and Chicago, places I’d never been before. “How I going to pack all my stuff?” she said. “I buy so much.” I never had that problem.
We went outside to start our run through town and into the country. My left leg began to hurt again just behind my knee cap, and after a mile I told them they could go ahead. Esperanza smiled stupidly and sprinted after Joel and Frank.
“She’s fast,” Sherri said. I nodded and we watched her bob ahead.
“There’s something weird about her,” I said and I meant other than the fact that she was from like 10000 miles away, had darker skin than anyone in the county, and spoke two languages, assuming they don’t speak English in Paraguay.
“She looks like she’s been home schooled,” Sherri said, and she was exactly right.
After another quarter mile I knew I was holding Sherri up. “Go on,” I said. “It’s ok.” And then I lost sight of everyone, and I hadn’t gone 100 meters further when a deerfly starting attacking me, testing my reflexes first before zeroing in on my eyes. I thought it might go for my bare forearm and I was right. I slapped it dead then squeezed it between my fingers as a warning to its siblings to leave me alone. Neither Sherri nor I ever got in the habit of using iPods when we ran since we were together most of the time and liked to talk. You go to the movies or watch TV and you focus on the screen, you listen to music, you pay attention to the lyrics and the beat. When you run you do anything to distract yourself from what you’re doing. I would replay a song in my head over and over again. When I ran in town I’d count steps between the etchings in concrete sidewalks or curbs. Now, in the country, I listened to the wind in the trees, the birds, and the hum of distant traffic. I made promises to myself to take an extra long shower or eat a bowl of ice crème with Oreos crumbled over the top after I finished. Sometimes ideas just appeared out of nowhere. Today I thought of Heather Alvarez telling me she and Ryan Nelson had two favorite songs, one, “Brainstorm”, when they were together, and another, “The Great Escape”, when they were apart, which is crazy because a couple can only have one special song the way “Icky Thump” belonged to Brad and me. The last two years—even longer actually—I ran with Brad in mind, picturing us together at prom, him in a tux and me in a short dress with a thin body inside.
Eventually I turned around and headed back for civilization as I knew it. I always felt dirtier running in the country than in town. The trees seem less educated in the country, more likely to have Dutch elm disease that could get on me, more likely to have committed incest. Trees in town were further apart, respecting each other’s personal space. Whenever we ran on a golf course the trees were well groomed and sophisticated like they might have a conversation with me about the latest Hillary Swank movie or their Facebook accounts. Yes, sometimes when I run I think I’ve lost my mind.
By the time I made it back to the school Coach Armstrong waved me inside. He looked relieved to see me, probably imagined that I’d passed out and the buzzards were eating my lifeless corpse. Everyone else had finished stretching again, and half the boys were leaving.
“Later, cappuccino,” Gene Schaffer yelled from his car.
“Don’t forget your emergency medical forms tomorrow,” Coach Armstrong called out.
I sat on the gym floor next to Sherri and faked stretching until she was finished. We said good-bye to Esperanza and walked toward the car.
“Where’s Paraguay?” Sherri asked me on our way home.
“I think it’s in—what is that?—South America,” I said.
“Do you think she’ll go back home and tell her friends that everywhere in the United States is like Dunn? Our whole country would be a disgrace,” Sherri said.
“She’s been other places. She’s knows it’s not all like here,” I said.
“Probably,” Sherri said.
“I was just asking Sherri if there were two other girls we could convince to run this year,” Mr. Armstrong said, trotting to catch up to us. “It’s be great if you two would have a team your senior year.” He must have been on drugs, plus he smelled like an old person after having run along with the slower boys. I took a step away and noticed that Sherri did the same.
“Not unless we get two more exchange students,” I said.
“There were those two eighth graders who tried it at the end of the season last year,” he went on.
“One moved and the other’s playing volleyball,” I said.
He looked sad. “Well,” he started, but turned as Frank spun his tires on the loose gravel in the parking lot. He must have lost his place because he forgot about recruiting two more runners, just told us he’d see us tomorrow and walked away. Sherri and I watched as he checked to see if the losers without rides called home yet.
Unless we walked inside the school we’d have to use the drinking fountain inside the playground, the one little kids put their mouths on and sucked the water. So we drove to the EZ Mart on the edge of town even though it had no pop machines outside the store, and we actually had to go inside. We passed fishing poles and landing nets and disgusting storage bins filled with worms and crickets to the back cooler for some bottles of strawberry flavored water. A wrinkled woman at the counter reading an RV and Trailer magazine waited on us.
“That be all?” she asked, as if we just might want some deer urine and an archery set too.
