Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning

by Danette Haworth

  We’re not talking much. Mostly, we’re slurping our drinks.

  Then Melissa says, “I have a good idea.” Her eyes gleam. “Let’s play truth or dare.”

  Lottie—I mean, Char—claps her hands. “Okay! Think of some good questions!”

  “Or some good dares,” I say, looking directly at Melissa. I dare her to . . . This has got to be good. I think on this.

  “I got a good one!” Lottie yells. “Melissa, truth or dare?”

  Melissa smiles. “Truth.”

  Lottie leans forward and asks, “If Paris Heights was your real life, and Zeke went to our school and got into a terrible accident and had amnesia, would you tell him you were his girlfriend and that he had always loved you?”

  “Who’s Zeke?” Eddie and I say together.

  “Like only the best-looking guy on Paris Heights,” Melissa says and laughs. Then she turns to Lottie. “You know I would! Do you even have to ask?”

  They giggle together. A slow burn creeps up from my heart and works up to my eyes.

  “Okay, okay, my turn,” Melissa says. “Char— truth or dare?”

  “Truth.”

  Melissa’s not prepared. I finish my BrainFreeze, it takes her so long to come up with the lame question she asks, which is this: “If your sisters were held for ransom and your parents had been kidnapped and the only way you could save them was to fling yourself off a cliff with only your long wedding dress for a parachute, would you do it?”

  Eddie groans.

  Lottie considers this question seriously. “Yes, I would do it.”

  Melissa looks sympathetically at her.

  “Oh, my Lord!” This is like boxing with pillows. “I can’t believe you’re asking these questions. Come on, let’s play it right.” I look at Lottie. “I got a good one for you. Truth or dare?”

  “Truth!” She’s into it now.

  “Who’s your best friend?”

  Her face falls. Everything stops—the smiling, the laughing, the birds’ singing—everything stops and Lottie stares at me as if I asked her to pluck the still-beating heart from someone she loves.

  “Violet . . . ,” she says, but she’s not answering the question. Her eyes plead with me to stop.

  “Answer the question,” I say. She asked for the truth, now she’s got to give it.

  The air is thick. I wait.

  “Okay, this is my answer,” she finally says. “Violet is my oldest and dearest best friend.”

  Ha! I knew it!

  “And Melissa is my newest best friend.”

  “That’s not an answer!” I say. “You have to pick one!”

  “You think you’re so tough,” Melissa says. “I’ve got the perfect dare for you, if you’re not too scared to take it.”

  “I ain’t scared of anything you can dish out,” I say. “Go ahead!”

  “Okay.” She smirks. “I dare you to kiss Eddie.”

  The expression on my face freezes. My heart falls inside of me, crashing a hundred times. Lottie looks shocked. Eddie looks shocked too, but in a truer way, like the way he looked when we were sitting on the porch and we felt that lightning strike the woodpecker tree.

  My eyes flash back to Melissa. She has a face full of smug. I want to push that smug back into her. I stomp over to Eddie, grab his shirt, and smash my lips into his. Then I push him away and look triumphantly at Melissa.

  “There!” I say. “I did it—I kissed him! It was nothing.”

  I say that to let her know how little her dare means to me. But when I look at their faces, I see I’ve done everything wrong. I quickly turn to Eddie, but he’s already standing up, turning away, leaving.

  “Eddie, wait!” I desperately glance from them to Eddie. He keeps walking, head down. I jog behind him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  He starts running.

  There ain’t no catching up to him now.

  Some kind of weight presses in on me. My shoulders sag. My eyes hurt from behind. I look back to the picnic table, back to two sets of wide eyes staring at me. I glance the other way, to Eddie, who’s not there anymore. Catching a ragged breath, I drop my head and slink home through the woods.

  27

  I have betrayed Eddie with a kiss. I am a Judas.

  The whole thing plays over and over in my mind: Melissa, sneering at me, daring me to kiss Eddie; my jaw dropping open; Lottie’s hand flying to cover her mouth. But the face that means the most to me is Eddie’s. His eyes got big and round, but his face had a gentle look. Tears well up in my eyes when I think about his face. Oh, my Lord, I can’t believe the thing I’ve done.

