Emerge

by Lila Felix

  “Ok, Ok, you win. I found your locker so I could see you first thing in the morning instead of waiting all freakin’ day until 6 period.” He laughed.

  “Awww…” I cooed at him.

  “Come on, didn’t you need to get into your locker.”

  “Not really, I was just told there was a hot guy there. I guess he left.” I cocked my eyebrow at him.

  “Ouch,” he said jokingly.

  We walked back to my locker and I put half of my books back in it from the weekend.

  “Where’s your homeroom?”

  “ The Science Building. You?” I asked.

  “Ugh, all the way out by the Driver’s Ed. Class.” He groaned.

  He was right. It was a long hot walk all the way out there. The warning bell startled us both a little.

  “So…” I started, “I guess I’ll see you in sixth.”

  He did this thing where he poked his bottom lip out and looked like he was thinking. It made me wonder what his lips felt like. He caught me looking at his lips and smiled.

  “We’ll see if I can make it sooner. I bet I can.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “I have my ways.”

  And with that he walked down the hall, the same way I had walked before and before he stepped onto the stairs he waved. I was too busy dreaming up creative ways we could meet up during the day to wave back.

  Chapter 11

  Every time I left one class and made my way to another I looked out for him. After third period, making my way to fourth period, I gave up. It was already half way through the day and I hadn’t spotted him even once. This was my first mistake, letting my guard down. My second mistake was giving up on him.

  I came into the Language Arts building and needed to make my way up the stairs to AP Civics. I turned with the herd making my way towards the stairs when my eyes found him down the hall. I wanted to see him, but I also didn’t want him to win. He had a look on his face like a jaguar which had zeroed in on his prey. My heart jolted and I did what any worthy prey would do…I ran… up the stairs at a furious pace taking out half of the other students in the process. I squeezed and moved my shoulders in unnatural angles trying to outwit my hunter.

  When I got to the top of the stairs I leaned out over the railing at the top and saw his face smiling back up at me. I wiggled my eyebrows at him smugly and he shook his head at me and walked out but not before he was nearly trampled by the now tardy herd.

  I waited for fourth period to end and before I even tried to make it out to the Science Building I looked out of the window for the other player in our two player game. I didn’t see him anywhere. So I walked back down the stairs and intended to scurry across the Quad to the Science building. I slowed my walk as I got closer, confident that he wouldn’t find me now. I walked into the building and into my classroom and sat, proud as a peacock, knowing I had outsmarted him again.

  Class began and about 5 minutes into it, the phone on the wall began to ring. Mrs. Credence answered it, opening her lab jacket and sticking his fist on her hip with a huff. She ‘mmmhhhmmed’ and “unnnhunnned” for a few seconds and then turned with the phone still to her ear.

  She looked directly at me, annoyed, and said “Jenna, you’re needed to the computer lab for some type of project.”

  I looked around wide–eyed. I had never been called out of class, plus, I didn’t have computer lab or a project.

  I gathered my things and put my bag across my chest and headed to the computer lab. It was right down the hall and I hesitantly poked my head into the door. There was only one student and one teacher. I put my hands on my hips and smiled.

  “Where’s the project?” I said.

  The big bellied teacher smiled and laughed a jolly laugh and pointed to the student. Then he went into an office which connected to the lab.

  “There’s an extremely important project right over there,” he said as he exited.

  Carlos turned around in the computer chair and smiled the smirk of a person who had just won a round of “hide and seek”.

  I squinted my eyes and gave him my most angry look, which wasn’t very intimidating and asked, “You think you’re funny?”

  He laughed and said, “No, I think I am ingenius.”

  I relented and sat down in the chair next to him, sighed and said, “True.”

  I looked around and said, “Where are all the other students?”

  He looked around as well and said “Oh, this is the one period where there is no computer lab. And I have Independent Study this hour, so Mr. Rhodes usually lets me hang out in here.”

