I stopped myself before I rambled too much, but I imagined myself on the interstate for a minute, windows down, music washing over me. I had always been accused of being a little flighty and I really did like driving because when I was behind the wheel, it was one of the only times I felt focused. Like I had this one small, manageable task and I could totally handle it, but it was still important. Like there was this thing at stake, but it was something within my control. That was a good feeling.
Mom taught me to drive on the backroads behind the art museum. Narrow and winding, the roads turned and curved around the hillside so suddenly that full attention was required at all times. The first couple times she took me out, I was terrified that someone would come flying around the corner and crash into us, but by the third time, it felt like I’d always known how to drive. One hand beside the other, eyes straight ahead, and get in the zone.
Lennox looked at something above and behind me, her eyes squinting off in the distance as she asked, “Can I tell you a secret?”
My heart missed a beat and then resumed with a vengeance, bouncing in my throat. “Yeah, absolutely.”
“I hate to drive. It’s terrifying,” Her tone was hushed and low, like she was really confiding in me, but her eyes still never met mine. I got this sudden urge to grab her cute little cleft chin and make her look at me when she talked, but I shrugged it off. Like literally shrugged in this ridiculous jerking movement. So, it was probably good that she wasn’t looking at me because as soon as my body made the gesture, I felt heat pinprick down my entire face.
“Did you get in a wreck or something?” I asked.
For some reason, as soon as I asked her that, it was like I had a flashback to this time when I was little and had seen a nasty pile-up on the side of the road on Route 60. Right before we drove into the shopping section of Barboursville where there was the Gucci Kroger and all the little strip type stores, there was a pretty big hill; somehow three cars had all been involved in an accident at the mouth of it. Anyway, what stood out was that it was one of the only times I’d ever seen a body, and when Lennox started talking about how terrifying driving was, I couldn’t stop seeing that image. A broken windshield, blood, and a dead woman on the ground. Her skin was grated like shredded cheese; I couldn’t tell how old she was or see any of her face. Just blood and black hair and asphalt. I shuddered and thankfully Lennox answering pulled me away from the memory.
“Nope,” she said and the look she gave me made me wonder if my morbid daydream was written on my face. Her eyes were squinted, and she was tilting her head at me like a puppy. “Just never liked it. My palms get sweaty and I feel like everyone is too close. Makes me anxious.” She gave me a half smile before changing the subject and even though I’d been the one to bring it up, I was glad we could leave that topic of conversation behind.
For the next half hour, we sat in the cold, alternating between shoving our hands into our individual pockets and blowing on them to try to stave off the chill. Again, I felt that hopeful feeling; Lennox’s cheeks were red from chill, but just like me, she kept asking questions to stay rooted to the bridge, rooted to the time we had together. I told her all the gossip about different teachers and what kids she should avoid, and she told me stories about the life she’d left behind. Finally, though, the cold became too much and it was time to head home for warmth.
I walked backwards for a second as I left, so that I could keep talking even as we parted. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to end the conversation.
“Do you live far?” I asked. “My house is just over on Neele,” I said with a wild, random gesture towards the general location of my house. “If you need a ride, you could walk over with me and I could drive you home.”
Her strides were long as she closed the gap between us and I had this vision of her closing space completely, taking me in her arms and kissing me. Giggles escaped my throat and she looked at me with a bemused grin, but mercifully didn’t ask me what was funny. She shook her head and crushed me by declining my offer of a ride.
“I’m actually really close, too, just towards Eighth Street, not your way,” she said with a similar random pointing motion towards the western part of town.
Then she was next to me and we stood kind of awkwardly shifting our weight between our feet as we tried to smoothly wrap up the conversation. I muttered something about getting together later in the week and she agreed. Then, in a rigid, stabbing motion, I held out my hand. She bit her lip to keep from laughing and extended hers in return. I shook it with a firm handshake like I was wrapping up a job interview or something.
