by Raen Smith
Dr. Sullivan walks out the door and I hear him talk to Flora in a controlled and clear voice that echoes throughout the conjoined offices.
“Piper Sullivan is withdrawing from Xavier High School effective today. Please send whatever paperwork that needs to be completed to this address.”
To say my heart sinks is a total understatement. More accurately, my world is imploding in front of my face.
“What are you doing?” Piper yells as we all filter into the administrative office, except for Big Dave. “You can’t do this to me.”
“Excuse me,” Dr. Sullivan says to Flora who nods her head quickly and looks down to shuffle through papers to avoid the awkward tension.
“We will discuss this tonight when we get home,” Dr. Sullivan says. “No other behavior will be tolerated and no further discussion unless you want me to miss my next surgery.”
“No,” Piper says dutifully as she hangs her head. Her blonde waves rush forward, blocking her dejected face.
“Piper,” I say. Her name rolls of my tongue with a longing I can’t control.
“Cash, don’t,” she says as she gives me one last look as her father turns toward the door without looking back at us. She curls her fingers into a circle and puts it up to her eye before running to catch up with her father. Then her pink shirt disappears through the door.
It takes all my self-control not to yell and chase after her.
Instead, I hang my head and trod back to Big Dave who is still sitting in Principal Watkins’ office. Big Dave’s hands are clasped in front of him, and his elbows are on his knees.
“What was that all about?” I ask.
Big Dave looks at me with hard eyes and replies, “What?”
“What was that all about?” I repeat, on the verge of yelling. I know it’s not Big Dave’s fault, but my alter ego is ready to tear down the entirety of Principal Watkins’ office. I want to sweep the papers off his desk and kick his chair through the window. I want to knock over his desk and stab the crucifix into the wall. Instead, I do nothing but wring my hands and breathe.
“Nothing,” Big Dave says quietly.
I breathe in deeper, trying to focus on sound reasoning. Piper is leaving Xavier. Not Appleton. Piper is leaving Xavier. Not Appleton.
“That wasn’t nothing, Dad. There’s no way that was nothing. I understand if you’re mad at me and want to ground me. I get that. I can wrap my head around that, but I can’t figure out what just happened in here.”
“It was nothing.” Big Dave clears his throat and slaps his knees before he gets up. He puts his arm around me and smiles. “Just a relapse, but now it’s over. I guess we have to go home, huh?”
“I guess,” I say without conviction.
“Suspension always seems like a backward punishment, doesn’t it? I mean, now you get to go home and miss class for three days. What kid doesn’t want that?” he asks as he leans across Principal Watkins’ desk and grabs the cigar. He slides it into his pocket before smiling at me.
“Well, I don’t. I’m going to get backed up on assignments before the first day is even over. I haven’t even gone to my afternoon classes yet.”
“You did the deed, you pay the fee,” Big Dave says as he claps me on my back.
“But Piper –”
“I guess everything happens for a reason, Cash. I’ll be the first to tell you that life can be a bitch, but it’s the journey that makes you stronger.”
“Screw journeys if they don’t involve Piper,” I say.
“The first heartbreak of many, son,” he says as he leads me out of the office. “Flora, can you let Hudson Hawley know that I’m taking Cash home?”
“No problem, Dave.” Flora nods her head.
“Let’s go to El Azteca. I’m in the mood for some bottomless chips and a margarita,” Big Dave says as he squeezes my shoulder.
***
I wait until Big Dave is snoring on the recliner in the living room with his copy of Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment spread across his chest before I sneak out to the garage. I left him a note to let him know where I’m going. I yank up the garage door and roll my Yamaha out of the garage and down the block a quarter of a mile. Once I turn the corner, I hop on and crank the engine until I’m burning down the street. Piper’s house is only fifteen minutes away. I want nothing else than to see her again.
