by J. C. Geiger
“You mean walk, like leave?”
“I mean, are you allowed to walk in the graduation ceremony?”
“Yeah,” Lance said. “Oh yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I’ve only known you two hours and you pulled a knife on me.”
“Did a shot of whisky,” Meebs added.
“Knocked down a girl,” Rocco said. “Fled the scene of an accident.”
“Did my shot of whisky,” Meebs went on.
“I didn’t really flee the scene.”
“Did he flee the scene, Dakota?” Rocco asked.
“Oh, he fled all right,” Dakota said, meeting his eyes.
“No,” Lance said. “I’d say I slowly backed away from the scene.”
“Let the record show he slowly backed away from the scene, Your Honor,” Meebs said.
They howled. Meebs drummed the hood of his car. The way they were talking made him smile. He was suddenly expulsion material. And this was an actual scene in his life.
“Did the cops go after Breanna?” Dakota asked.
“No. She and Stone got a story they’re cooking up,” Rocco said. “Breanna just totaled the Mustang, what, two weeks ago?”
“Mustang Sally!” Meebs sang.
“She totaled another car?” Lance said.
“You know you’d better slow that Mustang down!”
“Have you talked to the police yet?” Rocco asked.
“No,” Lance said.
“Lance is a loose cannon,” Dakota said. “He doesn’t work with police.” She winked at him. A wink, sending chills up his arms. So that was how a wink was supposed to work. He looked at the ground. Too much.
“Talk to Breanna before the police,” Rocco said.
“Why?” Lance asked.
“She and Stone have got a plan.”
Meebs began singing “Folsom Prison Blues,” doing a decent Johnny Cash: “I hear the train a comin’, it’s rollin’ round the bend….”
“Can we go, dude?” Rocco said. “I’m already tired of you, and we still have to ride home together.”
“I said biiiiiitch,” Meebs said, taking out his keys. So he was driving. Lance wondered how many car accidents these friends got into.
Rocco turned to Dakota: “You safe alone with the wild man? Can we trust him?”
“It’s Dakota,” Meebs said. “She’ll ice him down.”
“Don’t worry,” Dakota said. “He still has to use a hall pass.”
Lance’s cheeks burned. Meebs and Rocco hooted as they walked away.
A moment later, headlights flared, washing over them. He and Dakota were onstage. The brights flickered on and off and Meebs stuck his floppy-haired head out the window:
“Hey kids! Don’t get frisk-y!”
Lance looked up just in time to see Dakota try to ignore them while he tried to ignore them and tried to ignore her trying to ignore him trying to ignore them.
“C’mon,” she said, walking toward the field.
Dakota had a walk to her. Faster than she looked, like she stole an extra bit of ground with every step. She led him to the parking lot’s edge, where pulverized concrete gave way to Spanish broom. His eyes adjusted, and a narrow path materialized in the blue-green shadows.
He wanted her to turn around and look at him, and it was also the last thing he wanted.
She kept moving. Blackberries, goldenrod. Strange grasses: sharp tips and feathery plumes, others bowed over with thick, stoppered ends. Nettles pecked from the path’s edge. Lance was turning his legs, watching for jagged leaves, when he saw them: Splashes of white scattered in the undergrowth. Small flowers he hadn’t noticed before, fanning out petals like cupped, ivory hands.
He stopped with one inches from his right toe.
The center of the flower’s bloom was imprinted with a delicate shape—a spindly star, faint as a shadow. Was it really a star? He widened his legs to avoid crushing the petals as he bent down. Yes, a violet star, reflecting back the light like a cat’s eye. And the bloom gave off a sweet scent, close to lavender. Like the most expensive bar of soap.
And the sudden sensation of being watched.
Dakota. She had stopped and turned around just in time to see him—the high schooler, the kid in need of a hall pass, the wild one, the stranger—hunkered down over a little white flower. And obviously sniffing it.
