Next Day Gone

by J C Wing

  Knowing full well that her dad had explained this already, Willow allowed Corinne to tip her chin up and scrutinize the wound.

  “We were in the pool house watching a movie.”

  “Which movie?”

  Willow looked up at her mom. “Scream 2. A lot of blood and guts.”

  “I assume alcohol was involved.”

  This was a fair question, Willow thought, had her father not already asked it. This was something her mom did, though. Making up stories took a lot of effort, and Willow had made up her fair share. She’d been caught in a lie a few times, and always by her mother.

  “I’m sure there was alcohol somewhere,” Willow told her, “but I wasn’t drinking any.”

  “So, how’d you hit your chin?”

  Willow wriggled out of her covers on the side her mom wasn’t sitting on. She was in desperate need of a shower, and the room had become too warm.

  “It was time for us to leave,” she explained. “I got up, it was dark, I hit the leg of the coffee table with my foot. It tumbled over and then I tumbled over it. Ms. May would have been horrified.” Willow mentioned her childhood ballet teacher as a joke but hearing Ms. May’s name spoken seemed to make Corinne wistful. Dance had been another one of those things that Willow hadn’t taken a liking to. Tights and tutus, classical music and tiaras took a backseat to hiking and baseball, camping and talking about classic cars.

  “Well, you should be more careful,” Corinne said, not surprising her daughter. “Did you damage the coffee table? Do I need to call Elise Cooper and make sure she’s compensated?”

  “Gee, Mom,” Willow said sarcastically. “I don’t know. I was much too busy bleeding and chasing the Tweety Birds that were spinning around my head to notice the state of the coffee table.” She pushed herself off the mattress. Her mom was mad that Willow had screwed up her luncheon plans and she was trying to make Willow feel sorry about that. Willow shook her head and heard thumping on the stairs again.

  “Hey, Will …” Both Willow and Corinne turned when they heard Elias’s voice on the other side of the partially open door. “You decent?”

  “Come on in,” Willow responded. Elias pushed the door open, his eyes first finding Corinne’s, then moving to find his sister. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt covered by an unbuttoned long-sleeved flannel in bright red and black. He wore a baseball cap over his dark hair, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week.

  Once Elias had turned eighteen, his responsibility to show up to hospital related functions came to an end. He was only asked to go to the big events, and generally he did enough to keep Corinne happy. Willow shook her head thinking about how much she hated being fifteen. She was always counting the days, the weeks, the months, the years until she would be free to do the things she wanted to do. Her driver’s license, her own apartment, the ability to bow out of the afternoon teas and luncheons her mother loved to dress her up for. And the biggest thing … being able to date Jason without having to hide it. She sighed and brushed her out of control hair away from her face. Time never seemed to go fast enough.

  “What are you doin’ here?” she asked.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” Elias smiled.

  “Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting you is all.”

  “I talked to Dad this morning. Found out about the ER visit.”

  Corinne stood up and pulled the comforter off the bed. She began stripping the mattress of blankets and sheets. “She’s quite a sight, our Willow,” she said pulling the cases from both pillows and throwing them onto the stack of bedding.

  “She just needs a shower. Then she’ll be alright.” Willow couldn’t help but smile at her brother.

  Corinne gathered up all the bedding and turned toward her son. “She should be getting ready for her father’s luncheon right now.”

  “Yeah,” Elias said, throwing a wink in his sister’s direction, “but she’s gonna go fishing with me instead.”

  AT THE BOTTOM OF LAKE JAMES

  About five miles outside of Redwood, Elias pulled his dusty green Chevy truck over on the shoulder and threw it in park.

  Willow looked over at him. “Bladder got the best of you?” she smirked.

  “No, smartass.” He climbed out, leaving the driver’s door open. “You’re drivin’ the rest of the way.”

  Willow took no time in scrambling over to the seat he’d vacated, adjusting the mirrors as she settled in. She knew the way to Nebo, once a campground before the Civil War, and she’d been to Lake James State Park more times than she could count, which was the only reason anyone ever visited Nebo in the first place.

  “You do have your permit with you, right?” Elias asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Alright, then,” he said with a move of his hand. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Willow made sure she had a break in traffic before pulling out, then continued east on I-40. Twenty minutes later, she was entering the park.

  “Is that Parker’s truck?” She already knew the answer before she asked the question. She’d just been inside the cab of that truck yesterday. “I didn’t know he was coming.”

  “Just shut up and park.”

  Willow found a spot and eased the truck into it. They’d passed the Homestead and Paddy’s Creek Trails and had wound around near the park office. The boat rental and concession stand were closed for the season, which meant there were fewer people milling about.

  “Now, if it ain’t little Willow Larsen,” Parker said, striding up to Elias’ truck. “It’s been a minute since I’ve seen you. Still as pretty as ever I see.”

  Willow helped her brother haul their fishing gear from the back of the truck and turned to squint at Parker. “And I see you’re still as dumb.”

  “Eh,” Elias said with a chuckle. “I’m thinkin’ he might be a shade smarter now. He’s seeing Audrey Wood. I’m not sure how he made that happen, but he did.”

