Eleven

The phone rings 3 or 4 times longer than she had hoped it would.  His sister answers and tries not to sound so surprised.  “Ya.  He’s here.  I’ll get him.”

“Hello?” He’s cautious.

“Can you come down?” Every ounce of her pleading, “Please, I need you.”

“That’s what all the girls say,” he ignores the desperation in her voice.

“I’m not…I mean…please?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Be there in 5.”  He hangs up.  They both know he could be there in 1.  She times him.  It takes him 8 minutes to round the pines into her yard.  He walks right in.

“You rang?”

“I’m not sure why.”

“Not helpful,” he can tell she’s in pain but can’t help but bridle a bit. 

She’s not listening to him.  She feels the bricks building on her chest and sucks in whatever air she can.  She’s crying.  He stands and stares at her.

“Why am I here?  What happened?” He wants to move in to her.  It takes every ounce of will-power to stand firmly in place.

She tells her story.  The night before.  The party.  She pieces together the remains of her shattered night.  He’s vengeful.  They broke her.  For the first time since he has been there, he truly notices her in front of him.  Her wet hair.  Her pale skin pink from repeated scrubbing.  Her eyes drawn. Broke what was his. 

All he wants is to make it all stop.  Fix it. Protect her. He's afraid to make contact. He's furious.  She locks eyes with his.  Decided.  Her body recognizes the folds of his arms and fills every inch.  He doesn’t relax. 

“Who was it?”  He isn’t really asking. 

“Someone random.  You don't know him.” She knows why he’s asking.

“I need a name,” he whispers harshly in her ear.

“No.”  The word tastes bitter coming from her mouth.  She’s irrationally calm.

“Tell me!”  He has never screamed at her before now.

She repeatedly denies him the information.  She knows what he’ll do.  She regrets all of this. 


His mind spasms with conflicting thoughts and emotions.  He grasps hold of one. He's infuriated with...her.

“Why did you call me then?! How were you expecting me to react?!”  He leaves her no time to answer.  “I don't know what you want!  You call me—I answer. I haven't heard from you in months.  You tell me something like this—and nothing?  Why am I here?”

“I don’t know,” she says almost inaudible. 

"Why are you protecting his guy?!"

It's him she's protecting. Too many things damaged. Enough.

“Fuck," he cradles the back of his head in his hands hoping to pull words from the ceiling. "You don’t get to call all of the shots like this!   Give me the name!”

Silence.  She stares blankly at the hardwood planks beneath her feet.  She looks up to the sound of him pounding his way out the back door.  He knows he can’t leave her like this.  She doesn’t see him walk up her yard.   

After several minutes, he reenters the house.  She is exactly the same.  He makes room for himself next to her on the couch and moves her closer.  She doesn’t resist. 

Damaged. Not broken.  He relaxes.

Ten

“She hates scary movies,” he recalls.  Not nice.  Very funny.  As he compares these two variables and multiplies both by his state of boredom—he decides this is a good idea.  “She never should have told me she was home by herself.”

Phone—check.  Voice changer machine—check.  Freaky white mask and nondescript black clothing—check.

Ring.  Ring.  Ring.

“Hello?” she says politely.

Silence.

“Hello?” she asks again.

Sounds of deep breathing.

“Hello?” This time, not as self-assured.

“I see you,” declares the harsh and deep tones on the other line.

“Excuse me!?” There is the attitude he knows well.  “Hello?  Who is this?”

“You’ve seen the movies, right?” The deep tone echoes.

“Just stop.   I know it’s you.  We just got off the phone,” she says covering her anxiety with a coy tone.

“Who am I?”

Silence.

Click.  She hung up first.  He’s got her.  Down the hill he goes.  Mask in hand. 

He watches her maneuver her way through the house locking doors and scanning the yard.  “This could be a scary movie,” he thought, “they have a lot of windows.”  She disappears into the house.  

Mask on.  Place marked.  He aims for the brick wall right outside of their 1^st floor, family room window.  She’s bound to watch TV.  He sits.  He waits.  She enters the family room and immediately notices his perch.  She crosses her arms indignantly.