  I’m hiding out in my room. Momma’s making supper. She thinks I’m reading a book, but I can’t concentrate on nothing ’cept what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt Eddie. I just wanted to shut Melissa up. But even as I was doing that, even when I slid my eyes over to see her defeat, I remember noticing his lips. I didn’t know a boy’s lips could be so soft.

  It don’t matter now. He hates me. He’ll never be my friend again, and I don’t blame him.

  I wrap my arms around my knees. I sit like that for a long time, until I hear the phone ring and Momma call up, “Violet, phone!”

  I got no idea who’d want to call me. Maybe it’s a wrong number. My heart starts up. Maybe it’s Eddie’s parents calling to yell at me. I don’t want Momma to know about this, so I rush down the stairs to the kitchen, grab the phone, and drag it as far as the cord will let me. “Hello?”

  “Violet, it’s me.”

  I sink to the floor hearing Lottie’s voice. “Hey.” I’ll let her yell at me too. Lord knows I deserve it.

  But she doesn’t yell. Her voice sounds lonely. “Why did you ask me that question?”

  The thing with Eddie is taking up such a big place in my head, it takes me a minute to remember what she’s talking about. “It’s okay,” I say. “You can like her better than me.”

  “I don’t like her better than you! Wait a second.” The rustle of the cord comes through, then her voice lowers. “You’ve been acting weird ever since Melissa moved here.”

  “No, I haven’t—you have, with all your makeup and magazines, plus now you got a bra.” I hear her sigh when I say that. “You keep talking about boys being cute. You even said that about Eddie.”

  “Eddie is cute—haven’t you ever noticed? And I know you think I’m doing whatever Melissa tells me to do, but I’m not. I’m doing what I want to do.”

  My eyes narrow even though she can’t see me. “What about Paris Heights and all that stuff?”

  She clicks her tongue. “I don’t care about that! It’s just fun because Melissa’s so into it.”

  “So she is your best friend now.”

  “Violet, would you stop it? Besides, why can’t I have two best friends? You have me and Eddie.”

  My heart wells up with sadness. “Not anymore I don’t.”

  “Oh.” She lowers her voice and whispers, “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. He don’t want to be friends no more.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  I remember him running away from me. He knows I can’t catch up to him when he runs full speed. “Yes, I do,” I say. What I said about kissing him was past forgiving. If I were him, I would erase Violet Raines forever. When I saw the person that used to be her, I’d see right through her, like she was nothing but air. “He’ll never talk to me again.”

  We are quiet for a few minutes. Then Lottie says, “What did it feel like?”

  I push the phone closer to my face. “What?”

  “When you kissed him,” she says. “What did it feel like?”

  “I don’t know!” I holler. God Almighty, I’m grievous about this problem and that’s what she asks me. I ain’t going to tell her about his soft lips and his boy smell. Or the strange-good feeling it gave me when we kissed.

  When I don’t say nothing, she says, “Well, you can’t just not be friends anymore. You’ve known him all your li
fe.”

  For a moment, I see Eddie with his fish doll and its worn-out fins, Eddie on his bike riding that wheelie, and I think of Lottie and me carving our names into her bedpost. I feel like crying. All that I’ve given up, just to show Melissa. I am foolish.

  “Are you still there?” Lottie asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, but my heart is about half a mile away, down the road off the turn.

  28

  Lord Almighty, someone’s banging on the front door, and Momma’s not even done frying our eggs yet.

  “I’ll get it,” I say. Don’t often get a knock this early, ’specially on a Saturday morning. I swing the door open and there’s Lottie standing on the porch. Melissa too. I don’t want Momma hearing any of what happened yesterday, so I slip out, closing the door behind me. “Hey,” I say and look down.

  “Look!” is all Lottie says. She pushes a folded newspaper into my hands.

  Okay, I see the president is doing something. “So?” I hand it back to her. I wonder if they came to make more of a fool out of me than I did myself.

