A Penny on the Tracks

  “But we never had to worry about that. It’s not like the school’s swarming in lesbians.”

  “You think we were the only lesbians in school?” she asked.

  “Hell no. There had to be more. They just weren’t ready to live it out yet.”

  “Lyssa?” Jess said.

  “Yes?”

  “If there were more lesbians in our school who were ready to live it out, do you think they would have come between us? You think you would have chosen them instead of me?”

  I frowned. “Why are you thinking about things like that?”

  “I’m just wondering. So, do you?”

  “This is stupid.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  I sighed heavily. “Who’s the other girl I’d have to choose from?”

  Jess let out a flabbergasted breath. “This is a hypothetical question.”

  “Then give me a hypothetical girl. Let’s just use Chelsea from the cheerleading team? Brandi from the basketball team? Or how about Sara from the drama club?”

  “I know you’re trying to be sarcastic, but funny how you should mention Chelsea first,” Jess said. “I saw you looking at her a couple weeks ago after math class. She was walking up the stairs and you were standing by the water fountain watching her. Would you take her over me if you had the choice?”

  I pulled Jess underneath me and pinned her body with my thighs and hands against the bed. I moved my face close to hers. “I’m with you. I only want to be with you. I don’t want to be as close with anyone else as I am with you. I’ve grown so much with you these past two years. You know me better than anyone, maybe even Abbey.”

  She touched my face. “I just want to know we’re not together only by default cuz we had no other options.”

  “Just because you were the only other girl at school that I knew was like me, doesn’t mean I was forced to feel about you the way I do. Chelsea’s beautiful, but she’s overly superficial and she complains a lot, too. If she were my only option, I would have used her for sex and then dropped her the second school ended. But that’s not what I’m doing with you. Graduation is this week, and I want to stay with you. I love you.”

  Jess wiped away the tears running down her cheeks. “I sound like an insecure idiot.”

  I kissed her wet face. “No. You sound like every other eighteen-year-old couple facing graduation and college and wondering if they’re gonna last. But think about it. Aren’t everyone’s options limited in some way? Most of the kids in school date people within the same school. But how do they know there isn’t someone better at the school across town? I heard Lisa is worried that Tommy will fall in love with someone else when he leaves for college. And you know what? He probably will. They don’t have what we have.”

  Jess smiled and wiped the rest of her tears away. “No, they don’t.”

  I leaned in to kiss her, and the phone beside my bed blasted a loud ring. We both jumped.

  “Jesus Christ, that scared the shit outta me,” Jess said.

  “I could tell.” I laughed.

  “Hey, you jumped, too,” she pointed out.

  I hopped out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans hanging over the chair at my desk. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. “Who the hell could be calling me now?”

  I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Lyssa? Are you still sick?” Abbey’s voice was shaky, timid, and I immediately stopped breathing.

  “What is it?” I pressed the receiver tight against my ear. “What’s wrong?”

  “The chair moved,” she said.

  “The what moved?”

  “The chair. Downstairs in my dad’s office. It moved. I heard the tires roll.”

  The connection was in and out with static.

  “Abbey! Abbey!” I yelled.

  “I’m here,” she said through the bad reception.

  “Where are you? You sound far away.”

  “I have the cordless outside. I’m standing in my driveway. Will you come over? My mom’s not back yet.”

  I glanced at Jess tucked inside my bed looking so warm and snug. I wanted to crawl beneath the covers with her, but instead, I told Abbey that I’d be right there. I ended the call and slammed the phone onto its receiver. “I gotta go to Abbey’s.”

  “I heard. But it’s so late. Why?”

  “Because a chair moved,” I said calmly, and sat on my bed and slipped on my shoes.

  Jess moved closer to me and gently rubbed my shoulders. It took everything I had not to turn around, push her onto her back, and ravish her body once again.

  “What moved?” she asked.

  Frustrated, I stood up and raised my hands in the air. “A fucking chair,” I screamed and went into the closet and pulled out a blue-and-white flannel shirt. I quickly slipped on a sports bra that was sitting on the top of the dresser. I buttoned up my flannel. “A fucking chair moved.”

  I turned around to meet a look of deep confusion across Jess’s face.

  “What? You don’t get it?” I asked. “Let me explain it to you. Abbey’s home alone right now, and she thinks she heard a chair move. She’s standing in her driveway at one in the morning because she’s sure she heard the wheels of an office chair in the basement move. And now, I have to go over there and . . . and . . . I don’t know . . . look at this fucking chair . . . at one o’clock in the morning.”

  Jess pushed the covers off her. “I’ll come with you.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not? We’ll tell her we were hanging out and fell asleep.”

  I sat down on the bed beside her. “I lied to her today.”

  “About what?”

  I let out a deep exhale. “Abbey asked me to spend the night at her house tonight, or at least stay there until her mom got back from being with her sister who’s been ill for a while. Her father’s on a business trip. But I told Abbey I was really sick, like puking my brains out, sick.” I rubbed my forehead. “What was I supposed to say? I wanted to spend the night with you. We finally had this time together.”

  “Do you think she knows about us?”

