Cornerstone

by Misty Provencher

  Garrett listens. When I take a breath, his blue eyes start swimming in my vision. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop it. He waits for my eyes to clear, tips his head to one side and grins the way my mother would after I survived a vaccination needle.

  “What happens if I ask your favorite color?”

  “I guess I didn’t understand the question.” I stammer. My face feels sunburned. His eyes are as vast and blue as if I am looking at the earth’s oceans from the moon. “Fajitas are good.”

  “Just so you know,” he whispers as he leans across the table toward me. “I know. I know and I get it. I understand.”

  “Okay.” I breathe. I drop back, my spine melting against my chair.

  I shouldn’t feel like this. It’s dangerous. I know better than to believe what he’s saying. But knowing better does not feel nearly as strong as the wanting that pounds me with a runaway heartbeat. Looking into his eyes doesn’t help. I need to take a moment—to know what I know and to distance myself from what I want—so that I can make the right decision about what to do next.

  The silence grows so loud between us that it is disturbing.

  “You okay?” he asks. It is the perfect escape.

  “I need to use the restroom.” I say, standing up and pushing my chair back with my legs. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be here.” he says as I escape down the aisle.

  ~ * * * ~

  I splash water on my face. Why people do that, I don’t know. Now I’m confused and wet. I’d have to submerge my entire head in a bucket of ice to get anywhere close to the clarity I need right now. I pace the bathroom until it seems unreasonable to hide any longer.

  He knows.

  He says he gets it.

  He understands.

  What does any of that mean? Does it mean he really doesn’t care or that he’s willing to tolerate everything until he gets what he wants from me? That idea makes me want to gag. And he said he understands. How can he? Does he live in a dumpster too? Or is that him trying to be a hero? As in, Just remember, I’m better than you, so I’ll overlook this.

  Any of my theories could fit if his tone had even a tiny hint of sarcasm. But nothing about him felt unreal. I saw nothing in his eyes but my reflection. There’s no reason to doubt what he says...or maybe, it’s just that there is no way for me to want to. If I’m going to make a mistake, at least I’m going to do it with a boy who looks like a magazine ad. My stomach flips at the possibility.

  I open the bathroom door and criss-cross my way back. I get one aisle away and hear it. There is a heated conversation going on at my table, loud enough for me to hear but not loud enough to bring Ms. Fisk shushing from the front desk. One voice is Garrett’s, still smooth, but stronger now, a silk sheet stretched over a hammer.

  The second voice is easy to recognize when she hisses, “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. You know what she is!”

  “What she is?” I am elated to hear the resentment in Garrett’s voice. “What exactly do you think she is, Jen?”

  “She’s disgusting!” Jen explodes. “She lives in a rat trap with her crazy mother. Do you know what people are going to say if you go out with her?”

  There is a smirk in his tone when he says, “They’re going to say, I wish I’d asked her out first.”

  Oh my God oh my God oh my God. He’s talking about me.

  Jen snorts. “No they’re not. They’re going to say you’re nuts too.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that.” he says. “But I can see why you do. If you hadn’t spread it around that we were dating, you wouldn’t even be here right now.”

  “I never told anyone we were dating.” she insists.

  I am in love with how lame she sounds. I fight down a giggle.

  “Yes you did.” His tone is softer and kinder than I would’ve been. “And I’m flattered, but I think we both know we’re not right for each other.”

  “Oh, I can see that.” she huffs. “I understand why you and I aren’t right for each other. I do. It’s because you’re into slumming it.”

  “We can stay friends, if you watch what you say right now.”

  “Friends?” Her laugh is bitter. “No, we can’t just be friends. Where is she anyway? I have a few things to say to Little Miss Waste myself.”

  I hear Jen take a couple steps down the aisle and I stumble backward, away from the shelf that hides me from the two of them. I’ve seen how brutal she can be. She’s going to try to drag me back and humiliate me in front of him. I have to get out of here.

