And that was that. We never spoke of it again.
Top of the eighth
It is now 5:15. I check on the watch Reyna gave me for my 14th birthday almost three years ago. The sun is scheduled to set at 7:43 pm tonight. I know because I checked about thirty-five times that morning. Her surprise is located an hour away by boat. If the game ends in the next twenty minutes, I'll still have time to shower, change, pick up Rey and get her to the special spot before sunset. That is, if there’s no traffic. There’s always traffic. I’m running out of time and options. I’m beginning to panic.
This day is such an important day in Reyna's life. I have to be there for her. I just have to. If this game doesn't end in twenty minutes, I'm going to have a very difficult decision to make.
I take my stance and get ready to throw out the first pitch of the eighth inning.
The Surprise
Ten years ago today, Reyna's mother died. Usually, she and her father try to make it back to Puerto Rico to visit her grave, but this year they couldn't. Her father had to travel to Florida to take care of his sick mother, and he didn't want Reyna leaving the country on her own.
I think it’s sad how most people feel spring is a time of rebirth and new beginnings, but for Reyna it will always be a time of loss and mourning. That's why she wasn't at the game. She was probably sitting alone in her room, trying her best to feel La Cienega's smile.
When I looked in the sky and noted the hour, I dashed to the locker room faster than a cheetah on roller skates. I know my teammates think I’m odd, but I have someplace to be. I have a promise to keep.
After the quickest shower ever, I hop into my Jeep and speed over to Reyna's house. Her front door is locked, so I scale the wall and look into her bedroom window. Just like I thought, she’s lying on her bed when I arrive.
"What are you doing here?" she asks as she opens the window and helps me in. "How was the game?"
"Don't worry about the game," I say as I climb through. I fold her into my arms. She knows why I'm there and it makes her start to cry softly. I want to tell her that no game could mean to me as much as she does, but I don't know if that’ll make her cry even more. So I just hold her and let her cry. I know she isn't really crying over a baseball game anyway.
When she calms down somewhat, I say, "Let's go. It's time for your surprise."
"What? You're still doing that?" she asked, wiping away tears. "I thought because of the game you would cancel."
"Nope, we're still on. Get your stuff."
"What kind of surprise is it? Where are we going?"
"Well, if I told you that, it wouldn't be much of a surprise, now would it?"
She smiles and mumbles something in Spanish. I’m just about to ask her what she said when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I take a deep breath, hoping it isn't my mother. Unfortunately, it’s worse.
"Who is it?" Reyna asked.
"Kimmie."
"Yeah, Kimmie. Your girlfriend, remember? Do you have plans with her tonight? Maybe we can do this surprise thing later."
Technically, Kimmie is my girlfriend. At least, I think she is. I honestly think she broke up with me last week. But that could have been Karly. I have trouble keeping girls’ names straight sometimes.
I always thought the term ‘girlfriend’ was kind of odd in my situation. None of those girls are really my friend. I mean, most of them didn't know the difference between a strike and a touchdown. Reyna is my only real friend who is a girl. Actually, she’s probably my only real friend, besides my brother. But for some reason, we’ve never dated. None of my relationships ever have happily ever afters. Maybe I’m too afraid to ruin what Rey and I have to try something more with her.
I dismiss the call then send a quick text to my brother, letting him know I'm okay and not to expect me home. Then I toss the phone on Reyna's desk. I plan on leaving it there. I don't want any distractions. "No. Today. It has to be today," I say to answer Rey's question. "You got five minutes to get ready. We're losing daylight."
"Losing daylight?" she asks. "Where exactly are you taking me?'
"Don't worry about that. Oh, and bring a sleeping bag," I add before leaving the room.
"Sleeping bag? Sleeping bag?" I hear her call out after me.
Reyna won't stop asking questions during the entire car ride to the marina. I just smile and let her keep guessing. It’s fun to hear all of her conjectures. She guesses everything from Detroit to Disney World. Though I have no idea what possesses her to think I would take her to Detroit.
