I bite my lip. “Me too.”
He leans closer and I feel his lips on mine before I realize that’s what he’s aiming for. His lips are soft, a tiny bit dry, but kind against mine. It feels good, and the electricity from the touch on the knee jerks to life and shoots all through me. I close my eyes and kiss him back, and I feel warm all over, and I mean all over. Every time he kisses me, I feel like I could melt right into him.
“Sadie-Sadie,” he says, pulling his mouth far enough away to talk. He leans his forehead against mine. “Finally. Whenever I try to kiss you, something else in our world goes haywire.”
“Well, there’s always now,” I say. “What else can happen?”
Near our heads, Peapod starts a low-throttled growl, like an engine idling. We’ve grown to trust his growl, so we sit bolt upright before we hear the motor and before the dark blue pickup comes careening into the parking lot, spraying our legs with gravel.
“That,” Joe says, “is what could happen.”
The two jerks in the blue pickup, flags flying, have skidded to a gravelly stop right in front of us. Peapod is on his feet, his growl revved to full-throttle now.
“So you kids had to stick your noses where they didn’t belong, didn’t you,” says the redneck with the Schlitz cap and the watery eyes. “Got Cecil Baker in the joint again.”
“Cecil Baker got himself in the joint,” Joe points out.
“And Miss High-and-Mighty Allison didn’t do what her daddy said, and her puppy ended up dead.”
“Shut up,” I say, jumping up. “Just shut up about that. YOU killed her dog as much as Cecil did. You drugged him!”
“Well, he was a vicious thing, now wasn’t he? And Cecil said we had to go git him, whatever it took.”
The greasy ponytail guy’s reptilian eyes narrow. I know this guy is dangerous, but he’s just been a puppet for Cecil, and he’s too stupid to be a threat without Cecil backing him up. After all we’ve been through, these two aren’t so scary.
He says, “People ’round here don’t like nosey people. You better start keepin’ your nose in your own business. I’ll bet you kids took my chain saw, too, didn’t you? All the times you’re ridin’ around in them woods? I bet you took it to sell—”
“Your chain saw?” I almost choke.
Joe stares at the guy. “Now tell me. How exactly would we take a chain saw while we’re riding bikes?”
“You watch your mouth, boy,” the watery-eyed one says, spitting out the words.
“Is your name Steve Olsen?” I ask the ponytail guy.
“You did take it, didn’tcha?” He squints at me and spits tobacco sideways out his window.
“No,” I say, choking back my desire to burst out laughing, amazed at how calm I can be. “But I saw your sign. I’ve been keeping an eye out for your saw. Haven’t seen it in the woods, though.”
“Think you’re smart, don’tcha?” Droplets of saliva fly when the driver talks. “You watch yourselves.”
We shake our heads and watch them peel out of the parking lot. The pickup tailgate and its XXFUN license plate disappear down the gravel road toward the trailer court.
“There you go,” Joe says. “All I have to do is touch you and something happens. Maybe I should give up.”
“I don’t think so. Where were we?” I lean toward him, start the kiss myself. I press into him and he pulls me closer.
When we stop, Joe looks around. Nothing has exploded and nobody else has driven up.
“Hey,” he says. “We did it.”
“Yeah, we did.”
We lie back on the cool cement, Joe’s arm under my neck, him stroking my jawline with his finger, and we’re quiet. I rub Peapod’s rib cage from this almost-upside-down position.
“So you really will be my girlfriend?” Joe asks again. He takes my hand that isn’t rubbing Peapod.
“I guess,” I say.
“You guess?” He sits up, looking wounded.
“Joe, I mean I like you so much I can hardly stand it, but you’re gonna be in Arizona and I’m gonna be in Minnesota.”
“I’ll see you in November,” he says. “And we have half a summer left to figure it out.”
“Okay,” I say. “We can figure.”
“I had a girlfriend,” he tells me. “When John died, I mean. But I sort of ignored her. I hurt so bad, I felt dead. So we basically fell apart. Never broke up. Just stopped.”
“Kind of like Father Malcolm’s heart.”
He half smiles, and touches my cheek with the back of his fingers. “But now,” he says, “I know I’m alive again.”
He takes my hand just as Allie comes around the corner.
“Hey!” She rolls up and brakes hard, spraying us with gravel almost like the truck did. Joe lets go of my hand, but not too quickly. Peapod jumps to his feet and wags his way over to her, delighted to see one of his favorite humans, licks her hand, then returns to the cement.