  “No, no!” they yell together.

  Lottie takes the paper from me and opens it so’s the front page is full. “Here!” She points with one hand. They exchange a glance as I take the paper.

  All the breath is knocked out of me. Me and Lottie, on the front page! “Oh, my Lord!” I stare, astonished. I can’t believe we are front-page news. Only your most important news gets on the front page.

  Lottie jumps up and down. “Read it, read it!” But before I can, she’s already telling me what it says. “Everything we said is right here in the paper! And the Home Sweet Home people are going to fix everything! And they’re raising money for us to replace stuff!”

  “All right!” Melissa says and they high-five.

  I’m not even annoyed; I am in shock.

  I’m staring at us, me and Lottie. In the picture, we’re leaning against each other, and Lottie’s arm is around me. We’re both smiling these huge smiles, the kind that squish your eyes and make your cheeks big, and anyone could see just by looking how good friends we are.

  And just in case there was any doubt, the headline reads “Best Friends Survive Strike.” Well, there it is, God’s honest truth, right there in the newspaper—Best Friends.

  Lottie is still talking.

  Melissa makes a fist and sticks it under Lottie’s mouth like it was a microphone. “Char, you’ve survived lightning and now you’re on the front page of the newspaper. What’s next for you?”

  I can’t help it; I accidentally let myself laugh.

  Lottie says, “There’s even more!”

  She grabs the paper and flips it over for me. I look where the story’s continued inside, and there’s a little picture of Lottie, me, and Melissa, but not the one where I let my mad face show. The photographer must have taken this picture when we weren’t looking. I’m standing in the middle, pointing to something far in the distance. And even though Melissa’s leaning against the banister and Lottie’s sitting, we’re all looking ahead to the same thing. I wish I knew what it was.

  “Oh, my Lord!” I say. I hug the newspaper to me. I love this article, and I love these pictures. A wonderful feeling swells up in me, and I feel like I’m going to burst.

  Lottie hugs me and says, “All this is because of you! That letter you wrote!”

  I look at Melissa’s face in the picture and then glance at the real Melissa. “Actually, I kind of got the idea from you.” She looks a little surprised when I say that, but I feel it’s right to give credit where credit is due. I go on. “You know, how you write all those Hollywood letters and you put your picture in.” I turn to Lottie. “That’s how I got the idea.”

  “All right!” Lottie holds her hands up, one high five for each of us. We slap her hands and giggle.

  Melissa grabs a pen from her pocket and offers it to me. “Sign it, Violet.” She holds the pen out and looks me directly in the eyes. “I’ve just decided to start a collection of local celebrities.” She clicks the pen. “You’ll be my first.”

  She’s not laughing as I take the pen and neither am I. This is a peace treaty. Everyone’s quiet as I write my name carefully across the picture. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath and they are too, until I lift the pen and we all let our breath go at the same time.

  When I look up, Lottie is smiling at me, and Melissa is blowing on my autograph so it don’t smear. Lottie is still Lottie, even though she’s Char now. And Melissa, with her makeup and all her Detroit bragging, ain’t that bad. She has some good ideas and she’s a fast runner, I saw that the day of the alligator.

  I saw another thing that day too. One person who didn’t run away. My heart is full of sorrow on how I treated him. I can’t run away either. I got to find him.

  29

  I tell Lottie and Melissa what I got to do. After I say good-bye to Momma, Melissa and Lottie walk with me a little ways, then they head back to Melissa’s house.

  I’m on my own now, walking toward Eddie’s house, practicing what I’ll say when I knock on his door. If I say sorry, what if he doesn’t forgive me? Better to not apologize—then he can’t not-forgive me. Maybe I could act like I’m so happy and tell him about the newspaper and how everything’s being fixed, and—

  And then I see him, just hitting the curve before the woods. “Eddie!” I yell.

  He turns and sees me. Then he whirls around and takes off toward the woods.

  I start running too. “Eddie! Eddie!”

  I’m rounding the curve, but he’s way ahead of me, already slipping into the woods.