“That’s all,” I said. Even if I wouldn’t have needed to shower after a sweaty run in the dirty country, I would have after stepping inside the store.
We drove back to town without speaking, both of us knowing that we’d just finished the last practice of the summer. School started tomorrow. She stopped at my house and she looked at me and I looked at her.
“So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, because I was hanging out with Brad the rest of the day.
“I can’t believe it’s the first day,” I said.
“I can’t either,” Sherri answered. “It can’t be here already.”
Chapter 4
Brad picked me up in his oldest brother’s Grand Am. I didn’t ask what was broken on his Firebird this time; Brad has a temper, just like his three brothers, just like his dad, who went to school with my mom. Brad also has black hair like the rest of his family, a surgical scar on his left knee from a moped accident in junior high, and, today, my class ring on his little finger.
I touched the quarter-sized bruise by his elbow and slid my hand down his arm to his wrist. Brad lives close to the town park—a swimming pool filled with “pool rats”, kids who spent their whole summer there; a little league baseball diamond; two tennis courts with old sagging nets; a basketball court with bent rims; and a shelter house that was padlocked except for family reunions—and we drove 40 through the 20 m.p.h. zone into the green woods of the country. Broken farms with plywood over the windows sat next to new brick houses with long paved driveways belonging to the bankers, doctors, and factory owners. Life in the country is either for peasants or kings.
“Jeff’s not home tonight,” Brad said, his left hand on the steering wheel, his right hand in mine.
I felt the car accelerate even as a stop sign appeared a few hundred feet away. “My mom works late,” I said. “It’d be ok.” His hand left mine to turn up the radio. We kept on the country roads until we came to a golf course, the first sign that we were entering Defiance. We parked on the street in front of a bar called AJ’s and walked a block toward the theater in the center of town. We each bought our own ticket and sat in the back. A new theater had been built outside of town with stadium seating and Coke slushies but we usually came here because the tickets were a lot cheaper and no usher would tell Brad to keep his feet off the seats.
Brad leaned across me. “I’m supposed to tell you Troy says he wouldn’t mind going out with Sherri,” he said.
“Where you’d see him?” I asked. Troy Dumbrowski was a sophomore with bad skin who liked Sherri at the end of last year.
“He’s out for football,” Brad said.
“I’ll tell her,” I said.
When the lights dimmed Mr. and Mrs. Myers who lived on Brad’s street found seats two rows in front of us. They had four boys, none of them planned, according to my mother. Mrs. Myers forced her husband to get fixed, threatened to divorce him if he didn’t, after the last one. I baby-sat for them once in the eighth grade; the oldest, Henry, locked me out of the house until a neighbor came over with a key. The others fought until they finally went to bed around midnight, teeth unbrushed, faces unwashed, and I didn’t care because not only was I never going back, I never babysat again.
The movie was an adventure sequel. A few years ago I would have giggled out of embarrassment during the sex scenes, but now I wasn’t too uncomfortable. I wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Myers felt, if it was exciting to have sex anymore, or just routine. I wondered if sex without risk was really sex at all, or just some obligation, or habit. I wondered if they associated sex with their four demon sons and went to the movies together instead of bed. Brad and I held hands during some of the movie. I rubbed my thumb against his calluses. I wondered if he felt my touch.
After the movie, we stood outside in the orange night watching cars move up and down the center of town, up and down and back and forth. Most teenagers would get beer and park on the narrow dirt roads outside of the city that cut between fields of soy beans and corn and angled toward the river. Some would smoke pot. Some would have sex in the back seats. These were long nights of “booze cruising” and mosquitoes and humidity that coated the insides of windshields coming to an end. Mid-August was the last cheer of summer for us, especially with school tomorrow.
Suddenly someone yelled Brad’s name from a car driving past. We both looked as Eddie Reed slowed, rolled down his window, and flipped us off. Brad laughed and shook his finger back at Eddie. “Faggot,” Eddie shouted and sped away.
“Dude got fired today,” Brad said shaking his head. Eddie always made me nervous, though I’d never tell Brad that. He would steal bikes and throw them in the public pool and bend road signs late at night. He’d been on probation as long as I’d known him.
We got in the car and drove on a state road to the abandoned orchard where we turned and in another ten minutes we were back in Dunn. Brad’s brother Jeff rented a small stucco house. We parked behind the building next to an old leaning garage and went through a back porch that was lined with garbage bags and fishing poles. Brad used his key by leaning out of his shadow by the security light on the telephone pole next to the house to find the lock, and we went inside. The place was simple and dirty and smelled faintly of kerosene: a Winston Cup racing poster was hung in the living room where concrete blocks held up one side of a sofa. The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes, and a dry smelly aquarium with a snake coiled inside one end was on top of a stereo speaker next to a refrigerator that stopped humming when we passed on our way to the spare bedroom. Brad found some matches in the top drawer of a dresser and lit a scented candle, someone’s idea of jasmine. He took off his shirt.