  I backtrack to the bathroom but instead of going in, I stick to the outer edge of the library’s maze. I slip past the circulation desk and go out the front doors without looking back.

  When I hit the fresh air, I sprint through the parking lot to the tree line. Jen wins. I’m running away. I’d rather look like a coward than have her shred me in front of Garrett.

  Once I hit the tree line, there is a bigger problem with my escape plan. Besides having left behind all of my books and homework, it is moonless and black in the woods and next to impossible to navigate the path. Especially without my flashlight.

  I can’t stand around outside or keep creeping along the tree line, waiting for Jen to leave. I’d look even stupider if she caught me out here. And the worst would be if Garrett came out and saw me hovering among the trees like a complete loser. I have to go. Standing here can only make a bad thing worse. I take a deep breath and move into the trees.

  The path is obscured within less than a second. I try to feel my way from tree to tree, shuffling my feet over the ground, but I trip over tree roots and stumble on uneven patches. It only takes me a couple of minutes of fumbling to realize I need to go back. There’s no way I can do this without a flashlight.

  I turn around, and I’m lost.

  I muddle back the few feet where the entrance to the path should be, but there is no opening. No light. I spin in a dizzying circle trying to locate any dim glow breaking through the trees, without luck. The trees close in on me and my heart accelerates.

  I reach out with one hand and touch bark.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper to myself. I feel better with my hand on something solid.

  I reach out my other hand, swatting gently at the darkness for another trunk. My skin meets something nubby and soft instead. It has an undercurrent of warmth. I slide my fingertips slowly over the material, trying to place the texture. There is a hole. Before I can pull my hand away, I touch something soft and moist. Something that opens and exhales a hot, stale breath.

  “Finally.” says the gravely voice of an unfamiliar man. His tone is as shallow as a grave. He locks a hand on my wrist. “I’m real sorry, baby. But I’ll make it quick if you just keep still.”

  An adrenaline bomb explodes inside me. I fall back from the man, my feet pushing away instinctively against the ground. My wrist is wrenched from his grip as I stumble and land hard on my back. The ground pounds the air out of me. The tapping in my chest: long, short, long, short, long...speeds to a whir. My breath returns in one quick gasp and I’m on my feet again.

  I feel the man’s rough skin as he grabs for me and misses. I’m close enough to smell him. It’s the stink of wet ground, rotting in the shade. He swings his arm, another miss, but it throws me off balance. I fall to the ground again, scuttling backward like a crab.

  “Come ‘ere.” His voice is a rough whisper. “It won’t last long, I promise. It’ll be over before it hurts...”

  Something pops inside me and my ears thrum with the sound of a vicious ocean swell. I am outside myself, and calm, just like I was with Regina. I still can’t see the man’s face but I can make out the hole he leaves in the darkness. He lunges at me and I duck away as if I’m a ninja. He swipes with an arm but I weave out of the way with amazing ease.

  “Don’t make this thing any harder than it already is...” he grunts. I hear a thin scrape along the ground, the drag of metal against dirt. “Nobody’s gotta remembe
r any of this.”

  A thick sound cuts through the air, coming toward me. My eyes adjust to a blunt shadow overhead. I know I have to move and my body is trying to spring, but I hold it down, scared to do the wrong thing. Jumping might be the wrong move. If I...

  It’s the split second that gets me hit. I throw my left arm up over my head in defense. Whatever is tearing through the air comes down on me, solid as the hull of a ship. The sickening crunch knocks me off my feet.

  My arm is a thousand points of pain, all of them igniting as I hit the ground. A moan breaks free from my throat. The sound turns the man’s footsteps in my direction. He is coming for me, his metal weapon scraping over the raw ground behind him. I struggle to push myself onto my feet but my arm explodes in white hot needles.

  “Oh God,” I drop back down in the dirt.

  “Nalena!” Garrett’s voice spears through the dark like an arrow. The man’s footsteps halt.

  “Here!” I croak.

  And I pass out.

