Jimmy managed to finish his sandwich and potato chips. He drank his soda and tossed the remnants into the garbage. Somehow, he thought, he had to get through the rest of the workday and then try to figure out what the hell he was going to do about tonight. He would probably have to walk or ride his bike, and that did not appeal to him. Before he got to that, however, he had to deal with George.
Jimmy had known George for most of his life. They had met in grade school on Jimmy’s first day as the new kid in school. George had arrived wearing pants that looked like they had been painted by a spastic psychotic. They ate their first lunch together that day and became fast friends. George had very strong opinions and could be obnoxious, but he was loyal, and had always been there when Jimmy needed a friend. They had been tormented together and been through so much; the last thing Jimmy needed or wanted was to lose that because of a girl he had met.
“There has to be an easier way to do this,” he muttered as he went back into the store. Exactly what that way was, however, he had no idea.
The rest of the afternoon crawled by. Jimmy found a spot at the far end of the store to stack shelves and he and George tried the best they could not to stand anywhere near each other. It made for a particularly frustrating day. When the day was done, Jimmy got on his bike and headed back home without saying goodbye to George. George, meanwhile, tore off in his car with the tires squealing.
Jimmy made it home after about twenty minutes of riding his bike up and down the hills that had always made riding a bike particularly difficult. He got home with a massive headache, sweating, and feeling rotten. The only thing that had made the ride bearable was thinking about seeing Sapphire’s eyes again. At the same time, he felt those nagging doubts in his mind: she would not show up; she would be part of some elaborate practical joke; all of this would somehow end up on YouTube. Somehow, all of that seemed like a real possibility.
He opened and walked in the front door and heard it slam behind him. He took off his work shirt and made his way down the hall toward his room. He was just about to push open the door when his mother called out to him.
“I have to get out of these clothes,” he responded.
“It can wait a few more minutes,” she replied.
There was a tone in her voice. It was a tone that he had heard many times. It meant that she had made a decision and nothing he said in protest would matter. The one thing that could have saved him was intervention from his father, but he was not there. Jimmy’s father had been dead for five years now; he’d died suddenly from a brain aneurysm in the garage one night. Since then it had been Jimmy and his mother. Most nights Jimmy lay awake and thought about his father, but some days he could barely remember what the man’s face looked like.
Jimmy sighed and tossed his shirt into his bedroom, just barely landing on his bed. Then he turned and walked back into the living room. His mother was sitting in an old, worn rocking chair that she loved. She had a stern look on her face. Here it comes, he thought, but why was it coming in the first place? Why had his entire world turned upside down in the course of twenty-four hours? Had everyone on the planet gone crazy overnight?
“Are you still planning on meeting up with that strange girl you met last night?” she asked.
“Of course,” Jimmy replied. His head began a new wave of pounding against the inside of his skull.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think you should stay home,” she said. “You have to work again tomorrow and I don’t think you should stay up late tonight. What’s more, I don’t think you should try to see this girl again.”
Jimmy nodded. “OK, thanks for the advice, Mom. I’ll take it under advisement.”
“Don’t mouth off to me, young man!” she snapped. She hardly ever raised her voice, but Jimmy could tell that she was really upset about something. “You are still living under my roof, and you will follow my rules.”
“Not on this!” Jimmy surprised himself by snapping back. He felt anger, hot and loud, rushing into his blood. “I finally meet a girl who actually wants to be with me and you, George, and everyone else are doing everything you can to warn me away from her. Why? Why are both of you overreacting so much to this? It’s like George is acting like a jealous girlfriend and, you, well, you’re just a acting…weird. Do you want me to stay alone for the rest of my life?”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “There are lots of girls that you could be dating. You just never ask anyone. Any one of them would be better than some girl you met on the side of the road.”
Jimmy felt anger suddenly burst within him. It was white hot and totally unexpected. That feeling like he had had the night before when he faced off against Clint suddenly emerged within his mind. It was as if he were saying words that were not entirely his, doing things that were not entirely his own actions.
“No, Mom,” Jimmy replied. “There are not a lot of other girls I can date. I am loathed by nearly everyone at Knorr High School. Don’t you know that? Haven’t I told you that? There is not a single girl at school who would be seen anywhere near me. They cross to the other side of the hall, duck into classrooms, and do all they can to stay out of my way at school, Mom. Any notion you have that I am somehow going to end up dating the captain of the cheerleading squad needs to go right out of your head. It is not going to happen.”
“You don’t need to date the head cheerleader,” his mother said with utter exasperation in her voice. “What about your friend Carole? She’s nice.”
“She’s as much of a geek as I am,” Jimmy said. “Why am I only destined to end up with someone as miserable and lonely as I am? Sapphire is gorgeous, Mom. She’s beautiful and she likes me. She actually wants to see me. How can I not go and see if this is something real? It may be some giant cosmic mistake, or perhaps some cruel joke, but how can I not find out for myself? Don’t make me regret telling you about last night.”
“You are NOT going out tonight,” she said, her voice cutting and brittle in the still air inside the house.
