I kept walking down the rest of the hall and opened the door to my bedroom to find my boxes neatly stacked at the foot of the bed. I had a decent-sized room with its own bathroom, an extreme luxury. Grandma lived in a single story house that wasn’t really big, but it was open, so it felt roomy. I was relieved to find that the boxes looked like they were packed carefully. I took my jacket off and hung it neatly in the closet, adjusting the shoulder seams so they matched up perfectly with the hanger underneath. A corner of a piece of paper stuck out of the pocket and taunted me as I sat down. I put my head in my hands as I sunk into the bed.
The truth was I had feelings for that impossible girl. I wasn't sure exactly what the feelings meant. All the emotions about my parents swirled in my head, mixing with my thoughts about Lucy that just wouldn’t rest. I didn't want to be over-dramatic and think the status of "the Christian girl and the bad boy" wouldn't work, that was so overdone. But, I had never pictured myself in a relationship because the possibility of disappointment was too great. I didn't like depending on people or, worse, letting them have any kind of power over me.
But, here I sat, stressing about some stupid girl. Better, a gorgeous, well-liked girl who was dating Mr. Popular. For as much of a rush as the whole experience had been, I couldn’t figure out how to get the situation to work past today. The little piece of paper peeking out of the closet was like an exclamation point on the no-freaking-way sentence of the last day. It was the stupidest piece of punctuation that had ever existed.
I shook my head, jumped up, and grabbed the piece of paper that had her number on it. I ripped it into eight pieces and threw it in the trash can in the corner of my room. Standing over the trashcan, expecting relief, I realized I didn’t feel any better. My mind was still rushing over the weird Bermuda triangle of Lucy, my parents, and how I was going to get my car. The only comfort I had was in knowing that I was actually quite good at puzzles. I kicked the trash can a little then straightened it out again, a little scrolly number three was staring up at me from a visible scrap. I was done for now. I’d figure it out after I was clean. I grabbed the towel off the foot of the bed and headed for my new bathroom, in my new house, with a very new feeling in my heart. I hated change.
* * *
My new high school was little, much smaller than my last one had been. I didn't try to make any friends. I was graduating at the end of this school year, which was in seven months. If people happened to be amazingly awesome and worthy of lifetime friendships I wasn’t shutting them out or anything. I just wasn’t trying that hard to find them so I kept my head down and did my work. Besides, I doubted the presence of any best-friends-forever. The school was full of cliques and I caught on quickly that there were only two main groups: popular and unpopular. Most of the sub-groups were little moons orbiting around the popular or unpopular planets.
No one really knew what to make of me when I came walking through the doors my first day. I was instantly appointed to the popular planet because I was new and different. I was the only boy in the school who wore make up and had piercings on my face. Obviously I was very cool and worldly because of my dark hair and piercings. But although they were all sure it was very cool, they had no idea how to deal with it. Everyone seemed interested in me but nobody was brave enough to come and talk to me. So, my daily routine consisted of getting up, eating, walking to school, doing my work as quietly as possible, coming home, doing my homework, and sharing a nice hot meal with my grandma. After dinner I’d do the dishes and then I would do my own thing while Grandma did hers. Usually that meant reading, for both of us.
Sometimes she had me do a few things that she needed help with. Having a "man in the house," as she said, was as much a luxury for her as that big bedroom was for me. I was good with light bulbs and dusting high places, but I usually struggled when she asked me to fix mechanical things. The DVD player actually spat sparks at me, which cracked both of us up. As nice as it was living in a house where I felt welcome, it was still lonely. At least in Kalispell I’d had friends I could escape with. We’d all gone to a school that we could make fun of together. I’d tried mocking one of my classmates to Grandma and she’d just frowned and ignored me. No dice. Even with my amazing light-bulb-replacing skills I felt like the Lone Ranger riding off into the sunset, alone. On foot. Because I didn’t even have my trusty horse by my side.