  I let out a small huff of breath and smiled, “Good to know.”

  We talked and joked around for the rest of the hour and both groaned when the bell rang for the next class.

  “See you later,” he said as we began to walk in separate directions after leaving the building.

  Sixth period finally arrived and I spent most of it reading…well, pretending to read. Carlos spent a few minutes talking to his friends. He was sitting on the very edge of the chair and doing that knee bobbing thing and he kept looking back and forth between me and his friends. I couldn’t help but giggle, but tried to cover my mouth to cover it up.

  He got up, and walked to my corner of the classroom and I glued my eyes to the book in front of me pretending not to see him. He moved the desk beside me to in front of me and just sat there. After reading the paragraph at the top of the page about three times over, I looked up at him.

  “Is it funny?” he asked with the greatest grin on his face.

  “Is what funny?” I really didn’t know what he was referring to.

  “Your book. You’ve been trying to hide your giggling over here for about ten minutes.” How did he see I was giggling?

  “Um..no…not really. I was laughing about something else.”

  “Oh, really, now I’m curious. What is it?” He rested his chin in his palm and waited for his answer. Like he doesn’t know.

  “If you must know…” He raised his eyebrows so he must need to know. “I was laughing at you over there perched on the edge of your chair, and you were doing that thing with your knee. You weren’t even paying attention to your friends, you were just nodding. It was funny.” I dipped my chin slightly, satisfied that I’d gotten all of that out.

  He got this immensely serious look on his face and said “So…you were watching me?” One of his eyebrows went up a little as he finished his question.

  I scrunched my face up in embarrassment and looked up at the ceiling. He grabbed my hands and rubbed his thumbs and fingertips over my fingertips.

  “J, look at me,” he said and he was whispering and it made me shiver all over.

  I slowly met his gaze and blew out a breath. I was caught. And it humiliated that hell out of me. I was so new at this… And so bad at this.

  “You have no poker face, you know that?” He continued to whisper.

  “I really don’t. I blush at everything. Sorry.” I felt like my chest cavity was wide open. Not only had I let down my walls, but they were down and crushed on the ground and I was open and it was completely new and weird and uncomfortable and freeing.

  “It’s a really great blush.” His voice was gentle and I knew he was sincere.

  “I…” I tried to croak out a ‘Thank you’ but there was no use. That bell had a personal vendetta against me.

  He said quickly, “So…can I take you home again?”

  My eyes went wide and my heart trampolined down to my stomach and up into my throat at the thought of the chastising I would endure if they were home when I got home.

  “Hey,” he said… “It’s ok, I was just hoping…”

  “No!” He instantly misunderstood. “I mean, no, I’m not going to let them scare me out of everything. I would really like a ride home.”

  He rubbed the top of his short black hair and was thinking about it. It was a sight to behold and I flexed my hands behind my back protesting their need to feel it
for myself.

  “Ok, if you’re sure.” He finally grinned, but it wasn’t a full-on smile.

  “We’d better hurry up. You are getting close to your Jenna quota.”

  He laughed and we walked out of the classroom, then the building. We got into his car and took off towards my house.

  “Are you hungry or anything?” He looked over at me. There’s this feeling you get when someone asks you if you want food or something to drink but they are really asking because they are hungry or thirsty.

  “Not really. I mean I could use a Coke. Are you?” I sang the ‘you’ part to let him know I was onto him.

  “Yeah…” he laughed… “I’m starving. But I can wait.”

  “No, it’s fine. Anyway, I usually get home a lot later. So it’s not a big deal.”

  “Ok, where?” he asked as he drove that stubborn stick shift.

  “ I don’t care. Anywhere.” And I would. I would go anywhere with him.

  We drove around for a while and then we stopped at this taco stand that had the most divine carne asada tacos ever. I had never had them and got this flabbergasted “What? You’ve never had…” he sighed and shook his head. We ate and talked and talked some more. About 20 minutes before I usually arrived home, we left.

