A View From Forever (Thompson Sisters Book 3) (3 page)

“Stop!” she squeaked. He pulled his fist way back, about to slug her.

He didn’t get to throw the punch: Snatching up a loose brick, I lunged forward and hit him in the back of the head. He went down, and the alley fell silent.

“Mother fuck,” one of the guys said. “That’s Lonnie Wallace. Dylan, get the fuck out of here before he wakes up. I’m out.”

“Who is he?” I asked

“Dealer. Dangerous man. Really dangerous. I’m gone.”

I shrugged, then looked at the girl. “You okay?” I asked.

She looked at me, a little dazed. “Yeah,” she whispered.

I had my doubts. But I didn’t have anywhere safe to take her. “You got any place to go? Someone we can call?”

She shook her head.

I sighed. Then I said, “Let’s take a walk. Get away from here. I’m Dylan.”

“Spot,” she said.

Weird. Whatever. Lot of people used street names. I grabbed her hand and said, “Let’s go. I don’t want to be here when he wakes up.”

“He’s got a gun,” she said.

Shit.

That changed things, didn’t it? I crouched down and touched the guy’s shoulder. He wasn’t moving. I hoped he wasn’t dead. I leaned close enough to see and hear that he was breathing. I rolled him over and, sure enough, a pistol was stuffed in his waistband. Automatic, I guess—I didn’t know much about guns other than what I’d seen on television and the one or two times when I was a little kid that my dad took me hunting. But we didn’t hunt with automatic pistols.

Dad had taught me basic weapons safety. I
slid the pistol out of Asshole’s waistband.
It took a minute trying to figure out how to eject the magazine, then I found the button and ejected the magazine, then pulled
the slide
back. The chambered bullet went flying.

“Come on,” I said. I left the ammo on the ground and threw the pistol in the dumpster. Just to slow him down, if he ever woke up. Then I grabbed her hand and we ran.

A month later on Christmas Eve, I ran into Spot downtown, not long after the trains stopped running for the night. It was raining and cold, and my jacket did little to keep me dry. I was looking for a good sheltered spot to sleep when I ran into her. We walked together and finally
huddled under the bridge under I-20. I’d slept there before, and knew the dozen or so semi-permanent residents who kept tents, clotheslines, mattresses and personal items stored there.

When we got there that night, a blazing fire was going, and two families were huddled around the fire.

“It looks warm,” she said.

“Come on, then,” I replied, and pulled her over to the fire. I could feel the heat against my skin, and the heat of Spot as she leaned against me.

Sometimes I wanted to track down her asshole father and punch him until he couldn’t see. I was just as homeless as Spot was, but I was homeless because of something
I did
—not because of who I was
. She, on the other hand, was a good kid with bad parents. They had kicked her out because she was a lesbian. Not because of anything she’d done—they kicked her out because of
who she was.

That’s when it hit me. I could choose to go home any time I wanted. All I had to do was stop the drinking and pot. All I had to do was go back to school.

Spot
couldn’t
go home. She had no one.

The mother of one of the two families who lived under the bridge began to sing. Her voice was clear and beautiful and the moment she heard the singing begin, Spot began to shiver. Then to sob.

Silent night, Holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant, tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace,

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, Holy night

Son of God, love's pure light

Radiant beams from thy holy face

With the dawn of redeeming grace,

Jesus, Lord at thy birth

Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

Silent night, Holy night

Shepherds quake, at the sight

Glories stream from heaven above

Heavenly, hosts sing Hallelujah.

Christ the Savior is born,

Christ the Savior is born.

I’ll be honest. I cried just a little too, as I held Spot and she sobbed.
I wished right then that I could find a home for her, find someone who loved her. But it wasn’t really feasible. I had no resources, no money. I had
nothing.

A few weeks later, I had signed up to go back to school. I had quit drinking and cleaned up my act. I had moved back home. And then I had gone looking for Spot. There were a dozen weekends over the months after that, when I went and looked for her, searching at clubs and under bridges—searching everywhere.