  “No way! And I don’t want her to know, okay?”

  Jess turned away from me.

  “Okay?” I asked again.

  “Okay.” She looked at me. “But she’s your best friend. Why can’t she know? I’m sure she won’t tell anyone.”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “She wouldn’t understand this. She wouldn’t know what to do with this. Us. It’s too much for her to grasp. She’d probably cry.”

  “Maybe you underestimate her,” Jess said.

  “You think so? I’m going to her house in the middle of the night because she heard a chair move.”

  We laughed, and then I pulled her close to me for a kiss. “You gonna be okay alone here for a lil while?”

  “As long as nothing moves by itself, I’ll be just fine.” She smiled, and I kissed her again.

  “I shouldn’t be long. Abbey’s mom may be home soon, but who knows. You’ll probably be sleeping when I get back.”

  “Then wake me,” she said.

  “Baby, if you’re sleeping, I don’t want to . . .”

  “Wake me.” She gripped my arm and looked deep in my eyes. “Promise you’ll wake me.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I DROVE MY mother’s car to Abbey’s house even though I could have walked, but for late May it was a cool night. As I made the short trip to her house, I thought about Jess alone in my bed. I leaned my head back against the seat and groaned. “Fuckin’ Abbey.”

  I made a right turn onto Abbey’s street, and any frustration I was harboring over leaving my house in the middle of the night vanished the moment I saw the outline of her small body pacing up and down her driveway on this chilly night.

  I pulled into the drive beside her and rolled down the window.

  “What took you so long?” Abbey folded her arms in front of her, and her fore
head creased into a tight expression. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was tied back into a firm ponytail and her thick curls dangled freely at the ends whenever she moved her head.

  She wore white sweatpants and a red Guess sweatshirt.

  I got out of the car. “What took me so long? I was in a dead sleep when you called,” I lied. I figured if she was going to give me attitude I may as well try to make her feel guilty for her part, but she expressed no remorse.

  “Come on.” Abbey held the back door for me. “It’s the chair in the office downstairs.”

  I entered her house. The stairs leading to the basement were to the right.

  “Did you hear any other noises?” I asked.

  Abbey shook her head. “Just the chair.”

  We stood in the threshold of the kitchen and the living room, peering down the dark stairwell.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll check it out.”

  I took a step toward the stairs, but then paused and turned back to her. “You got a bat?”

  Her expression turned more serious. “You believe there’s something down there, too. Don’t you? That’s it. I’m goin’ back outside.”

  Abbey moved toward the door, but I pulled her back. ”I don’t believe there’s anything down there. And I’m certain the chair didn’t move. Whatever you heard was in your head, but if I have to check out your basement in the middle of the night, you need to give me something because you’re freaking me out and forcing all kinds of shit in my head.”

  Abbey left briefly and came back with the thinnest golf club I’d ever seen. “My dad only golfs. I don’t have anything else.”

  I took the club and held it up, assessing its lack of durability. I was sure I could break it in half over my leg if I wanted to. It was a good thing I was sure Abbey was out of her mind, because I couldn’t have killed a mouse with the flimsy club she gave me.

  I eyed the stairs leading to the dark basement while reminding myself that I had nothing to be scared of. But the moment felt too much like a stolen scene from a really bad horror film where I’d spend half an hour yelling at the stupid girl for going to check out a basement, alone, in the middle of the night, with nothing but a toothpick-thin golf club for protection.

  I took a deep breath. It was too late to turn back now. Any hesitation at all would only encourage Abbey’s crazy imagination.

  “Switch the light on so I can see where I’m going,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  She turned the light on, and I barreled down the staircase. With my heartbeat quickening, I gripped the pansy golf club and held it out in front of me. I imagined something jumping out at me as I approached the bottom of the stairwell.

  But nothing did, as I was sure it wouldn’t. Damn Abbey, messing with my mind.

  “Do you hear anything?” Abbey asked from top of the staircase.

  “Like what? A chair moving? No. I don’t hear anything.”

  I glanced to my right, toward the main room. There were two couches, a TV, and numerous issues of Home and Gardens and The Ladies’ Home Journal scattered across a round coffee table.

  On the walls of wooden panels hung old family portraits from when Abbey was a child. One of the pictures in particular caught my attention because I remembered the day Abbey climbed into her parent’s car to take that family photograph.

  It was an awkward looking picture taken about ten years ago. Abbey looked uncomfortably sad sitting between her parents, half on her mother’s lap and half on her father’s. No one seemed delighted about being in the picture, except for Abbey’s mother.

  There was a red mark on the right side of Abbey’s forehead she had gotten that morning while we were playing outside. Her mother had given strict instruction that Abbey was not to get dirty. She was furious when she called for Abbey to come inside and saw the raw scratch on her face, ruining what her mother wanted to be “the perfect family portrait.”

  We’d been climbing trees and Abbey lost her footing and scraped her face against some branches. Abbey was grounded for the next three days. From the looks of the pictures hanging on the wall, it appeared that that was the last family portrait ever taken.

  “What are you staring at? Do you see something?” Abbey asked.

