Love and Vandalism

by Laurie Boyle Crompton

  “Excuse me. I’m working.” My voice is dead as I push past him, not looking to see Hayes’s reaction.

  “What time you get off, sweet thing?” He follows too close.

  “My shift just started, and I’m with a customer.” We’ve reached the aisle with colored pencils, and I thrust a thumb toward them, turning just as Hayes catches up.

  Hayes looks at my recent shame with utter amusement, but Frat Boy stays focused on me. “What gives? Are you mad I didn’t call?”

  “What? I never even gave you my number. When I left, I literally told you it was a one-time thing.” I look back and forth between the two of them. “What is with the boys in this town, anyway?”

  “I knew I should’ve tried reaching you sooner.” Frat Boy cringes. “I didn’t think to call you here at the store.”

  Nobody has ever mistaken me for pouting over a neglected phone call.

  I say, “If I wanted to see you again, I would’ve gotten in touch with you.” I point a finger at Hayes. “And the same goes for you.”

  The two of them look at each other for a beat before Hayes’s face breaks into one of his easy, lopsided smiles. “Name’s Hayes.” He puts a hand out and Frat Boy shakes it with a look of confusion. “Recently moved into town and I’m Rory’s new friend.”

  “You are not my—”

  Hayes interrupts me. “I take it you two are, er, were together?”

  Frat Boy runs a hand through his curls, looking confused.

  “No,” I say. “Nobody here is together. There are no new friendships blooming. I just need to get back to work.”

  I leave the two of them looking bewildered while I move behind the counter.

  Kat has been straightening up a rack of temporary tattoos beside the register while pretending she’s not listening. I can see she’s trying not to snicker.

  “Seriously, what is happening with the world?” I say to her. “Could either of those two guys be any less my type?”

  She looks over to where Hayes is talking to Frat Boy and pretends she’s noticing them for the first time. “I don’t know. The guy with the wet hair is pretty hot.”

  “He’s not—” I give a small growl. “He doesn’t usually look like that.”

  Kat raises a pierced eyebrow. “Usually? As in, you’ve hung out with him on numerous occasions?”

  “No. Usually, as in, I just gave him a ride up to Stony Falls and he went for a swim. That guy is usually coated in cologne and hair gel.”

  “He still gets my vote.”

  I don’t respond as we both watch Hayes lean down to study the colored pencils. Frat Boy is walking in our direction.

  “Looks like they’ve come to some sort of agreement,” Kat says. “Perhaps they’re planning to share you?”

  “Ha. Like I’m some rubber, girl-shaped chew toy. Dumb dogs.”

  Kat looks toward Hayes and says under her breath, “Still, woof, woof.” She moves to the other side of the counter as Frat Boy approaches.

  He says, “So, your friend over there explained the situation.”

  I put my hands on my hips and tilt my head up at him. “Oh yeah? And what situation is that?”

  “That the two of you just started seeing each other and would I kindly mind stepping aside since things between you could get serious and I’m clearly just in it for a fun time anyway.”

  I laugh and look over at Hayes, who’s busy trying to open a small tin of colored pencils.

  “I told him you’re a big girl who seems capable of making her own decisions.”

  “Thank you. You are absolutely right.”

  He grins the way he did that first time we met. “Well, then, what time do you get off work?”

  “Easy there. I’ve decided you and I are never happening again. I wasn’t playing hard to get. I’m just genuinely not interested in another go. Sorry to be so forward, but let’s not waste any more time, shall we?”

  His smile hangs on for a moment before slipping off his face. “But I don’t—”

  “Thanks for the Lego bong hits. But bye now.” I give him a cheerful wave.

  Kat moves to stand beside me and her bright-pink lips draw into a phony smile. We wave in sync like a couple of animatronic dummies at Disney until Frat Boy finally gives a nod and backs away.

  At the door, he turns back to the two of us as we continue waving mechanically. “Well, if you change your mind…”

  But I keep my phony smile aimed a foot above his head, and he finally, finally gets the point and leaves.

  Kat and I dissolve into giggles as the bell chimes on the closing door.

  “I had no idea how to picture your friends, but I’m not surprised.” Hayes slides a box of quality colored pencils and a Moleskine notebook onto the counter.

  My laughter cuts off. “Kat, you want to take care of this one?”

  “Hello, Kat. I’m Hayes, Rory’s new friend.”

  I give an annoyed growl, and Kat bites her lower lip. “So, what about my appearance doesn’t surprise you?” she asks.

  He smiles at us. “It’s not your appearance. It’s your attitude. Exactly what I expected—your position so far above it all that you judge everything. Everything is a joke to you.”

  I snap, “Not everything is a joke to us.”

  Hayes nods his head toward the doorway. “That guy was. He was honestly under the impression that you liked him.”

  Kat moves in front of the register and starts ringing him up.

  “How do you know I don’t like him?”

  “You don’t seem the type to play hard to get.” He has no idea how true this is. “Besides, if you liked him, I would’ve been able to tell.”

  “Oh, so we just met and now you think you can read my mind or something?”

  “Not your mind, your body language.”