Not what he was going for.  He lunges.  She screams.  She was only acting bravely before.  She is petrified.  She keeps telling herself that it is him.  Tries to calm her irrational fear and anger and frustration that he would find humor in all of this.

“It is him, right?” she pleads with herself.  Straight to the bathroom upstairs with the window to the roof.  If it’s a murderer in this pleasant community, she has an escape route.  If it’s him, she’ll scream strings of profanities at him as he victoriously traverses his hill. 

Nothing.  Stillness.  Shit.

She scales the side of the roof which looks out into her backyard.  There he sits—waiting for her.  Mask to his side, eyes beaming with satisfaction, “It took you long enough.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“Nice escape route.  Dare you to jump.”

Nine

“What am I doing over the weekend? Wait…what?!” she asks in a shrill tone.

“Don’t you ever check your voice mails?” He chuckles.  He knows the answer.

“I heard your voice. I called you back,” she answers dismissively.  “Answer me! What do you mean, ‘What am I doing this weekend?’”

“We’re flying up.”

Both of them.  She isn’t thrilled.  He reads her well.  She fakes it.  She squeals.  He makes small talk. 

“I’d love your advice on some good restaurants or places we can check out while we’re up there.  It’s not a long trip—but I’d like to show off the city—and see a different side of it myself.”

She gets it.  She’s going to meet the girlfriend.  He’s going to make sure of that. 

“I can’t wait to see you.”  She isn’t lying.  They’ve only gone 3 years this time.

“I’ll call you when we land.”

Eight

He’s gone.  They were just in class together.  She was just feeling guilty for not spending more time with him, for not letting him stay a few minutes longer before her parents came home from work, for only being his friend in private.

She stared at the barely visible, red-bricked peak of his roof.  She cried.

He told her that he was moving—moving far.  She wouldn’t look at him.  She made some cavalier comment about how it wasn’t fair to move a year and a half before graduation.  He wasn’t impressed with her response. 

“Shut up,” he thought to himself.  She heard him anyway. 

He wrapped himself around her as he always did.  It wasn’t difficult.  She fit well inside his arms.  Their minds went numb.  He could have kissed her.  He didn’t.  She could have kissed him.  She didn’t.

Neither of them knows how long they stood there on her back porch or how he walked away.

She retraced the path from her house to his in her mind.  The once worn-down trail past the pine trees, along side of the tall wooden fence, traversing up the hill--long overgrown with tangled weeds and new growth.

Seven

“He doesn’t say much,” her father concluded.

“Maybe he’s just quiet,” her mother suggests.

“Kiddo, where did your new friend come from?  Where does he live?”

“Up the hill, Dad.”  She points to a roof top not too far away.  One row behind their new home and a few houses to the left.  The red brick and grey shingled roof just barely peaking above their pine tree line. 

“Bud, does someone know where you are?”

He shrugs.  His 5 year old brain intently playing with her little black lab leashed to the back porch.  She is exploding with excitement to have a friend her age to play with. 

“Ok.  Well…don’t leave the yard, Baby Girl.”

“Kay, Daddy.”

“Come on, we can see them from the back of the house anyway,” her mother nudges opening the back door. 

“Want to play on my new swing set?” she suggests to him.

“No.”

“Want to play hide-and-go-seek?” she tries again.

“No.”

“Kay.”  She looks at him confused but eagerly suggests several more options.  He doesn’t respond.  “Want to play with the puppy?” She says, dejected. 

“Yep!”  He grabs the mangled tennis ball from the dog’s feet and launches it into the air. 

They play for hours.  Long after the puppy retreats into the house content and exhausted.  Her parents call her into the house for the night and worry about her new 5-year-old friend making it back to his house in the dark.  “He’s fine,” they conclude. Her mother waits and watches for signs of movement from the back door.  His shadow scampers across the driveway and a motion light grants her mother a sigh of relief. 

A scene to be played out countless times.

Six

Thanksgiving.  Senior year of college.  Everyone is home.  They wink from one side of the bar to the other.  Harmless flirting ensues.  