  “Wait!” I shout. But I know waiting for me’s not part of his plan. He wants to get away from me. He hates me. Tears sting my eyes, but I keep running.

  Leaves and branches scratch me as I shoot through the trees. A spiderweb sticks to my arm.

  I shudder and slap it off. I can’t see him anywhere, but I dart through the trees, sticking to the path. Oaks and cypresses blur as I rush past.

  I can’t see the river, but I’m running alongside it on the bank when I hear the sound of chains clinking and metal stretching.

  Eddie’s crossing the bridge.

  “Eddie, wait!” I yell. “Eddie!” But he’s already gone when I come up to the bridge. The metal net sways after him, squeaking like a rusty swing.

  I run up the dirt hill and climb up to the bridge. Putting my hands on the cables, I feel the weight of the bridge swing back and forth. Looking through it to the other side is like looking through a tunnel. I pull myself up and slide one foot onto the cable. My heart hollows out. My breath becomes rapid and shallow. I’m sweating everywhere. My fingers curl around the hand cables and I hoist my other foot up. The chain-link net rattles all the way down, and I swing on the cable.

  I scream.

  I’m losing my balance. I don’t want to fall. Even if the net catches me, I don’t want to fall. The water’s rushing below. It’s way far down. My mind is telling my feet, “Move, move, move! Get off this bridge,” but my feet ain’t going nowhere. I’m stuck. I’ll rot up here and they’ll find a skeleton tangled in the chains.

  “Eddie!” I yell with all my might. I don’t hear nothing, and that hurts even worse than being stuck up here. Tears roll down my cheeks, thinking about Eddie not yelling back. My lips press together, and I sag against the net. My heart hurts. “Eddie!” I yell, my voice catching. I lose my footing and my hands rake the chains for a better hold. “Come back!” I shout. I catch sight of the black water rushing below, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Eddie, please!” I open my eyes and lift my voice. “I’m afraid of alligators and I’m afraid of kissing and I’M AFRAID OF CROSSING THIS BRIDGE!” I pause. “I’m sorry!”

  Yelling that makes me feel better, so I yell it again. “I’m sorry!”

  Silence. Then some twigs snap, and Eddie pops out from behind some bushes. He stares at me, and I swear his blue eyes are blazing a path right to me. I ain’t ever noticed the full p
ower of his eyes before.

  We stare at each other like that for a minute before I remember I’m stuck on this high wire. “I can’t get down,” I yell. “Help me.”

  Eddie opens his mouth likes he’s gonna say something, and I know I deserve whatever’s coming, but instead he jogs to the end of the bridge and climbs up. He rattles across it surefooted, like he’s got both feet on the ground.

  I stare at his shoes. “Don’t shake it,” I say quietly. It becomes a chant: “Don’t shake it. . . . Don’t shake it. . . . Don’t shake it,” until he gets right up to me. Then he’s prying my grip off.

  “What are you doing?” I screech.

  “You got to let go,” he says.

  “NO!” I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to cross this bridge.

  “You’ll be all right,” he says, loosening my fingers from the chain. “But you got to let go.”

  When he gets my fingers loose, his hand is holding mine. His hand holds mine real tight. Then he turns me around so’s I’m facing the way I came, and he puts my hand back on the net. I can’t hardly walk; I’m still scared, but I inch my feet forward until I come up to the end, and I leap off with Eddie leaping behind me.

  I don’t know what he’s going to say to me. I think about what I said, what I said after I kissed him, and I hang my head.

  “Well?” he says, and I look up at him. His eyes burn with their full power.

  God Almighty, it’s like I never seen his eyes before.

  “What?” he says. “What?” He kind of grins and the power turns into a twinkle.

  I didn’t know eyes could do that.

  For a moment, I don’t know what to say. Finally, I look straight at him and ask, “What do we do now?”

  He reaches toward my face and my heart pounds like it did on the bridge, but all I feel is a light touch as he brushes a leaf out of my hair. Time stretches out before he says anything.

  “I’m hot,” he says.

  I wipe the back of my neck. “Yeah, me too.”