After El Azteca, I drove us home in the old Camry, and Big Dave spent the afternoon mediating and thumbing through some of his battered copies of spiritual enlightenment and self-help books. God, Big Dave really is a great dad, but he can be a little zealous with all that crap, and I get sick of watching him nod his head and close his eyes. I wandered off to my room where I threw a ball against the wall and skimmed through Gray’s Anatomy until my arms were too exhausted to even lift the book anymore. I really need to work on that bench-pressing stuff.
Hudson came over for dinner, even though I wasn’t in the mood to see him. He gobbled up one of Big Dave’s frozen pizzas by himself while I replayed the story of Piper and me in the closet. He nodded his head in sympathy and promised me that it was going to turn out fine. He tried to convince me that Dr. Asshole was just yanking her out of school. It didn’t mean that she was leaving. Even if that is the case, I know that I’m not going to be welcome within fifty feet of Piper if Dr. Asshole has anything to do with it.
My headlight shines in the dusk, leading me to Piper and to the fence on the north side of town. The chill of the September night filters through my Xavier sweatshirt, and I suddenly realize what a jerk move it is to wear this sweatshirt now that she isn’t going to be there anymore. I hate that Piper came in with such a beautiful bang and now Dr. Asshole is trying to take that away from us. Big Dave’s words keep rolling through my head as I turn onto her road, and I hate every single one of them, “The universe must be balanced, and we must find peace in knowing that the cycle will settle into an equilibrium fit for all us.”
What the hell does all that bullshit mean, anyway?
I stop my bike a few houses down and push it in the quiet darkness until I am next to the fence and the hole and the visions of Piper that are branded in my memory. The McMansion is black. I flip the kickstand down and jog up to the fence in search of the hole, but I can’t find it in the dark right away. I scan the white lines until I see a slip of paper sticking through the hole. I grab the paper, unroll it in a fury and put it up to my face. But I can’t make out the words, so I jog back to my bike and flip on the headlight.
My hands are trembling as I hold the paper up in the beam of light.
Cash,
Where should I begin? I don’t know how to start this letter because I know how I have to finish it, and I don’t want to do that. I guess I will have to do the best I can.
Things I know about Cash Rowland:
1. He is a wicked sweet boy with a grin that melts a girl’s heart.
2. He stole a kiss from me in a closet I’ll never forget (the kiss, not the closet).
3. He is cautious, smart, and filled with more useless information than I can probably imagine.
4. He definitely should go to college and is definitely smart enough to be a doctor. He will be a damned fine doctor if you ask me, but hey, I’m just a girl.
5. He deserves someone so much better than me, Piper Sullivan.
As you read this, I’m probably up in the air somewhere over boring Wyoming or one of the Dakotas (which one doesn’t matter to anyone), or foam-fingered Idaho. That’s right, you read it right. Dr. Sullivan is shipping me on a plane across our great country to finish off my senior year with my crazy Aunt Belinda in California. I’m not writing down any contact information because if this is meant to be, we’ll find each other again someday. I want you to get your head out of your ass and go to college. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet some hot girl in med school, and you can have little doctor babies.
Yours,
The Girl in Pink
P.S. I wrote this note with “
your” pen that I am now claiming as my own. As you can see, the flow is phenomenal, and it will become one of my go-to pens in my collection. Thank you, by the way. You still owe me five bucks.
I crumple up the piece of paper and throw it on the ground before I kick the front tire and yell into the silent neighborhood of rich jerks and their mansions.
“FUCK!!”
As I stand panting with my hands on my knees, all I can feel is the cold emptiness that only Piper Sullivan can replace. I stumble over to the crumpled paper and pick it up, smoothing it out to read it again. My eyes blur over the words so I fold it up neatly and shove it into my pocket. I wonder then what Shaman Amy would say to me to get me out of this black hole. Whatever she would say, I’m pretty sure that I would tell Shaman Amy to go screw herself.