  “You did just use a self-defense move on the guy,” Kat chimes in as if that’s being at all helpful.

  I cross my arms in front of my chest. “Well, then, Hayes, what is my body language telling you right now?”

  He looks me up and down with a sultriness and confidence that I find utterly maddening. “It’s saying that you don’t trust yourself around me.”

  “That’ll be…twenty-four thirty-seven,” Kat whispers as if she doesn’t really want to interrupt us.

  Hayes keeps his eyes trained on me as he pulls a square of folded bills out of his back pocket and peels off two twenties. He slides them across the counter to Kat.

  “These are wet,” she says, but he doesn’t break eye contact with me.

  Laying the bills side by side on the counter to dry, Kat counts out his change and puts it in his outstretched hand.

  I pull my crossed arms tighter against my chest as his gaze softens with amusement. “Until next time,” he says to me, and before I can respond the bell on the door is ringing and he is gone.

  “Holy shit that was a lot of heat,” Kat says as soon as he’s out of earshot. “Did you hook up with him?” She picks up the two wet bills and waves them back and forth to air dry.

  “No. I told you, he’s not my type.” I start rifling through the tattoos she’s already straightened.

  “Yeah. Right,” she says. “If that boy is not your type, then you don’t have a type. Or eyes. Or a pulse. Or a—”

  “All right, all right. You’ve made your point.” I elbow her jokingly.

  “When are you seeing him again?”

  I shrug and realize I was just wondering the same exact thing.

  “Judging by the way he was looking at you, my guess is soon.”

  I hate the fact that I hope she’s right.

  Chapter Five

  “Heartbreak. Now there’s one that I wish I could spare you.” Mom’s brow furrows and she looks down at her hands as they rub together. “I still think of the time w
hen you were little and we were walking along the road together. You were holding on to your stroller and walking beside it, instead of riding, and we were moving so slowly. When we came across a dead squirrel, you asked me why he was lying so still.”

  I laugh. “Without hesitating you told me, ‘He’s sleeping.’”

  “I thought the concept of death was too sad for a toddler,” Mom says. “But when I told you he was sleeping, your response was, ‘That’s funny. He looks dead.’”

  She laughs and goes on to talk about the way my matter-of-fact approach will serve me well in life. “Death is real,” she says, but I can’t help thinking she’s always had me figured wrong. Calling her out on her denial of the obviously squished squirrel was just my way of trying to get her to tell the truth, to admit she’d fibbed.

  Parents should never lie to their children.

  Now she says, “No matter how hard our hearts are, they are all broken eventually by someone.”

  I don’t react. I am a rock, sitting completely still. Rory stone.

  I barely blink as she segues smoothly from heartbreak to the topic of sex. “It’s important that you ask yourself if you’re really ready. You should never feel pressured into it. Sex is best when it is experienced with someone you truly love and you only have one first time. Spend it wisely. It should be with someone really special who treats you well.” She repeats, “You only have one first time.”

  After a pause, she confesses that Dad wasn’t her first, and I feel a wave of satisfaction at that. When a tear rolls down her cheek, I reach out but stop myself before touching her smooth face. She smiles and wipes the tear herself while shaking her head. “I was crazy about him.”

  As Mom describes her first wild love affair, I try to imagine what she was like when she was young. Before she was my mother.

  I have a picture of her when she was about my age in a frame on my dresser, and it shows her sitting on a bench in Central Park with a sunbeam illuminating her smile. She’s a beautiful stranger in that photo. Someone who looks a lot like me. Somebody I can never know. A young woman glowing with a freedom and happiness that, for some reason, makes me immensely sad every time I look at that photo.

  I’ve never seen my mother smile that purely in real life.

  I need to figure out a way to protect some part of that glowing girl who’s long gone.

  Dad needs to be confronted head-on. He’s still out, so I end the conversation with Mom early and sneak into his office, which is technically just a computer table in a corner of our den. I need to figure out when he’s meeting his mistress. This all has to end now.

  Since dad always uses RoryGrrl1 as his password, it’s a snap to jump onto his calendar. Technically, what I’m doing can’t even be considered hacking, since he knows that I know the password to all his stuff.

  Still, I’d rather avoid a confrontation at this point. Better to save the real screaming for after I have hard-core proof of his philandering ways.

  A quick scan of his past few months reveals nothing other than the fact that, here and there, he’s apparently been attending church. I’m upset by this for some reason.

  Not that I’d jump at an invitation to church, but Dad never even mentioned he was going, and it takes me a moment to shake off feeling excluded.

  I take a closer look at this month’s calendar. There’s nothing obviously out of place at first glance.

  Then I notice the semicolons scattered here and there, sometimes as many as three in one week.

  I think of the way I create events that contain only a period to track my monthly cycle and know immediately that I’ve broken his code.

  Sure enough, there’s a mark in the time slot from when he butt-dialed me while on his date. I cringe at that remembered half conversation and scan for more clues to bust him.

  Unfortunately, he must write down where he’s meeting his mistress in a different, secret calendar. Either that or he just keeps it stored in his head. He’s extremely “trust averse,” so that’s probably his method.

