True Love Way

by Mary Elizabeth

  “One more hour,” she reminds me with a real smile.

  The hurt in my stomach disappears into the classroom, but Josh doesn’t follow behind her. He moves his dirty shoe from in front of the doorjamb and lets it close. With only a few feet between us, hot anger rushes through my limbs, and I want to smack the silly grin off his punk face.

  The bell signaling the beginning of class screams from the ceilings, ringing in my ears. It’s enough to snap me out of the blind rage eating me up, and I walk away, already counting down the next sixty minutes.

  “Where is she?” Mathilda wonders out loud, picking at the ends of her hair. “Let’s get this summer started.”

  My bicycle’s unchained and ready to ride my girl home flying. Herb, Kyle, and the redhead are ready to go, rocking back and forth on two and four wheels. Despite wanting to go home before we even got to school this morning, Penelope’s nowhere to be seen. An hour has come and gone, and she’s never late.

  Tilting my bike against the chain-linked fence, I push my hands into my pockets and anxiously wait for her to appear through the double doors she comes out of every day. Each time they open, my heartbeat skips, hoping it’s her. It’s not.

  “Dude, we’re the only ones here,” Kyle says.

  I look around and finally notice the courtyard’s nearly empty. She could have left class and gone home, but Pen’s normally good about letting me know when something like that happens. If she ditched class to sleep in Coach Finnel’s office, he would have woken her up to ride home with us. Penelope still would have been here by now.

  “I’m going to look for her,” I say, walking away from my friends.

  “We’ll be here,” Mathilda calls out.

  I don’t bother checking in with Pen’s dad before I head toward her math class. Something about the half-smile she gave Josh on a day she can do no more than cry tells me exactly where she is. Walking through the double doors she didn’t come out of with my heartbeat stuck in my throat, when I see her leaning against a row of lockers, talking to him like I didn’t have to push her out of her house this morning, nearly makes me choke it up and spit at her feet.

  Pen notices I’m at the end of the hall and stands straight. A part of me is relieved to see that her face is still past pale and that her shoulders are slumped.

  “Crap,” she says, waving good-bye to Josh Dark and walking toward me. “I’m sorry. You should have left.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask when she stops in front of me.

  “Nothing,” she says, looking over her shoulder before continuing. “Josh helped me turn in a bunch of classwork. It raised my grade to a D-. I was thanking him.”

  Lifting my eyes above Penelope’s head, the homework helper walks down the hall in the opposite direction. Instead of chasing him down, I take my girlfriend’s hand and lead her outside, far away from trouble.

  “I passed math because of him,” Pen says in a dismissive tone. “I’m sure he just felt sorry for me. He probably won’t even remember who I am next year.”

  With our fingers linked and our friends in sight, I don’t tell her that I hope she’s right.

  “Are you guys in kid-love or love-love? Because there’s a difference, you know.”

  I shrug my sun-kissed shoulders, not knowing what to call the warm, swirling sensation Dillon gives me on the inside. I’m only certain that it’s my favorite feeling in the world.

  Risa puffs smoke into the sticky, summertime air. “Has he seen your boobs?”

  My eyes open wide under my orange circular lenses, and I cross my arms over my chest. “No!”

  Officially out of high school, my boy’s sister has been on the road this summer, following some indie band all over the Pacific Northwest. She came back two nights ago with dreadlocks, a studded nose, and a small tattoo on her lower back. Risa brought me back a shirt. It made me feel nice to know I was in her thoughts while she was sleeping in the back of vans and brushing her teeth in gas station bathrooms.

  “D told me you want to have sex, Pen. That’s such a big, big thing for such a small, small girl. Do you know what it’s like to be with someone like that? To share your body with another person?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer, waving her habit out of my face. “I’ve seen it in movies.”

  Her newly knotted hair is tied back, and the diamond in her nose sparkles in the sun. She has on a pair of my pink-framed sunglasses, and the gap between her teeth is pretty behind her red-stained lips.

