Just Shelby

by Brooklyn James

  “Raelynn said you didn’t drink,” informs her date, the only one here of legal drinking age and with a nose like a knife, looking down its straight edge at me.

  A hush descends over the circle once again.

  The shifting glances seem to range between Come on, man, just let it go to Come on, girl, just take a drink.

  I timidly reach for the jar. But my father’s presence has never left. I feel his hand. I can’t. I don’t. I step back.

  “She’s my DD. I brought her. I’ll drink for her.” Destiny tries.

  “Everyone in the circle drinks,” he says, shoving the Mason jar into my chest.

  My mind flashes to this morning in the front yard with Ace’s coaching, my fists pummeling into that mushy couch cushion. Too bad this guy is made of muscle and bone, and he has at least twenty pounds more of each than I. Outrun him, yes, that is my plan.

  “What the hell, bro?” A familiar voice approaches from behind, swift footsteps closing the gap.

  The tight circle disbands like the weakest link in a schoolyard game of Red Rover.

  Ace steps between me and Raelynn’s date who towers over him and the rest of us high-schoolers. His left hand makes a fist around the rim of the Mason jar, taking and cradling it against his forearm, high and tight to his rib cage the way a running back secures a football. His right fist follows—close-ranged and from his waist—in record time, delivering an uppercut to his opponent’s chin. The momentum so powerful, something cracks—teeth or perhaps the neck of Raelynn’s date. Teetering in thin air like an inflatable Gumby, her date paws at his own ears the way a dog might when hearing a high-pitched sound. That’s what Ace meant by “ring the fucker’s bell.”

  Red screams, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, as her man-date falls to the ground.

  Ace douses him with the remaining firewater from the Mason jar, waiting for him to come to. When he does, he coughs and gags and flounders—the real fish out of water. “Don’t ever push this shit, or any other shit, on her,” Ace snarls through gnashed teeth, crouching over him. “Don’t talk to her. Don’t look at her. Ever!”

  “Huh? What! Okay.” Raelynn’s date seems to be confused about where he is and how he got there.

  Ace thrusts himself upright. “That goes for all of you. Anybody here with any shit, don’t push it on her. It doesn’t touch her or I’ll touch you.”

  If I wasn’t so busy wishing for a hole in which to crawl, I would probably look at Ace the way everyone else does. They don’t know if he is crazy or if they want to be him or if they want to be with him.

  Even Red wants Ace.

  “You got no business being here, Shelby Lynn,” I wield the double name with the same precision I would a jab. Its intention successful, any adulation she may have felt for me in the circle is replaced by contempt.

  “How else am I to know what your beloved Poke County has to offer if I don’t carouse with the locals,” she jabs back.

  “For a doper’s daughter, you’ve got some air about yourself. Amazing no one wants to hang out with you.” I jerk open the passenger-side door of my Jeep.

  “I’ll walk.” She jerks her elbow from the crook of my hand.

  I trap her between the open door, sheltering her and our conversation from the rubbernecks in the circle, whose eyes are burning holes in my back. “Get in, Shelby.”

  Just Shelby. Its intention equally successful, her defenses drop along with any airs. “Doper’s daughter?” she whispers.

  “I didn’t mean it,” I whisper back. “You can’t wait to get the hell out of here, but the rest of us are staying. What does that make us?” What does that make me?

  She doesn’t know. Or maybe it’s too unfavorable to say. And judging from the sharp glint in her eye—like a predator discovering a formidable prey’s weakness—she can’t stomach inferiority in me of all people. She looks away and gets in.

  “Impossible. Shelby runs around here like she’s got something to prove, when she’s the one who thinks no one around here is good enough for her,” I mutter, stomping around the Jeep and getting in under the steering wheel.

  I’ve had girls in my Jeep before. None of them ever made me feel the way I feel sitting in it with her. The first she’s ever been here. The first we’ve ever been here. Why are my hands clammy? One of them wants to reach across the console for her hand but fears being left empty. Why do I care what Shelby thinks of my Jeep? Or me? It’s not a damn first date or anything. I fire it up.

