Running From Mercy

by Terra Little

  With a full stomach and the certainty that they were finally on course, Chad slept for most of the drive back to Atlanta. He didn’t wake until they were in Mercy, and when he did, he found his mother talking to an old woman about the For Rent sign she’d seen in the window of a two-story house there. He could see in his mother’s eyes that she liked the town and wanted the house. He knew what it meant when his mother got that look in her eyes and he’d started feeling sorry for his father right then and there. What should’ve been a thirty-minute drive to work every day was suddenly about to be stretched to almost an hour, one way.

  Chad was fourteen when they moved into the house on Northrop Lane. He started his freshman term at Mercy High School halfway through the school year and stuck out like a sore thumb, with his designer jeans and funny accent. He talked in clipped, rapid tones while everyone around him spoke slowly, almost musically. More than once he’d had to ask for something to be repeated before he fully understood what was being said to him, which made the other kids laugh and shake their heads at him. They were under the impression that he was the one with the speech impediment.

  Finally, Nate Woodberry took pity on him and struck up a conversation with him in gym class. Nate was popular, and through him, Chad gained acceptance. Suddenly, people were coming up to him, wanting to talk, inviting him to sit with them at lunch, and inviting him to come along when they went to their hangout spots after school and on weekends. Apparently, hanging out with Nate meant he was worth the time of day.

  He was introduced to Pam and Paris on a Saturday a few weeks later when he accompanied Nate to a pool party a classmate was hosting. Nate came by to pick him up so they could walk together, and Chad had come jogging out the door with a purple towel draped around his neck, his swim trunks slung low on his hips, and his mind on all the havoc he planned to wreak. He remembered every detail of the moment he first laid eyes on Pam. She was riding piggyback on Nate’s back, whispering something in his ear as Chad crossed the porch and met her eyes. It had taken him a full ten seconds to get around to noticing Paris, who was busy pulling her sister’s hair into a sloppy ponytail and looking anxious about the fact that Pam wouldn’t be still.

  “Chad, this crazy girl on my back is Pam and the other one is Paris.” Nate grinned up at Chad. He slapped Pam’s bare thigh playfully. “Pam, get down. You’re too big to be riding on my back anyway.”

  Pouting, Pam lowered her thighs and slid down the back of Nate’s body to her feet. Chad thought the contact was uncomfortably intimate and cocked a curious brow. Sensing his thoughts, Pam cocked one in return and they stared at each other as he came down the steps and joined them on the sidewalk.

  “How come I never seen you around school?” Chad asked the back of Pam’s head. She was walking ahead of him, next to Nate, and they were so close that their arms were brushing as they talked back and forth in low voices. He was trying unsuccessfully to catch the drift of their conversation, but he kept getting distracted by other things. Namely, the shorts Pam was wearing—denim cutoffs that were frayed around the hem and riding high on her thighs, almost like panties. And then there was her hair. It was dangling down the middle of her back in a loose ponytail, the ends trailing across the clasp of her bikini top. He waited for her to turn around and answer him.

  “We don’t go to the high school,” Paris said from beside him. By contrast, she was wearing a one-piece swimsuit underneath an open camp shirt and a denim skirt that stopped just above her knees.

  Chad remembered that she was there and looked down at her politely. Her eyes were the same shade as Pam’s, sheer green and weird looking, shining out of a honey-toned face. He blinked from the intensity of them, thinking that Paris was cute and then he thought that Pam still hadn’t answered him.

  “We go to the junior high.”

  “Oh.” He was shocked, but he thought he hid it well. At least until Paris’s knowing chuckle reached his ears. He couldn’t stop staring at the rhythmic sway of Pam’s hips.

  “They’re best friends,” Paris supplied quietly. “Since Beacon.”

  “Beacon?”

  “The elementary school.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re a freshman, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re what, fourteen, fifteen?”

  “Fourteen,” he said, scratching the back of his head lazily. In front of him, Nate reached out and hooked an elbow around Pam’s neck, catching her in a headlock. The laugh she uttered in response hit him straight in the gut. He tried to picture Leslie’s face in his mind and found the image fuzzy and out of focus. Lines of confusion creased his forehead as he looked down at Paris. “Why?”

  She shrugged primly. “Just asking. She’s thirteen, though. In case you was wondering.”

  “I wasn’t,” he lied.

  “Oh.”

  He was busy trying to touch Melissa Henry’s breast underneath the water, without seeming to be doing so, when Pam slipped out of her shorts and headed over to the pool. Since they had arrived, she’d helped with setting out food and drinks and then she’d disappeared inside the house with some of the other girls. She’d stayed inside and out of sight for over an hour, but now she was ready to swim and she hadn’t so much as looked in his direction all day.

  Pam jogged the last three steps to the pool and cannonballed into the deep end. She stayed under for several minutes, then finally resurfaced less than a foot away from where Chad stood in the shallow end of the pool. His eyes locked onto the imprint of her nipples through her bikini top and he forgot all about trying to touch Melissa’s breast. He swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out.