  Chapter 5

  A bump jolts me awake with a groan on the front seat of Garrett’s car. I’m strapped in beside him and we’re tearing down Main. He takes a right at my street.

  “Hey,” Garrett says, glancing at me. “How are you doing?”

  “Where are you going?” My arm is full of white hot pain and I try not to moan.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just picking up your mom and we’re going to the hospital.” he says.

  “No.” I have to say it through clenched teeth. “Not home. Just take me to the hospital, okay?”

  But it is too late. Garrett slows the car to a gentle halt in front of my apartment complex.

  “I’ll be right back.” he says.

  “Wait.” I say, but he’s out of the car and jogging up my front steps, banging on the middle black door, as if he’s been to my house a thousand times before. I move my good hand away from my jagged arm and shriek with pain before I can even reach for the door handle. I’m stuck.

  I drop my forehead on Garrett’s side window with a thud. I wish I could pass out, but instead I have to watch my life being pulled wide open from his front seat.

  The light from our apartment spills from the doorframe and over Garrett’s body, making him a silhouette against my mother’s glowing figure. His hand goes to his forehead like he’s rubbing his temple. They only talk for a second before my mom darts away, leaving the door open wide. The blinding avalanche inside enhances the light that flows onto the porch. It’s not like I can’t imagine what he is thinking, standing on the threshold of all that paper.

  The car window gets slippery under my cheek as I watch Garrett step one foot into my house. He can’t go any further. He stands on the tiny patch of clear space where we kick off our shoes. His head does a slow arc of surveillance and his hand stays on the doorknob. My mother appears again with her purse, shooting past him, down the steps. Garrett twists the lock on the door and pulls it closed behind him.

  ~ * * * ~

  My mom is so busy hyperventilating on the way to the hospital that Garrett spends most of the time trying to calm her down. I watch his smooth profile as he speaks to her, which helps to keep my thoughts from tumbling back to the man in the woods. The smell of the man is still in my nose. I concentrate on Garrett’s voice, controlled and deep, in order to shoo the other voice from my head. My arm has gone mercifully numb, except when Garrett brakes at a light. The forward lurch, before the car completely stops, makes it feel like my entire limb is being pulled off.

  “Tell me again how this happened.” My mom prods from the back seat. She is leaning forward with her torso nearly wedged between us, her fingers rubbing light circles on my good shoulder.

  “She was in the woods...” Garrett begins for me. My mother sucks in a frantic breath, turning her head toward me.

  “What woods? Why were you in the woods?”

  “There’s a shortcut to the library...” I say and Garrett mercifully chimes in, “She was going home...”

  My mother turns back to him. “You were with her?”

  “Uh...” Garrett hits the brakes so we don’t run through an amber light and the car rocks forward slightly. The momentum is excruciating, even though I’m holding my arm against me. I grit my teeth and groan.

  “Are you alright?” The two of them ask at once. I nod.

  “We’re almost there.” Garrett says. I’m not sure if he’s assuring me or my mom or himself. He probably just wants to dump us both and run. I figure he’s kicking himself right now, for ever having sat down at my library table at all. The light turns green and he accelerates, slow and steady, glancing over to gauge how I’m doing. I try to look like I’m in control. Strong. But I keep thinking of Garrett scaring off the shadowed man and my head fills with the man’s husky voice. I try to shift my focus to my mom’s interrogation instead.

  “How did your arm get hurt?” My mom swallows. I can tell she doesn’t want to say broken. She’s trying to hold it together for my sake and it is barely working.

  “There was a man in the woods.” I say. “I think he hit me with a shovel.”

  “A man!” she shrieks in my ear. “You think he had a shovel? You didn’t see it? What did he look like?”

  “I couldn’t see anything, Mom. It was pitch black.” A sour knot boils in my stomach and I add, “I touched his face. I think he was wearing a ski mask.”

  “Didn’t you have your flashlight?”