"The marina?" she asks as I park. "Scott, did you buy me a boat?" She smiles. Though many of our classmates do own their own boats, she knows I can't afford one. Not until I get that big MLB contract, anyway.
"We're using Harrison's," I say, referring to our classmate, Harrison McKinley III. He's a senior on the football team who owes me a favor.
"Where are we going?"
"Stop asking questions and grab your stuff."
I practically run to the dock and toss in my gear. Reyna is a step behind giggling with excitement.
I'm not an expert at sailing by any means, but Harrison taught me enough so that we make good time to the little island I've picked out where we’ll spend the night. One that has the perfect balance of marshland and view of the sky.
Charleston has lots of little privately owned islands along the coast. It took me two weeks to find the perfect one for us and then another three weeks to convince the owner to let me use it.
Reyna is quiet and reflective the entire boat ride over. It's like the sea air awakens a familiar part of her. She is staring off into the sky. I know she’s thinking of Puerto Rico.
I dock the boat on the island, toss out our stuff then reach for her hand. She pauses as she looks at the shore. She spies the blanket, the radio and the cooler. Then she sees the picture of her mother that I placed in a frame of the Puerto Rican flag.
"Oh, Scottie," she says as she starts to put things together.
"I hope this is okay," I say as I help her out of the boat. "I know this is a hard time for you and I know you’d rather be on your home island, remembering your mother. But I thought, just for this year, you could share this island with me, your best friend, and I could think of your mother with you."
She’s quiet and I think for a moment that I've made a mistake. I was too presumptuous. What made me think she’d want to spend this day with me? What made me think she’d want to wallow in the sadness of her mother's death? This was a stupid idea.
"You're so much more than a friend to me, Scottie," she says, burying her face into my chest. I wrap my arms around her and kiss the top of her head.
I'm not much of a cook, but Reyna seems to enjoy the sandwiches I made. We wash it down with virgin pina coladas, which didn't stay as cold as I’d hoped. Reyna doesn't seem to mind.
As the sun sets, I wrap my arm around her and say, "So, is La Cienega smiling?"
She looks at me and says, "We both are."
Real Perfection
Reyna and I stay up most of the night talking. She tells me stories about her mother and about Puerto Rico. Though I’d heard them all before, I don't mind hearing them again.
We take our time gathering our things the next morning. It was a perfect night and neither one of us wants it to end. Reyna is the only girl I can spend the night with on a completely pure and platonic level. Our relationship transcends anything physical.
Reyna is an excellent student and I think she will be upset with me for making her late for school the next morning, but she isn't. Instead, she suggests we go some where for coffee and continue our conversation. How is it I never get tired of talking to her?
Around noon, I drop her off at home and then drive the few blocks over to my own house.
My little brother Stu is sitting on the curb. This worries me. He should be in school.
"What's wrong?" I say, hopping out of my car.
"What's wrong?" he says incredulously. "What's wrong? I should be
asking you that. Where have you been, Scott?" He stands and starts looking me up and down, as if searching for an injury.
"I'm fine," I say, grabbing my stuff out of my car.
"Well, not for long. You better hope you have a broken achilles or an enflamed tendon or whatever it is you athletes get. That is the only way Sam’s going to forgive you for what you did."
"Is she really mad?" I ask, even though I know the answer.
"Scottie, I love you, so don't take this the wrong way. But that is the dumbest thing you've ever said in your life. Of course she's mad. You walked out during the eighth inning of what was supposed to be your first perfect game. A perfect game. Perfect! What were you thinking? I thought this was what you wanted."
I shake my head. "Nah, I thought that was what I wanted. But I think I found what true perfection is."
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Continue the story of Scott and Reyna in Nothing Else Matters.
***
Leslie DuBois lives in Charleston, SC with her husband and two daughters. She is the author of several books for adults an young adults including Ain't No Sunshine, Guardian of Eden, The Queen Bee of Bridgeton, The Devil of DiRisio, Nobody Girl, Nothing Else Matters, and Shadows of St. Louis. She also writes her award-winning Priscilla the Great series as Sybil Nelson. Visit her at www.lesliedubois.com.