He could hear Darren and Jonathan reacting.
Dude, Lancelot. Did you just stop to smell the roses? What the hell are you doing?
But only Dakota had seen him, and she was quiet. Maybe smiling. Then she turned and he struggled to his feet and they were walking again, back to the Trainsong parking lot. Just them and evening-gray cars. Dark windows.
It felt like something was supposed to happen. Like he should say something.
“Thanks for walking me back,” he said.
“Thanks for saving Stone’s life,” she said. She tilted up her chin and her hair slipped back like curtains. White lights from the parking lot struck her eyes—somewhere between green and gray. Blazing when they looked at him dead-on. Long hair was a good idea. Without it, she’d spend all day frying people’s retinas.
“You leave tomorrow?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I hope.”
“Well. Enjoy the trainsong.”
She smiled then, like she’d just decided against saying more.
“I’ll do my best.”
The air tightened between them. What else could he say?
“Goodnight,” she said.
“Goodnight.”
Good. Done.
He turned away, finally able to breathe again. Nothing weird had happened. Everything was okay, aside from a sudden concern for his trumpet. He’d left it unattended in his room, which was unwise in a place like this. Who knows who has keys to these rooms? He was also out of towels. Luckily, Cheri was still lurking down in reception. She must be plugged in somewhere behind that desk.
“Breakdown Kid,” she said, barely looking up.
“Hey. Can I get a couple towels?”
“What happened to the ones in your room?”
“I brought them down to the accident.”
She leapt to her feet. “Wait. Did you get blood on my towels?”
“Yeah, I—”
“Those weren’t emergency towels! Those were bath towels. That’s why they’re in the bathroom, not the emergency room.”
“What was I supposed to do? I was trying to save—”
“Kidding,” Cheri said, slapping the counter. “A joke, Breakdown. Ever hear of a joke?” She gave him a fresh stack of towels.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Wait a sec,” she said. When he turned, something bright flashed through the air and he caught it. A quarter.
“For the clean-up job,” she said. “Welcome to the team.”
Lance managed to fall asleep. His eyes shot open when his trumpet started playing itself.
It was a horrible blat of a sound he’d made before the accident. His horn was doing it again, loud enough to shake the room. Lance wrapped his arms around his head. He had to stop it.
He kicked off tangled bedsheets and crashed to the floor, smashing his mouth. The taste of iron on his lips, and he was scuttling across the carpet to his horn. He threw himself down and wrapped his arms around the case, trying to muffle it. The case trembled along with the room. Drinking glasses went tick-tick-tick on a porcelain sink, the cats’ frame tapping at the wall, and a strangely familiar calack, calack, calack that did not belong to his trumpet.
He loosened his grip.
It was a train. A train that sounded like it ran through the center of the motel. Another whistle. It would never stop.
Enjoy the trainsong.
Trainsong Motel. Another one of Cheri’s jokes.
“Damn it,” Lance said.
He climbed into bed, and even when it had long been quiet, he could not sleep.
He tried his usual technique—a fantasy he’d played dozens of times. Him
and Miriam in a bedroom. He was removing her clothes, slowly. Somewhere in the middle of the scenario, his mind drifted and landed on Dakota. His legs went still, shocked at his behavior.
He absently wondered what Dakota looked like naked, and it was stunningly easy to imagine. His mind was suddenly full of painters, sculptors, cinematographers. Like they’d been awake all night, just waiting for a project. Naked Dakota was standing in his brain, wondering what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t do that to Miriam.
He opened his eyes and heard something in the walls.
The things made a tooth-and-nail scratching sound. Slow and steady, like they’d be burrowing all night. He imagined mouths and whiskers and dark little claws. The sounds could almost be distant footsteps if he shut his eyes and pictured them that way. Shoes tapping up wooden steps, pacing along the balcony to his room.
He remembered the way she’d walked through that field. He could picture her perfectly.
He woke himself hours later, bolting upright in bed. “Hello?”
