True Love Way

by Mary Elizabeth

  The glowing blaze from the bonfire at the base of Castle Rain is visible from the end of the lot where I park my car. Silhouettes gather around burning tree branches and chopped wood, holding cups or glass bottles. Laughter and music drift into the air with white smoke and small embers, and the salty ocean breeze sweeps it all away.

  “Is that Dillon Decker?” I hear someone say.

  Herbert and Mathilda head toward the water holding hands, and Kyle mumbles something about grabbing a brew before he walks away. I’m left on the sand alone as a shadowed figure makes its way closer to me.

  Pepper Hill appears out of the shadows holding a red Solo cup, barefoot and barelegged. She’s wrapped in a red zip-up sweater, and the strings to her black bikini hang out from under it.

  “I’ve never seen you at one of these parties before,” she says, kicking sand up behind her as she walks toward me. “Why are you way over here?”

  “I’m probably going to head home,” I say. “My parents got me this car…”

  Her big blue eyes light up, and her lips spread into a big smile. “You got a new ride? Can I see?”

  Pepper steps closer to me, kicking sand on my shoes. Liquid spills out of her cup, dripping off her fingers. When the blonde girl who led me to a horrible habit is close enough to touch, the stinging scent of booze is heavy on her breath, and I notice she doesn’t have any makeup on her face.

  “I’m a mess.” She dries her hand off on red cotton. Pepper blinks slowly and grabs onto my arm to stay standing.

  “It’s cool,” I say, leading the helpless to my car.

  “Do you want a drink?” she asks, holding her cup for me over the center console.

  I lean my head back against the headrest and decline. My passenger shrugs, dropping the sweating plastic into the holder and touching everything she can put her hands on.

  “This is seriously the coolest car ever, Dillon. I bet my uncle can fix the headliner for you,” she says, turning her attention to the old stereo dials.

  Eventually she takes a hint that I’m not interested in small talk and sits still. I haven’t been to the beach or the cave Penelope and I hid out in so often since we broke up. Being here without her feels wrong, and guilt weighs heavy in my chest.

  Pepper places her small palm on my leg. I look down at her perfectly painted nails, but don’t ask her to move it.

  “I’m sorry about you and Pen,” she says, reaching for my hand. Her thumb rubs small circles over my knuckles.

  “Thanks,” I reply in a shaky voice.

  “Breakups suck,” she continues. “But I feel like everything happens for a reason.”

  Staring at her tender hand in my larger one, the same guilt I feel for being here without Penelope flares and triples in size because I’m drawn to Pepper’s soft skin. I turn my palm over and open my fingers so that hers fall between mine. Holding tight, for the first time in three weeks, I don’t feel so alone.

  When Pepper Hill’s soft lips touch mine, I know I’m not.

  “Why do you keep calling?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Stop.”

  “I can’t.”

  “My mom is getting mad.”

  “I can’t stop calling.”

  “Are you going to the dance?” I give up and ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “With him?”

  “Yeah,” she answers in a soft voice.

  “Sometimes I wish you were invisible. I wouldn’t have to see you or love you.”

  “You can’t say that, Dillon. Besides, I heard about you and Pepper. I saw you with her at school.”

  “How are you doing?” I change the subject.

  “Bad. Does that make you happy to hear?”

  “No.”

  Two months later and she still makes me cry.

  “Don’t. Please, please, please don’t. Stop crying, I can’t take it.”

  I clear my throat.

  Hopefully, my next words sting.

  “Stop calling me, Penelope.”

  “Dude, what are you doing?”

  I hold up the overpriced corsage and lift my eyebrows. “Buying Pepper’s flowers. These are the ones she told me she wants.”

  “I’m not asking about the flower, smartass. What are you doing with Pepper Hill?” Herbert leans against the counter beside me, waiting for my answer.

  “She’s my girl. We’re going to the Winter Formal.” I shrug and pass the cashier my dad’s credit card.

