by S. J. West
“Oh come on, Lilly, you know you want to pet him.”
Will started to chase me around the bridge with that stupid snake. And as luck, Fate, whatever you want to call it, would have it I tripped, conked my head against an old wooden post on the side railing and fell into the water unconscious. The next thing I remembered was lying on the bank spitting out water from my lungs with Will cradling me in his arms.
“Lilly! Lilly!” Will was so frantic, I thought he was having a fit. “Are you ok? Is anything hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Rubbing the sore spot on the back of my head, I looked at him like he had lost his mind. “Two, stupid. I’m not blind. What happened?”
“You fell and hit your head.”
“I know that much. How’d you get me out of the water? It’s pitch black out there!”
Will sat back on the grassy bank and didn’t speak for a while. I sat with him and waited for him to tell me what happened.
“When I saw you go in, I dove in after you. I found you and brought you back up.” He said it so simply, like it was no big deal. He was my savior, and he sat there like it was just something that happened everyday.
I hugged him and whispered, “Thank you.”
That was the day Fate noticed me and changed one of my best friends forever. From that moment on the Will I had known since I was a baby didn’t exist anymore. I don’t know how I knew this, I just did. Tara and Utha Mae knew it too, though we didn’t talk about it. Talking about our family behind their back wasn’t something we did. We still loved Will, but knew the Will we had known wasn’t coming back. Gone was the child who played with us with abandon. In his place was a more serious Will who watched us closely, like he was afraid the boogeyman was going to jump out of the dark at any moment and take us away. There were moments when we could see glimpses of our Will, but they grew to be fewer and fewer as time went by.
It almost seemed like Will knew Fate was trying to do me in after that night. Maybe that’s why he was always there when I needed him.
When I was ten years old and Will eleven, I remember being called into the principle’s office right before school was to let out for the weekend. The office secretary, Ms. Cane, took me out of the softball game we were playing down by the lagoon and asked me to follow her. It made me nervous, and I wished Utha Mae hadn’t taken Tara out of school early for her dentist appointment.
“Am I in trouble?” I finally asked her, scrambling my brain for something I had done wrong. The only thing I could think of was the pile of green M&M’s Tara and I had stashed under the bookshelf in Mr. Price’s science class. One of the older kids had told us they would make us horny. Well, we had enough problems. We didn’t need horns growing out of our heads. At least that’s what we thought that meant back then. Now it just makes me laugh at how naïve we were.
“No, Ms. Nightingale, you are not in trouble.”
Dear Ms. Cane, she was the proverbial old maid: never married and no children of her own, just her and her ten Persian cats in an old house she inherited from her mother. She was always dressed in a paisley dress of some color and fashion, high heels and her white hair coiffed just so on top of her head. I often wondered as a child how she slept. I figured she had to sleep upright. There was no way that head of hair would lay flat against pillow.
When we got to the principal’s office, I found Will sitting in front of Principal Wright’s desk with a trash can in his lap and a face as pale as a piece of chalk. His blue eyes looked at me beseechingly as I stepped inside. Though, as soon as I did I regretted it. The stench surrounding Will was like a wall hitting me in the face.
“Hi, Lilly,” Mr. Wright greeted me. I always liked Mr. Wright. He was short, fat, bald and the nicest guy on the planet. He had five children of his own so he always knew how to talk to us kids. “Poor Will here has the stomach flu. We’ve called his parents but he requested that you sit with him until they get here.”
“Do I have to?” I asked, trying to hold my breath so I wouldn’t have to smell what was in the trash can.
“Please, Lilly,” Will looked at me with those bright blue eyes and I couldn’t say no. I sucked it up and sat there with him until his Mom came. Will’s Dad was out of town on business so we had to wait until Will’s Mom got off of work at the hospital. She couldn’t leave before her shift was over since they were short staffed. So, we ended up staying until almost an hour after school let out. That’s when the news came.
Our school bus had been in an accident. Apparently a man on a motorcycle had a heart attack and crashed head-on into the bus. The bus driver swerved to miss him but ended up tipping the bus off the road and flipping it a few times into an empty field. Luckily only one person was hurt: little Emily May. She had always wanted to sit up by the bus driver like I did when I rode the bus. She ended up flying out the window and being crushed as the bus flipped. If I had been on the bus that day, I would have died.
After that, nothing happened for five whole years. I thought Fate had forgotten about me. But, apparently she has a long memory.
Will had just “forced” me to join the Beta club at school. I didn’t want to because I thought their initiation was stupid. The girls had to wear rollers in their hair, a bathrobe, and a sign saying “Beta Club” around their neck for a whole day. It was stupid. I wasn’t going to do it.
“Don’t you want to get into college?” He had asked me while we were sitting in the library for study period. “This will look good on a college application. It might even help you get a scholarship.”
“She don’t have to do nothin’ she don’t want to, Will Allen” Tara said in my defense. “Why should she have to dress up like some kinda white trash to join an ‘honors’ club anyway?”
Will rolled his eyes at Tara. “It’s not that bad. I did it last year and you two got plenty of laughs at my expense.”
