A Shot in the Dark

by L. J. Stock

  “I’m a junior at Childress high. Why does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t, I guess. I’ve just never seen you before.”

  “Big shock there,” I mumbled, waving my hand in front of my face to get rid of a mosquito before planting it over my eyes to look up at him without being blinded “You wanna tell me why you were trying to kill me?”

  “I wasn’t. I just couldn’t see that well. There were two cars, and I was trying to figure out which one was the real one.” He had the audacity to laugh at that and rocked back on his heels.

  “Are you kidding me?” I snapped, looking up and seeing his red eyes. He was either really drunk, or he had the beginnings of pinkeye.

  “Yes,” Dustin said, laughing once without humor. He kicked the dirt with his boot harder than necessary sending a stone skittering into my car. “Well… partly. I’ve only had a mouthful or three. I’m not drunk yet. I was just on my way to get drunk.”

  “And you were driving like an idiot because...?”

  “It don’t matter.”

  “Yeah, it kinda does. You could have killed us both,” I said again, examining his handsome face with a little more scrutiny. “Are you high?”

  “No, but I like the way you think.” He clicked his fingers together and pointed at me, flashing his most charismatic smile in my direction. “Do you know where I could score some recreational drugs?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded, stepping away from him like I could contract what he had by sharing the same air. He was frantic and chaotic, his red eyes darting from side to side as he scratched the side of his nose. He was starting to scare me, and though I was sure it hadn’t been his intention, I couldn’t calm my heart down enough to make it hear reason.

  “Nothing's wrong with me. I just need to get kicked off the team fast.” Dustin turned away from me and started toward the back of his truck like he hadn’t dropped that little landmine on top of everything else. It took a while for the words to register in my addled, anxiety-strewn mind, but the moment they did, I found myself following him, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  Dustin pulled down his tailgate and hopped up, his legs swinging idly as he stared at the ground below him solemnly. His eyes were cast into shadow by the bill of his cap, but it wasn’t hard to see that he was deeply bothered by something.

  “Why do you need to get kicked off?” I asked inquisitively. “Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, quit?”

  It was none of my business, and I wasn’t even sure he would answer me, but whatever his problem was, it seemed to be bothering him enough to act erratically in an attempt to be kicked from the team. This kind of behavior was a cry for help if ever I saw one. I normally would have walked away and let someone else deal with the fallout. I was better suited to fading into the shadows than being front and center for problem-solving. Unfortunately, I was the only one here now, and Dustin seemed like he really needed to talk to… well… anyone.

  Patting the tailgate next to him in an invitation, Dustin leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs as he waited for me to comply. It wasn’t an order, it was a request, and I couldn’t see any harm in sitting there while he bent my ear. It wasn’t like he would even remember I existed on Monday. I had nothing to lose but time, and that was something I had plenty of.

  Slipping up next to him, I folded my legs under me and turned to face him, watching as he pulled the bill of his cap farther down over his eyes to hide them from me. I watched him carefully, studying the way he pinched the bridge of his nose before pushing his index finger and thumb out over the tops of his cheeks. It took me a while to recognize what was going on. I wasn’t great with social prompts, either, apparently. I had a total of one friend, and she was pretty straightforward. I don’t think I’d seen a guy cry since my dad had at Mom’s funeral. It was something most men hid well from the world around them, especially from kids and women—which was ridiculous—and if I hadn’t been studying Dustin as intensely as I had, I would have missed it.

  “Dustin?” It was an invitation to talk, and to my surprise he took it.

  “You ever feel like you’re running out of time? Like life is passing you by so quickly you start to feel dizzy?” he asked thickly.

  “I think everyone does at one time or another, and it probably gets worse the older you get. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m running out of time… with my mom. She has terminal cancer, and they’ve given her a few years at most. They’re trying everything they can to help her to give her more time, but the end is still an inevitability. No cure. No hope.” He shrugged. “No time. That’s all I want with her.”

  I let out a long, loaded breath. Every piece of air in my lungs forced itself from me as my heart tightened in my chest for him. My memories of the months following my mom’s death flooded my head like a dam had broken, and they kept coming until my stomach rolled painfully. I’d never wish that feeling on anyone. The hopelessness, the void that sat in the center of your chest, and the ache that always managed to linger in the jagged wound was too much to feel all at once. I’d lost my mom at a young age, and it had sucked, but to lose her now would… I couldn’t even imagine.

  “I’m so very sorry, Dustin.”

  He waved me off, grabbing a blade of the long grass that was hitting his calves as he swung his legs. There was no response to that, and I hadn’t really expected one. You couldn’t say thank you because in your head it sounded like you were fishing for sympathy. You couldn’t say it’s okay because it wasn’t, not ever, and with it still happening I doubted he would feel it would ever be okay again. So the wave was an appropriate response that said everything and nothing at all in the same breath.

  “Can’t you just tell them that?”

  “No one would listen. My dad told me I was going to play and that was that.”

  “Your mom?”

  Dustin laughed bitterly and started pulling the grass apart, throwing it back to the dirt below us and watching it flutter slowly. “She thinks I actually want to play, so she agrees with him.”