  The three of them carried their poles and other gear across Mill’s Creek Trail and toward the banks of Lake James.

  “Sounds to me like maybe it’s Audrey who isn’t so bright,” Willow said as they made their way toward the water.

  “You just can’t be nice, can you?” Elias asked throwing a sideways glance at his sister. He’d been hearing the two of them jab at each other for years now, and Willow noticed he didn’t look all that upset.

  Parker laughed as he set a big red cooler down on the ground. “Don’t even worry about it,” he said. “It wouldn’t be Willow without all that sass and vinegar.” Parker caught Willow’s eye and his eyebrows bounced suggestively. “A man needs some of that in his life.”

  Elias chuckled and shook his head as he set up his camping chair and got ready for an afternoon of fishing. “I ain’t much in the mood for sass and vinegar. I will take one of those beers you got in that cooler, though.”

  Parker flipped the top open and reached inside. “You want one?” he asked, nudging Willow’s upper arm with his elbow. She felt pain, although his touch wasn’t necessarily hard. She’d seen the bruises in the shower that morning; a thin band of dark fingerprints around each of her biceps. Edie would be enraged when she saw them, and they’d be impossible to explain away if anyone else got a peek. She fingered the quarter length sleeve of the baseball shirt she wore and gave Parker a dismissive shake of the head.

  “One of us ought to stay sober, don’t you think?”

  Water dripped on her legs as Parker handed the bottle over to Elias who sat on Willow’s other side. After his second beer, Elias brought his line in and stood up.

  “I’m off to the head,” he announced. “Neither one of you kill the other while I’m away, ya hear?”

  Mount Shortoff rose above the lake, and everything was blue; the sky, mountains and water. Willow studied the view before quietly saying, “It sure is pretty.” She could no longer hear Elias’s footsteps as he walked back toward the park office and the restrooms that were located there.

  “H
ow much you know about Lake James?” Parker asked.

  Willow shrugged. “I know it’s full of bass, catfish, crappie and pike,” she said. “Not that anyone would know that by looking at how many of them we’ve caught today.”

  Parker tipped his bottle up and drained what was left of it into his mouth. “Water’s clean, clear and cold.”

  He rummaged around in the cooler for another bottle. Once he’d popped the top and taken another long swallow of the brew inside, he moved his head. Willow could feel his eyes on the side of her face, but she kept her gaze out toward the water. “It’s a hundred and twenty feet deep in some places. Not the deepest lake in Carolina. Fontana out near Proctor is four times that,” he paused, his thumb tapping against the neck of the bottle he held in his hand. “Still,” he said, his voice intense and quiet now. “If you tied ‘em down real good, you could drop a body in the deepest part, and no one would find it for a good, long time.”

  Elias and Parker worked in the Construction Program run by the city of Asheville. Elias had only been employed full time for the past two years. While earning a business degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Parker, who had gone straight from high school to earning a paycheck, urged him to apply. During his junior and senior years, Elias worked for the city during school holidays and on weekends. Now, at twenty-three, Elias was thinking about letting that degree and the skills he’d learned with the city work in his favor and had begun plans to start up his own landscaping company. Of course, Parker would come aboard as a full partner, and this is what the two of them talked about for the next couple of hours while the three of them sat on the banks of Lake James.

  When Willow’s phone rang, she excused herself from the shop talk and wandered down the shore. The number that came up on the screen was unfamiliar.

  “Hello?”

  “Willow!”

  Her face lit up with a wide smile when she heard Jason’s voice. “What is this number?” she asked.

  “New phone,” he told her.

  The news surprised Willow. Jason’s family was much different than the one she’d lived with all her life. Both her parents had come from money, and her father had spent fourteen long years in college to become one of the most well-respected cardiologists in the state. They lived well, and there had never been a time in Willow’s life that she could remember feeling a financial strain within their household. She was well cared for, but not spoiled, and knew she’d have to work to support herself once she’d stepped out into the world. It was also understood, however, that she had a rather durable safety net in which to fall if she were to stumble. Money had always been a point of contention between Jason and Willow, and they argued about it often.

  “What happened to the old one?”

  Willow knew the phone he’d been using didn’t technically belong to him. It had been given to him by one of his mother, Nicole’s, many suitors some time back. Willow couldn’t remember the guy’s name, or if she’d ever heard it. Nicole was a fly by the seat of her pants kind of gal, and rarely stayed in one place for too long. She had a habit of taking off with a man, settling for however long it took for the relationship to go sour, then she was off again to another town or state in another reckless pursuit of romantic fulfillment. She’d never met her, but as far as Willow was aware, Nicole had yet to find what she was looking for.

  In all honesty, the phone had never belonged to Nicole’s boyfriend, either, but the giant grocery store chain the man worked for. Once his mom and the Green Grocer broke up, Jason assumed the service would be cut, but whichever bean counter in HQ was paying the bills overlooked this particular cell account month after month. Eventually, however, someone must have caught the error.

  “No service,” Jason told her. “It’s all good, though. I picked this new one up on a prepaid plan. I met some of the guys for lunch and we got to talking about it. Oh,” he said, still sounding excited, “another one of the guys hooked us up with fake ID’s, too. There’s a bar up in Mars Hill we all wanna go to in the next couple weekends …” Jason’s voice trailed off. “How did the luncheon go?”