I climb back on the bike and sit there for longer than a reasonable amount of time, contemplating the reasons why the universe decided to take a huge dump on me. Maybe it’s because I once stole a piece of licorice from old man Van Rossum when I was seven or maybe it’s because I should have been a little nicer to Jill Haven and her trombone. All I know is that I hate everything about the universe and my Luella Intuition in this moment.
There are two key things that I don’t know during this haze of rage:
1. I don’t know that I’ll read her letter exactly one-thousand-four-hundred-thirty-two times before I see her again.
2. I don’t know that my lips won’t find Piper’s for more than two-thousand long and agonizing days.
Shatter away, Piper Sullivan. Shatter away.
Chapter 6
Spring 2013
I know you’re wondering if you read the date right. You’re wondering how I could have possibly let five years pass. Believe me, I know. You’re thinking, Cash Rowland, get on that dirt bike and go find her. She’s the love of your life. You can’t let her get away. Believe me, I know.
It wasn’t like I didn’t try. God, did I try to finagle Piper Sullivan back into my life. Countless Internet searches, endless fake phone calls to Dr. Sullivan’s office to pry information from the receptionist, and even random mailbox checks at Dr. Sullivan’s McMansion. One spring day during my senior year I even showed up at Dr. Sullivan’s office and demanded that he tell me where Piper went.
You can imagine how that went over.
I was a wreck over Piper my senior year, but old Hudson waded me through the madness, and I managed to graduate at the top of our class by some act of the universe, or maybe it was the tortured Jesuses. I was waitlisted at Princeton and when the acceptance letter came late mid-summer, I dropped my plans to attend the local community college with Hudson and enrolled at Princeton.
Big Dave and Hudson reluctantly drove me the seventeen hours to New Jersey and dropped me off with two milk crates of belongings, the half-smoked cigar, and twenty-thousand dollars in loans, for the first year. I managed to secure ten grand in scholarships and Big Dave came through with another ten grand, again, reluctantly. He had been saving, even though he hadn’t ever wanted to actually use the savings for college.
I scoured the campus for weeks, checking every dorm and hanging out at every social gathering I could find. I always looked for the same things: pink clothes, blonde hair, and peach lips. And my search always came up empty. Piper wasn’t at Princeton.
It was at the end of that year that I almost smoked the cigar and almost burned the note Piper had left in the fence that night. Almost.
I returned to Wisconsin that summer for good with only ten college credits earned. I failed half of my classes at Princeton not because I couldn’t hack it at an Ivy League school, but well, you could say that I was a little preoccupied. I was also twenty grand poorer. Hudson and Big Dave welcomed me back with open arms.
The original plan was put back in place, and I moved back home with my tail between my legs much to Big Dave’s relief. Most nights, I lay in my bed thinking of her, dreaming of her, and one night in particular, I swore I could smell the faint hint of peach that was Piper. But I shook it off, knowing that it was just my crazy obsession that couldn’t be quelled.
I attended community college in preparation for medical school before a brilliant idea washed over me while daydreaming during class. I was trapped in a concrete cage with little visibility to the outside world, just like I would be for the next eight years pursuing a doctorate. Then there’d be a residency, then finally a job in a concrete cage that I would work for the next forty years of my life. The feeling suffocated me as I watched a semi roll past the classroom window that provided the tiniest glimpse of the outside world. The wheels turned in my head and an idea that would only make Big Dave glow with pride formed in my mind. I had the rest of my life to be trapped inside a concrete cage. The open road called to me. For the record, Big Dave thought my plan was ingenious.
I’m twenty-two now, and I’m a truck driver. Yep, you heard that right, I drive an eighteen-wheeler Hudson ceremoniously named Cash Money. I like the name, and better yet, I love the smell of the diesel and the open road and the blue skies and the freedom. Plus, I get to see every shithole that America has to offer.
Most people think that truck drivers get to “travel” across the country and see what this great nation called America has become over the last two hundred some years. But they’re wrong. I deliver toothbrushes, TVs, toilet paper, and condoms to the shitholes of America. You know on the movies where people are being killed in some back alley? That’s where I’m going. See you have highways, then you have the cities filled with businesses, then there’s the industrial park and then there’s the warehouse. In the way, way back of the dirtiest corners of every city, that’s where you find truck drivers. That’s where you’ll find me, Cash Rowland.