You are completely ridiculous, I chastised myself before spinning on my feet and heading in the opposite direction. I called a goodbye over my shoulder and was greeted by a quiet chuckling. I wished the world would swallow me whole.
After I got home, right before I was about to take a hot bath and think of nothing except bath bombs and lavender oil, Ari walked into my bedroom without knocking and plopped on the bed. She had her notebook with her, open so that there was a page showing. Her little boots were just barely hanging off the edge of my comforter and I glared as I thought about all the mud and muck that probably coated the bottom. I had tried to convince Mom to make a no-shoes-in-the-house rule, but she’d just rolled her eyes and told me to quit being so anal about everything.
“Can I sing you my newest lyrics?” Ari asked, looking up at me with that somber Ari face.
I hesitated. In addition to the siren song of the bath and washing my awkward failure of a goodbye from my pores, I hated Ari’s song lyrics. I know poetry doesn’t have to rhyme and all that jazz, but song lyrics really should. Hers never did. They were always about love and forever and a bunch of words that barely made sense to me, let alone possibly being meaningful to her ten-year-old brain. I didn’t blow her off, though. I almost never blew her off; there was something irresistible about her earnest little voice as she asked me to workshop her songs. True, her particular mopey music didn’t register with me, but the kid had been keeping a notebook of lyrics since she could write; it was obviously pretty important to her that someone hear her sing them.
“Okay, let’s hear what you’ve got.” I said, settling in beside her with a sigh.
She closed her eyes like she always did and her tiny little elf face went blank. Ari has this row of freckles that curves across the bridge of her nose like a wave and everything about her is tiny. When she was really little, like four or five, I used to always tell her that her freckles were footprints from all the fairies dancing across her nose while she slept. When she sings and her face gets serious like it was that evening, there’s an otherworldly quality about her. She looks so much younger than she is—most people guess that she’s about seven—but there’s something about the melancholy tone her voice takes on that makes her seem like she’s lived lifetimes in her ten years.
“I never wanted you to walk away. You said you had to, that you couldn’t be here with me . . .” Like the others, tonight’s song was seemingly about a break-up, heartbreak. She sang for about five minutes and I was really starting to get a feel for the haunting melody and steady flow of her voice when she stopped.
“What do you think?” she asked, all wide eyes and serious, straight-as-someone-other- than-me mouth.
“I liked that one better than a lot of the others,” I said honestly, getting up off the bed. I reached out and grasped her wrists, gently pulling her off the bed, too. “Your voice is getting a lot stronger. I need you to get out, though, because I’m about to take a bath.”
She nodded at me and silently walked out. I watched after her, slowly shaking my head. She was such an odd little duck, so quiet and in her own head for a fifth grader. When I was about a year younger than her, I used to always make up song lyrics, too, but mine were always goofy and about summer or ice cream. I never even thought about love or loss and I’d only written anything at all for a month-long period. Nothing had ever been as important to me as her son
gs were to her; there was nothing I was passionate about. Even with photography, I’d never pushed myself to go beyond putting pictures on social media. Being honest, my pictures were totally decorative, just there to make me seem more interesting.
Right then and there, I made a mental note that that needed to go on my list: find a calling. Even if it didn’t translate to a life career or something I stuck with forever, I needed something that I could really get into. As I finally drew my bath, I let my hand stay under the warm water, loving the soft kiss of the spray.
Could a bath be a hobby? There was almost nothing that I found as calming as the warm water splashing across my skin, especially when I had a good, smutty book and some chocolate to enjoy while I let myself marinate in oils and suds. It was the only time my mind would quiet down enough that I could really relax, almost like the water washed away all the thoughts and worries and just left the core of who I was, just a girl who could soak. A girl who could enjoy.