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Picture Not Perfect
By
Lois Lavrisa
Being a seventeen-year-old guy without a car sucks big time. The possibility of not being able to afford to go senior prom with your girlfriend blows too. However, working at an ice cream shop and having to wear a dorky paper cap is by far the worst.
“Can you work late and close up by yourself?” Mike, my manager, asked me.
“Yeah.” Wiping down the black marble countertop, I glanced up at the clock. It was 9:00 p.m., an hour left before we closed.
“Have you asked Gabrielle to prom yet?” Mike asked. He took off his paper cap and ran a hand through his thick brown hair.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I kind of want to make sure I have the cash first. This week’s paycheck should be enough, I hope.” I grabbed a bottle of blue glass cleaner and made my way to the front window to scrub off the sticky fingerprints.
“It’d really suck if she said yes and you couldn’t afford to go,” Mike said.
“Yeah, sure would,” I replied. “Then again, it would suck if she said no.”
“No kidding.” I watched a blue drop of cleaner slide down the glass, the smell of ammonia mixed with the sweet smell of waffle cones.
“Isn’t prom, like, this weekend?”
“Saturday night.” Today was Thursday.
“Glad you gave yourself plenty of time,” Mike crumpled his paper hat and threw it at me.
I caught it, then lined up my shot and tossed it in the trash. “Two points.”
“Good shot. I’m heading out. Thanks for taking over.” Mike untied the white apron from his waist and tossed it over his shoulder. As he exited, the bells on the door jingled.
A woman with a huge multi colored purse slung over her shoulder walked in as Mike left.
“Good evening and welcome to Leonardo’s. Savannah’s most famous ice cream parlor, established in 1919. The city’s best ice cream and sandwiches. My name is Tim,” I greeted her with our standard spiel.
“Your hat says Tim ICG, what does ICG mean?”
“Ice Cream Guy,” I replied.
“Creative.” She smiled.
“I try to come up with something different every time,” I said. Each shift we got a new paper hat. We took a crayon and wrote our name on it. Some employees drew pictures on their hats as well. “What can I get for you?”
She looked through the glass display case. “There are so many choices here.”
“Forty three flavors, all made fresh right here,” I said, motioning toward the back room. “In our kitchen.”
“You sure have a lot of Hollywood memorabilia,” she said as she pointed at the wall.
“The owner is a movie producer and this is stuff he’s collected over the years. Plus, there are a lot of original pictures and things from the three original owners.”
While she walked over to a wall adjacent to the ice cream display case, I noticed she stood about five and a half feet tall, half a foot shorter than me. Her short red hair poked out from under a straw hat. Her pale skin had a few slight wrinkles. I guessed her around my mom’s age, maybe late thirties.
“Are you from around here?” I asked.
“No, I’m from Pennsylvania,” she said. Her back was to me as she stood in front of a shadowbox on the wall. Lining the entire wall were pictures and posters. So many that only very small areas of the red wall was visible. I knew each item on the wall by heart, having cleaned the glass on every piece many times.
“Is this your first time in Savannah?” I asked, trying to make small talk. Rule number twenty in Leonardo’s employee manual is to show customers southern hospitality. That meant small talk.
“No, I visited here as a child. I had family who lived in the Victorian district.”
“Are they still here?”
“No.” She turned to face me.
“How long are you staying?”
“Just until Saturday.” She reached in her bag and pulled out Leonardo’s brochure and laid it on the counter. “The concierge gave this to me. He said it gives patrons ten percent off.”
The front of the brochure had pictures of the interior of Leonardo’s and a history of the store. The backside had a stamp from the Marshall House.
“Just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll be glad to take your order,” I said.
“Can you give me a few more minutes?” she said as she looked at the wall of pictures.