  Out of my periphery, I see her familiarizing herself with the Jeep. She looks it over and then looks at me and back again, as if it and I are extensions of each other—rough and built for another time. The dashboard lights glow. I suddenly regret my inflated ego and volunteering to take on a lefty at the fights. The right side of my face shows the learning curve in doing so. Reddish-purple cheekbone and swollen eye, blood cakes in the brow above.

  “Why do you do that? Fight?” she asks, a hint of my mother in her tone. There are better things to do with a body than to willingly abuse it.

  Definitely not a first date. “The same reason you run. I fight because I’m good at it,” I deadpan, mashing the clutch to the floor and engaging the stick shift. Gravel and grass sling up around the wheels, an unfond farewell to the river bash.

  The Jeep sounds like a crop duster and rides like one, too, on the rutted dirt road. It’s fitting, symbolic, as rocky as our relationship.

  “Do you have any idea who that was with Raelynn?” I nearly shout to be heard.

  “Her manfriend,” Shelby shouts back. “She was sure to point out the difference between him and all of you at Hot Brown this afternoon.”

  “He’s some man, alright. His name’s Billy Don.”

  “Of course it is,” she sneers. Just what Poke County needs, another double name.

  “He’s the bottom of the barrel. Dopes, deals, pimps whatever and whoever he can to scrounge up a living. Not even Raelynn deserves him.”

  Shelby shudders with the thought of her mother naked on the front porch this morning. Who used her for their living. “Where are we going?”

  “We aren’t going anywhere. You’re going home.”

  “I can’t go home. Not yet. I promised Grandpa I would go to this party. Have fun. Be a kid.” A bemoaning chuckle escapes her. What’s fun about being a kid.

  “What are we supposed to do. Ride around. You and me?” Not exactly the Saturday night I had planned.

  “Yet you’re not good enough for me. I’ll run home.” Unaccustomed to my Jeep, she struggles with the door handle.

  I slam on the brakes and come to a screeching halt. My arm slings out across Shelby’s body, holding her fast to the seat. “You wanna hang out with me?” In the thick of irritability is satisfaction that she might.

  And in the dimness of our close quarters, I realize I’ve never been alone with her in the night. Saturday morning runs and passing in the hall at school, our time together has been in the light of day. She looks different in the night, the starlight adding a softness to her pale, cool complexion.

  Her hair is pulled back in a turquoise bandanna that matches the color of her eyes. The quiet confidence in them simmers. Like the eyes of a lioness, they’re hooded, exotic, piercingly intense—damn hard to look away from.

  I swear those eyes say who wouldn’t want to hang out with you. Before they break contact and roll in the direction of the river, she says, “Beats hanging out with that crowd.”

  I break, too, processing the back-handed compliment and preparing my reply—one reserved for promising a kid sister some time. “Alright, track star, we’ll hang out.” I step out of the Jeep and pull a six-pack of beer from the hatch on my way to her passenger-side door.

  “I didn’t drink at the river, and I’m not drinking with you,” she says.

  “Did I offer? I drink. You drive.”

  She looks surprised, maybe impressed, that I have enough sense not to. Then she dips her chin to her chest, hiding her own inferiority in those
brilliant eyes. “I…um…don’t have a license.”

  Don’t have a license? Sure, her mother’s no help these days. But what about her grandpa. He can’t see to it that she has a damn driver’s license? How’s she supposed to get out of here without one. “You don’t need one to drive these back roads,” I say, offering her my hand.

  She doesn’t take it. But she does get in behind the steering wheel. The dashboard lights accentuate her curiosity and her consternation, illuminating her profile as she looks everything over. Where to start?

  “Clutch, brake, gas,” I point out the pedals aligned from left to right on the floorboard. “Push the clutch to the floor with your left foot and sit on the brake with your right.”

  Easy enough.

  My left hand atop her right hand, I guide her through the gear stick pattern. “Neutral, first, second, third, fourth, and reverse.”

  Got it.

  “Go back to first. Feed it a little gas while you come off your clutch.”

  The Jeeps stalls.