  “And do you?”

  “Sure, I love football, but I want to get to know her in every way. I want to spend as much time with her as I can before she dies because I know how much of a gift each day is. I think about all of that time I would waste on the field in practice, traveling for the away games, running, weight training. I only see her for an hour most days as it is.”

  “Can you maybe tell her that?”

  “Not without upsetting her,” he said, finally looking up at me with those impenetrable eyes. “I feel like I’d just be reminding her that her days are numbered. Dad just pretends it’s not happening, and my brother, Rett, he drinks all the damn time, so he doesn’t have to remember. I’m the only one that seems to be focusing on what life would be like without her in it.”

  I understood that. I couldn’t even imagine knowing that death was on the tracks and refusing to be derailed. How did you reconcile with the inevitable? How did you cope with the huge part of your life, knowing it could be taken from you at any time? You couldn’t. This wasn’t about me, though. This was about Dustin, and where I could see his good intentions, I could also see the huge, Texas-sized flaw in it.

  “So, your big plan is to get kicked off the team?”

  “In a nutshell.” He shrugged.

  “And how’s that working out for you?”

  Dustin started laughing and turned to face me. It was the first time since he’d started talking that his face didn’t look stricken and gaunt. I could see why the female population of Childress High School went weak at the knees for him when he turned his smile on he was blinding.

  “No one seems to give a shit. I’m afraid to try something more drastic, but, even then, I think I would be forgiven.”

  “You’ll miss that one day.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and then grinned brightly. “Probably. But right now, it’s inconvenient.”

  I rolled my eyes at him p
layfully and dropped my legs, swinging them for a while as I let my mind mull over what I was about to offer. The shade of my trees had always been my escape, and I hadn’t even shared that solace with Megan. I’d discovered the small grove on one of my many ‘hikes’ after my mom had died.

  “Okay. This is a one-time offer, but I can see you need the solace. If you help me change my tire, I will take you somewhere you can hide until after the game.”

  “You gonna help me hide from the town?” He flashed me his grin.

  I smiled and nodded. “It’s a one-time offer.”

  “You’re using me for manual labor.”

  “Well, it is your fault, so technically you should be offering anyway.”

  “You’re not going to the game?”

  “I never do,” I admitted, shuffling awkwardly.

  “I should be insulted or something.” He looked out at the road. There was nothing coming. You could have seen a car approaching from miles away if there were any, but he knew as well as I did it was only a matter of time until the coach—or his dad—sent someone out to look for him.

  “Well?” I asked, my hands pushing me up and off the tailgate. My skin was tingling from the heat of the metal. “That a yes or a no, Mr. Hill?”

  “That’s a yes, along with a polite request never to call me that again.” He smiled and pushed off, his boots hitting the dirt with a dull thud that sent up a small cloud of dust. “Can I ask you a question first?”

  “Sure. If you must,” I teased, heading back to my car and turning to walk backward so I was facing him.

  “What the fuck is your name?”

  I couldn’t help my small burst of laughter. Dustin sounded perplexed by the whole thing, as though he should know the name of everyone at school. “I’m Miki.”

  “Just Miki?”

  “For now,” I said, and then turned around to head to my car, my stomach feeling oddly warm.

  It only took us thirty minutes to work out how to change a tire between us. Dustin was handy, and I was good at reading instructions. Between the two of us, we got my tire changed and were back on the road before another car made its way down the highway. I was pretty sure he wasn’t missed yet, just tardy, which meant they wouldn’t look for him for a while, but they would look. This season was their season.

  Dustin followed me north toward the state line, keeping at a safe distance this time, choosing to drive slowly as we went off-road and headed toward the group of trees that had been my safe place for so long. Once we were both past the hanging branches of the willow, I cut my engine and flipped my radio on, climbing out of the open window and onto the hood of my car and crossing my ankles as I settled in for the long haul.

  “How the hell did you find this place?” Dustin asked, turning in a circle before sliding onto the hood next to me and crossing his ankles to mirror mine. Bad Company’s Seagull was playing quietly, filling in the silence as he got comfortable, but it was only a matter of time before his eyes fell to me in search of an answer. In the quiet coolness of the trees shade, his scrutiny felt oddly intimate.

  “I found this place when I was nine.” I reached up and pulled a leaf from a low-lying branch, twirling it between my fingers as I chose my words carefully. “I think it was one of my attempts to run away from home. I was just walking, and up this small grove popped from all the flatness, like a mirage in the desert. I was so hot that I crawled underneath with my doll, curled up and eventually went to sleep. I woke up the next morning covered in mosquito bites and decided I wasn’t cut out for camping.”

  “Your parents must have been frantic.”

  “My mom died the year before, and my dad didn’t really notice I was gone.”

  I knew how pathetic that sounded. I could have lied and said my father had embraced me and made me promise never to run away again, but my dad made no apologies for his lifestyle, so I never felt the need to make excuses for him. If I ever needed an adult, I’d always gone to Megan’s mom, my godmother, Jennifer. She’d been my mom’s best friend since they’d been girls, and she was the only reason I even had a car.