Tonight was different. The thoughts weren’t turning off, but they weren’t unpleasant; all I could do was replay my time with Lennox. Over the maybe three hours I’d spent with her in the course of my life, I’d found myself more drawn to her than anyone before her. All past crushes seemed like dreams that I could remember only in snippets; with Lennox, after just two meetings I felt like she was a novel I’d memorized every word of. I thought about the way her slim torso curved as she leaned against the bridge. I closed my eyes and pictured the crinkling of her eyes and the small arching of her lips when she smirked. I got that same hot, tingling sensation that I’d had when we were together, and I wondered what her skin would feel like under my fingers. Not even in a sexual way; I just wondered if her cheek would be soft if I reached out and ran my fingers across her face.
I groaned as I submerged my head under the water.
On the first day of Winter Break, Marley and I met at the mall for Christmas shopping and coffee. Her eyes were like tinsel, wide and excited, and she was talking in rapid-fire exclamations from the second we met in front of Starbucks. She was mooning over the seasonal peppermint mochas, the seasonal peppermint bath products, and the seasonal makeup palettes that she wanted to snag from Sephora. When she was finished listing our day’s itinerary, she snapped to the next topic: Sean Custer, aka the boy she was absolutely, for sure going to start dating and then eventually marry.
Marley had a pattern where every couple of months, she loved a new boy with all the fervor and zest imaginable for a time period of no more than a month and a half. While this would drive me beyond crazy with anyone else, it was different with Marley. Not just because she was my oldest friend which, let’s face it, made most grievances acceptable, but because she was so damn earnest about it. When she described each boy, she knew really personal things about him instead of just describing his physical attributes. With Sean Custer, a boy who had definitely picked his nose until middle school, Marley had decided that his interests in LARPing meant that he’d never get boring and his habit of carrying tarot cards to school each day meant he was focused on living the best possible version of the future. You had to hand it to the girl: she knew how to put a positive spin on things.
“And he’s really, really good with the tarot cards, too, Hannah,” Marley was telling me, her hands two butterflies of fluttering movement in front of her face as she talked. “The day I first started thinking about how much I liked him, I asked him to do a reading for me in Art and he guessed that I’d have a new love interest soon.”
As much as I liked to cater to some of Marley’s innocent ideas, I sputtered out a laugh at that one. With an eye roll, I laughingly asked, “Don’t you think that was kind of an easy shot? I mean, he was either flirting with you or figured since you’re single, you probably want a boyfriend.”
Marley stopped short and her wide eyes narrowed at me. With a hand on her newly jutting hip—which was barely noticeable in the first place since Marley is built like a piece of plywood—she pouted at me. She took a slow sip of her coffee, but didn’t move, and she kept her eyes narrowed at me over the rim of her cup.
“Are you doubting my fella’s skills?” she demanded.
Throwing my hands palm out in defeat, I shook my head and plead innocence with all the false sincerity I could muster. She laughed and linked her arm through mine. The mall smelled like perfume and cinnamon and even the kiddie train had a wreath on its front. As it barreled down the left mall lane, we cut in front of a cell phone case kiosk. Marley stopped short and gripped my wrist.
“What?” I barked in shock.
“We could have him read your cards.” She responded breathlessly, her hand still gripping my wrist. I rolled my eyes and pulled away. Her fingers had left red marks against my skin. With a glower, I shook my head. There was no way I was going to sit in a room with Marley and her love of the week while he used a deck of playing cards to try to navigate the non-existent drama of my life. Before I could even get a word out, Marley cut me off.
“How about you?” she asked before lowering her voice to a whisper. “I haven’t heard you so much as mention a crush since school started. What’s going on with the love life, Madam?”
What was going on with my love life? I took a long sip of my cinnamon latte while I mulled over her question. In all practical ways, it was nonexistent. I had no love life to speak of. All I had to tell about was a girl I’d spent maybe three hours with in my lifetime. Then again, a crush is a crush. After another deep sip, I dove into the story of meeting Lennox.
“So, she just leaned over and whispered to you? While you were alone in the woods? Marley marveled, her eyes wide as she grabbed my arm.
