Trying not to make Anna any more uncomfortable she tried not to stare at her alone and waited for the others to take their seats—Biscuit between her and Lucy with Grady and Cal behind them, making a tighter group—before launching into her list of questions.
“Should we go down by the fence like those parents over there?”
“You can,” Biscuit answered, taking the role of tour guide around his mouthful of cheeseburger. “But you can see the track events better from up here. Those other people are watching the long jumpers and discus and shot putters. We don’t have anyone who pole vaults or a javelin thrower this year, or they’d be in the middle of the field and down there by the goalpost.”
“She’s never said anything about jumping over things.”
“Hurdles. She doesn’t.” He popped a French fry in his mouth. “With those long legs she’d be really good at it, though.” Cal darted a wary look at his friend and chewed his food with more aggression, but Biscuit didn’t notice. “In track-and-field, you focus on what you can do best unless you want to get into multiple-event competitions and that can get to be crazy . . . and really exhausting. There are some kids in high school who try, like, two things at a time. They’ll combine maybe one short or medium running event with one throwing event or a jumping event. But everything takes time for training, if you want to be good enough to be competitive in it. So the more you do the more time you need for training, and in high school you don’t have a lot of that kind of time.”
“I see. And Anna focuses on the longer runs and the relays.”
He nodded and finished chewing. “The 1600 meter run and 3200 meter relay . . . sometimes they call it the 4x800 meter relay because four runners run around the track twice each, which is 800 meters each, before they pass off the baton. That’s 3200 meters total. But there are shorter relays . . . 4x100, 4x200, 4x400.” He shrugged. “Anna’s always run like there’s something chasing her, she’s fast, but the shorter sprints were never enough. Endurance and long distances are what she needs, and she’s trained her body to give them to her.”
“Oh, what do you know about it?” Lucy bumped him with her shoulder as Cal once again scowled at his buddy in a most unfriendly way. “You are so full of it.” She leaned around him to look and speak to Hannah. “His mom’s a psychologist so he spouts that weird psycho-babble stuff whenever he wants to show off. Anna runs because she’s good at it. It makes her feel good. It makes her happy. Everyone has something they’re good at and Anna’s something is running.”
“And what are you good at, Lucy?” She wasn’t often in the girl’s good graces, so she wanted to make the most of it.
She shrugged and leaned back so Biscuit’s body hid her. “Not much, I guess.”
“Well, that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. Oh. You mean the way I dress.”
“Not particularly.”
“Other than that I don’t do anything different or special. I’m just . . . average.”
Hannah leaned far forward to look at her deliberately, then leaned back “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I think you’re good at telling the truth. And better than that, I think you’re a good friend. I think that makes you special. Sometimes it can be very hard to be a good friend. You may not know it yet, but loyalty like yours is rare in the world.”
Lucy made no comment and this time Hannah leaned back a little to look at the girl on the other side of Biscuit. Her eyes were downcast; her expression thoughtful and not disagreeable.
Grady’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, grateful, warm and intimate. She didn’t mind grateful, though it wasn’t at all necessary. But warm and intimate? She tipped her shoulder and shifted her torso until his hand slipped away. She simply couldn’t risk it.
“Why are they lined up like that? Why do some of them get a little head start like that? Because they’re slower? Where is she going?”
This time Grady answered, leaning on his knees and talking over her shoulder. “They’re staggered like that because the track is an oval and it’s measured so that each of the six lanes is a quarter of a mile or 400 meters. They flip a coin before each race to see which team takes the even or odd lanes, but the distance for each lane is the same. Looks like they’re doing the relay first. See the girl with the short reddish hair? That’s Trudy Meyers. She’s not quite as fast as Anna, but she’s got the endurance for the 3200 meter run. Anna can and has run it, too, but only at all-day meets when one event is scheduled in the morning and the other in the late afternoon, so the runners have time to recoup. In these after-school meets there isn’t time, so they focus on their best bet to win. Anna’s faster but Trudy’s good and very consistent.
“She’ll start the relay because 800 meters is a nice warm-up for her; she’ll barely be out of breath at the end, so she can push ahead a little and give the team a nice, safe distance to defend. If one of the two girls in the middle can’t maintain, or if they fumble a pass-off, they’ve put Anna at the end of the relay to make up the difference. And, of course, to smash the Ripley school record.”
“Of course.” She clenched her fists in her lap and tried to remember the last time she’d been this excited about anything, or more confident of an outcome. Aside from Joe, when had she ever believed so wholeheartedly in anyone?
“Please go.” She finished pushing her arms into the sleeves of a wool jacket that was getting too small for her and picked up her backpack.
“Not without you,” Grady said, shaking his head. They were crossing Main Street toward the two-acre circular town square.
Once the older Mrs. Phillips was settled in an assisted-living facility in Ripley and once school started again in the fall, her father found her a new after-school job working for his friend Mr. Dimmit, who owned the local pawnshop. And she used the term friend very loosely here, as Mr. Dimmit didn’t seem to like her father very much—which she might have considered a virtue had Mr. Dimmit been anything but a gruff, short-tempered old geezer who let it be known that it hadn’t been his idea to have her underfoot from four in the afternoon until he closed at nine every night—and all day Saturday—but if that was his only way of getting half of what her father owed him, he’d take it.