Not only did I still not have a car, but in the two weeks I’d been at Grandma’s, I still had not thrown my trash away. I went out of my way to throw everything in the kitchen trash. In fact, I’d completely avoided the entire trashcan side of my room. That corner was off limits, like there was impending doom awaiting me if I gave into its power. I thought about that dang trashcan every night as I fell asleep, re-piecing the paper together in my head. Sometimes I dreamed about the little scraps floating back together all by themselves, and the number being magically revealed to me. At least three times I woke up excited because I had the number, only to realize that it was still lying in pieces in the untouchable corner. I didn’t crack, though. I was going to win the epic battle against the trashcan.
On a rainy and freezing night almost exactly two weeks after I moved in with my grandma, I was buried under the covers, trying to ignore the can by reading a book. The book was failing me. I’d gone to bed early, feeling down, like a chicken whose arms and legs were tied up as a puppet. The puppet master was asking me, the Goth-chicken-boy, to walk over to the trash and dig out the girl’s number. I stuck to the book. I knew I wouldn't call her anyway, even if I’d managed to fit all the pieces back together. Two weeks was a long time ago.
It was like a fairytale. This gorgeous, super-happy person didn't exist. There was no way that a girl like that had even asked me my name. With a few weeks, and all that had come between then and now, it seemed crazy to me that a kindhearted girl crawled into my hospital bed and talked to me about my piercings and fell asleep in my arms. I told myself I was going to throw my trash out tomorrow and that I was going to stop being such a little wuss. And that I was going to figure out a way to get to Kalispell and get my dang car so I could drive around in the rain and cold instead of trying to read a stupid book in my stupid bed, having a stupid imaginary fight with a trashcan.
I sank deeper into my sheets cursing myself for being such an idiot when I heard a tap at my bedroom window. My eyes flew open. I heard it again, faster and a little harder. It couldn't have been the rain because it wasn’t a random irregular patter. It was hard and sounded like it was on purpose. I got out of bed cautiously and opened my curtains.
Two inches away from me on the other side of the window was a pair of excited, bright blue eyes, attached to the face of a soaking wet, shivering girl.
Lucy.
4. ALMOST
I couldn't believe my eyes.
Lucy was standing outside in the rain looking like a drowned kitten. She grinned at me, hair flattened against her head, eyelashes dripping huge drops. I whisked the curtains closed and hurried to get a shirt on. I’d already been half naked around this girl; there was nothing to see here.
Shirt firmly on my back, I re-opened the curtains and lifted up the window to peer down at Lucy. I felt a wet hand-slap on my forearm. It didn't hurt but it startled me. I stepped back a few inches.
"It’s been two weeks!" I heard her voice coming out of the darkness over the sound of water falling from every possible surface. This felt like it needed a response, but I was not delighted about the prospect of another slap from the soggiest girl I’d ever seen. I poked my head back out and Lucy was glaring at me so viciously that I was surprised daggers weren’t shooting out of her eyeballs.
"You haven't called me! You moved to Whitefish?!" Her hands were on her hips, water pouring off the ends of elbows. She was so adorable, trying to scold me in the middle of a Noah’s ark-style deluge. I couldn't help but smile.
"Why are you standing there smiling like an idiot? Let me in!" She stamped her foot, sending droplets of water and mud flyi
ng. Her hands lifted up to me like I was supposed to pick her up into my room. I stared for a minute.
"Um, yeah, why don't I just open the front door for you?” I pointed to the front of the house which was a whopping twenty feet away.
"Oh." She put her hands down and turned around to head toward the front porch. As I walked across my room I heard a thunk. I headed back to the window and saw her body smashed against the side of the house.
"Lucy? What happened? What are you doing?" In response, I saw a long finger pointing to something in the rainy dark. I couldn't see anything so I squinted. Finally I made out a little black object that was moving back and forth in little shuffling steps.
"Throw something at it," Lucy squeaked. If a person had a hundred spiders crawling on them they would sound about the same. My face split into a grin. I couldn’t help it. Besides, she couldn’t see me, which was good. She was terrified.