The first time we made love was in this room. I felt dirty inside. It stung and I knew if my mother found out what we’d done she’d kill us. Sherri told me to take a home pregnancy test, but I didn’t. I never took that chance again though because from then on I always made Brad wear a condom. I guess you can buy them in the bathroom in the Shell station on Main Street.
Brad pulled back the bedspread and I was glad the only light was from the candle so I didn’t have to see the sheets. He took off my shirt and I rubbed his shoulders and reached around to undo my bra. I whispered to him, “Did you lock the door?”
“Yeah,” he said, and kissed me hard when I started to speak again. He’d always tell me to relax. He usually told me he loved me afterwards. Tonight was hot in the room—the window was closed—and Brad was fast. When he finished we lay together listening to the murmur of traffic up and down the street. A car stopped in front of the house, its headlights brightening the bedroom, and I sat up.
“He’s not coming home,” Brad said, “he’s fishing on Lake Erie like I told you, remember?”
“Sorry,” I said, and lay back down next to him.
Brad’s breathing eased after a while again. I took a chance and told him I had to get home. He scratched the back of his neck sleepily, and we got dressed. Brad pulled the sheet and cover roughly back in place as if anyone would believe that he had just remade the bed. Then we walked back the way we came and went to the car.
“Yeah, so some guy from the Army called again today,” Brad said.
Brad took the military test, ASVAB, before school ended and he’d get a call every week. They promised to pay for his college once he passed basic training, but I couldn’t see him taking orders all day. I guess they train a person to obey, but Brad might be the exception.
“They must be really interested,” I said.
“Eddie finally told them to stop calling, he was joining the navy. That was all it took. Maybe I’ll tell them I’m joining the marines.”
He stopped in front of my house. This was one of those nights when he didn’t say he loved me and I didn’t press it. I let myself in the front door and entered by the light over the kitchen table. I tip-toed through the house and slowly opened my mom’s bedroom door. I let out my breath after my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I realized she wasn’t home yet. I took a quick shower and lay in my bed for a long time listening for the front door to open, watching for the hall light to come on. I wanted my mom to lean over me, tuck me in, kiss me on the forehead, tell me she loved me. I finally got out of bed and turned on the fan in my room and listened to the whirl overhead until I fell asleep.
Chapter 5
I got in Sherri’s car at 7:35 and we looked at each other.
“How many days are in a school year?” she said.
“A hundred and something,” I said. “And this makes one.”
We drove down Highland to Jefferson, passed Mrs. Thompson standing in her nightgown on her front step videotaping her son skipping to the bus for elementary school. The yellow blinking light flashed in the crossing zone; both cop cars were on patrol. We parked in the student lot where the weeds had overtaken the concrete, walked past the “corner kids” smoking just outside school property
Our school is old and worn-out. The home of the Dunn Raiders has no hot water in the bathrooms (the sign on the boys’ bathroom in the basement: Menz Room); four different styles of vinyl floor tile in the sophomore hallway; lockers with crooked numbers written on with a black marker (every fourth boys’ locker number is 69); a leaky gym roof and a wavy wooden gym floor; cockroaches; mold; and torn plastic curtains across classroom windows that freeze through with ice in January. The last two tax levies failed. “Hell no, I ain’t voting for it,” Brad’s dad said. “They can’t take care of the one they got, I ain’t paying for a new one.” We were on our third superintendent in five years, this one smart enough to rent rather than buy a house.
After we entered the school by the front doors which lead to the main hallway we got our schedules from Mrs. Lange, the guidance counselor, and compared our lives’ routines for the next nine months. We only had three classes together: art, advanced math, and family relations/consumer education, a ridiculous Ohio requirement. I picked up Brad’s schedule too; he had art and consumer ed. with us, and he and Sherri had first period English.
We stood for five minutes with Tracy Zeigler and Anna Getz watching the people pass: a move-in, a skater with her black I Frighten My Family T-shirt; Skyler Smith who was in love with Wilma Flintstone until the seventh grade; Myra Chase who had a baby last year when she was a sophomore (“See the penis,” she said to all of us at lunch one day pointing to a printout of her ultrasound. “It’s a boy.”); Jennifer Baird who’s orange stains on her white shirt were from too much foundation to cover her zits. The warning bell rang at 7:55 and Sherri left for English and I went to government.
“I’ll sit next to Brad,” Sherri said. “I’ll keep him awake for at least the first day.”