  When Garrett hits the brakes to turn into the hospital’s emergency entrance, I am grateful to let out another groan instead of an answer. It is enough to shut my mother up. I don’t want to lay out the entire story of how I was eavesdropping on Garrett and Jen’s conversation and how I ran away from Jen, ditching my backpack to get away. I can feel my face flush with heat in the dark as I wonder again about how I got from the woods to Garrett’s car, until my mom starts squawking that she wants us dropped at the Emergency entrance.

  “No, I’m not getting wheeled in.” I glare at her. “I can walk just fine, Mom.”

  “You shouldn’t be moving that arm any more than you have to.” she insists.

  I look past her to give Garrett my best pleading glance and he winks at me, but then he pulls up in front of the emergency doors. He smiles with an apologetic shrug as a guy in scrubs appears beside the car door with a wheelchair.

  “I don’t want you passing out when you get on your feet again.” Garrett says, reaching over me to unlock the door.

  ~ * * * ~

  Garrett stays in the waiting room while my mom and I are escorted into one of the curtained pods inside the emergency room. I am sure he will not be there when we come out. Whether or not all that stuff he said about knowing or understanding still applies, he’s also had to drag me out of the woods and drive me and my hysterical mother to the hospital. And none of that even takes into consideration that he’s had a glimpse inside our house.

  The doctor comes in and takes a look at my arm. He’s short and smells like garlic and he excuses himself after he asks how this happened and I tell him about the man in the woods.

  When I come back from being x-rayed, there is a cop waiting with my mom in the pod. He’s got out a notepad and wants to know how much pain medication I’ve had.

  “None.” I shake my head. “I can’t feel it. Everything’s just numb.”

  “I’m going to need to ask you some questions then.” The cop says. His upper body is as broad as he is tall and wherever he stands in the pod, it feels like he’s hovering over me.

  “She was attacked in the woods behind the library off Main Street.” My mom blurts and that’s where it begins. He asks a zillion questions about how I got in the woods and how long I was there and how I met Garrett and how long we’ve known each other and when did Garrett get into the woods. Then he asks me a million more times to describe the man and I can never do any better than saying he was a big shadow in a ski mask.

  “Why do you think it was a shovel that he struck you with?” he asks
.

  “It sure felt like one.” I say. It was a lame attempt at humor. The cop dodges a glance from his pad to me and doesn’t crack a smile. I frown and clarify, “It sounded like he was dragging a shovel on the ground.”

  “Did the man say anything to you?”

  “Yes. He said he wanted me to stand still...and he told me it would be over before it hurt. And he said I was making it harder than it had to be.” I get a shiver down my spine that explodes like needles inside my arm. I wince.

  “Did he attempt to touch you?” the officer asks. He lowers his pad and stares at me straight. “In a sexual way?”

  I glance at my mother who is biting her lip so she won’t cry. I hadn’t thought of it that way and now it feels extra creepy to have to think of all the possibilities under fluorescent lights. Especially since I’m being asked by a complete stranger in front of my mother.

  “No. He was grabbing at me like he wanted to catch me.” I say. “But I couldn’t really see him in the dark.”

  “Is there anything else you remember? Anything at all?”

  Remember. The word tickles my brain.

  “Yes.” I say. “He told me no one has to remember any of it...or anything...no one has to remember anything. Something like that.”

  My mother gasps. The officer turns to her.

  “Does that mean something to you, Mrs. Maxwell?” he asks. She bites her lip again.

  “No. No, it doesn’t.” She straightens herself up in the seat. “But do you think this man was trying to...” Her sentence fades and she puts a finger over her mouth.

  “We won’t know anything until he is apprehended and we have a chance to talk with him.” The officer says. He looks at his pad and taps it with his pen before looking back at me. “However, I would suggest that you choose better routes to the library than through unlit woods. You said your friend Garrett found you. Is he still here?”

  “He’s in the waiting room.” my mom says. “He’s a nice kid. He’s waiting to drive us home.”