She spends the evening reliving the glorious and less so glorious days with people four years older and four years younger than her.  Quick mental math reveals that not everyone here tonight should be. 

She tucks her hands into the back pockets of the man’s jeans standing directly behind her while she chats casually with former friends and high school acquaintances.  She isn’t really paying attention to their responses.  The man doesn’t reject—pushing back against her to acknowledge she’s there. 

It’s a game. 

Much later, she feels a deliberate, male hand passing across her back as he makes his way through the thick crowd of people.  “History,” she tells herself, “nothing more than a shared history.”

Her designated driver decides it is time to go.  She makes for the exit with her friend—glancing around to say goodbye. 

They storm through the exit, scoffing at tonight’s turn-out and the people they have been reintroduced to.  Her aged, male acquaintance stands outside—equally intoxicated.

“Leaving, too?” she asks.  The man nods.  “Follow us back to your house so I know you don’t die.”  He agrees.

They pass the man’s house.  Her friend rounds the block with the man still behind them.   She says her goodbyes and thank you’s for a safe trip home and b-lines for the car parked behind them.  She opens the passenger door.

“Miss something?” she asks.  The man smiles, holds her face with both hands, and kisses her more deliberately than she has ever been kissed before. 

“Meet you between the yards in 10 minutes,” the man insists.

“I…ok.”

She’s no longer the handicap.  Their age difference, no longer a concern.

Five

She hates this part.  She does it all of the time, but she really hates this part.  Door open, screen door closed.  Someone is home.  She skips up the front steps and knocks on the wooden frame.  

“I’m going out!” he bursts from somewhere behind the haze of metal screen.  “I’ll be…around!”

Whew.  She follows him to the back of the house.  Basketball.  

The sound of the ball hitting the pavement soothes them both.  He tells her how their neighbor called the police yesterday because he can’t stand listening to that ball hit that pavement 24 hours a day.

“Ummm…What did they say?” she asks skeptically.

“They asked us nicely to limit our basketball playing.” He shoots.  3 points.  “Fuck him.”

More kids join the game.  She’s the automatic handicap.  The last one picked. He purposely doesn’t pick her.  Why lose?  

The older boy doesn’t mind.  She is on the older boy’s team most of the time.  She practices.  It’s futile.  They work together and rarely win.  She knows it’s her fault.

But this time it’s different.  They are playing 2 on 2—The older boy and her against him and his sister.  She takes a shot—it goes in.  The passes are flawless.  The older boy shoots—it goes in.  They are winning.  

She taunts him a bit.  He smirks.  He still doesn’t think she stands a chance.  He scores.

Check.  The older boy against him.  She somehow ends up with the ball.  They give her space.  There is no chance in hell she will make this shot.  Swoosh. 

Her eyes are huge.  The older boy picks her up and carries her around the driveway.  She wins.  He says nothing.  She taunts him some more.  The only thing she remembers is the flash of pain and warmth across her face and the sound of the basketball bouncing across the pavement.

His sister shrieks and holds her face into the twilight.  Blood.  “She’s swelling—Help me get her inside.”  He jumps on his bike and doesn’t come home until he sees the light on in her bedroom. 

Four

Her first middle school dance.  He’s still too young to go.  She nervously slips into her scandalously high heeled shoes which she still can’t believe her father let her purchase. 

“Is he coming down?” her father asks. 

“Is who coming down, Dad?” she responds indignantly. 

“PICTURES!”  Flash.  Mom naively saves the day.

She and her newest best friend pose for blinding shot after blinding shot.  Flash.  Flash.  Some posed, some posed to look as if they aren’t posing.  As she reenacts the process of putting on mascara for the 50^th shot, (flash) there’s a knock at the door.

He’s covered in snow.  Hair disheveled, clothed in battered jeans and an athletic jacket.   No one would know that he changed 3 times.  He’d never admit how he stood in the cold for 5 minutes in her backyard admiring the way she moved in that dress—Flash.

The only picture she now has of the 2 of them. 

Three

Same Biology class.  This never happens.  Do they sit together?  No.   