But I never saw her again.

Now, I’m slow to come back to the present. Now, my missing friend Spot seems far more real than the kids here in New York.

“Hello?” Mike from Chicago says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Are you awake?” I’ve heard him introduce himself that way to half a dozen people now.
Hi, I’m Mike. From Chicago.
It’s become part of his name.

I shake my head slightly. “Sorry. I guess I was stuck in a memory.”

He chuckles. “Must have been a good one.”

I don’t answer. I go through the motions for the remainder of the reception, listening where I need to and saying what I have to, but never really focused on the present. I’m interested in the foreign exchange program, but sometimes it is difficult to maintain my sense of reality. I’m surrounded by people who think hunger was not being able to get your favorite appetizer and who flaunt clothing which is unimaginably expensive, just because they can. They’re public school kids just like I am, but they’re public school kids with backgrounds I don’t really understand: tutors and test-prep programs, expensive extracurricular activities and parents who sponsor scholarships, academic camps and God only knew what else.

I don’t belong there.

I don’t belong anywhere.

I’ve never tried to quantify the number of flights I’ve taken in my life. After all, I’ve lived in a lot of places. I might be sixteen, but my father is a
U.S. Ambassador. I’ve lived in San Francisco, Beijing, Brussels, Moscow and Washington, DC. The first flight I
remember was in 1994. I was about four years old, and I somehow got separated from my mom and my sisters. I remember wandering through the terminal, and no one spoke English, and everyone looked
huge
, and I cried for Carrie.
None of us ever
cried for our Mom. From what I’ve heard in the years since, that was during a layover and plane switch in Tokyo—one of the largest airports in the world.

Add up all the places we’ve lived—plus short trips for holidays—and this is probably the hundredth flight I’ve been on. Whenever possible, I fly as close to the front of the plane as I can—usually not a problem because when traveling with my father, one travels first class.

Not so on this foreign exchange trip. My seat is on Row 51 in the coach section. That far back in the plane, the left and right rows only have two seats, while the center has four. I’m jammed up next to the window. At least it isn’t one of the
tiny seats I was forced to ride in on the flight from San Francisco to New York three days ago.

I know, in principle, that people have to ride in coach.
Most
people ride in coach. I’ve been lucky,
very
lucky, that I’ve never had to. At least this isn’t so bad, unless my seat-mate turns out to be obnoxious. We will see—our group apparently has an entire block covering most of the back of the plane, so it is likely to be another one of the students in our group.

I stuff my handbag under the seat in front of me. It contains two paperback novels, my phone and assorted other junk. I pull out my neck pillow, stuffing it in the back of the seat for whenever I get sleepy, which will likely be soon. The flight is scheduled to leave at ten p.m., with a morning arrival time in Barcelona, where we have a short layover. .

My mother would say I’m dithering: my mind is on the email I’m planning to send to Mike, but I haven’t quite organized myself to do it yet, so I’m doing and thinking about everything else.

Michael Harrington comes from an old-money San Francisco family, and his father and my father are … friends? Colleagues? It’s hard to know the relationship. But the Harringtons are often guests at our home, and I suppose that it was inevitable that eventually Michael and I would date. Far preferable him than Randy Brewer, who my parents have been pushing on me since the eighth grade. Randy is a sanctimonious prick. Mike, on the other hand is … I don’t know. Bland? It’s not that he doesn’t have a personality—it’s just that it isn’t all that interesting. He gets okay grades, but isn’t brilliant. He plays piano because his mother forces him to have lessons, but he doesn’t really care for it.

In truth, it seems like Mike doesn’t really care for much of
anything.
He just doesn’t have any passion in him. He goes through life knowing that he has a massive trust fund and that he doesn’t really have to do much of anything in life to survive. He’ll always have his country club memberships and access to the rich and powerful—he’ll always
be
rich and powerful, and not through any efforts of his own.