“If you try and stop me, I will just sneak out,” Jimmy said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, and unless you plan on nailing my windows shut or handcuffing me to the bed, you are not going to stop me.”
The phone rang. Jimmy paused and picked it up.
“What do you want?”
“Whoa,” Jesse said on the other end. “That had to be the angriest greeting I’ve ever heard. What’s going on, my man?”
Jimmy sighed. “Nothing, just debating something with my mom. Hi, Jesse. Sorry.”
“Not a problem, anything I can help with?”
“No,” Jimmy said. “What’s up?”
“Been waiting all day to hear from you. I heard some interesting rumors. Did you stab one of the football players?”
Jimmy felt himself blushing. “Well, things kind of got out of hand.”
“And were you there with a girl?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “Well…it’s kind of hard to explain. And I don’t think now is the time.”
There was a pause, the steady hiss that always seemed to come from a silent phone line, and noises in the background at the library where Jesse worked. Jimmy had hurt Jesse’s feelings now and he knew it, but he gripped the phone and said nothing.
“I understand,” Jesse said. “Stop by the library when you can, OK? Let’s talk.”
“OK,” Jimmy said, and hung up the phone.
Jimmy stood there with his hand on the phone for several minutes. He knew his mother had overheard the conversation, and he could feel her eyes boring into his back. The disappointment was coming off her in waves. He balled his hands into fists.
He suddenly turned and stormed away. She called his name, but this time he found the strength to ignore it. He thought about Sapphire’s smile and the way she’d felt as they danced. He thought about her voice and how her laugh reminded him of wind chimes. He thought about all of that as he slammed the door behind him, locked it, and sat down on his bed.
He was shaking. He let his anger subside and then he set about finding something to wear. He expected his mother to come to his door, but she didn’t. That feeling of being controlled had left, but now he was left shaken, stunned, wondering what the hell was going on for the umpteenth time that morning.
Outside, the sun began to make its final descent to the tops of the trees. Sapphire was waiting.
6
Jimmy opened his bedroom window. Technically, he had no reason to sneak out of the house, but he didn’t want to run into his mother again. The night air was cool, and the slight chill cut through the shirt he was wearing. He reached back into the room and grabbed a jacket. His heart was pounding.
It had gotten dark early; that usually happened at this time of the year in this part of Pennsylvania. The hills were so high that the sun dropped down behind them long before it dropped down below the horizon. Thus, it was dark much sooner than other parts of the state that was a bit more flat.
He walked across the lawn, his feet making soft, wet noises on the grass. He mounted his bike and began to pedal. The doubts began to assault his brain almost immediately. He was driving into an ambush. All that would be waiting at the bridge were the football jocks. Given what he had done the night before, he’d be lucky to get out alive and not drowned in the river. Or he might just spend the entire evening freezing while standing by the side of the road.
The ride seemed to take forever. Every time a car went by, Jimmy became convinced that it was filled with the football jocks. He moved over into the woods each time and tried to hide among the shadows. Above him, the sky turned from blue into a kind of light gray, and then the edges of the horizon began to glow and turn pink and orange. He hoped that if Sapphire were the real deal, someone who really loved him, she would still be there when he arrived.
The journey felt like an eternity as he rode up and down the hills and around the twisting turns of the road that led to the bridge. What took minutes in George’s car—and with George’s lead foot—took half an hour on the bike. When he rounded the bend and saw the bridge ahead, his heart leaped into his throat. He found new reserves of strength, pedaling faster, his eyes straining against the dying light, trying to find her standing at the side of the road. He saw nothing.
He reached the bridge, out of breath, and feeling like he was going to pass out and sweating. He figured he probably didn’t exactly look like the most attractive man on the planet right now. He parked his bicycle off to the side of the bridge and then stood near the opposite end. He looked up and down the road and heard crickets in the trees and could hear cars whooshing by on the highway about three miles distant, and somewhere, high overhead, he could hear the roar of an airplane’s engine. What he did not see, nor hear, was Sapphire.
“Please,” he whispered under his breath to no one in particular, “Please don’t let me be an idiot for waiting here.”
He paced back and forth on the shoulder. The sky above him grew darker and darker. It seemed as though the shadows of the forest that lined the road drew closer and closer to him, the branches of the trees seemed to reach out toward him. He shivered and tried to pull his jacket more tightly around him. He heard a noise from the other side of the road and froze. Were those footsteps?
“H-hello?” he said, and when his voice cracked he cursed under his breath. He was losing his cool. “Sapphire?”
There was a pause that seemed to stretch on forever. He heard nothing. The footsteps had stopped, as had the sounds of the brush rustling.
“Jimmy?” said a voice that reminded Jimmy of wind chimes.
“Sapphire?” Jimmy called again. He felt relief, but he was now just as nervous as when he’d arrived. He had been so sure it was all going to end up being a grand joke on him that he wasn’t sure what to do now that Sapphire was really here.
She came into the dimming light across the street from where Jimmy was. She was still wearing the dress she had been wearing the night before. She still had Jimmy’s jacket slung across her shoulders.
