by E. Van Lowe
Chapter Five
My wipers were on high, I’d turned on the brights and yet I could barely see two feet in front of me. The rain was coming in sheets, cascading off my windshield like river water over a waterfall.
Rather than risk my first accident in a stolen/borrowed car two weeks before I was legal to drive, I pulled alongside the road to wait out to storm, or at least wait until the rain had eased up enough that I felt safe to drive.
I turned on the radio, but instead of a top forties tune pelting through the speakers, the harp and sitar song filled the car.
What the?
I turned off the radio, but the song played on. I squinted at the road ahead of me, then looked over my shoulder, squinting through the rear window. If my hunch was right, Lara was nearby. I sat staring at the road for several minutes, and then she walked past, head down, walking in the pouring rain.
I rolled down the window and the rains came in, bombarding my face. “Lara!” I called.
She continued away from me as if in a trance, as if she didn’t realize how hard it was raining.
I pulled the car back onto the road, caught up to her, and rolled down the passenger window.
“Lara! It’s me, Josh. Get in!” I called.
She emerged from her trance, and looked at me without stopping. “No, thank you,” she said.
“You’re getting soaked,” I called.
“Better than getting insulted,” she called back.
She shot me a look, and I felt the hand tighten its grip around my heart. “Lara, please get in. You’re shivering.”
She stopped, and took inventory of herself. She was soaked to the bone, the tank top and shorts clinging to her. Rain water ran as if from a leaky faucet down the tip of her nose.
“You sure you’re not a stalker dude? You sure seem like one,” she said.
“I’m not. I swear. I just want to help. I have a towel in the back. You can dry yourself. I won’t talk if you don’t want me to. Just, get in. We’ll pull over and wait out the storm.”
She hit me with a warning expression. “No talking!” she said.
I nodded, and pushed open the passenger door. She climbed in, sloshing rain water onto the passenger seat and console. I’d need to dry that off before I got home.
I grabbed the beach towel from the backseat and handed it to her. She began drying her hair as I pulled off the road.
I tried not looking at her, but I couldn’t help myself. She’d been dominating my thoughts ever since I first laid eyes on her.
“Stop staring at me,” she squawked.
“It’s either staring or talking,” I answered with a wry smile.
It was a terrible line, one that was sure to send her back out into the rain, but it didn’t. She smiled back.
You just dodged one, Joshie boy. Don’t blow it this time. Keep your mouth shut.
I noticed she was still shivering. “Be right back.”
I hopped out into the storm, went to the trunk, and found what I was hoping for. I got back in, and handed her the large USC sweatshirt.
“This is my Mom’s. It should fit you easy.”
She looked from the soft, dry sweatshirt, now in her hands, to me.
“You want me to change into this with you sitting right there?”
“That’d be nice,” I said with a grin. Before she had a chance to frown at me, I said: “Tell you what, I’ll turn my back and face the road. You can change, and tell me when it’s all clear.”
After a moment’s hesitation: “Okay.”
I turned my back to her, staring out onto the rain-soaked road. I could hear her shrugging out of the tank top, and then the shorts.
“So… this is your mother’s car?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. Stick to monosyllables, Dude.
“Does she know you’re out here in the rain?”
“No.” There ya go. Just stay with the Alexia Dupree conversation manual, and you are home free.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“What difference does that make?”
“Ooh, defensive. You must be fifteen.” There was a playful teasing to her voice that for some reason, I enjoyed. I liked being teased by her.
“Sixteen in two weeks,” I replied.
“You can turn around now.”
I did. If I thought Lara was sexy before, she now appeared old Hollywood sexy. She wore the oversized sweatshirt the way Marilyn Monroe must have worn a mink coat. Looking at her lit only by soft shafts of moonlight that had squeezed in between the rain drops, I knew I was falling in love with her.
She withdrew into a shadow, pulling back against the car door. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, her voice turning wary.
“Like what?” I asked, trying to play it cool.
“Like… you care,” she said, her voice dropping an octave. “You can’t like me, Joshua. Okay?”
“Okay,” I replied, knowing, of course, it was too late for that.
Her eyes were huge and luminous. In the daylight they were green, but in the moonlight, her eyes had been transformed into glorious emerald beacons, pulling me like a moth to a flame, insisting I love her.
Her lashes were long and beautiful as well. Her skin had an olive tone, as if she’d gotten just the right amount of sun. Her lips were pouty and pink. I looked away from her again, not because I wanted to, but because I knew if I kept staring, pretty soon I’d try to kiss those lips.
“Conner asked what were you reading before he dove in the pool yesterday. Were you and Alexia really reading?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Yes,” she replied, laughing lightly. “I wouldn’t lie. We were reading poetry. William Wordsworth.”
“I think I’ve heard of him.”
“He’s one of the romantic poets.”
“We haven’t gotten to romantic poetry in school yet. Maybe next semester.” She laughed again. “What’s funny?”
“We don’t read romantic poetry for school. We read it because it’s beautiful. It’s romantic.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t dawned on me that some people might read poetry when they didn’t have to.
“’My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.’ That’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “The romantics can take something as simple yet beautiful as a rainbow, and capture the feeling it provokes.”
“Okay, yeah. I get it,” I said, smiling so as not to appear dumb. As far as I was concerned, a rainbow was a rainbow. It didn’t evoke any feeling in me. But sitting there, staring at Lara sure did.
“Looks like the rain is letting up,” I said, grateful the storm was coming to an end.
The rain outside had softened to a heavy drizzle, a typical Southern California soup.
“I see.”
“I can drive now. Let me drive you home,” I said, my voice turning raspy. I didn’t look at her. The inside of my mother’s Camry suddenly felt small and claustrophobic. I continued staring at the road ahead.
“Okay,” she said, in that soft tremulous voice I found utterly irresistible. If she asked me to eat dirt with that voice I’d gladly do it.
Without glancing in her direction, I pulled away from the side of the road.
You can’t like me, Joshua.
As I drove on, her words of warning played over in my mind. It was the one thing she could ask me to do in that tremulous voice that I was immune to—liking her, loving her. She could say those words until the cows came home.
You can’t like me, Joshua.
Too late for that.