  “I got out of it.” Willow’s sneakered feet squished along the wet shoreline. She’d walked quite a way and turned to look back at Parker and Elias. Neither one of them were as much into fishing as they were talking about the guys they worked with, the girls they were dating, or the beer they wanted to drink.

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Well, I wound up falling face first into the corner of a coffee table at the party last night, so Dad and Edie took me to St. John’s to get my chin stitched up.”

  “Holy, shit, Willow, are you okay?”

  Willow smiled at the genuine concern she could hear in his voice. “Yeah. It was only four stitches, and E spent the night. Dad took pity on me and let me out of the luncheon.”

  Jason had never been to an event like the ones Alex Larsen and his family were expected to attend. He was often annoyed while listening to Willow complain about having to dress up and eat extravagant meals. “Was your mom pissed?”

  “Of course,” Willow said. “Then Elias came over and told me he was taking me fishing, so that made her even happier. He let me drive, too, but I won’t be sharing that with Mommy Dearest.”

  There were a few moments of silence on the line. They each had their issues with their mothers.

  “Catch anything?” Jason inquired.

  “Just the creeps. That Parker Holt is one freaky dude.”

  “Parker’s with y’all?”

  “He met us here. He and Elias are having a business meeting.” Willow shook her head and continued to watch. “They’re a cooler full of beers in right now, and I’m pretty sure the fish could come up with a better business plan at this point.”

  “I’m glad you’re driving.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Parker looked up and caught Willow’s eye. Elias was packing up his chair again and gathering up the fishing gear. Parker held her gaze. He smiled and Willow felt that familiar greasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Then he raised his hand and crooked his finger at her in the silent gesture that said, “come here”.

  “Looks like the boys are ready to leave,” Willow said into the phone, her eyes still on Parker.

  “Are you sure you’re alright?” Jason asked. “I mean, your chin and everything?”

  Willow moved her eyes away from Parker and looked out over the water again. “Yeah,” she told him, pushing the last couple of days from her mind. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good.”

  CREEPER

  Edie pulled into the school lot bright and early on Monday morning. Her hair matched the copper colored leaves that dressed the tall maple trees towering above them.

  “I’m so gonna flunk that test tomorrow,” she groused as she slid out of the driver’s seat.

  “We studied hard yesterday,” Willow reminded her.

  “That means nothing,” Edie stated. “I thought algebra was bad, but geometry is so much worse.” She hiked her backpack up on her shoulder and shut the door with a bang.

  “Y’all are gonna do fine.”

  “Dylan might, but I’m gonna tank.”

  Willow’s ponytail flipped in the breeze as the two of them fell into step together. “Tank,” she said, shaking her head. “Have you ever gotten anything less than a B+ on anything in your life?”

  “No, but this is where it’s gonna start, in Mr. Lewis’ sophomore geometry class. I can see the headline now: ‘Edith Elizabeth Heath, Former Cheerleader of Redwood High School Tanks Geometry’.”

  The lines in Willow’s forehead scrunched together. “How did cheer get mixed into this?”

  “Well, obviously my dad will pull me from the team when I bring home my failing test score.”

  Willow laughed. “When he takes away your Blazer, can I have it? I’m really desperate for a set of wheels.”

  Edie shoved Willow as they neared the entrance of the school. “Cold,” she accused. �
�That’s what you are.”

  “Hey, if you want to get anywhere in this world, you have to take every advantage that pops up.”

  “Go on,” Edie said, pushing her again. “I’ll see you in third period.”

  The girls parted ways, turning down separate halls, and Willow touched the small Band-Aid that covered the stitches in her chin. As she moved closer to her locker, she could see something hanging from it. She hurried forward, almost running into Marcus, Josh and Tyler who were making their lackadaisical way through the hall.

  “Hold up, Larsen,” Josh said. “What’s the rush?”

  “First bell hasn’t even rung yet,” Tyler informed her.

  Marcus stepped in front of her and moved to get a better look at her face. Willow stopped and held still while he narrowed his eyes at her.

  “What’d you run into with your face?”

  The first bell sounded, echoing loud and shrill.

  “Damn,” Tyler muttered.

  “It’s nothin’,” Willow told Marcus. “I’m fine.”

  “Oh,” he said, sarcastically, knowing he was being brushed off. “You’re fine.”

  “Fine enough to make sure I keep strikin’ you out on the ball field,” she told him, her eyes meeting his.

  This was the kind of trash talk Marcus could handle. “We’ll see about that,” he volleyed back. “Sunday. I’ll tell the guys.”

  “You do that,” Willow called after him as they all made their way down the hall.

  She was only a couple yards away from her locker now and could see that it was the jacket she’d left in the pool house hanging precariously from the handle. She reached out and grabbed it with one hand while she quickly manipulated the lock with the other, swinging the door open and shoving the coat inside before slamming the locker shut again. Without a word, Willow turned and headed to her first period class.

  From the doorway of his American History classroom, Zac watched her as she went.