“You forgot your jacket,” she said with a smile.
“You’re wearing the same dress,” Jimmy replied, realizing how stupid that sounded.
She smiled and shrugged. “I thought you liked it.”
Jimmy held up his hands in a gesture of supplication. “I do like it. I just didn’t expect you to be wearing it again.”
Sapphire shrugged again and stepped forward, grabbing Jimmy’s hand. Her fingers were cold, and he nearly pulled his hand back instinctively. When he wrapped his fingers around her hand, he felt the same strange sensation he’d felt the night before, as if his warmth was transferring to her. In seconds her hand was as warm as his, and her smile widened. Jimmy leaned in, and she mirrored him. Her lips were warm and soft against his, and he closed his eyes, hearing only the soft rustling of tree branches over their heads.
“I missed you,” Jimmy said the moment his lips left hers. “I spent all day thinking about you.”
“I missed you, too,” she replied.
“George isn’t happy with me,” Jimmy said. He hadn’t intended to bring up George, but it was like he was unable to keep his mouth shut around her. “My mom isn’t too happy about things, either.”
A frown crossed Sapphire’s face. “Why?”
Jimmy sighed. He should have kept his mouth shut. Why did she have this effect on
him?
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said quietly.
She shook her head. “No, we should be honest. I want you to tell me everything.”
Jimmy looked at her in surprise. “Really? I kind of got the feeling that there were things about you that you didn’t want to talk to me about. That’s the reason both George and my mother think this is crazy. They had never heard of you before, you came out of nowhere, and then you seemed to vanish into nowhere. No one lives down by the river, and both George and my mother feel that there’s nothing about you that’s even remotely honest or true.”
Sapphire dropped her hand and stepped away from Jimmy. A frown crossed her face again, but she seemed to regain her composure. Then the mask cracked, and a look of pain crossed her visage.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Jimmy said quickly, expecting her to suddenly bolt into the darkness and vanish from his life forever.
“They’re right,” she said. “There are things that don’t make any sense about me. Everything they said is one hundred percent correct. I don’t even fully understand what happened last night, how I ended up here, how I ended up dancing with you, or how we are even here again tonight.”
She looked up and stared Jimmy straight in the eyes. In that moment, he was lost in the darkness of her eyes. He could feel her stare piercing his skull, focusing on some spot in the back of his head that even he didn’t know was there. It was as if she could see him as he truly was, without any of the false machismo that he attempted to put on from time to time.
“I don’t know how any of this is possible,” she said, “and I can’t possibly explain. I just know that it’s happening and I haven’t felt like this in a very, very long time. There’s lots of my story to tell, and I hope I get the chance to tell it to you. I don’t know if the universe will let that happen, but I hope it does, because everything that’s happened so far shouldn’t have been able to happen. I just hope you won’t turn around and leave now because I’m talking like a crazy person. I hope you’ll stay here with me, at least for tonight.”
Jimmy shook his head, but a smile crept across his face. “I would never leave you. Sapphire, I have no idea what is going on, and not a single goddamn thing you’ve said tonight has made a lick of sense, but I am not going anywhere.”
He stepped forward and grabbed her hand. It was cold again, but quickly warmed beneath his fingers.
“I’d follow you anywhere,” he whispered.
She stepped toward him and fell into his arms. He enfolded her within them, feeling her body against his; she was real, solid, and she
felt good. She tilted her face up to his and he kissed her lips. They also felt real and solid, and like everything that could and should be right with the world was. He knew this was right; he didn’t care that she had a strange way of talking, or that she had seemingly walked right out of the darkness of the night—and maybe the darkness of his soul—and had ended up walking down the side of the road. He didn’t care if she lived under the bridge like a troll. He could get used to living under a bridge, he guessed.
When the kiss broke, they stared at each other. For the entire time they had been standing there, not a single car had driven past them. Her eyes shined with the dying of the light, and the stars were tiny pinpricks reflected in her pupils.
“Where should we go?” he asked.
She smiled. “Follow me.”
He did.
They walked. When Jimmy thought back on it later as he tried to relay the story to others, he could only remember that they had walked. He also remembered that he held her hand. He remembered that it was cold at first, but as they walked her hand warmed until it was hot, almost burning. Around them the darkness crept in, surrounding them, making the path hard to see, but Jimmy kept his gaze on Sapphire’s face. He never stumbled once. They were now back at the bridge, while beneath them the river gurgled and ran.
“Where do you come from?” Jimmy asked.
Sapphire turned her head and looked back out across the shimmering water of the river. She stayed that way for a while and then turned back, as if weighing a hard decision. Her eyes were like black pools; they reflected some tiny light from deep within, as if she were glowing from the inside. Jimmy looked up, but could not see the moon.
“I come from around here,” she said simply.
“But where, exactly?” Jimmy insisted.
She sighed. “There are a lot of things I can’t explain, Jimmy. I can’t even explain how I’m here with you tonight. There are things about me that are complicated.”
Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance Page 5