by Lucy Lambert
“Not yet… stop!”
I said it so suddenly that Ellie, her instincts kicking in, pushed the brake to the floorpan. The tires squealed when they locked up.
The truck stopped at a canted angle on the road, the rear end over in the opposing lane.
And the lurch of it made the seat belt bite into my stomach and shoulder.
“What are you…” Ellie started, too startled to be upset.
The seat belt would have hurt if I’d been paying any attention to it. But I wasn’t. No, all my attention focused on a small park that sprung up between one block and the next.
My fingers, numb with shock and excitement, pried first at my seat belt then at the door handle. I stumbled out of the truck, my heart humming in my chest like a high revving race car engine.
I know this. I know all of this, I thought. I mounted the curb and within two steps found myself on the grassy pitch of a small, disused but well-maintained park.
“I know this place,” I said. My hands bunched up into fists.
Chapter 8
ELLIE
I squinted in pain. The seat belt did a number on my shoulder, and it already started throbbing. Another car came down the opposite side of the road, the elderly driver pausing when he saw the obstruction I made.
I smiled through my teeth and waved while I maneuvered into a parking spot along the curb.
“Next time I want something with anti-lock brakes,” I muttered. I threw the Ranger into park and climbed out of the cab. I intended on giving Dash a piece of my mind. Something along the lines of Are you crazy? What the hell was that?
Except when I saw him, I couldn’t.
He stood on the grass of old Pine St. Park, gazing about like a castaway who’d just found himself stranded on a desert island.
One that, judging by his look, he’d been on before.
“Dash?” I said, coming up alongside him. I had expected maybe a look of open mouthed shock to go with his posture. However, when I saw his face he looked almost calm. Intense was a good word for it.
Calm on the surface but he roiled beneath those faux-placid waters.
“My mother used to take me here. Every day after school,” he said. “I used to like the swings, and I wouldn’t let her push me. I wanted to do it myself. I thought I was too old to let my mom push me on the swing.”
“That sounds like you, all right,” I said. It struck me how strange it was to say that. How could I possibly know what sounded like him or not? No matter the case, it still felt right.
There was a strange, hot feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why did I say that? This is weird.
I looked around as well. I spotted the old merry-go-round. The groundskeeper had slapped a new coat of red paint on it. It already flaked from the rusty patches.
“That was my favorite,” I said, nodding towards it, “I used to get it going so fast my dad would look at me after and say, I thought you were going to shoot out of it like a marble from a slingshot.”
I smiled. It was a nice memory.
“I remember that, too,” Dash said.
Chills went up and down my back. “There’s no way!”
“But I do. And every time he said it he would laugh like it was the first time he’d thought of it and that it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever hear. There’s something about this place. There’s something about you, Ellie. I feel like I’m just beginning to figure some things out…” Dash said.
“Who are you? Really?” I asked.
The fine hairs along the back of my neck stood up with a prickling sensation. Again, I looked at him and felt that I knew him. Somehow, somewhen. And all this stirred something inside me, some deep, recessed memory.
Dash was an unusual name, but up until then I’d figure it was entirely fake, no matter what he said.
Because I used to know a boy named Dash. Not for long, not even a year, back when we were both 12 or so. And we did used to meet in this park.
He was a boy I hadn’t thought about in probably a decade or more.
I remember it took a lot of effort to stop thinking about him. About us.
On first glance, this new, adult Dash didn’t resemble the boy in my memory much. That boy didn’t have such broad shoulders, or such chiseled features.
But could it actually be him? I thought, looking at him. I could see how that boy could become this man. And his eyes, weren’t they the same eyes?
Oh my God, I thought, that prickling feeling in my spine intensifying.
Dash didn’t answer right away. He walked over to the swing set, apparently conscious of every move he made. From the way his riding boots pushed into the grass, to the way the breeze rippled in his hair.
He reached out and grasped one of the swing set supports. I followed him. I stayed a few feet back.
“Until I was fifteen, I spent most of my life on the road with my mother. I can’t remember if we were running from someone… running to somewhere, or whether she just had the worst case of wanderlust in the world. When I was twelve, we spent six or seven months here in Pleasant. This was my favorite place, this park. Except, I couldn’t really remember any of it until you drove us past here.”
The blood quickened in my veins. I looked at his face closely, tried imagining him younger, not even a teenager, but not really a child.
Then, as though his face had been there all along, I recalled him. At least, I recalled some small part of that time. Neither of us were out of our twenties yet, but it was still a gulf of time.
“I think I remember, too,” I said.
He turned to me, his eyes bright and intense. “Tell me what you remember.”
For a second there, I thought he might grab hold of me and will the secrets out of me just by sheer force of will.
“I…” I started, momentarily at a loss for words. I haven’t seen someone so intense for a long time. Why did he want to know so badly?
Except he didn’t push me. He didn’t yell at me to spit it out. This worked against my defenses, so long used to dealing with jerks and assholes.