His response? Complete disinterest.

All the same, a few weeks ago, while my parents and his parents were attending some charity auction (I think it was for the San Francisco Opera? Or the Science Museum? I’m not sure which), the two of us were seated together. He was unusually quiet that night, but he finally leaned over and said, “Alexandra… would you like to have dinner with me?”

I didn’t point out that we were already having dinner, though I wanted to. Instead, I assented. I don’t know why. It wasn’t pity, but it wasn’t interest either. We went out a few times—
dinner, movies, the symphony.

My reaction to his advances? Complete disinterest.

I finally decided last night it was time to let him know. But how? Do I call? Not from Israel. And somehow it feels tacky to just text message or send him a message on Facebook. Which leaves me with email. Impersonal, but not as much as a text. Better than the painfully-awkward, ugly conversation we might have in person. The thing is, I don’t really even like Mike. And outside of my relationship with my family, I don’t think he really likes me either. Letting him know now will be a blessing in a way. He’ll have a few weeks to process it before I return home.

I finally settle back into my seat. The seats around me are filling; the aisle crowded with travelers making their way to their seats.

Then I spot that guy. Dylan Paris, from Georgia.

We still haven’t spoken. He carefully makes his way down the aisle, guitar case in his left hand, boarding pass in his right. He looks at his boarding pass with a fierce expression I have some difficulty interpreting, then up to the seat numbers above the row. I watch his eyes move from one seat to the next, rows 48, then 49, 50, then 51. Then his gaze drops to the empty seat next to me—then to me. His eyes widen, just a little bit, then he looks back to the seat next to me. From the looks of it, he is headed right to me.

Less than a minute later the people ahead of him clear out of the way and he drops a worn backpack onto the seat next to me, saying “Hey”.
The backpack isn’t faux-worn, with stone-washed pre-faded fabric and an expensive label. It looks like a second-hand Army backpack, right down to the stenciled name that I know isn’t his. “I’m Dylan.”

Then he smiles, a warm looking slightly sideways grin that barely shows his teeth but causes the skin around his right eye to crease just slightly. His eyes are piercing, a pale blue that looks oddly out of place against his tan complexion and dark hair.

“Alex,” I say, trying to stay cool. This is the third time in as many days I’ve introduced myself as
Alex
. It just seems right somehow.

“Where are you from, Alex?”

Oh. I like the way he said my name. Hi
s lips curl around the syllables like a particularly delicious fruit, and it makes goosebumps run down the back of my neck.

“I’m from San Francisco,” I reply, trying to keep my breathing under control.

He smiles, a quirky smile. It makes me want to smile back. Truth be
told, it makes me want to do a lot more than smil
e. “Really? I’m from Atlanta. Never been out West.”

I struggle for something to say. “It’s my first trip East by myself,” I said.

He settles in,
stuffing his bag under the seat in front of him. He takes a small blister pack out of his pocket and peels it back, then pops
a square object in his mouth. It doesn’t look like a pill. More like gum, really. Nicotine gum?
Crank tried to quit smoking last year and chewed the stuff constantly.

Dylan says in his soft Southern accent, “Tell me about yourself, Alex.”

By this time, the captain is speaking, and the flight attendant begins walking up and down the aisles checking seats as the plane departs from the gate.

I sit back
, unsure what to say. He put me on the spot, and I have no idea what to say.
I’m Alex, and all I do is study. I don’t have a life really, except barely reflecting my much more brilliant and colorful sisters.
Instead, I say, “That’s a pretty open-ended question.”

His face flushes a little. Then he says, with a twinkle in his eye and a funny looking grin on his face,
“I guess. Let me start over. I’m Dylan, and I have lousy social skills. I’d like to get to know you by asking stupid questions. How’s
that?”

I burst into laughter, and he laughs too, and everything is okay. “Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll ask you a question, then you ask me a question, then I’ll ask you a question.”