She sits with her friends.  He secludes himself to the other end of the room. 

She passes notes for 45 minutes to girls out of ear shot.  He obnoxiously complains that the teacher is too loud for him to nap.  She smirks and looks his direction.  He never turns around.  

Months go by.  She greets him enthusiastically while he barely gives her more than a grunt and a head nod in her general direction.  She fumes and does her best to internalize the rejection.  He hates her friends and the way she behaves around them.   

She called him an asshole—he grins towards the front of the room.

“I win,” he thinks to himself.  “See you after school.”

Two

“Be NICE!” she warns him in protective, hushed tones.

“Mmmk,” he says unconvincingly.

She’s 8.  He’s 7.  The weird little neighbor kid spinning himself in circles—somewhere in between.

“I don’t even think he’d notice if we left,” he tries to convince her.  

“He asked me if I wanted to come over and play.  I can’t just leave.”

“Why?”  He throws his body on the ground dramatically.  “Whatever.  Why is he spinning?  What song is he singing, anyway?”

Jesus loves me…spinning…this I know…spinning…for the Bible…still spinning.

“Never mind.”  

They sit and meticulously pull thick blades of grass from the earth.  The thickest blades make the best whistles.  He tries to teach her how to make the whistling sound through her thumbs.  She tries to convince him that sliding the blade horizontally through her lips actually makes the better sound.  She can’t figure out how to do it his way. 

She tightens her lips and blows a gust of air and saliva past the quivering, reed.  She soaks him.  They roll with laughter.

The weird little neighbor kid slips out of a loosely velcroed shoe and face plants into their discarded and spit-soaked grass clippings. 

The 6:00 siren sounds.  It’s time for her to run home for dinner. 

He considers helping the weird little neighbor kid onto his feet before he walks back up the steep hill to his house.  “Not worth it,” he thinks to himself.  She isn’t watching him anyway.

As he approaches the tree line which borders their yards, he turns around.  “Dude!  Get up!  Nobody likes you because you act like that!”   

He begins his assent.  Eat something fast—she got a head start.

One

11:03.  Only the sounds of her father’s inconsistent breathing in the family room downstairs.  Wait a few more minutes.  Stirring in the next room.  Silence.  11:15.  She’s going out the window.

This was a better idea in theory.  It isn’t a death drop—but it would hurt like hell.  Muscles tighten as she slips her legs out the window and eases her body awkwardly to the awaiting shingles.  She can’t hear him below the porch roof, but knows he’s there.  He’s always there.  He will see her and coax her to jump into his grasp despite her terrified look and reluctance.  She jumps.  He catches.  

Always.

It wasn’t graceful.  She elbowed him in the eye socket as she plummeted towards him.  Grin and bear it.     She doesn’t need to know.  

“Just catch her,” he tells himself over and over again in his head.  He does.  Worth it.  Pain subsides as he feels her relax up against him.  Definitely worth it.  

“Breathe, Kid,” she says.  Flustered, he immediately lowers her to the ground.  

Awkward.  Shit.

Here they are again.  Say something.  

“You’re late.”

“And this is unusual?”

“I was starting to think that the sleeping bear downstairs was going to block your path for the night.”

“I forged a new one,” she boasts, jumping up onto the brick wall leading to the hill of her backyard.  “Walk straight back to the trees so the window light doesn’t catch us.  If he wakes up and sees us…”

“You’re paranoid.” 

“I’m cautious.  Where are we going tonight?”

“What fun would that be if we planned these outings?” 

He pushes ahead of her playfully up the hill.  She could catch him if she tried.  He could disappear far into the darkness if he tried.  Always the same. 

Introduction

I'm using this blog as a way to publish my "works in progress".  A way to solidify the memories I am reliving on paper and the ones I have contrived to fill in the blanks.  They are works of fiction--but I am sure that many of the stories will be recognizable by those who know me best.  

To the 5 year old boy who wandered into my backyard one day--I thank you for giving me years of material to bring to life. 

To everyone else--Please be kind.  These words are in their roughest stage.