  “This should kill some time.” I chuckle, content and no longer having to wonder how we will spend our time together.

  While Shelby plays driver—making a milkshake of me with all the jolting and churning in trying to establish routine muscle memory between the wheel, clutch, stick, and gas—I play DJ.

  I want to go straight to Bootleg. Does she have any clue about her parents’ musical past?

  I settle for Lily May Ledford instead, another double name.

  Lily May doesn’t get beyond her banjo intro to the first lyric when Shelby says, “Not bluegrass. Anything but bluegrass.” As if it physically distresses her, she loses her rhythm, almost stalling the Jeep again.

  “I thought you’d like her,” the words lurch out of my chest, in sync with the lurching Jeep.

  “Her?” she says.

  Lily May’s voice could be mistaken for a dude’s. A lot of old-time female bluegrass singers’ voices could. Ola Belle Reed, to name another. In their defense, they covered a lot of songs originally sung by…dudes.

  “Yes, her. She was a trailblazer. One of the first to go against the grain. No passive, quiet little ‘female’ songs. She wrote her own music. Played her own music and delivered it with an in-your-face punch, just like the dudes.” Any self-respecting Gen Z chick should appreciate the “girl power” in that. Surely one who blazes the running trail as hard as Shelby.

  “Anything but bluegrass,” she says again.

  “Folk. You like folk?”

  She shrugs.

  Who doesn’t know what kind of music they like. “Lily May Ledford made folk too. A part of the American folk music revival of the ’60s, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship.”

  “Lily May…” she quips, as if the double name provides all the reason not to listen to her. “I’m just not that into music.” She grinds a gear, a frustrated moan slinking out, before locking it in.

  Not into music. But you were born to Bootleg! I slip them into the player. After a few bars, “Better?” I say.

  “Another her, right?”

  Contralto, smoky, raspy, whatever you wanna call it—that’s what makes it sexy.

  She shrugs again. “Her voice sounds kinda goat-ish.”

  She doesn’t even know that she just likened her mother to a goat. “It’s called vibrato, Shelby. It’s innate and relaxed, au naturel. There are vocalists who can’t pay enough to train their voices to sound like that. A goat!”

  “Stop!” she yells back, stalling the Jeep. “You’re distracting me.”

  My hand coaxes hers to the gear stick, back to neutral for a restart. “How can you not be into music?”

  “Who knew you were a walking Wikipedia! ‘National whatever Fellowship.’ ‘Vibrato.’” She mocks me, like I’m some sort of music snob. “My father used to listen to it all the time. A lot of bluegrass.” Those turquoise eyes glisten in the glow of the dashboard light, threatening tears. “It reminds me of him, okay. And my mother won’t have it, can’t handle it, any of it. Music is one of her ‘triggers.’” She snuffs back sorrow, channeling anger instead. “One of a gazillion triggers.” Wrenching her hand from beneath mine, she turns the key and slips the clutch, rivaling my peel-out from the river bash.

  Reminiscent of this morning, hands forfeiting boxing for driving, she bottles up and releases anger—controlling it—in a series of effective clutch-stick-gas combinations, rpm’ing and navigating this mother as if it is second nature.

  “Now we’re drivin’!” I champion, finally able to enjoy a drink without slopping it all over myself.

  Bootleg plays along. Like Appalachia, its backwater beat drives Shelby from these hills faster than she’s ever run.

  We sit on the hood of Ace’s Jeep at what appears to be the top of the world. Appalachia at her finest. She is many things, but in this moment she is majestic.

  My leg—fatigued from its overzealous mashing and releasing of the manual clutch—takes comfort in relaxing while my mind reruns the driving lesson. Aside from the music, the lesson was surprisingly tolerable, even empowering. I assumed it would be as agonizing as college admissions, that I would come up short.

  Amazingly, I passed. Even more amazing, he didn’t groan or grunt commands in a macho tone.

  From our vantage point, trees seem to sprawl indefinitely, untouched by civilization. With a full moon and a blanket of stars, low-level fog adds to the remote darkness making it easy to see how folks here get left behind, unable to see the forest for the trees. Innumerable, one could believe that there is nothing beyond them. But the possibility of what is beyond them is precisely why I wonder.