  I’m so frustrated, I want to fling the computer against the wall. I want to run into the other room and scream for Mom to see what’s happening right now, but I can’t even come up with actual evidence to catch the bastard.

  I should’ve thought to hit Record on that message.

  The next semicolon is just a few days away, but unless I manage to follow him without his knowing, an utter impossibility due to his stupid intuition, Dad is going to continue getting away with this.

  When he comes home, he’s carrying a big sack of Chinese takeout as some sort of bribe or peace offering or way of sucking me back in.

  I tell him I already ate and that I have to get started on my summer assignments. I do have summer assignments; I’m just not really doing anything about them.

  Grabbing a bag of chips from the pantry, I storm upstairs, telling myself that I just need to have patience. Because if there’s one thing I trust absolutely, it’s that the truth will always come out eventually.

  • • •

  It’s overcast and so the beach is empty as Scott and I sit on our lifeguard bench exchanging hiking stories.

  I’m rubbing on a layer of sunblock, since I got sunburned the last time it was overcast, and he’s telling me about the bear he saw when he first started working here at the park.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “When I came around the bend, there was this huge, black, furry thing. It took me a minute to realize it wasn’t a giant dog.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was actually reaching for my phone to take a picture, and the bear stopped walking, turned, and looked directly at me.”

  “Did you get a picture?”

  Scott’s eyes follow my hands as I rub lotion onto my leg. “Hell no. I got busy trying to scope out a tree that would be easy for me to climb.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Climbing trees is how you escape grizzlies. Black bears are really good tree climbers.” We only have black bears here in the Northeast.

  “Yes, I know. But I was totally new to the woods, and my mind just went blank with terror. I knew enough to look around for cubs, but couldn’t remember if I was supposed to run or stand my ground or hold my arms up to look bigger.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t start running.” I slide both hands up and down my thigh, partially to avoid streaks, but mostly just to mess with him.

  He watches me openly for a moment before shaking his head and looking out toward the lake. “No, I instinctively backed away real slow, and he lost interest and walked off into the woods.”

  “Yeah, they usually don’t mess with humans.”

  “I know that now, but wow was I ever amped-up for the rest of that day.”

  “Now do you wear a bell when you check the trails?” One of Scott’s jobs is to hike the trails to make sure there aren’t any fallen trees blocking the various paths.

  “Nah.” Scott dismisses me with a wave. “Rattlesnakes are the bigger danger out there.”

  “That’s true.” I put the lid on my lotion and shove it back into my bag.

  He says, “But I do carry bear spray.”

  I roll my eyes. “Because being armed is somehow better than trying to avoid conflict in the first place. I’m getting you a bell. You’ll never have to worry again.”

  “Oh, hey,” Scott says. “I’ve been meaning to ask how things turned out with the sarge?” At my confused look, he goes on. “The other day? When he butt-dialed you?”

  “Oh, yeah. That situation is all shades of fucked up.” I jump down from the bench, pick up a handful of stones, and pull out the flattest ones I can find.

  “Are you okay?” he asks from above me.

  “I’ve been checking his calendar”—*Toss.* Skip-skip-splash!—“trying to catch him in the act.” *Toss.* Skip-skip-skip-splash! “I figured ou
t how he marks the times he meets his mistress”—*Toss.* Skip-skip-splash!—“but I have no idea how to track down a location.” *Toss.* Skip-skip-skip-skip-splash!

  “Have you considered shadowing him?” Scott asks.

  “I really don’t want to resort to that. He has this weird sixth sense and would definitely bust me.”

  “Hey!” A familiar voice rings out, and with an involuntary startle, I throw in the rest of my rocks. Splash-splash-splash-splash-splash!

  I spin around and see Hayes strolling across the rocky beach toward me. “No need to shadow me, Rory. I’m right here.”

  “Because of course you are.” I wipe my hands on the butt of my suit and leap back up to the lifeguard bench beside Scott.

  Hayes stands directly in front of us and reaches a hand up toward Scott. “Name’s Hayes. Friend of Rory’s.”

  Scott looks Hayes up and down as if he’s just been challenged to a pissing contest but leans down and gives his hand a quick shake.

  “You do realize that telling everyone that doesn’t make it true.” I turn to Scott. “We’re not really friends.”

  “See, now, that’s just hurtful.” Hayes looks at Scott. “Is she always so hurtful?”

  Scott twirls his whistle, winding the string up his two fingers. “Yeah, she’s a real heartbreaker, all right.” He squints out over the lake and hunches down in his seat.

  “Just ignore him.” I pretend to scan the smooth water.

  Hayes says, “Why? He seems like a perfectly nice guy.”

  “Not him,” I spit. “You. We’re ignoring you. Trying to work here.”

  Hayes turns and looks around. “You’re guarding an empty lake?”

  Scott looks down, but I elbow him and nod for him to continue looking off into the middle distance.

  I’m half-messing with Hayes and half-avoiding that growing zing of desire that makes me feel out of control whenever I’m around him.

  Zero eye contact with Hayes means zero zinging.

  The three of us stay like that in silence for a time until I hear the distinct sound of a fly unzipping. “Hey, you can’t—”