  “What’s the rush?” she asks. “You guys are so young. Wait it out a while.”

  With her words going in one ear and out the other, I wipe sticky sweat from my hairline and look over at my yard where my Dillon levels a fresh patch of concrete below our porch with my dad. The two of them have spent the last week breaking up what was there before with sledgehammers and other power tools, burning under the summer sun and bickering back and forth about teenage sissy muscles and gross chest hair.

  “I swear his mustache reached out and touched me,” my boy said last night after a long day of working beside my father.

  “Girls on the marching band have more strength than the freak kid next door,” Dad later complained.

  Lifting heavy curls from my neck, I tie my hair into a bun on the top of my head and stretch my legs out in front of me. Dillon stands before his hard work, red in the face and squinting against the sunshine. His white T-shirt is soaked in sweat. My breath catches when he hooks his fingers under the hem and lifts his shirt off.

  “Stop looking at him like that,” Risa jokes, pushing my shoulder forward.

  I can’t. I don’t.

  He’s heavy breathing and shimmering skin.

  That boy is all mine.

  The object of my affection looks up, meeting my eyes between our yards. Pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, I cross my legs, curl my toes, and wave.

  “Sex is cheap, Pen. Making love is prettier,” high as a kite mumbles between hits.

  Dillon throws his shirt over his shoulder and motions me over.

  He’s ten different tones of blonde and muscles that weren’t there two weeks ago.

  Up on my bare feet, I hop across the hot concrete onto itchy grass that tickles between my toes. I didn’t notice when I was sitting next to Risa sucking up secondhand smoke, but her addiction has gone straight to my head. Giggles bubble in my chest, and my entire face tingles. The closer I float toward Dillon—walking past my father, not caring if my hair smells like pot—the harder my heartbeat dances.

  “We’re busy, Penelope,” Dad grunts. He mixes a bag of concrete in a wheelbarrow.

  Lifting my shades to the top of my head, sweaty and sun licked winks down at me and says, “Ignore him.”

  A cool ocean breeze flows through our backyards, sea salt scented and refreshing enough to raise the hair on my arms. Loose strands of my hair whisk across my face, sticking to the Cherry Cola balm on my lips.

  With a bead of sweat falling from his right temple, Dillon pushes unruly curls behind my ear and says, “I love you like no other.”

  My crazy heart shakes and shimmies, and a more tender part of myself tingles. It takes everything I have not to lick the drop of moisture sliding down the side of his face in front of my dad.

  Wiping it away with the tip of my finger, I stare at the tiny bead of fluid and consider rubbing it across my mouth. It falls free, soaking into the lawn before I get the chance.

  Dillon takes my hand and walks me around the newly laid slab of concrete over to the one they did earlier this morning on the other side of the porch. What will soon be an area for my father to barbeque dries slowly in the humid heat, dark gray in color and perfectly flat.

  My boy kneels, pulling me down with him to our knees. Before I can question what we’re doing, he holds his hands out in front of him and spreads his fingers. Knowing exactly what he’s up to, I hold my smaller hands up beside his. We drive our palms into the wet cement at the same time and push until our fingers are almost cove
red.

  “It’s so cold!” I laugh out loud.

  We lift our hands at the same time and look at our permanent mark on Coach Finnel’s summer project. Dillon runs to the end of the yard, but I stay and stare at our prints, thinking about everything his hands do for me. They grip the brush he uses to comb my hair when I can’t do it myself. His two large palms and ten long fingers grip his bicycle’s handlebars and ride us wherever we want to go. His knuckles pound into my front door every morning, despite how mean my father is to him. These hands hold the pen he uses to write me notes across our lawns.

  Best of all, his hands hold mine.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Dillon asks. His voice lost its carefree tone, and his smile and bright eyes have been exchanged for a scowl.