There was no response. He looked around the strange room and had no idea where he was, or how he had gotten there.
Cheri Front Desk stood outside the office, murdering shrubbery with a high-powered hose. The water was strong enough to strip paint. She grinned up at Lance, shredding bushes like confetti.
“What’s happening, Breakdown?” she asked.
It was confusing, what was happening. The day had come on bold and bright, and he was somehow standing in a motel parking lot, holding his trumpet case. Time had passed. The moon had gone down and taken away the party of his life. And the sun had risen on what, exactly?
Cheri Front Desk and denuded boxwood.
“I need to get to Joe’s Place.”
“Sure,” she said. “Just down Highway 2. About a ten-minute drive.”
“But I don’t have a car.”
“Ohhhhh, right.” She stopped spraying. “Want me to find you a ride? Ladies around here would line up around the block for a tall drink of water like you.” She giggled. “But I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”
Lance took a step back. Tall drink of water. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t want Cheri filling the glass. He had to be careful. He’d met others with Cheri’s bizarre, life-bending powers. Neighbors. Proprietors of general stores. Innocent-looking people who could grab hold of your morning with one unsolicited comment and swing your day completely off course. Lance moved away slowly, before Cheri’s powers could take hold.
“Wait, wait,” she said, scanning the parking lot. “There’s a taker! Lookee there!”
Too late! Too late!
He was caught in a Cheri Front Desk tractor beam. She was sending him across the parking lot in the direction of someone familiar.
Dakota.
The girl he’d last visualized naked in the privacy of his motel room, now existing in broad daylight. She was sitting in a green plastic chair, tan legs stretched out in front of her and crossed neatly at the ankles. He felt like he should apologize for taking her clothes off. Or give her flowers. Something. Then Dakota was looking at him and he was taking one step in her direction, more steps, until he was standing right in front of her.
“Go on!” Cheri said. “Ask her for a ride. Hey, Dakota!”
“Hey,” Lance said, his voice coming out low and stupid.
“Hey,” Dakota said, squinting into the sun. “You’re still here. Is your car fixed?”
“I don’t know. My phone’s dead. I left my charger at Joe’s Place. It’s about—”
“I know where it is.” She smiled. “You need a ride?”
Her question tingled under his skin and projected a word onto the backs of his eyelids. dangerous. Like black letters on a white screen. This word, coming from nowhere. Cheri Front Desk would not be held responsible.
He nodded.
“Good,” Dakota said, pulling out keys. “I was just out here thinking up a good reason to leave.”
“Glad I could help.”
“You’re perfect.”
They climbed inside her sky-blue Ford Focus. A green tassel hung from her rearview mirror, tangled up with a bacon air freshener that thankfully didn’t smell like bacon. It smelled like a freshly peeled orange, or Dakota did. A warm smell, coming from her neck. She had a little blue vein there, tracing up around her jaw. They seemed to be sitting really close in this car. Maybe the Ford Focus had a weird thing about smashing their passengers too close together. Or maybe Dakota sat this close to everyone.
They drove for a few minutes. It was quiet.
“I don’t usually give rides to strangers,” she said.
“Well, thanks.”
“Had a bad experience with a hitchhiker,” Dakota said. “Hell of a story.”
“Really?”
She pursed her lips, then didn’t go on.
“So what’s your story, Wildman?” Dakota said.
“Which story?”
“Your best story. You’re going to be gone forever in five minutes, right?”
“Well, I was supposed to go to an amazing party last night.”
“That’s your best story? You were supposed to go to a party?”
He laughed, surprising himself. “Yeah. I think that might be it.”
She smiled. A nice smile. A little crooked. Not showing a lot of teeth, but lips. The kind of lips Darren and Jonathan would’ve commented on crudely and specifically. The kind of lips Lance had never noticed until now.
“Want to get coffee?” those lips asked.
“Yeah,” he heard himself say. “I do.”