  She played Marco Polo with some of the other kids. She joked around with some of the boys and seemed completely unaware of the lustful looks she received for her efforts. She swam lap races with Paris and lost two times out of three. She threw her head back and laughed with her mouth wide open and she ran her fingers around the rim of her bikini bottoms to smooth them out five times.

  Chad knew because he’d counted while he was staring at Pam. He was perplexed by her face, couldn’t seem to figure out the symmetry of it. Her eyes were wide and deep-set, her cheekbones jutted out sharply over hollowed jaws, and her lips were just plain too big. They sat on her face like a ripe peach, split in half and full of juice. She smiled and he saw that her teeth were straight and white, but too large for her mouth. He thought she resembled the Pink Panther with all those teeth. Her nose should’ve helped balance everything out, but it was narrow and slightly turned up at the tip, which made her look even stranger.

  She looked like a cat, he decided. Moved like one, too. Tight little body, small breasts, narrow waist, and a round, plump butt. Her skin was barely brown-tinged, and he didn’t know what it was about her that kept his eyes straying in her direction. By the time they left the party and headed back to his house, he was pissed with himself for allowing a thirteen-year-old kid to get his goat.

  He took his frustration out on Pam. He walked behind her next to Paris and tried to stare a hole into the back of her head. She continued to ignore him, which made him even angrier.

  “What’s your problem, Pam?” he asked when he could hold it in no longer.

  “Excuse me?”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. At fourteen, he was nearing the six-foot mark and she had to tilt her head back to catch his eyes. “You heard me,” he said. “You think you’re too good to talk to somebody?”

  “I didn’t hear you say nothing to me.”

  “I’ve been talking all day.”

  “To Paris and Nate and all those other girls, but you ain’t said nothing to me. So what’s your problem?” She propped her hands on her hips and shifted her weight to one side. Neither of them noticed the look that passed between Nate and Paris because they were too busy staring each other down.

  Chad’s eyes darted over her strange-looking face rapidly. Somebody must have reached in a bag, pulled out facial features and pu
t them together on her face with no rhyme or reason. He sucked his teeth and looked away. “Whatever. You’re blocking my way.”

  “You got a problem with me, you need to tell me what it is.”

  “I’ll tell you when I’m good and ready to tell you.”

  “Whatever,” she snapped and resumed walking. And Chad resumed staring at the sway of her hips.

  They fought like cats and dogs every time Nate had the bright idea to force them together, which was often. She was like Nate’s shadow, and Chad couldn’t resist temptation. He began to look forward to the times when he could make her face flush red with a few sharp words or make her so angry he could hear the sound of her breath whistling through her nostrils. She pretended to be so tough, but he didn’t have any trouble wriggling his way under her skin and taking her attitude down a few notches. It became like a game to him.

  He took it a step too far the night he tagged along with Nate to walk Pam home. Earlier in the day the four of them had gone to a movie and then split up. Pam hadn’t materialized again until well after ten o’clock, coming out of the shadows at the side of Nate’s house like a ghost and jogging up on the porch, where they were kicked back talking trash. She had sneaked out of the home after everyone was asleep and would sneak back in when she was ready to join them.

  Chad wondered how she’d managed to get past her parents and out of the house to roam the streets at all hours of the night. He was staying over at Nate’s house and Nate’s mother was down at the speakeasy, but what was Pam’s deal? Plus, they were almost fifteen to her thirteen. She should’ve been in bed counting sheep, where apparently, Paris was.

  He said this to her and she told him to shut up. He kept poking and prodding at her until he had her right where he wanted her, knee-deep in the middle of a heated argument that had Nate shaking his head and cracking up. For him, it was all in fun.

  Until he said, “Where’s your momma, anyway?” just as they came out of the woods and approached the back of the children’s home where she lived. He looked from her to the home, clearly surprised.

  “I don’t have a momma,” Pam said. “A daddy, either. Still think it’s funny?” She left them there and disappeared through a window she’d left cracked for the purpose.

  They didn’t speak to each other for a week, mostly because Pam was giving Chad the silent treatment. If he thought she was standoffish before, it was nothing compared to the way she treated him after the night he put his foot in his mouth. He waited for an opportunity to catch her alone to apologize, but she went out of her way not to be left alone with him. And she was good at it.

  When the opportunity finally presented itself, he followed her from the movie theater and caught her before she could turn off into the girls’ bathroom. She hadn’t known he was on her heels until he cuffed her arm, dragged her down the walkway to the rear of the building, and caged her in a dark corner.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “You said if I had something to say I should say it, right?”

  Her back was to the wall and he leaned in. She flattened a hand against his chest and nudged him away from her. His face was in her face and she couldn’t breathe without sharing air with him.

  “Hurry up and say it because I have to pee.”

  “I didn’t know you lived there,” he said softly.

  “So what if I do?”

  “So . . . nothing, I’m just saying I didn’t know, that’s all.” She pushed him away from her again and he came back even closer. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen, why?”

  “I’m almost fifteen.”

  “So?”

  “You’re too young for me.”

  “So why are you in my face, then?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. What’s up with you and Nate?”

  “Nothing. Did he say something was up?” she asked suspiciously, ready to take Nate’s head off for lying.