  I was seeing something, I thought, as I continued staring at the picture; a very sad little girl. But I had to turn my attention away from the wall of photos and continue my search for something I was sure I wouldn’t find.

  I looked to my left, down a long hallway of doors. One of which led to the office that consisted of the suspected moving chair. I glanced up the stairs, and Abbey was standing in the same spot I had left her, gripping the railing.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’m fine. Just be careful.”

  I smiled. Her parting words sounded so serious, as though I were about to embark on a dangerously ominous voyage. I imagined kissing the woman I loved goodbye as I headed off to a dangerous war like in some 1940s black-and-white combat movie.

  My girl would wrap her arms my neck and beg me to come home safely. “I love you,” she’d say, and would look so longingly into my eyes that I would think of that moment every time I got lonely, and in the instance I was sure of my imminent death, her face, from that memory, would be the last image in my mind.

  It would be the only way I’d be guaranteed to die happy.

  But Abbey wasn’t the woman I loved, and I wasn’t a brave soldier going off to fight a noble war. I was a horny teenager in a hurry to get home to my half-naked girlfriend waiting for me in my bed, as I went off to search a room for a chair that supposedly moved by itself, while holding a golf club in my hands.

  I liked the version in my head a lot better.

  The hallway with all the doors was covered with the same wooden paneled walls that lined the main room. I took slow, deliberate steps toward Abbey’s father’s closed office door. I listened carefully for any movement around me, but only the steady hum of the furnace filled the quiet space.

  I felt my heartbeat quicken as I reached for the knob. My slow pace only encouraged my mind to think crazy thoughts, and I had to remind myself this wasn’t a horror movie.

  “Stop being so dramatic,” I muttered.

  I held the club in front of me and threw open the door. I quickly switched on the light and stepped into the room. I peered over the office, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The place looked the way it always had.

  A desk near the back of the room was covered in three orderly stacks of papers and pen holders. A stapler and a three-hole puncher sat next to the phone at the corner of the desk. I took a second look around the room. The small closet door behind me was open, revealing rows of men’s suit jackets hanging neatly together.

  I looked back at the tidy desk with its chair tucked tightly underneath the table.

  Everything seemed to be in place. The damn chair hadn’t moved. Just as I suspected it hadn’t. I flipped the club in my hand, left the room, and shut the door tight behind me. I skipped up the stairs, expecting to find Abbey where I’d left her, but she wasn’t there.

  I poked my head into the kitchen. “Hey, Ab. You there?” She didn’t respond, so I called her name louder, but the house remained still. I opened the back door and held the screen door wide as I stepped onto the driveway.

  “Abbey?” I yelled in a hushed whisper into the night.

  After a couple seconds, Abbey stepped onto the driveway, out from behind a row of bushes. “Did you find anything?”

  I leaned the club I was still holding against the pavement. “Are you hiding? In bushes?”

  “I didn’t want to stand by the stairs all by myself.”

  “You’d rather stand out here, alone, in the middle of the night? I was right downstairs.”

  She shrugged. “Still.”

  I shook my head and sighed. “There’s nothing in your basement, Abbey, but anything could be out here.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “The
n get inside.”

  I followed her into the house and then handed her the club as we settled into the kitchen. “Thankfully, I didn’t need it. It wouldn’t have done me much good if I had.”

  Abbey took the club. “Thanks.”

  I took my car keys from the pocket of my jeans and held them in my hands.

  “You’re not leaving, are you?” Abbey asked.

  “Why would I stay? There’s nobody here.”

  “But I still have all these bad thoughts running through my mind. I don’t want to be alone. Will you stay for a little while?”

  I leaned my head back and sighed. “Come on, Ab. There was no one down there. The chair didn’t move.”

  Her gaze fell to the floor. “But it’s in my mind, you know?”

  I rubbed my forehead in frustration, again thinking of Jess waiting for me at home, but I fought the urge to be impatient with Abbey, remembering that I had also let my mind spook me out a bit downstairs.

  I sat down on the kitchen chair and clamped my elbows onto the table. “Won’t your mom be home soon?”

  She shrugged. “She should be, but I don’t know . . . What’s the big deal? You don’t look sick anymore. Sleep over. You used to sleep over all the time.”

  I glanced at the phone hanging on the wall. I wanted to call home and tell Jess what was happening, but I didn’t know who I would tell Abbey I was calling at that late hour. Chances were Jess was sound asleep.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay until your mom gets home. Then I’ll leave.”

  “But it’s so late. Just stay the night.”

  “I need to go home,” I said sharply, but then quickly eased back, pulling my elbows off the table. ”My mom’s not home. I told you that. I’m supposed to be watching the house. I need to get back.”

  Abbey held her gaze on me for a couple seconds. “Go home now then.”

  “I told you I’ll stay until she gets home.”

  “No, that’s fine. Leave. You gotta get home to watch your house because something awful might happen in the five hours before now and morning.”

  I stood from the table. “Why are you acting like such a baby? So what if I don’t spend the night? We’re not eleven anymore. I’m kind of over the slumber parties.”