It wasn’t a hard job: sweeping and mopping the floors, washing windows, dusting off at least one example of everything under the sun that people valued—but not enough to keep, or couldn’t keep because they needed money more.
It was quiet in Clearfield at 9:15. With most of the other shops closed as well, there was little traffic. The streets were wet with rain and they could hear their own footsteps on the asphalt. Cool but not cold, there was a restless breeze pushing the fall leaves around on the trees. It made the air so sweet and clean, she felt a little dizzy.
Or it might have been Grady. He made her a little dizzy, too, sometimes.
“I’ll be fine. You have to go. I’ll be in trouble if he sees you here.”
“If he comes to pick you up, you mean?” Grady had begun to sound like everyone else when he spoke of her father—an edge of anger coated in disrespect and distrust—and he barely knew the man.
“He comes.”
“I’m not talking two A.M. when the bars close, Hannah. You can’t sit here in the dark all night again.”
“I don’t sit in the dark. I sit under the streetlamp.” So her father could see her, recognize her, and maybe remember to stop and pick her up. “Right here on this bench.” She plunked herself down firmly.
He stood looking down at her, his hands in the pockets of his thick barn jacket. “Man, you’re stubborn.”
“Well, you’re annoying.” She didn’t make it sound like a bad thing.
“You’re frustrating.”
“So are you.”
“You’re also beautiful.”
That caught her off guard and she squirmed on her bench. Her cheeks scorched as she looked away and fought her smile, then muttered, “So are you.”
“What’s that?” He sat beside her.
Too close. “I didn’t quite hear that.”
She flipped her hand back and smacked him on the chest. “Yes, you did. Stop teasing me.”
He grinned and leaned forward, his knee to her thigh. “But, Hannah, you’re so easy to tease.” He squinted and leaned closer. “Jesus, what’d you do to your face? Does it hurt?”
She touched the tender bruise above her ear, mostly hidden by her hair. “Not anymore, but it sure did smart when I did it . . . falling off a ladder.” After daddy hit me. “I hit something on the way down, I guess.”
“You’re gonna kill yourself, you know that?”
She nodded; it was likely—one way or another. “So is . . . is that why you keep hanging around, then?” She looked over his shoulder for on-coming traffic then glanced back over her own, just to be safe. “Because I’m easy to mock and make fun of?”
He laughed and got to his feet. “Deliberately misunderstanding me isn’t going to get me to leave either, so don’t even try it. I tease to get a rise out you and you always take the bait.”
She watched him amble across the wide sidewalk, out of the pool of light cast by the streetlamp to one of the thick maple trees that circled the town square. Under the wet branches, close to the trunk, she could barely detect him in the shadows.
“And I keep hanging around because I like you.” His hesitation was brief. “I love you.”
She turned more fully on the bench and strained to see him. She could spell the word love. She’d read about it in books, heard it preached in church, she knew there was a whole day dedicated to it in February—and yet it wasn’t a word she’d had a lot of personal contact with.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Love you?” His voice was amused.
“Don’t say it.”
“I know. I thought saying it out loud would sound weird, too, but it’s not so bad. I love you. See? And if that’s how I feel I should say so, right? So should you, if you happen to feel the same way.”
“I don’t.” Her answer was quick and firm because she wanted him to stop talking about it. Jeeze. “How can you tell?”
“That I love you? Well, let’s see,” he said, as if he were patiently talking to a child. “That’s easy. There isn’t anyone else that I’d stand way over here in the dark for because she’s afraid of being seen with me and still think it was worth every second of it to be this close to her.”
She didn’t realize she was smiling until her cheeks tightened and rose up under her eyes adding to the pressure of the tears that were building up behind them. Cool drops of rain fairly sizzled on her brow and cheeks and chin, though she hardly noticed that either. She was aware of her heart beating in odd places—her ears, her throat, wild and erratic in her chest, slow and disturbing lower in her pelvis. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out—he’d blown a hole in her mind.
“Why me?” It wasn’t a new question. She’d been asking herself why he kept coming around for months—first, with suspicion, and then curiosity and flat out bewilderment. Why anyone like Grady would spend two minutes with someone like her was like a rock star spending time with a river rock.
“Why not you?” He stepped forward but not quite into the light. “Once you get past all your thorns, you’re as easy to be around as anyone else. You’re pretty and you’re smart . . . and funny in a weird way. Please tell me we aren’t going to sit out here in the rain. Let’s move up to the gazebo, just until it stops.”
Water fell from the sky—and not in random drops anymore. She looked down the street in the direction from which she expected her father to come. Grady was right. If her Daddy was drunk, it could be a while before he showed up; and if he wasn’t, the scenario would end in one of two ways: He’d box her ears for being so stupid as to sit soaking in the rain or he’d honk his horn impatiently and box her ears for making him wait while she ran from the gazebo to the truck. There was no winning with her father, so the best she could do would be to get Grady in out of the rain.