It was true. Tara and I had laughed our heads off the first time we saw Will in his initiation outfit. The boys had to dress up as “nerds”. He had slicked back his pretty blond hair, borrowed a pair of his Dad’s old horn rimmed glassed and put white tape at the center of the nosepiece, folded up a pair of baggy old man pants like high waters with suspenders and worn calf high black socks with tan sandals. I’m pretty sure I still have a picture of him in the get up. It was a framer. I would have gotten it blown up into a poster, but my Mom wouldn’t pay for it.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” he said with that sweet little smile of his I could never refuse. “We get to go to Biloxi next month for the state convention. Don’t you want to take a walk on the beach?”
Ok, I have to admit. By the time I reach puberty, I developed a serious crush on Will. I couldn’t tell Tara. I couldn’t tell anyone! It was just too embarrassing. He’d been my best friend for so many years. How could I have romantic feelings for him now? In a way I almost felt dirty about it, like it was incestuous in someway. You know how non-southerners are always talking about people in the south marrying their sister or brother or first cousin? We had grown up together. Weren’t we almost like brother and sister? But as soon as I turned thirteen, I started to see Will in a totally different light. All the girls at school fawned over him. He didn’t seem to care though. He still spent all his time with me and Tara. I began to wonder if he felt the same way about me too. Perhaps having me join the Beta Club with a promise of a walk on the beach was his way of saying it indirectly.
So, I plucked up my nerve so I could have that walk on the beach with Will and see where things went after that.
It was early March when we had our convention in Biloxi. It was the first time I had ever stayed so far away from Tara in my whole life! We left that Friday afternoon from school and made it to Biloxi by dinner time. We stayed at the Super 8 across from the beach. The rooms were packed. There were four people to each room and let me tell you, four girls in one room is three girls too many. I convinced Will to let me get ready for the night’s festivities in his room. It was only him and J
ake Pugh in there anyway. Plus, they were guys. It’s not like they had to do much to get ready. Shower and put some clothes on. Why do boys have it so easy?
Well, I had planned to do my best to get Will to see me in a different way that night. I had matured quite nicely and ahead of some of the other girls my age. I borrowed a dress from my mother’s closet. It was a dress one of her boyfriend’s had given her hoping to calm her down and make her look normal. It was a slim fitting black cocktail dress with a crisscrossed bodice and v-neck. I knew I was tempting fate if I tried to wear high heals so I settled for a pair of black dress shoes with an open toe and only a one inch heal in the back.
I rolled my long dark brown hair to add in soft curls and put on a little more makeup than I usually did. I didn’t want to look like a hoochy mama, just more grown up.
When I came out of the bathroom, Will was sitting at the small table they always have in hotel rooms watching the news, and I saw exactly what I had hoped for: a double take.
“You look,” he paused for a long time staring at me, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “Nice.”
Now that I had his full attention, I was at a complete loss as to what to do with it. I hadn’t had a boyfriend yet so I was completely clueless what my next move should be. I’d seen plenty of romantic movies but was totally incapable of trying to act smoldering in any way. And it didn’t help that Will seemed as lost as me because all he seemed to be capable of was staring wordlessly.
I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed my coat and hid under it. We left the room and went down to meet the others in the hotel’s restaurant.
All through the meal and meeting, I could feel Will’s eyes locked on me. Every time I looked back at him, I couldn’t tell where his thoughts were taking him because his facial expression kept changing. At one time he looked at me like he finally realized I was a girl who was becoming a woman. Then the next minute that would change to a look of total disgust, which was hurtful. Then the next time I dared to look at him I saw what I wanted to see: yearning.
After the meeting, Will walked beside me as everyone made their way out of the coliseum. Without saying a word he took my hand and we made our way down to the beach across from the hotel. The moon wasn’t out yet but we could see just fine by the lights from the city. I carried my shoes in one hand and let my other hand remain in Will’s.
“Why did you wear that dress tonight?” Will asked me in a low husky voice.
I could feel my cheeks grow hot and was thankful we were in the dark.
“Why?” I asked as innocently as I could fake. “Don’t you like it?”
Will stopped walking which made me have to face him. “I think every boy in that coliseum liked it, Lilly,” he admonished, knowing I was evading his question as best I could. That’s one bad thing about falling in love with your best friend. They know all your evasive maneuvers.
Well, I decided, I had come this far, I shouldn’t chicken out.
“I wanted to see what your reaction would be,” I mumbled lowering my head so I wouldn’t have to look into his eyes. If I looked I would see one of two things: pleasure or pain. Pleasure if he felt the same way about me. Pain if he didn’t and had to let me down gently.
I heard him let out a deep sigh before he drew me into his arms. It wasn’t the first time Will had held me in his arms. He held me when we had to put my first dog to sleep because she got run over by a car; he held me when I had the chicken pox; he held me when I needed to cry because some of the girls at school picked on me for not having the newest designer jeans and wearing the cheap Wal-mart ones because that was what my mother could afford. He’d held me numerous times in our lives, but this wasn’t one of those hugs.