  Outside, I light a cigarette and blow dense white smoke into the cold January air. Herb stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “You can’t smoke,” he says, trying to grab the cig from between my lips. “This is wrong. Pen messed up, but Mathilda says Josh kissed her first.”

  “So that makes it okay?” I flick my cigarette into the street where it rolls end over end, throwing ashes until it rolls into the gutter and burns out.

  “No, but you’re not happy, and she’s not happy. Pen’s our best friend. You can’t give that up.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Herb.”

  Standing outside the florist shop, one of my oldest friends shakes his head at me with a knowing look on his face.

  “Man-to-man, D, I know Pen’s sick,” he says, staring down to his feet before looking in my eyes. “Mathilda talks to her every day. They hang out on the weekends, painting nails and braiding each other’s hair and shit.”

  A rush of anger surges through my body, and I have to step away from Herbert to catch my breath. My friends get to keep her, and I can’t deal with even living next door to sadness.

  “What’s your point?” I ask, running my hand through my hair.

  “You could have told us. We knew something was up. We just didn’t know what.”

  Pressing my lips together, I turn to face him and hold my hands up. “What do you want me to say? Penelope’s with Josh now, and I’m with Pepper. It’s what she wanted, or she wouldn’t have kissed him in the first place.”

  “Joshua Dark is bad news, Dillon. She hangs at the reservation with him. Pen told Mathilda he’s dealing meth.”

  The only thing that stops me from driving home to be with her is the image of when she was my girl kissing the drug dealer she chose over our relationship. The moment Pen did that, she threw away everything we went through together and all I sacrificed for her like it meant nothing.

  She isn’t my problem anymore.

  “You’re wrong, Dillon. Penelope needs you.”

  “Dance with me.” Pepper pouts her pretty lips, pulling on my hand.

  The girl I came here with stands out in the room full of people decked out in their best formal wear. Pepper’s hair is tightly curled and pulled back, pinned all around her head. The corsage I slipped on her wrist while our parents took pictures matches the loose tie around my neck and her red dress that brushes the floor when she walks.

  She loves the attention.

  I want to go home.

  “You smell like whiskey and cigarettes. It’s seriously gross.” My date gives up, holding her manicured hands on her hips.

  “Want some?” I offer my punch cup.

  “No thanks, dick.” Pepper rolls her eyes before she walks away.

  Swimming in a liquid haze, my drunk eyes search around the room for the girl next door. She’s been the only thing on my mind since Herbert filled me in on what she’s been up to lately. I stole the whiskey bottle Risa keeps under her bed and drank most of it, hoping to ease my worries. It made them worse, and it pissed Pepper off because she had to drive.

  “Have you seen Pen?” I ask when Kyle takes the seat next to me.

  He nods toward the gym turned winter wonderland entrance.

  Madness walks in under Josh’s arm, expressionless and beautiful in a simple white dress. The group of reservation kids she’s with is loud and flashy. All of them with the exception of their ringleader are dressed casually.

  I put my cup down to go talk to her, but Kyle p
ulls me back into the chair.

  “Don’t do it, D,” he says. “Wait until she gets away from him.”

  Sitting through another hour of annoying beats from the stereo and my girlfriend giving me dirty looks as she dances with her friends, Penelope finally gets up from her table on the other side of the room, and I follow her to the bathroom.

  “Does Wayne know Josh is a drug dealer?” I ask, taking her elbow and yelling over the music.

  “Why do you care? You don’t want me, remember?” She pulls away from me and straightens her dress.

  “You know I do, Pen,” I say.

  I’ll never stop.

  Tears pool in her eyes, but before I can comfort her, Josh shows up and does it instead. I thought watching them kiss was hard, but it’s nothing compared to seeing him care. To stand here and watch him brush her hair out of her face and wipe away sadness only I used to understand creates a stinging bitterness in me I can’t bear to deal with alone.

  He took everything from me.

  “Take your hands off of her,” I say, squaring up.