  “Come on. He didn’t notice?” The incredulity in his voice was easy to hear. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe what I was telling him, more that he couldn’t accept that a father wouldn’t worry that his nine-year-old daughter had gone missing. I think most people would think the same, and that was what made me feel the need to explain my sad past.

  “My mom got pregnant with me when she was sixteen. My dad was seventeen. When I ran away, my dad was only twenty-six and making up for lost time in a big way.” I shrugged, my hands brushing along a low hanging branch slowly. “He loved my mom with all his heart, and she wanted me, but as much as my father loved me, I don’t think I was a choice he would have made. He still had so much life to live. He lost his football scholarship to be a dad and husband, and when mom died, I think he was trying to relive the golden years of his life.”

  “Now he’s what? Thirty-something?” Dustin asked, his lip curled in disgust. “He still hasn’t got time to be a dad?”

  “He doesn’t need to. I’m self-sufficient.” I left no room for discussion. I knew who and what my father was, and though I was more than resigned to that part of my life, I didn’t need someone who had no intimate knowledge of the situation making a judgment call.

  Oblivious, Dustin curled an arm under his head and turned to study me. I could feel the intensity of his gaze and met it head on, my eyes holding his as I ignored the fluttering of uncertainty and excitement that spread under my skin and covered my entire body.

  “That’s not healthy, Miki.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “But I’m alive. I’m well fed. I go to school every day. His girlfriends leave me alone. His friends don’t even know I’m there, and I get on with my life, doing what I have to do to move on when I’m old enough to get the hell out of there.”

  “Money?”

  “He leaves me cash, and if he forgets, my mom’s best friend loans it to me and then collects from him.”

  “When was the last time you had a conversation with him?” It was a really personal question, but he wasn’t prying. I think Dustin was more curious about my situation now. As long as I didn’t feel like a science project, I was happy to answer his questions.

  “I think I was ten.” I was being sarcastic mostly, but ten was the last time my dad and I had shared any kind of meaningful conversation. We’d talked about Mom, and in a moment of lucidity, he’d apologized for never being there and promised to do better and be a father. The attention had lasted all of a week before he’d gone out to the bar and got drunk, forgetting about me all over again. That was when the women had started coming to the house, and I’d quickly learned to become invisible. There were only so many times you could stumble into a semi-dressed drunk woman on her way to the bathroom before you learned to stay in the shadows.

  Dustin was almost too easy to talk to. He asked all the right questions—questions that made me respond without much thought. I’d never been a chatty person, and I normally gave my answers in as few words as necessary before attempting to blend back in with the walls, just in case anyone tried to have an actual conversation with me. Invisibility was a natural reaction to my unique situation.

  Dustin gave as much, if not more than he took, and his open responses made me more comfortable than I should’ve been. There was nothing off the table, no topic too sensitive or disturbing, and it wasn’t until almost dawn that I finally hit a subject that he wasn’t inclined to expand on.

  “Will Libby be pissed about your being gone tonight?” I asked quietly as his hand brushed against mine. During the course of the night, we’d slowly been gravitating toward one another and were currently almost nose-to-nose as we were laid on our sides. There was a deep intimacy in the way we talked, and the way he studied every inch of my face when he’d asked me a hard question. My faux pas had come only when I’d been staring at his lips for far too long and suddenly remembered he h
ad a girlfriend, who was, of course, on the drill team and one of the most popular, beautiful girls in our school.

  “I really don’t wanna talk about Libby tonight,” Dustin said, sitting up and resting his forearms on his drawn up knees. There was a finality in his tone that only made me more curious about his reaction. He’d been so open about everything else that these walls seemed jarring.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” I rolled on my back and stared up at the sky that was beginning to lighten through the overhang of branches.

  “You didn’t.”

  I didn’t respond to that. There wasn’t much more to say since he’d shut down. If he wasn’t willing to talk about her with me, I wasn’t going to press him about that particular part of his life. I could take a hint.

  My stomach grumbled angrily in the quiet that lingered between us. I’d turned my car on, let it run, and then switched it off to give the battery a rest while we’d continued to talk, and I’d forgotten to turn it back on. The only thing louder than my stomach’s complaints was the morning song of the birds that surrounded us. I guess that’s what happened when you neglected your body’s demands for almost twelve hours.

  “Are you hungry?” Dustin asked sheepishly, looking over his shoulder at me and flicking the bill of his cap with his index finger. “You should have said. I have snacks in the cooler of my truck.”

  That got my attention while dispelling the odd tension between us.

  “What kind of snacks?” My tone was almost a growl, and my hands rubbed together like a cartoon villain’s.

  “Jerky, sandwiches, and ribs. Probably some chips and other crap, too.”

  “Sandwiches, you say?”

  “Ham, cheese, and pastrami, I think.”

  “You don’t do anything by halves, do you?” I asked as I rolled from the hood of my car and bounced on my toes eagerly, beating out a staccato beat on the warm metal fender. “Where can I find this treasure trove of food?”