  “What’s the first thing you’re gonna do, when you get there?” Ace asks. Apparently the provincial landscape has the same effect on him. He contemplates life outside of Poke County.

  “Study.” I smile, knowing the uninspiring reply will not surprise him in the least.

  He chuckles—deeply, gently, satisfied.

  And when he does, I swear it wafts out of him and into me, my stomach turning somersaults the way it used to when my father would humor me by speeding up for dips on the undulating hollow road.

  What is wrong with me? I have occasionally been around Ace for my entire life. I have never felt mushy in his presence. How have the events of this day changed that?

  Composure overpowering butterflies and mush, “What would you do?” I ask.

  “Live it up. Party like there’s no tomorrow.” His eyes glimmer, thinking about the endless metropolitan opportunities to do so. They then lose their spark as he takes a drink from his third can of beer. “That’s why some of us have no business going to college.”

  I thwart off any motivational reply, knowing it would only annoy him. “Your mom lives in the city, doesn’t she?”

  “Yep.”

  “You didn’t want to live with her?”

  “Nope.”

  I managed to annoy him anyway.

  “What are you gonna do about wheels? A license?” He changes the subject. “I mean, college kids have cars too, right?”

  “If they will take me,” I preface the daunting objective, “all I will need is a one-way ticket.” Bus, plane, or train—I do not care if I have to run.

  “Not even gonna look back, huh.”

  What for? I internalize.

  “You have your learner’s permit?”

  “Yeah.” Thanks to the guidance counselor for opening the computer lab to those of us without access to the online course. My driving log empty of even one of the required sixty hours before I can test for my license, I’ll be lucky if the permit doesn’t expire first.

  He pulls his phone from his back pocket, eyeballing the time. “You just logged three hours with me. We can log more if you want to.” He takes another drink, the action as casual as his offer.

  “But you’re neither twenty-one nor my guardian.” Yet to have a license, I know what is required to earn one—probably the only nerd who actually read the entir
e DMV Handbook.

  “It’s a piece of paper, Shelby, not video surveillance.” He points out the flaw in the honor system. “Log your time with me, your mom initials it. She owes you that much.”

  “We could do that? People do that?” My palms sweat just thinking about it. By-the-book Shelby!

  “I don’t know what other people do, but you need a license. How else are you supposed to get one.”

  You would do that for me? I swallow the thought, butterflies and mush returning.

  Amidst his coarse language and cool persona, he is warm—smoldering. Engaging body language, olive complexion, rich timbre, tousled hair the color of dark chocolate, and a five o’clock shadow on his angular face that dares me to touch it, verifying its texture and authenticity. One of few in our senior class exhibiting such maturity, he looks like a full-grown man. One leg straight out on the Jeep hood—nestled aside mine—and the other bent up and casually held by the crook of his arm, his moonlit silhouette could easily be an ad in any of the outdoorsy magazines I have leafed through in the library at school.

  A late bloomer, clothed in unshapely hand-me-downs, round face as “au naturel” as that woman’s “vibrato,” my moonlit silhouette must rival any other girl who could not be featured in a magazine.

  What is he doing here with me?

  “Why are you nice to me?” the unswallowable thought slips off my tongue before I can retract it. The only thing we have in common is pressing each other’s buttons.

  He looks at me, taken aback. Maybe he doesn’t think one has to have a particular reason to be nice. Or maybe he doesn’t notice how he goes out of his way to be kind to me.

  “You remember that time,” he begins, “on the school bus. We were in elementary school. Mom left Pop. I failed my grade. Couldn’t keep friends or make friends. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe they thought divorce was contagious.”

  His narration taking me back, I do remember. It was a rough year. My father was in trouble with someone. The police? The government? Too young to care about the details, I only knew that he was gone, abruptly, and for too long. Without him, my mother became more dependent on drugs. I failed the same grade. How fickle friends can be. Red liked me then, took the flunky under her wing, provided a place for me in her flock while simultaneously establishing her pecking order. Ace was the outcast.