  Josh looks away from Penelope and steps toe-to-toe with me without making sure she is safely out of the way. Instead, he smiles in my face and dares me with his dark eyes to make a move.

  I shove my hands into his chest.

  Rez boys aren’t that fucking big.

  “She doesn’t want to be with you, Dillon,” my worst enemy says, unbuttoning his cuffs.

  Herbert and Kyle run up with Josh’s crew behind them. My boys hold me back and I allow it, but when I notice Mathilda shove Pen into the girls’ bathroom, I fight them off and rush after the kid dumb enough to mess with my girl and me and expected me to go down without a fight.

  Before I have a chance to break his face, I’m pushed out of the way and told, “Move your feet, boy.”

  Stumbling to the side, Coach Finnel shoves me over and over until I crash through double doors out into the cold Washington night. I breathe in mouthfuls of icy air, hoping it will clear the blind rage coursing through my veins.

  It doesn’t work.

  “Do you have any idea who he is?” I ask, pulling at the front of Mr. Finnel’s shirt. “Who you’re letting your daughter be with?”

  Wayne doesn’t budge or stop me from taking my aggression out on him. He just looks down at me with a sympathetic stare I wish I could rip from his face.

  “What are you going to do anyway?” I push my fist into his chest before releasing him. “You’re a washed-up football coach chaperoning a high school dance.”

  He cracks a smile.

  “She needs to learn for herself, boy. We can’t do everything for her.” The man I’ve grown up fearing reaches out for me. “But you should know I would never let anything bad happen to Pen.”

  I shrug his hand off my shoulder, but his fatherly affection frees pressure behind my eyes, and I start to cry. When Wayne reaches for me a second time, I let him wrap me in his furry grip and soak his shirt with my self-pity.

  He’s right.

  There’s no saving Penelope from her own mind.

  I need to let go.

  Months go by and eventually Dillon and I start to pass each other in school hallways like there was never anything between us. Sometimes our eyes meet, and my muted heart comes to life and thumps like it used to, but one of us always looks away and my beat goes silent.

  As gloomy weather parts the sky and allows the sun to shine down, graduation day gets closer and closer. They tell me I’m going to get a diploma, and I’ll be able to walk with the rest of my class in a cap and gown.

  “But going to a university isn’t an option, Miss Finnel,” the school counselor says. “Here are some pamphlets on our local community colleges and trade schools.”

  My therapist thinks I should give my future more consideration than I do. She gives me pamphlets about the advantages of having short-term and long-term goals.

  “There’s no reason why you can’t be successful in life, Penelope. The fact you continue to see me each week is proof you want more.”

  “Or that my parents force me here,” I say with a smile, shoving the pamphlets into my book bag with the ones she gave me during our last session.

  Dad and Mom have come to an agreement about the medication I’ve taken sporadically since I was a kid.

  “It does more good than harm, sweetie,” my mother says, dropping two pills into the palm of my hand—one white, one yellow. “You’ve done so well lately.”

  I throw the mood stabilizer and anti-depressant to the back of my throat and swallow them dry.

  My parents stand back and wait for me to open my mouth and lift my tongue, which is the direct result of them catching me when I used to spit them out before bed.

  “Good?” I ask, after having shown them proof their drugs are now dissolving in my stomach.

  Dad uncrosses his arms. “You don’t have to be so sarcastic all the time, Pen. We—”

  “Only want what’s best for me,” I finish his sentence, heading toward the stairs. “I know.”

  Mom locks the orange prescription bottles back inside a box she hides from me anyway, and I take two steps at a time up to my room. I close the door behind me and pull off my shirt and kick off my pants as my lips start to tingle and my head feels light.

  Changing into a pair of pajamas, I open my now yellow curtains in case Dillon’s taken the board down from his. Tears used to break from my eyes every time I looked and it was still up, but they don’t anymore. Maybe it’s the pills doing their job, or because I’m used to him treating me like I don’t exist, but I’m able to walk away dry-eyed.