  “He didn’t say nothing. I’m asking you.” He reached up and pressed the pad of his finger into the flesh of her bottom lip, watched it sink and then rise again. She swatted his hand away irritably and he grinned.

  “Stop it.” She came away from the wall and pushed at his chest with both hands. “Get off me.”

  Instead of heeding her words, Chad dipped his head and stole a kiss. He drew back and looked into her shocked face and then stole another one. And another one after that. When her lips went slack, he slipped his tongue in her mouth. Pam had never kissed a boy before, and the experience shook her.

  “Stop,” she pleaded against his lips.

  “You ever kiss before?”

  She shook her head. “Not like this, not with tongue. I don’t know how to do what you’re doing.”

  “Open your mouth wider and put your tongue in my mouth,” Chad told her. “Move your head this way.”

  She did as he said and let him slip his arms around her waist as they kissed. “Your tongue is in the way,” she said after they pulled apart for air.

  “That’s part of the fun, Pam. You have to make room in my mouth for your tongue.”

  “Oh.”

  Chad grinned at the silly memory and stepped back from the window in Paris’s bedroom. He had been standing there long enough to see Pam get out of a car with a strange man and then he’d heard her and Nikki talking downstairs. They spoke in low tones for several minutes and then the sound of the door closing floated up the stairs to him. Nikki hadn’t told him Pam was coming to the house, nor had she told him she was leaving with Pam. He figured it out when he saw the two of them climb into a shiny new rental car, with yet another strange man, and drive off.

  Worrying about Nikki’s safety was the last thing on his mind. What he did worry about was Nikki becoming too attached to Pam and being let down when Pam disappeared again. No one knew better than he did the pain Pam could cause when she pulled one of her famous disappearing acts.

  May 21st

  Dear Diary,

  Nikki went back to school today. She told me that Chad was going back to work, and since he was, he was making her go back, too. How would it look if the principal suspended other kids for skipping school and let his own daughter get away with it? she said he’d asked. I made sure to make a lot of sympathetic noises when she told me about it, but secretly I agree with him. Sunday will be two weeks since Paris died, and I know she wouldn’t want Nikki to start slipping in school. Paris was all about education, and Nikki knows it.

  I have spent time with her every day since the funeral, and I’ve decided that she is the most amazing young woman I’ve ever known. Talking with her feels different in person than when I called from California to see what she was up to. She tells me her secrets and her dreams and I soak them in like a sponge, thinking that I never thought I’d know these things about her. Paris was the one she confided in, and I was the one who went looking for the latest Prada bag and sent it to her right away. When she and Paris came to visit, I thought I was being the best aunt I could be by introducing her to famous people, bringing her to the studio with me to watch me record tracks, and letting her shop endlessly. But there’s more growing between us now, and I don’t know if I should be afraid of what’s happening or not. We both know I’m not the most emotionally available person on the planet. Even scarier is the thought that I don’t know how to be.

  Oh, and she looks so much like Chad it kills me to look at her sometimes. She laughs and I catch myself staring at her mouth, at the way her dimples sink into her cheeks like wells, just like Chad’s used to do. She has his forehead, smooth and high, with eyebrows that spread out like wings. I look at her and think that Mannie, my makeup artist, would have a field day with her eyes. They are wide, the clearest green, and deep like an ocean. They talk even when her mouth is still and the things they tell me are frightening.

  I’ve seen videos of Nikki running track and I knew she was fast, but in person she is stunning. Whew, can she go! I tagged along with her and Kelli when they went running
yesterday, and I was reminded of every minute of my thirty-five years. She is tall and slim like Chad, and I can’t believe I have to look up at her when she is standing next to me. Seems like she’s grown three feet since the last time I saw her. They say pictures don’t really do their subjects justice, and they are absolutely right.

  I’m convinced that Nikki has a future in modeling, with her smooth, brown skin and long face. Did I say she is the spitting image of Chad already? Well, she is. Except for her eyes and hair. She has the Mayes’s green eyes and black hair, but everything else is purely Chad. Even the way she chews gum and blows bubbles. He has stamped everything she does.

  I can’t help feeling disloyal to Paris for being happy about this time I have with Nikki, because I know I never would’ve had it if she hadn’t gone away.

  I would never have come back to this godforsaken place if she were still alive.

  I have to go now. I told David Dixon I would meet him for lunch at Hayden’s Diner today. I’m still trying to figure out what the hell he wants with me, but I guess I have to eat, don’t I?

  Pam

  Miles arrived at Hayden’s Diner before Pam and chose a booth near the back of the room. The place had been designed to resemble a railroad car, with a Formica counter and cracked plastic stools running the length of one wall and plastic covered booths back-to-back along the opposite wall. Windows along the front of the diner afforded a view of Main Street. As he kept an eye out for Pam he wondered if every small town in America had a Main Street. Mercy’s was the town’s hubbub of activity, with various shops and professional offices situated in two long rows across the street from each other, like a frontier western town. The diner sat at the end of one of the rows, between a small dry cleaner and a free-standing building that housed the DMV office and a state family services center.