  I smile, hoping it eases the look of concern from his face.

  “I’m fine.” I stand to my feet and wipe the sticky cement onto my denim shorts.

  Dillon takes a step closer. He has a small broken branch in his right hand.

  “Are you sure? Because we can get out of here.”

  I shake my head, forcing cheer into my voice. “That’s okay.”

  Concern’s shoulders noticeably relax, and some of his smile returns, instantly lighting up his face.

  “Your dad is going to be pissed,” he says, kneeling back down and pushing the tip of the stick into the concrete above our handprints. “But who gives a shit?”

  Dillon scribbles our names above our hands, the date below them, and then he draws a small, lopsided heart between them.

  With his arm over my shoulders, and mine across his bare, sweaty lower back, we’re proud of our contribution to the future Finnel cookout area.

  Then my boy’s sister suddenly stumbles out of nowhere, pushes us over, and takes the stick. In long, warped letters she writes RISA HEARTS WEED onto an untouched slab. After sling shooting the branch across the yard, my hero goes home.

  Speechless, Dillon and I tense when my dad appears from the other side of the house. In tube socks that reach his knees and shorts that don’t, my dad’s face is red, and his dark curly hair is frizzy.

  “Am I working alone, boy? Do you want me to die under this sun? Is this a part of some master plan to end my life and steal my family?” There’s a touch of humor in my father’s tone, and I’ll guess there’s a smile under his mustache.

  Then he sees what’s happened to the backyard’s addition.

  “Boy!” he roars. “I leave you alone for five minutes and you ruin everything.”

  Dillon drops his arm from my shoulder but lifts his hands in surrender.

  He’s wide-eyed and full of excuses.

  I take a few steps back, secretly loving when these two go at it and wait for my dad to see the real issue here.

  Coach points to my handprints and says, “You have some cute hands, boy.”

  Dillon rolls his eyes.

  “Risa hearts weed,” Dad reads. He stands straight and focuses on his archenemy. “What the hell does that mean? Is it some kind of gang talk? Are you a homeboy? Should I be concerned for my daughter’s safety?”

  This time I roll my eyes.

  “I didn’t do that,” Dillon exclaims, backing up as my dad moves toward him. “It literally says my sister’s name.”

  Dad looks thoughtful. “I thought I smelled weed earlier. She’s in town?”

  Dillon nods. “She just got back.”

  Who does he think I was sitting with on the Deckers’ porch all morning?

  Dad nods. “I better have a talk with your parents.”

  My boyfriend throws his hands up. “Do whatever you want.”

  Dad turns back to his ruined work. “I have one more question for you, boy.”

  “What is it?” Dillon asks.

  “Why is there a heart between your hands and my princess’?”

  The neighbor kid was right. My dad’s chest hair does look like it’s going to reach out and grab him.

  Summer ends and storm clouds move in, coloring the world in the same gray hues as my mood. On a rainy day in September, I turn fifteen and celebrate with Dillon hidden in the woods. We skip cake and ice cream and don’t come home until a million stars and a quarter moon light the ground.

  When we break free from the trees, our parents have their flashlights out and their yelling voices on.

  Dawn cries, “It’s one in the morning. I was about to call the police!”

  Our families split us up, forcing us into our own homes. Mom’s decorated the kitchen with the same birthday banner she used when I turned fourteen.

  “You slept through your last birthday, remember?” she answers when I ask why.

  Fifteen unlit candles decorate the homemade cake, and whatever she made for dinner sits cold on the stove. Yellow balloons tied to the table chairs are already losing their ability to float, and I sympathize with them. Days have been low for me lately, too.

  Dad grabs a beer from the fridge and pops the top off. He won’t look at me.

  “I’m going to bed,” I say, walking past a birthday celebration I didn’t want in the first place.

  I spent my day of birth in the arms of the only boy who can help me wish away the sorrow plaguing my insides. We hid under one hundred-year-old oaks, protected from the rain beneath their large branches with the sound of waves crashing against Castle Rock in the background.