"What is it?" I asked her quietly.
"A dog," she said in a voice dripping with disgust.
"A dog? It looks more like a rat, don’t you think?”
If that was a dog it was a Chihuahua. Lucy didn’t budge. Her hand was still held up, pointing at the little blob.
"I don't care what it looks like!" She was sliding sideways against the house, slipping down, still refusing to move forward. Even though I knew it would totally kill my reputation, I couldn't help it, I laughed. It probably sounded like a mouse sneezing (I don’t get a lot of practice) but there it was. Her head snapped up and at first she was looking thunderous, like she’d slap me again if she could convince herself it was safe to move. But when she realized my laugh was because of a hulking dog-rat beast she cracked a half smile and shrugged a little.
"Oh, just pull me up." She held her hands up again. Apparently I was supposed to sprout giant Popeye muscles and lift her straight up in the air with my forearms. She waved them impatiently waiting for me to grab them.
“You hiding spinach in your back pocket?” I asked, amused.
“What?” She cocked her head to the side.
"Stand on something, at least," I didn’t feel like explaining with the prospect of super-soaker soon to be in my room.
"Are you serious? Like what?" Her eyes were darting from the dog to me and then around the dark side of the house for something.
"What about that bucket, Sherlock?" I pointed to a purple sandbox kid’s toy a few feet away from her. She shot me a disgusted look after she realized what I was gesturing at. I was really enjoying this. Lucy released the side of the house and slinked over to the bucket like she was a part of the mission impossible crew. As she touched the bucket the little dog started growling.
Lucy stopped dead in her tracks, frozen halfway bent over, her eyes like saucers.
"Just kick it!" I called out to her.
"No way." She was whispering with so much force it would have been quieter if she had just talked to me. "It has teeth."
"You’re wearing boots. What can that thing do?" The bedraggled girl’s irrational fear of dogs was making my entire week. She stood still for a few more seconds and then burst into action.
"Oh shut up!" She swung her leg in the general direction of the little dog-blob, scooped up the bucket, and raced back to the window. Her knees picked up higher than her face, like she was running on quicksand. She threw the bucket down and leaped onto it, almost falling sideways in her attempt to launch herself at the window. Although she couldn’t make it on her own, the plastic bucket did give her at least six more inches. I grabbed hold under her armpits and started to heave.
"Why is it I’m always pulling you out of something?" I murmured into the top of her head. She was really close to me; her wet hair was sticking to the side of my face. I heard her grunt with amusement. She was walking up the side of wall and managed to get her knee on the sill, then her left foot. She pushed off and went flying over my head, into my room. We both landed on the ground with a thump.
As soon as I made eye contact with this crazy girl I saw her open her mouth and I knew there was going to be an obnoxious, booming laugh. She must have seen me flinch because she put her hands over her mouth and instead laughed into her hands. No noise came from her mouth, but her shoulders shook uncontrollably. In a few moments, tears started to stream down her face. Finally, the laugh-seizure passed and the hands came off the mouth. Lucy rolled over on to her side and sighed deeply. Then she looked over at me and pulled out the devastating smile.
"Hi." She said.
I shook my head, feeling what I assumed to be the stupidest smile ever spreading across my face.
"Hey, Lucy."
Her smile quickly turned into a little frown that was echoed in a scrunch of her adorable eyebrows. My heart ached a little.
"It’s been two weeks, David." She said quietly, investigating some invisible spot on her hands.
"Yeah, I know." I looked down too. I had no idea what to say. I wanted to make her feel better somehow. I really didn’t like the eyebrow scrunch.
"How are you?" I asked her, looking up to see her staring at me.
"Like you care!" She crossed her arms in a huff and glared at me again.
"I'm sorry, Lucy. Honestly, I didn't even think you would notice," I said truthfully.