She stood, he held out a warm, dry hand to her and they ran together to the gazebo at the top of the small knoll. A lot of good it did them—they were both dripping wet and shivering cold; out of breath, alone, and sexually aroused.
Grady started hunting for something on the ground, dashing out into the rain again to circle the porch until he found it, and then reentered on the other side.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see. Come stand over here by me.” She did. And when she was safe behind him, he took aim and threw a fist-sized rock at the single, pale spotlight in the peak of the roof.
“No!” she said when she realized what he was doing, but too late to stop him. “We can’t do that. What if we get caught? That’s vandalism.” Her bones ached at the thought of her father’s reaction.
“Shh.” He turned to face her. Enough light from the streetlamps below enabled her to make out his features. He was smiling. “First off, we didn’t do it. I did it. Second, I know what it’s called. And third, I’m a kid. I’m supposed to vandalize things.”
She gasped and rose up indignant. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how much trouble you’ll be in if anyone finds out? And I know your parents won’t be happy about it. Your daddy will have you cleaning your barn with a toothbrush, he’ll be so mad.”
“Are you worried about me?”
“Of course, I’m . . . no. I’m . . . What if some little kid comes up here and cuts himself on it?”
“I’ll sweep it up before school tomorrow.”
“And replace the bulb?”
“Um, probably not. If you keep your job at the pawnshop, which you most likely will, I could go broke breaking and replacing the lightbulbs up here.”
A half-startled, half-bemused laugh escaped her. “You’re going to come every night?”
“Yep.”
“You’re crazy, Grady Steadman.”
“I am, Hannah Benson. About you.”
She shook her head. She didn’t get it. She couldn’t help the way she felt about him—Grady could charm paint off walls. But why he’d pick her out of all the girls in Clearfield was a mystery he’d no doubt take to his grave.
She walked back to the gazebo’s entrance that was closest to Main Street, looked down through the rain at the bench under the streetlamp where she should have been sitting. It looked like a lonely place in the drizzle and dark, and yet for her, every night, she knew it would become a warm and magical place that would also become the focal point of her days. She’d never been this excited about anything or more confidant of an outcome because she’d never believed in anyone as wholeheartedly as she did Grady Steadman.
He moved up behind her. He spoke soft and breathy in her ear. “Please, Hannah. Aren’t you ever going to let me kiss you? Don’t you want me to?”
“I do. More than anything.” She turned to face him. “But . . . I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how.”
“Yes, you do. It’s easy.”
“No. I don’t. And you’ll laugh at me.”
“I won’t. I never will. I’ll teach you. And I’ll go slow.”
She swallowed hard and hoped he couldn’t hear how frightened it made her sound. He carefully slipped her backpack off her shoulders and placed it lightly on the floor. He stood tall, several inches taller than she, and slipped his fingers around hers at their sides. He shook them a little.
“Relax. It doesn’t hurt and I’ll stop whenever you say.”
She took a deep breath and let it out, shifted her weight and nodded.
“Ready?” Another nod. She’d come to know his expressions over the past few months—the subtle difference in his grin when he was teasing her and when he was simply enjoying something funny. The smiles he used when he was content and happy or glad to see her—and this one, which appeared to be filled with restrained emotions that tore at her to give in to him.
He released her left hand and used his fingers to smooth back wet tendrils of hair from her face; to thumb
rain from her cheek and chin and to tip her head back, then cradle it in his palm.
Her heart beat so hard and so fast, she felt faint. The gazebo began to weave and spin.
“Close your eyes,” he murmured . . . then a breath from a mere brush of his lips and he stopped, waited, then set them warm and soft on hers. Sweet and tingly. “Now you do it.”
She got heady when his lips quivered under the sweep of hers; their fingers clenched tighter between them when she pulled her lips from his. He sipped at her lower lip and his body grew tense when she returned the favor, slow and deliberate.
“Are you sure you’ve never done this before?” His voice was thick as he tried to pepper his reaction to her with humor.
She came up on her toes to practice on his upper lip, then both, and then his lower lip again. She thrilled at the soft moan in his throat as he drew their entwined fingers up behind her back and held her head steady. “Open your mouth for me, Hannah.”
She did, to ask why, but he swooped in and covered her mouth with his, his tongue darting in and out, sweeping as he drained the air from her lungs. She went reeling—mind and body—using her left arm to cling to him as his right hand reached out to grab a support post on the gazebo. He freed her hands to hold her tighter against him—she was inclined to help him out. She wrapped her arms around his neck and traced the shape of his lips with the tip of her tongue. She felt his fingers form fists in her wool coat.
Falling back against the support post when her legs grew weak she delighted in the feel of his weight against her to keep her upright, to keep him near, to give them more time to torment each other this way. She loved kissing him—loved his smell and taste, the feel of his lips and his tongue and his skin. And she was good at it. She could tell by his reactions—his breathing, his tense trembling, his hunger for more.
“Okay.” The abrupt stop left her confused and throbbing inside, though he continued to hold her and didn’t move away. They were both breathless and weak. “That’s . . . some first lesson.”
What Happened to Hannah Page 20