That night, he held me like a man holds a woman, close to his heart. I could feel his warm hands through my coat gently gliding up and down my back. I hid my face against his chest still not daring to look up into his eyes. Before I knew it, one of his hands was under my chin forcing me to look at his face. Even in the dim moonlight, I could make out the look of distress written across Will’s features. What was he thinking? I couldn’t tell. It was almost like he was having an internal battle with himself. Fighting between what he wanted to do and what he thought he should do.
Finally, one side won and he smiled.
“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” he whispered.
I shook my head because I didn’t think I could speak coherently, and I didn’t want to ruin the moment. “I know it’s a cliché to say this but you truly are one of the few people in this world who’s just as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside.”
He lowered his head beside mine and whispered in my ear, “Would it be all right if I kissed you, Lilly Rayne Nightingale?”
All I could do was nod my head and hold my breath. I had always dreamt my first kiss would be with Will and now it was finally coming true.
Cupping my face in his hands, he lowered his heart shaped lips to mine in a gentle caress. He was a little hesitant at first but the kiss soon turned more passionate. After a few minutes, he finally pulled away almost gasping for air.
“I think we need to stop now,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Why?” I didn’t want the moment to end. I had waited what felt like a lifetime for this to happen. Surely it wouldn’t end so soon.
“Lilly,” Will moaned, I could tell he didn’t want it to end either but that he thought it was what he should do. “Please, don’t make this any harder on me than it is. I need to take you back to your room now. Please.”
I sighed in disappointment, “All right.”
He took my hand and walked me back to my room. After a chaste kiss goodnight on the cheek, Will left me standing in front of my door only to watch him walk away hoping he would turn around for one last kiss.
But, that was the last time I ever kissed Will.
The next morning my world was turned upside down.
During the night, a string of tornadoes tore through the county we lived in. Our high school was destroyed and several neighborhoods were wiped off the map. It took forever to get a call through to my mom. She was over at Tara’s place when I finally got in touch with her.
“Oh, Lilly,” I could hear the tears in my mom’s voice, something I had never heard before. “Everything’s gone. It’s all gone.” She wept and wept as she tried to tell me what happened, but I couldn’t make out anything she was saying. Finally, Tara came on the line.
“Lilly, your Mom’s trailer is gone.” Tara was never one to mince words. You could always count on her to be brutally honest no matter what the situation. “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, girl. Your trailer was the only one hit in the whole trailer park. We went through what was left and found some of your stuff but you’re basically gonna have to start over.”
“Was my mom in the trailer when it hit?”
“No, she was stayin’ with a friend over night.”
I thought it nice of Tara to call my mom’s latest boyfriend just a friend instead of flat out saying that my mom had been sleeping at a man’s house.
I told Tara to look after my mom for me until I got back. I could still hear Cora weeping in the background when I got off the phone.
Will was there for me, like always. He held me while I wept for the few possessions I had lost, but mostly weeping from relief that my mother was ok.
We were out of school for two weeks afterward. During that time my mom and I were pretty busy setting up a new trailer and buying new things for the place. Thankfully, Cora had kept up the insurance payments on our old trailer. The insurance paid for us to get a new trailer and gave us money to help replace a lot our possessions.
I only saw Will once in those two weeks. He and his parents came by to give us a gift card to Wal-mart to help out. I felt funny accepting charity from them, but I would have felt even worse refusing their thoughtful generosity.
They set school back up in a local elementary school’s gym. It
was a mad house. It became so hard for the teachers to be heard above the bedlam that some of them just gave up trying to teach all together. We ended up having a lot of recess time in the last few months of that school year. I wouldn’t have minded that so much if Will hadn’t changed.
When we got back to school I found out through the grapevine that Will had been taking Jessica McCormick out. Jessi was the head cheerleader of the football squad. I was so hurt and embarrassed I couldn’t even look at him. Tara knew something was wrong and finally threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t tell her what was going on between Will and me. I finally told her everything.
“You mean to tell me he kissed you and then starts datin’ Jessi?”
“That’s the way it looks,” I shrugged, wiping tears away on the sleeve of my shirt.
“I didn’t even think he talked to Jessi more than a couple of time in his whole entire life!” I could tell Tara was getting madder by the minute. And to be honest, it made me feel good to have her on my side. “I’m gonna go have a talk with Mister high and mighty Will Allen Kilpatrick right now!”
I restrained Tara from leaving by physically blocking the front doorway to Utha Mae’s trailer. She was about to crawl out a window before I finally convinced her not to embarrass me any more than I already was. How much more could I take?
Will kept his distance from us the rest of the school year. Utha Mae kept asking where he was and why he didn’t come around anymore. We just told her he had found a girl he liked. I can still remember how Utha Mae looked at me when she thought I couldn’t see her, like I’d lost a part of me I would probably never get back. She must have known how I felt about Will but never said anything about it.
That summer I got a job at a small convenience store one of my mother’s friends owned. It wasn’t the most exciting job in the world but it gave me a lot of time to catch up on my reading between customers. One day a cute boy came in the store to buy a Coke and some chips. I didn’t recognize him at all. He was about eighteen with jet black hair, tanned skin and the most gorgeous green eyes I had ever seen.