"Oh, I see. A boy comes out of nowhere, saves my life and it’s just supposed to slip my mind that he hasn't called me? Especially after I specifically asked him to?" Yeah, that makes perfect sense. How silly of me!" Her eyebrows were performing acrobatics, now. Very stern, irritated acrobatics.
"Sorry. I did think about it," I admitted. "A lot, actually.” Her face instantly morphed from stern to sunshiny as a little smile pressed at the corners of her mouth.
"You did?" She bit her bottom lip, trying to edit herself. "Why didn’t you, then? You act like jumping into a freezing lake is easier than calling a girl." She let her arms relax a little but she still looked hurt.
She was SO right about that. Saving her was mostly a reaction; I would have saved anyone, even pretty boy, Mike. But calling Lucy took effort. Thoughtful effort. Thinking was my Achilles heel. I was a serious over-thinker. I would think and think until I started thinking about why I was over-thinking. Then I’d ponder that for a while. Most of the time whatever I was thinking about was long-done by the time I was finished thinking about it. Thus, most things I had to think about didn’t really get done.
I was also a chicken.
I shrugged my shoulders, feeling stupid. She smacked my arm and graced me with a full smile.
"I'm soaking wet, can I borrow some clothes?" Her big innocent eyes paired with a slightly cocked head, all very natural, like this was the most normal and reasonable request in the world.
"Err…." was all that came out of my mouth, "Sure?" It sounded like a question. The soaking wet cutie who’d just flown through my window wanted to wear my clothes. Totally normal.
I walked over to my closet, heaved the door open, and stared blankly into it. What on earth would she want to wear? I had black shirts, some black pants, and a few pairs of skinny jeans that I was positive her curvy hips wouldn't fit into.
"You got any pajama pants?" She called from the bathroom. Good, great. Make yourself at home.
"Yes. I'm wearing them," I answered her. I remembered a pair of green cargo pants I had worn a couple of times when I was younger. Out they came from the box at the back of the closet. She materialized by my side and grabbed them, along with a Nine Inch Nails shirt I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to. She scampered back to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
I heard a few splats where her clothes must have hit the tile floor. She opened the door, sauntered out, and I saw her clothes laying in a wet pile in the middle of my bathroom. My first reaction was to brush by her and pick them up but I was momentarily paralyzed by the way she looked.
How could someone who had wet, stringy hair, no makeup and baggy boy clothes on be so stunningly beautiful? The girl literally made my knees weak. Noticing the Jell
o in my legs, I realized I was becoming something that I thought I hated. Whether or not I ever called her, I had to stop kidding myself that this girl didn't make a difference to me. Realizing that I was ogling, I tried to scrape my jaw up from the floor.
Lucy walked towards me and sat on the edge of my bed. I sat down in my computer chair and rested my head on the back, consciously avoiding looking in her direction. My ceiling had never gotten this much attention from me.
I was glad that I rarely washed my makeup off. Lucy, on the other hand, had the prettiest skin. It was pale and clear, but with a rosy undertone. Her top lip was bigger than her bottom and her two front teeth were a little too big for her mouth. She didn't seem ashamed of them because she was always smiling, showing them off. Her wide eyes laughed at me every time my gaze slipped from the ceiling to her face. It seemed like even the slightest flaws were endearing, mostly because she seemed unaware of them.
"How'd you find me anyway?" I asked, forcing myself to look at her.
"I cornered Johnny at school today and I made him tell me where you were."
I laughed a little. Poor Johnny. "And he just gave me up that easy, huh?"
Her grin, as she nodded, was like a string that pulled my hand around to pat my hair down against my right eye. "He looked a little scared, actually." And her open smile turned slightly wry, like she completely understood how Johnny had given me up so easy.
"I'm sure he was petrified with a pretty girl chasing him down and demanding information."
I felt myself blush; I was so lame.
Lucy smiled at me and crossed her legs in front of her to sit Indian style, putting her bare feet on my bed.
My Stupid Girl Page 5