I shrugged, “Not much yet. I remember you on the swings. I think I remember us talking. Most of what I remember from that summer is…well…” Here my pulse quickened again, the memories a warm flush in my skin, “A boy from school, honestly.”
Part of me still didn’t quite believe it. Didn’t quite want to believe it. It was too much.
Dash waited a little longer, perhaps hoping for more. When more didn’t come, he nodded. He stopped that intense stare, dropping his eyes to the ground.
I wanted to go to him. The impulse was strong, shockingly so.
“Maybe we’ll both remember more. Especially if you stay longer,” I said. I could still feel that heat in my skin. It had been so long since I’d thought about that time. Since I thought about that boy.
Life got in the way. Obligations and responsibilities and bad boyfriends.
I wanted to remember more. My mind searched, poking in old, cobwebbed corridors and closets of memory. But nothing gave up any secrets yet.
Dash turned back to the park and surveyed it. His jaw set in a hard line and even though I saw him in profile only I could see the way his brow furrowed in concentration.
Then he gave it up with a shake of his head. “Come on, let’s go get your clothes back. No point in putting it off any longer.”
We got back into the truck and the engine turned over after one complaining, coughing attempt.
I pulled away from the curb, both of us distant with thought.
“What happened to your mother?” I asked. “Does she still live here?”
“No, she doesn’t.” Here, Dash hesitated. His jaw clenched a little tighter and I wondered if maybe he struggled with whether or not to say anything more. “She died seven months ago.”
I caught the quick glance he shot at me, as though that amount of time should have meant something to me.
It tugged at something in my memory, but at that moment I couldn’
t tell you what. I kept trying to wrap my head around the two of us knowing each other when we were young. Well, that and getting my clothes back.
“I would say sorry,” I said. I made a left down Oak St. The truck’s suspension groaned in protest. “But I lost my dad and I know from experience that ‘sorry’ doesn’t really make anyone feel better except maybe the person saying it.”
I felt him look at me and it took a lot of effort to not divert my attention from the street to return his glance.
“You just had the urge to say ‘sorry’ to me, didn’t you?” I said.
“Guilty,” he replied.
From the corner of my eye I caught the ghost of a smile on his lips.
“Well, we’re going to have to put the interrogation on hold,” I said. I parked the Ranger in front of a Chinese restaurant that closed a couple years ago. Soap on the windows obscured the interior.
It was something of a relief to be able to backburner this conversation and those feelings. I wasn’t certain I could confront them yet.
“I recognize that alley,” Dash said. He nodded between the Chinese restaurant and the Second Hand Rose store. “Do you think your ex and his pals are still waiting?”
“No,” I said. I noticed that my fingers still gripped the steering wheel hard. That, and the Ranger’s engine still growled beneath the hood. The blood quickened its pace in my veins.
It was part fear that we might run into them again, part remembrance of our earlier fight with them and just how thrilling it had been.
“You don’t sound certain,” he said. He reached over and killed the engine. The Ranger stopped its gentle vibrations and the world suddenly felt far too still.
This whole town is too still and quiet now, I thought. The sign coming into Pleasant said “Pop. 4300” but I would be surprised if more than half that still lived here.
“I’m eighty…no, ninety percent sure they’re gone.”
“I’ll take those odds. Let’s go get your things back. Then at least you won’t be able to hold that over my head,” Dash said with the barest hint of a sarcastic smile.
He put his hand on my shoulder. If my pulse raced before, it galloped then. I could feel the heat of his palm through the cotton of the button down.
“Okay, yeah. Let’s go,” I said.
They aren’t going to be there, I repeated to myself when I climbed out of the truck. They aren’t going to be there.
Chapter 9
DASH
I cupped my hands and peered in through the small window of the back door to the laundromat.
The thin film of dust and age obscured the interior a little, and I squinted against it. I could make out the square shapes that were the washers and dryers.
A laundry basket—Ellie’s presumably—sat on one machine near the door.
I tried looking to the left and right, thinking that someone wanting to catch us might hide beside the door if they were smart. I couldn’t make anything out in either direction.
“What’s taking so long?” Ellie said. Her hand landed on my shoulder and tugged. It was a Take a hike so I can get a look, pull.
However, I wanted that touch to linger. My heart pumped harder in my chest at the gentle yet insistent pressure of her palm.
I tried to hide my reaction. This was, perhaps, a mistake.
“No need. There’s no one inside,” I said. I glanced back at her and saw her frown. “Let’s go.”
I knew that one of us should have gone down to the mouth of the alley and checked for Bobby’s Trans Am. Or for one of his boys guarding the door just out of sight.
But I wanted so much to be right. I actually wanted to be the impetuous, risk-taking hero. And he was definitely a guy I’d left in the dusty trails of my travels.
“Lead the way,” she said with a touch of sarcasm, indicating the door with a wave of her hand.
I almost went and made a Ladies first joke, but didn’t. It stopped right at the back of my throat.
It’s just all these memories coming back. They’re really throwing me off my game. Like with Ellie. I don’t actually like her. She was just so familiar to my mind that it made me think so.