  I slip under my covers and grab the cell phone my parents gave me for my seventeenth birthday. There are a voicemail from Josh and a text from Mathilda, but I turn the phone off without responding to either one of them and find myself brushing my fingers over the Deckers’ home number, knowing I’ll never dial it again.

  As my eyes grow heavy and my bedroom begins to fade away, I wonder if the boy next door ever does the same thing.

  Dillon’s cap and gown are as green as his eyes, and from my spot two rows back, I can’t help but appreciate the man he’s truly becoming. His hair is cut short, and it makes the angle of his so-sharp jaw more predominant. Something causes him to laugh hard enough he tilts his head back, showcasing the most perfect Adam’s apple I’ve ever seen.

  When he looks over his shoulder and catches me staring, the right side of my mouth curves up. Dillon doesn’t reciprocate, and his eyes pass over me like I’m another stranger in the crowd.

  Normally being treated in such a way from the only boy I have ever loved would crush me and send my mind into an episode of self-hating and near insanity, but the medicine coursing through my bloodstream puts a wall between heartbreak and reality. Madness swarms below a false cure, waiting for me to slip up.

  Until then, I’m … numb.

  “Dillon Timothy Decker,” his name is called over the loudspeaker twenty minutes later.

  The alumnus walks onto the stage and accepts his diploma with a gracious smile. Our graduating class erupts into a loud buzz of cheers and claps. Herb throws a beach ball—he must have snuck under his gown and blown up while we sit here and wait for our name to be announced—at his best friend as he walks off stage. It bounces off Dillon’s shoulder back into the awaiting hands of the commencing student body where it’s bounced around until a teacher is able to deflate it.

  “Penelope Georgia Finnel,” my full name is broadcasted. I follow the designated path taped onto the stage and receive what I didn’t work hard enough to earn.

  After shaking hands with the principal, we take a photo before I’m led away with a smile and a nod, and just like that, it’s over.

  Once the platform is cleared and we flip our caps into the air, Castle Rain High School’s graduating class is officially released to become productive citizens of the world. I share a quiet good-bye with the very few friends I made through the years, leave Mathilda Tipp w
ith promises to get together soon, and meet up with my only family I have here to support me—my parents.

  Dad slings his arm over my shoulders, Mom slides hers around my back, and we go home to start the rest of our lives.

  “I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable,” I say, falling into bed with my phone at my ear.

  “Don’t be silly, Pen. You know Kyle. He wants you to come,” Mathilda replies. “I’ll be in front of your house in two minutes. Be ready because I’m only going to honk.”

  “But Dillon’s going to be there. He should celebrate graduation with his best friends. I’m the one who doesn’t belong.”

  “Penelope, you’re one of us, and you’re my best friend. Shouldn’t we be able to celebrate together, too? We only have the summer.”

  “Okay, you’re right.” I sigh. Looming panic fights to break past my chemical resolve. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

  “Good,” my redheaded friend says. “And if Pepper Hoe-Bag Hill tries to mess with you, I got your back. I’ve been waiting to chew her face off.”

  “Thanks.” I laugh and hang up.

  Quickly checking my reflection in the mirror, I rub smeared mascara out from under my eyes and run a brush through my colored hair. True to her word, the sound of Mathilda’s horn follows the echo of squeaky brakes coming to a stop in front of my house.

  “Is it okay if I go to Kyle’s for a party?” I ask, standing before my parents in our living room.

  Mom glances up at the clock on the wall and hums.

  “It’s eight o’clock, baby. You’re supposed to take your medication in a half hour, and I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to miss a dose.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Be home at eleven. You can take them when you get home.”

  Kissing them each on the cheek, I run out the door into the humid summer night and jump into Mathilda’s Camry. Herbert reaches forward from the backseat and messes up my hair.

  “We could have walked,” I say as she pulls away from the curb. Yellow-orange headlights illuminate the road ahead.