I figured she was finished with small talk. The back door buzzer sounded. I ignored it. Then my phone buzzed. I looked at the caller id. It was my brother.
I texted him: What?
He texted back: Open back door.
I texted back: No can do. I’m working.
The buzzer went off again.
Then he texted: emergency
Rats. “Would you excuse me a sec?” I said to the lady customer.
“Hmm. Sure,” she said, sounding distracted a she studied the pictures.
I locked the register, and put the tip jar under the counter then I jogged through the kitchen to the back door. Looking through the peephole, I saw my twin brother, Theodore. He was my mirror image; slim build, six feet tall, curly black hair, olive toned skin and chocolate brown eyes.
After unlatching the locks, I opened the door. His bike leaned against the brick wall adjacent to the door.
“Listen, I could get in big trouble. What’s the emergency?” I asked.
“I need twenty bucks, I’m kind of short this month and I really want to take Vicky to the movie. You know the vampire one.”
“That is not an emergency.”
“To me it is.”
“Anyway the movie is horrible. I’ll give you money not to go.”
“Yeah, I can’t stand it either. But she sure gets cozy with me after seeing that lead actor.” Theodore winked.
My wallet had exactly twenty dollars in it, and it was going toward my prom fund.
“It starts in thirty minutes, and I promised her. But I’m tapped out with all the prom stuff I had to pay for,” Theodore said.
“I’m broke and I need the money for prom.”
“C’mon, please, you’ll get it back tomorrow. Promise.” He motioned across his heart.
“You better.” I raised an eyebrow.
He was always tugging at my heartstrings, and I usually gave in. I pulled out my wallet and handed him my twenty. Perhaps my being born a minute of ahead of him gave me a big brother protective complex. On the other hand, maybe I was just a sucker.
I put my now empty wallet back into my pocket. Just t
hen, my stomach growled. Thankfully, my one free meal per shift of a sandwich and chips was waiting for me in the fridge.
“Thanks, bro,” Theodore said. Then he hopped on his bike.
“Don’t forget, pay it back,” I said to him as he rode off. With that twenty and my next check I’d be able to afford prom.
Within seconds, I heard purring. I looked down and saw Leo, the grey striped stray cat the employees had sort of adopted. Leo liked to be petted behind his ears. “Hey buddy, you having a good night?”
He tilted his head and then licked my hand.
I went into a storage closet and got a scoop of dry cat food from the bag we set aside for Leo. I emptied the scoop into the bowl we kept outside the back door. Leo rubbed against my leg, let out a soft meow then went to town on the food. I shut and locked the back door then washed my hands.
Nearing the register, I looked around and noticed that the lady, who had been in here earlier, had left.
The front door bells jangled again.
“Hi, Timmy, I love the hat,” Gabrielle said as she strolled in. “What does Tim ICG mean?”
Stupid paper hat. “It’s the initials for Ice Cream Guy. I thought that would get people talking to me, like you just did.”
“Hmm, why don’t you just put ‘Tim cute boyfriend’ on it?”
“Right, and on yours I’d write ‘hot chick.’” My heart seemed to be sprinting. The common reaction I had whenever I was around her. Gabrielle was tall with long blonde hair and gorgeous big green eyes. “I thought you were busy tonight with your debutante meeting?”
“Huh?” her eyebrows scrunched. Then she cleared her throat. “Oh, yes. That was cancelled. Father decided that I should decline the invitation to join. With us being new in town, we didn’t want to come on too strong. Maybe next year. Unless, of course, we move to our chalet in France.” She ran a long finger along the glass display case. Her eyes were wide as she gazed inside.
“Can I get you something?” She looked thinner than when I first met her a few weeks ago. She said she'd transferred here from some private boarding school in Maine.
“Our chef is off tonight, and I am such a mess in the kitchen. You know having had servants, it’s so hard to even figure out how to make something as simple as a sandwich. I’m all thumbs.” She gave me a weak smile.
Eternal Spring (A Young Adult Short Story Collection) Page 13