I gave my head the slightest shake, as though that might send everything out.
Then I grabbed the latch, thinking, If this thing only opens from the inside I’m going to look really stupid.
I turned the latch. No lock stopped it. The door swung outward.
I glanced inside quickly, then looked back at Ellie, who stood behind me with her arms crossed tightly across her chest in a way I found both endearing and annoying.
“It’s empty,” I said.
It wasn’t.
A hand reached out from the corner beside the door that in my haste I didn’t bother checking. It grabbed my shirt and yanked.
“Bobby! I got ‘im!” Someone yelled.
“Hang on to him!” Bobby called. It sounded like he stood somewhere on the street in front of the store, watching out for my bike or Ellie’s Ranger.
I grabbed at the offending wrist and pushed my thumb into the pressure point right below the heel of the hand while I also took a better look inside.
Someone, Bobby probably, had thrown all of Ellie’s clothes into the laundry hamper on top of a washing machine in the middle of a row. A wet sock hung over one side of the basket, dripping slowly onto the white sheet steel.
“Hey!” The man owning the hand screamed.
He tried yanking his hand back. I pushed my thumb in harder.
It wasn’t that I was some kind of sadist intent on hurting him. Well, it did give me some satisfaction, I have to admit; he’d been one of the goons about to hurt Ellie and the thought of that turned the blood hot in my veins.
But mostly I wanted him to really get the message to stay away.
He yanked again, and this time I let him go. His own momentum carried him back into a dryer, which tipped back and smacked against the wall with a crash.
Bobby yanked the front door open. Fire blazed in his eyes when he caught sight of me.
“Let’s see how tough you are now that it’s a fair fight!” he shouted.
“It wasn’t fair when it was three on one?” I snarled. “What, did you bring a couple more guys along or something?”
His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. I could tell he was the sort of small town prince who usually got his way and didn’t know how to react when his brand of hayseed intimidation failed.
“No!” He blustered, “You don’t have any of that body armor now. I bet you can’t even take a punch.”
I shook my head even when I spotted the laundry hamper again. Get him riled up. Get him distracted. “I seem to recall your fist connecting with my face. Where I wasn’t wearing any armor.”
Then I saw Ellie through the front windows. She’d snuck around the building. If I could get Bobby to come closer, past where the hamper sat, Ellie could run in, grab it, and we could beat feet out of this place and away from Bobby and his boys.
We locked eyes for a moment, and I saw that she thought the same thing.
“Shut up,” Bobby said.
“Make me,” I replied.
Chapter 10
ELLIE
Out here, I couldn’t make out what they said inside.
I could see Bobby’s back. He was a big, strong guy and his shoulders filled out his jacket in a way that suggested that strength.
But Dash also looked strong. Right at that moment, he wore something like an insulting sneer on his face.
I couldn’t read any lips, but it looked like he said something like make me.
Make me? Make you what, Dash? I thought, squinting. I shot a quick look to either side in case Bobby’s other boy might make a sudden appearance. But I’d made him chase me a few minutes earlier and as far as I knew he still lay in a moaning, crumpled pile after I’d run him straight into the grill of my Ranger.
“Come on, Dash, the plan is to get my clothes, not get into another fight!” I said
to no one but myself.
Although the prospect of watching Dash fight again made my stomach flutter and the blood quicken its pace in my veins.
“Oh!” I said before I could help it.
Bobby made a lunge for Dash, swinging a big haymaker with one fist.
Dash leaned back away from the punch and stepped back. I could hear Bobby roar in rage from outside.
He kept advancing on Dash, swinging his fists in big, clumsy windmills.
Oh, I thought when I realized what it was Dash was up to. Bobby was just about past my laundry basket.
As though to confirm my theory, Dash and I locked eyes again.
It was long enough for Bobby to connect a punch.
Dash jerked back a microsecond too late.
It was a glancing blow. Probably more surprising than painful. Still, my heart sped up, clamoring against my ribs.
Then Dash went through the back doorway. Bobby stood there, his big shoulders heaving with rage. He’s going to figure out what we’re up to, and I’ve been standing here slack jawed watching a couple of boys fight over me.
I ran inside. The bell over the door jingled. Every nerve in my body hummed with excitement. Bobby turned around at the noise.
“Ellie!”
I didn’t give him time for more. I grabbed the laundry basket. A soggy sock started falling out so I grabbed it and thrust it back in with the rest of the pile. It left my palm wet.
“Bye, Bobby,” I said.
He turned and ran for me. I yanked open the door hard enough for my shoulder to ache.
And then I ran down the alley. Dash, still standing at the back door, saw and joined me.
When I threw my clothes into the back of the truck I was smiling. My heart sang in my chest and my cheeks ached.
“Go! Go!” Dash said, pulling himself into the passenger seat and slamming the door hard enough for the truck to rock on its springs.
Won’t this be just the time for the battery to go flat on me? I thought. I hid my smile.