  I slept, we kissed … He wouldn’t touch me, even when I begged.

  “It doesn’t need to be special,” I said, overcome with greedy need. “We can do it right here. For our birthdays.”

  Dillon didn’t bother himself by saying no again. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the thick bark.

  “What were you thinking, Pen?” Mom asks as I walk away. “Why would you leave and not tell us where you’re going?”

  With my hand on the stair’s banister, I say, “I told you I’d be with Dillon.”

  “But you also said you’d be home before dinner,” she replies.

  Dad throws his empty beer bottle into the sink and opens the fridge for a fresh one. It breaks, and my mom sighs. Not willing to stick around and listen to the argument brewing between them, I head up to my room with the words, “If she was consistently taking her medication, this wouldn’t be happening,” following behind me.

  My boy appears in his window after me and is the first to write a note.

  I DON’T CARE WHAT THEY SAY.

  My sophomore year in high school plays out the same way my freshman year did. I don’t have any classes with Dillon because he’s smarter than me. The kids in my classes stay ten feet away because I’m the weird girl with the sunglasses. Teachers stop making an effort after the first semester when they finally realize it’s better spent on someone else. On the days I make it to school on time or at all, I often talk Dillon into sneaking away early. Sometimes he can’t, so I hang out in my dad’s office and sleep until it’s time to go home.

  “Here,” Joshua Dark places a sheet of paper on my desk and takes his seat in the spot beside me. “I knew you weren’t going to do it, so I did the homework for you.”

  I slide the assignment closer and smile at the algebra problems I, in fact, didn’t do.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Josh places his hand on the back of my chair. He smells like cinnamon and soapy laundry detergent. Still labeled as trouble, the rez kids continue to bus in from Neah Bay. They grew impossibly bigger over the summer, and my dad spent the first few weeks of school recruiting them for the football team. Some, including Josh, also don’t look so … poor.

  I haven’t seen one hole in any of Joshua’s clothing, and it seems like he has on a new pair of shoes every day.

  I kick the red pair he has on today with the side of my foot and say, “Did you get some awesome job or something?”

  This bad boy winks at me and says, “Something like that.”

  I turn in the work he did for me, like I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Truth is, the on
ly reason I’m passing this class is because he does enough work for two. It’s a secret our teacher hasn’t caught on to yet or just doesn’t care about, and one I haven’t mentioned to Dillon.

  Josh moves his hand from the back of my chair to the back of my neck and rubs his thumb back and forth. Straightening my spine, I look around to make sure my boyfriend can’t see this, even though I know he’s sitting in a class across campus.

  “We should hang out sometime, Penny.”

  Pretending to need something from my book bag, I bend over so that Josh’s hand falls back to the seat. There’s nothing but a few extra pairs of sunglasses in case the teal pair on my face somehow breaks, my sack lunch, and another yellow number two pencil identical to the perfectly good one already on my desk.

  “Is there something wrong with this one?” Josh asks, holding up the first pencil when I present him with the second.

  I shrug. “I like this one better.”

  Disturbance tears a corner from his homework and scrawls something down. He passes it to me before sticking my pencil in his shirt pocket.

  It’s his phone number.

  “I have a boyfriend,” I remind him, brushing the contraband from my desk.

  Joshua tears off another corner and writes his number down again; this time in blue ink.

  “Call me when you want to come to my side of town.”

  “Your dad’s going to be home soon,” Dillon says, blushing and so kissable. Lying against my pillows, he holds himself up on his elbows.

  I crawl across my bed, kneel beside him, and take his hand in mine. “Don’t say anything, okay?”

  Bright green eyes look up under long, dark blonde lashes. His breath hitches, and his freckled cheeks tint red.

  “And close your eyes,” I say, nervous under the thousand pounds of pressure his stare forces down on me.