  We pulled up at the blue house with the unkempt yard and I was so relieved that they weren’t home that my whole body allowed itself to relax. It was as if I was in a full body cast and someone had just cut it off.

  He asked me if we could go out again this Saturday, during the day.

  I said, “of course.”

  We decided that he would pick me up at three so that he could go home after work and get some rest and my shift at the music store ended at two.

  I tried not to stay in the car too long because I didn’t want to get caught by my parents or tattle tailed on by my nosey neighbors either. But truth be told, if he had suggested driving away and never looking back…if it wasn’t for May…I would’ve gone in a heartbeat.

  I threaded my small childlike fingers through his warm calloused ones and sighed all the things I was feeling.

  He shook my hand to wake me from my pity party and said, “I don’t want you to go but I don’t want you to stay here and get in trouble either. You know?”

  All I could do was nod.

  I reached up out of pure instinct and ran my hands down the back of his skull trimmed hair. He looked at me in a way I had never been looked at before and couldn’t explain.

  Then the loudest horn I had ever heard blared from behind us. We both turned around and there was a huge truck trying to get around Carlos’ car to get onto the freeway. We said a quick, “See you tomorrow.” The horn blared again as I scrambled to get out of the car so he could drive out of the way of the trucker with the Jeeper’s Creepers horn attached to his truck.

  I walked up the drive feeling a loss of something. I felt the loss of his presence and was reminded of my life as I turned the knob to that horrible white door with the sad duct taped window.

  Chapter 13

  That afternoon and night went as close to normal as I get. I went to work, and when I got home my mom and step-dad were home so I finished some homework and played with May. She had gotten a toy as a treat for good work in her new preschool. Who knows where they got the money for that, or if they bought it.

  School was now a joy for me. Not because I was escaping my life or trying to distract myself from my disturbed parents, but because I had something to look forward to. And there was someone there who cared. There was someone there who apparently looked for my arrival and searched for me in the halls the way I did for him.

  He had made an appearance at my locker every morning since and I could almost tell you down to the second when I would see him in between classes. But I couldn’t help but have a knot in my gut. It was all going too well, too fast and my parents were way too complacent about my going out. It was a feeling of impending doom, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  We decided during Drama class that we were going to go to the Santa Monica pier. I had only been a few times and when I had we didn’t have any money for rides or games or anything. I left that out of the conversation.

  Carlos had to go to work that night so I rode the bus home and everyone was home when I got home. May was playing outside in the yard, which was typical. She waved at me and showed me her soup she was making which was actually dirty water in a pail with leaves. I went to work and got another paycheck. I still had not spent mine from the last payday, so I decided to go to the thrift store to look for something new to wear on Saturday.

  The lady at the Barely Worn thrift store was a younger woman, maybe 26 or 27 and I could never remember her name but she remembered mine every time. She reminded me of the record store owner on the movie Pretty in Pink…The one who wore clothes that made her look like a different character every day.

  Today she had on this black leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up and she had dyed her short hair black. She had tons of black eyeliner on…I took a guess.

  “Joan Jett?”

  She laughed and said, “Yeah Jenna, 80’s Joan Jett. Good guess.”

  “Thanks.”

  I looked around a bit. There was absolutely no order to the store whatsoever. It was total chaos. You could never tell if the pants you found had been there for years and you had overlooked them or if they were a new item. And Joan Jett wasn’t going to tell you either.

  I found a really cute navy blue scoop neck shirt that cinched on the sides with a gray ribbon. I also bought two pairs of jeans, a new sweater and a pair of lavender Chucks. Because you could never have enough Chucks. I also found May a new set of pajamas with little bottles of fingernail polish on them. I paid Joan and decided to get home and wash my ‘new’ clothes so I could wear them on Saturday.

  I stopped by the used bookstore and traded books for my store credit for selling my read books back to her. Happy with my purchases, I headed home to finish my homework for the weekend so I wasn’t stuck doing it on Friday.