Or you’ll find me here, with my fully functioning Shovelhead parked out front of a bar called Speakeasy in Appleton, standing next to Hudson who earned a two-year business degree the same year I brought home my commercial driver’s license. Hudson is taking over his dad’s carpentry business, so you don’t have to worry that he’ll ever lose his piney-fresh, lemon smell. It’s in his blood.
“Which girl are you looking at?” Hudson yells above the music and follows my gaze to the two girls dancing on the other side of the bar.
“Neither.” I take a swig of my ice cold Miller.
“My guess is the blonde. It’s always the blondes.” He does his usual smirk that replaces what a normal person would consider a smile. I’ve known him for more than a decade, and I’m certain that Hudson is incapable of smiling. He smirks. It drives women wild, or at least that’s what they tell me. Most women like to tell me what they love about Hudson because they think I’m his sidekick, which I am whether I like to admit it or not. They tell me how bad they want him and his skeleton t-shirts and his bulging biceps and rock hard abs and oh, by the way, is he available? I’d love to go on, but a smell twitches my nostrils.
It’s a scent that stops me in my tracks every time. It’s a scent that makes my heart drop. It’s a scent I think about every single time I lean in to kiss a girl. It’s almost the scent of her.
I turn to my left to watch a bald, middle-aged man with a swelled beer belly so large that it brushes against the bar. A cigar is sticking out of the pocket of his fitted – and not fitted in the pleasant kind of way – work shirt.
“Whatever, Hudson. You’re right. The blonde.” I turn away from the man who is the antithesis of Piper Sullivan. It’s been five years now and every time I smell that glorious twinge of cherry-smoked cigars, my ridiculously adolescent hopes raise, and I think I’ll see the girl that shattered my heart standing before me. Pathetic, I know. At least I’m not as physically pathetic as I was when I first met her. I’ve gained forty pounds and can grow a beard within a few days. And I catch women eyeing me every once in a while, or at least I think they do anyway. Usually, Hudson is the one nudging me with the “potentials.” Those are Hudson’s words, not mine, because you see, none of the girls I meet are even remotely close
. There is no potential.
“Ease up, man,” Hudson says. “Get some of that tension out of your neck. I think the blonde might help with that.”
I finish my beer and raise the bottle at Holly, the cute and (according to Hudson) definitely interested bartender, before I set it down. Again, there are no potentials. Even the one girl that I technically dated for more than six months wasn’t a potential. The blonde nursing student was a friend of Hudson’s girlfriend at the time, and I only agreed to a double date on Hudson’s insistence. She was nice and all, but she was the type of girl that you found yourself marrying and then thirty years and four kids later, you found yourself wondering how the hell she managed to make that happen. Plus, she had an annoying habit of chomping her food every single time she ate – chomp, chomp, chomp. She hung around for six months too long.
“How’s the project in Madison? Are you almost done?” I ignore the talk about the blonde who may or may not still be dancing behind us.
“Another week yet,” Hudson replies as he takes a long pull from his bottle.
“Another week? It seems like it’s taking you a bit longer than usual,” I say. “Remind me again why we even have an apartment together. Neither of us is ever there.”
“Tell me about it,” he replies before he slaps his hand on my shoulder. “We have to remind ourselves that it’s all about the potentials.”
“Potential for what?” I ask. The truth is, Hudson and I are still working on that badass thing even five years later. It’s an unspoken goal that we both know we’ll never accomplish. At least I’m a little closer to looking the part like Hudson. Deep down, though, we’re both just nice guys, the suckers that always finish last.
“I saw her,” Hudson says in a voice so raw and unwilling that it almost makes me drop my beer.
“Saw who?” I ask even though I know who he’s talking about. I just want to hear him say her name.