A fluttering anxiety rose up in his chest, like a warm breeze scattering leaves, spinning up behind his lungs. This was a choice he could not easily explain later. A few miles down the road, they pulled into a parking lot.
“Whiggley’s!” Dakota announced. She sounded like a little kid.
Whiggley’s was the real deal. An actual DINER. Every spot in Bend had just been a cheap knockoff of this: homemade pies spinning in a glass case, a steel tank of a cash register, booths with padded red seats, and hollow, glass-topped tables stuffed with ’50s knickknacks and memorabilia. Their waitress was actually named Maude. She was one of three bustling white-haired ladies in aprons and striped shirts. They could’ve been identical triplet Maudes, possibly fathered by the diner itself.
Maude #1 flopped a few giant menus on the table and filled their mugs to the brim with hot coffee. Steam unraveled, perfect in the sunlight. Folding and uncurling, stretching slender fingers toward the ceiling. Lance warmed his hands on the ceramic cup.
“Lance,” Dakota said, leaning forward. “I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
She beckoned him forward. They leaned toward each other.
“What’s with the case?” she whispered, cupping her hands.
“Which case?”
“The one you carry around like a suitcase full of money.”
“Oh,” he said, touching it with his foot. “That’s just my trumpet.”
“I figured. Is it handcuffed to your wrist?”
“Maybe. I’m not allowed to say.”
“Can I see it?”
“Right here?”
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s get crazy.”
He pulled out the case and set it on the glass-topped table. He unsnapped the buckles, and there was his trumpet. Sunlight broke over its hammered brass like an egg yolk, and Lance saw himself smile in the bell of his beautiful horn.
“Wow,” she said. “It is like a suitcase full of money.”
“Not cheap,” Lance said. “Two summers as a bank teller, right there.”
She reached out to touch the horn. Instinctively, his hand jerked up to stop her.
“Wow,” she said. But she touched the horn anyway, running her index finger along the trademark etching of a windblown tree.
“Wild Thing, eh?” she said, tracing the letters.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’
s what it’s called. That’s the brand.” He quickly snapped the case shut and put it under the table. It felt better there. Safe.
“So, musician. Knife-fighter. Bank teller. Are you a good student?”
“Pretty good.”
She sat back and shook her head. “You’re interesting, Lance.”
His heart was pounding because suddenly he, Lance Hendricks, was interesting. And did that mean she was interested in him? It did, at least literally. And, also—wait, was this a date? This was just coffee. Which was fine. Everyone drank coffee together. Friends. Relatives. They could be related, if someone asked.
“Tell me a story,” she said.
“What kind of story?”
“Any story,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you.”
This girl never checked her phone. She did not look away.
He lifted his menu to face level, but did not look at the column of Piled-High Country Skillets nor the Barn-Buster Breakfasts. He needed to hide. Safe from her eyes, he rifled through his stories like a deck of old baseball cards. What had he ever done? Behind his menu, under the bright lights of Whiggley’s Diner, he was forced to give his stories a good, hard look.
There was the night he and Darren threw folding chairs in the deep end of Bend Public Pool. Shopping-cart races at Walmart. His craziest, spur-of-the-moment trip when he skipped trumpet practice and drove exactly forty-five miles before turning around at a gas station with a blended coffee drink.
His mantras came rushing back, trying to save him.
You are valedictorian.
You are the first-chair trumpet player.
You have a full-ride scholarship.
Miriam Seavers is in love with you.
But he did not have stories. Just achievements.
And all the coffee cups were rattling in their saucers. Silverware, shivering against the glass-topped case. That damn train. It must be coming back.
“You okay?” she said.
“Yeah, why?”
He looked outside, bracing himself for the earsplitting whistle.
“Your left leg is a seven-point earthquake.”
Lance planted his feet and the table stopped shaking. He attempted to resume normal breathing.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
“No, it’s just a condition.”