  I got home and my Mom and Step-Dad were waiting in the kitchen hopping up and down on their toes. The nutcracker dancers had nothing on these two.

  My Mom sneered at my bags and said, “Oh, excuse us Ma’am, little shopping diva, but we need to go…somewhere. Could you come down off of your high horse for a little while and watch May?”

  “Mom, I spent twelve dollars. My books were free because I had store credit.”

  “Well, whatever, it must be nice.”

  “Yeah, I’m happy to watch May. Has she eaten dinner?”

  Rage ignited her face and she grabbed me by the throat and got so close into my face that I could see the red lines in the whites of her eyes.

  “Look you snotty bitch, we fed her ok? Ugh..we’re late now. Thanks.”

  She let go of my throat and I stumbled back a bit into the refrigerator.

  My Step-Dad laughed and said, “Don’t fall.” He shoved past me and they started the car and flew out of the driveway.

  I put my own hand around my throat where she had and brought back my hand to look. There was a little blood. I made my way to the bathroom after throwing my bags onto my bed and went into the bathroom to inspect the damage. It wasn’t bad, there were just some scratches under my jawline and one was a little deeper than the other and was seeping a tiny amount of blood. It cleaned up with warm water and I went to find May.

  I found May playing in her usual spot in the backyard, by herself and her blonde curls were tipped with mud and she was concentrating so hard that she had her little pink tongue out while she worked. She had little purple overalls on with a white t shirt underneath that looked a little too snug around the tops of her arms.

  “Hey…” I sat down cross-legged beside her. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

  She caught on to my game at once.

  “Well, Madam, tonight we’re having salad with chowder.”

  I gave her an incredulous look.

 
“Really? Chowder? Have you ever eaten chowder?”

  She stopped stirring and her tongue took a trip to her top lip to help her think.

  “No, but there’s a guy named Chowder on t.v. and they said it was like soup.”

  “It is…” I giggled at her “You’re right. Did you eat dinner?”

  She gave me the hardest meanest glare that her four year old face could muster, put her hand on her hip and huffed.

  “Do you call a Pop-Tart dinner?”

  “No Ma’am…I call it a Pop-Tart.”

  She laughed and said, “I call it gross. They asked if I wanted soup and I said ‘no’ even though I did.”

  We laughed for a while and she showed me how to make a perfect leaf chowder garnished with bark.

  “Hey Sprite…I think someone got you some new pajamas today.”

  She dropped everything and said, “I wanna see. I wanna see!”

  We went inside and we made chicken soup because she was apparently on a soup kick inside and outside. She took a bath and after she was dried we did a very extravagant ‘new pajama’ reveal.

  She put her new pajamas on and hopped into bed. I thought about sneaking to call Carlos but I remembered that he was at work. He worked from 7 p.m. until 2 a.m. that night. I took my own shower and got into bed pretty early. I started on one of my newish books and took solace in the peace and quiet.

  When the car lights flooded my window I looked at my alarm clock and it was 3:14 am. What in the world could unemployed people be doing out until 3 o’clock in the morning? Maybe it was better if I didn’t know. It might make me an accomplice.

  I went to work the next morning. It was really busy in the store and there were tons of different types of sheet music to re-shelve. The Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra had been in during the week and had plowed trough every piece that we had.

  I got off at 1:30. I was supposed to leave at noon but I hadn’t finished re-shelving all of the music so I stayed to finish…not to mention the overtime.

  I rushed home and got into the shower. My parents and May were gone so I could be giddy for my date in relative peace. I put on my newish outfit and decided on some flip flops instead of the Chucks. I went to grab some of the cash leftover from my last paycheck. I opened the dresser and rooted around in my usual spot under the old wooden box that I used for my jewelry but came up empty. I thought I must’ve put it in my purse so I checked there. Nothing. Then it hit me.