“So what’s this?” she asks, nodding in the direction of our hand-holding. “Wow. I didn’t know. When did this start?”
“Oh, AllieCat,” I say, knowing my face is bright red. “On the Fourth of July, I guess. Or when we didn’t know where you were. Never really had a chance to start before this. It’s been sort of a crazy week.” I squint at her because the sun is behind her back, streaming down and glistening off her tanned shoulder muscles. I try to read her face to see if she’s pissed or sad or jealous or just surprised that I’m with Joe and not with her. I didn’t mean to flaunt it, ’cause she doesn’t need anything else to be sad right now. I don’t know how to do this—I’ve never been the one in the middle that two people wanted. But Allie grins at me and I know it’s okay.
“Mostly,” I add, “we’re just busy not being dead.”
“Funny how close we are to getting ourselves dead any old time, isn’t it?” Allie shakes her head. “Life’s pretty fragile, and you can just stop being, can’t you?”
I think about Father Malcolm’s heart—just stopping. About Siren overheating, having a seizure, and ending up dead. About Joe’s brother John exploding on the canyon floor. Alive one minute, dead the next. And Scout taking a bullet in his bone and living.
And we’re alive.
We’re quiet again. We’re good at being quiet together.
“So—” Allie lifts her handlebars and lets her front wheel bounce on its shock. “Are we gonna ride, or are you two lovebirds too busy necking?”
“Shut up, Allie,” I say. “Of course we’re riding.”
“Or,” Allie says, “should we just sit here and be amazed at being alive?”
“Come on, you AllieCat.” Joe grins and jumps to his feet. “Isn’t that kind of why we ride?”
Straddling her bike’s top tube, Allie takes her helmet off, shakes her spiky hair, and runs her hands through it to make it stand on end. “Guess so. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But yeah, every time we don’t kill ourselves on some hill, we’re still alive. That rush is about as alive as you get, I guess.”
“Hey, Allie,” I say, picking up my bike. “You want to move to Minnetonka with me? Want to come live with us? We’ve got room. You could ride with me on Buck Hill, and we could come stay with Scout in the summer. Want to? I can ask my mom. But I know she’ll say yes.”
Allie fingers her helmet fastener. She looks at the sky, so deep blue you can get lost looking into it, and then she looks toward the junk woods, the place where Siren is buried. She gives me half a smile, and I know and she knows that I would never offer if I weren’t completely comfortable with her, even though she kissed me.
“Thanks, Sadie. But no thanks. I belong here. And Siren might come lookin’ for me. His ghost wouldn’t know what to do in that traffic.”
“Allie, you’re not serious about being stuck here �
�cause of a dead dog, are you?” Joe asks. “You’re not just saying that ’cause you’re chicken to move?”
“Naw.” Allie slides her helmet back on. “But I do belong here. I need to keep an eye on my mom when she gets out. They’re letting me stay with her since I’m sixteen and she’ll only be in day treatment. And then they got us doing some kind of family counseling. Like that’ll help.” She rolls her eyes. “But I’ll do it. And somebody has to keep Scout from blowing up the neighborhood. So I guess the chicken I gotta ride through is right here.” She grins at both of us. “We all got our own chicken, don’t we?” She fastens her helmet. “Plus, Mike told me at the bike shop that he knows somebody who needs to find homes for some puppies … some little dog needs me.”
I grin at her. So does Joe.
“I just belong here, okay?” she says, sweeping her hand across the river, the valley, and the junk woods. “So, let’s shut up and ride.”
Then we’re on our bikes. We’re flying down the hill, through the junk woods, toward the Blue Earth River, trees streaking past us, sun beating on our shoulders, wind in our faces.
And we are alive.
© Steve Deger
About the Author
Rebecca Fjelland Davis writes and rides her bike in Southern Minnesota. She also spends time with her Newfoundland dog, Freya, and as much time as possible with her grown children who live too far away. She thinks her need to ride her bike stems from riding her pony every day when she was a kid: she needs to move in the fresh air. She also spends time teaching, grading papers, and forcing students to try new books and new places (like France or Egypt or an art museum). She still trains for a rare bike race (she is a two-time winner of the women’s division of the National 24-Hour Challenge bike race in Michigan) and tries to avoid being hit by cars (it happened once). Becky lives in an old farmhouse and teaches English and Humanities at South Central College in North Mankato. Visit her online at www.rebeccafjellanddavis.com or at her blog: www.rebeccafjellanddavis.blogspot.com.
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