I nodded, “Yep. I almost peed my pants,” I confided. That was an exaggeration; I had been mildly startled. Thinking about it now was more frightening than it had been in the moment because my brain had time to play out all the possible dangerous outcomes.
“And you love her?” Marley asked in a singsong voice. I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t love her; I don’t even know her,” I paused a beat before continuing. “But, yeah, I’m smitten. She’s really, really cute.”
As soon as I said that, I wished I hadn’t because of course Marley wanted to know exactly what she looked like. My vague description of her edgy hairstyle with the flippy bangs, her chestnut hair, and her pretty eyes was not satisfying her curiosity. I shut my eyes, trying to conjure up a more exact description, but even after replaying the scene in my head, all I could really add was that Lennox had almost ghostly pale skin, wide blue eyes, and really, really nice eyebrows.
This last detail caused Marley to nod slowly with a sage lift of her own eyebrows. “Thank God her eyebrow game is strong. Can you imagine if she’d had, like, 2000s pencil thin no-brows?”
Chapter Four
Lennox
Twice now, Hannah and I had spent hours alone in the woods. Twice it had been nearly impossible to make myself leave her side. After spending time with her two times, she was already complicating my life.
It wouldn’t have been so bad except my mom noticed. After the second time I met Hannah in the woods, I’d walked into my warm, cinnamon roll scented house with the idea of going up to my room and relaxing at my computer when my mom summoned me into the den. She never wanted to talk to me anymore. Since we’d left Columbus, I’d felt like a ghost in my own home: everyone in the house knew I was there, they could hear me rattle through the hallways, but my presence was to be avoided. I even scared them a little bit. So, when I sat in the old gray recliner across from the couch, I knew whatever was coming was going to suck.
For a minute, I wondered if we were going to play stare chicken. Her eyes were fixed on me, her lips pursed, her fingers knitted together, and her body still. I tried to stare back, but if we were playing a game, I lost quickly. I never could hold my mom’s gaze when I knew she was mad.
Her voice was soft but solid as she began to talk. “You have been gone a couple hours and you were gone a couple hours
the other day, too. Where were you?”
Her eyes were pleading. Rebellion surged in my chest. Her desperation made me feel like I was a recovering addict and she was accusing me of being on a bender or something equally serious. I didn’t deserve the third degree for being a teenager who went on a walk in a new town and made a friend and even though there was a giant warning alarm telling me not to, telling me to just be quiet and avoid a fight, I said as much.
“I took a walk at the park the other day and I met a kid who goes to the school I will be going to. We talked for awhile and then I met up with her again today.”
“Her?” my mom asked, eyes darting to the doorway.
“Dad’s at work,” I muttered. “Unless he has spies, it’s safe to say her.”
Mom rubbed her face with her thin hands, the skin pulled taut under her eyes. Neither of us spoke, but I could feel the anger start to drain from my body as the muscles in my calves relaxed and my heart slowed back to a normal beat.
I knew it wasn’t my mom’s fault. During the fight before we left Columbus, she had barely spoken. When my dad suggested they send me to a camp to “fix me,” Mom had put her foot down. She was never going to stop trying to keep me from upsetting him and the southern Baptist in her would mean she always put his feelings before anyone else’s, but she also had my back when it got too intense.
And it had been intense.
My dad’s face, normally so stoic, was drawn and ashen as he had taken his seat across from me. He was rigidly perched on the edge of the couch. With his eyes on my face, he slid the pamphlet over to me. I looked at it, amused by the pastel rainbow stretched underneath the scrawled title “Nature’s Promise.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the rainbow used that way. My parents’ friends were constantly sharing memes on Facebook that insisted the rainbow belonged to Christians and it was time we take it back. As if a symbol could even be taken back. Like we could march into some LGBT lair, swords drawn, and demand they return our rainbow.
Plunge Page 3