Pick-me-up (10 page)

They headed back on the tracks and made it to
the trail without seeing any cars. She tensed, hoping he wasn’t
going to leave her to walk through the dark prairie on her own.
But, he didn’t even slow. Tim turned without pause with her into
the prairie.

They made the trip quicker and quieter than
before. At the corner of her street, he stopped her under the
darker shadow of a tree and pulled her to him. “Just in case,” he
said, glancing down the street toward her house. She understood
that this was goodbye. He pushed her hair behind her shoulders and
then cocked his head slightly. “You’re alright, Katelyn Wells.”
Then he leaned down to kiss her.

Katelyn pulled her head back, dodging his
kiss. “Alright?” she acted offended. “Just alright?”

He smiled, “Yeah, you’re worth keeping
around.” And he kissed her. Katelyn contented herself with his
teasing.

They said goodnight and she walked into the
street, turning around twice to see him watching her. When she
reached her yard, she turned once again, but she could no longer
see Tim.

Once back safely in her room, she confirmed
her door was still locked before she fell into bed. She didn’t
bother changing into pajamas. Instead, Katelyn inhaled her
sweatshirt and smelled the lingering scent of Tim. “Worth keeping
around,” she mumbled to herself before she fell asleep.

“Please, Mom?” Katelyn slid into the chair
next to her mom at the table. “I’ve been grounded for almost two
weeks. This is the second weekend I’ve been stuck at home.”

Her mom didn’t respond, but looked up from
her stack of mail she was reading to give her a careful look.
Katelyn had pleaded to go to a movie with Tim earlier in the day,
but her mom said no. Katelyn was trying again, but this time asking
for Tim to come over to watch a movie.

“You said you wanted to meet him,” Katelyn
built her case. “It’s just a movie and technically Romeo &
Juliet is homework.” The silence was a good sign, so Katelyn
continued. “Tim could help me understand it since he’s already had
to read the play,” she paused. “Please, Mom? I’m doing everything
right with Gorman. I’m almost done with my late work.”

Katelyn had spent eight days total with that
bastard. Every day, they both smiled at each other with disguised
burning hatred. But, she played the game and put on a fake voice to
accompany her smile. “Here you go, Mr. Gorman,” or “Anything else,
Mr. Gorman,” and always “Do I have your permission, Mr.
Gorman?”

The pile of work on her desk seemed to grow
at first with end of the school year work rather than shrink, but
she managed to get it cleared off, finally. Katelyn should be back
in classes just in time for the next week’s final exams.

Her mom caved in. Tim knocked on the door
within the hour. During introductions, Tim played the polite, kind
boy. Her mom raised an eyebrow when Kayla came into the room and
went to Tim without hesitation. “Tim! Want to play?”

Tim turned out to be more of a distraction
than a help to focusing on the play. He made up jokes and mocked
the love-struck characters. Katelyn couldn’t help laughing at his
reenactment of Juliet’s death scene. Tim flipped imaginary hair and
exaggerated his gestures, clutching his chest and slapping his
hands to either side of his face. “What?! The only decent guy I’ve
met—well, actually, the only guy I’ve ever met—is dead?” Here Tim
put his hand to his forehead in great dramatics. “Bummer. I can’t
go on.”

While Katelyn laughed, Tim mocked confusion
as he looked around for a prop to use as a weapon. He grabbed one
of Kayla’s dolls from the floor, naked except for one boot, and
began to strangle himself between the doll’s legs. He feigned
strangulation while he dropped to the floor. He sat up, lifting one
eyebrow and smirking. “Hey, this isn’t such a bad way to die,” he
said and held the split legged doll away from his neck for a
moment.

Katelyn blushed. Their sexual exploration had
gone farther than the kisses and touching of their first meeting.
It was getting more difficult to tell him to stop.

Tim had been coming over after school on the
days when Katelyn’s mom worked. He was patient with Kayla, even
playful. Brianna threatened to nark, like always, but Katelyn made
deals. Brianna took advantage of the situation and started going
over to friends’ houses. Tim would leave half an hour before
Katelyn’s mom was supposed to come home. Brianna would sometimes
show up minutes before her mom, and they’d clear their stories with
each other. Surprisingly, it was the most civil Brianna had been to
Katelyn in years.

Katelyn’s dad never showed back up. Her mom
told them a few days after he disappeared that he had called. He
had taken a job in Utah as a foreman for a construction company.
Katelyn had answered the phone once last week when he called. He
made a big production about the details of the job—framing new
residential houses in a subdivision. He wanted her to come out for
a few weeks after school let out.

As far as she knew, her parents had patched
things up. She’d hear her mom at night, after she came home from
work, talking on the phone. From her bedroom, Katelyn had only
heard her mom’s voice raise a couple times within the past week.
Plus, her mom was in a much better mood.

“It was nice to meet you, Tim,” Katelyn’s mom
said after the movie and the last slice of the pizza they ordered
was eaten.

Katelyn walked Tim out to the side of the
house where no window would let her mom spy on them. Tim kissed
her, and they contented themselves with just an embrace rather than
the hours they’d spent in the past week in her bedroom holding each
other.

Katelyn came back in to find her mom right in
the kitchen waiting for her.

“He seems like a nice boy, Katelyn. You
really like him, don’t you?”

Katelyn tried not to blush, “Yeah, Mom. I do.
I really do.”

Chapter 12: Summer
Break

Katelyn sat down in English class and ignored the judgmental looks
of a few students around her. She’d been gone for two weeks, held
in Gorman’s office on lock down. He apparently had had enough of
his guest and put her back in classes just in time for semester
exams.

Class began and Teacher Woman droned through
the test instructions while passing out materials. She failed to
pass out enough for her row, so Katelyn had to raise her hand and
ask for another copy. “Thank you so much,” Katelyn used the same
fake polite voice she’d become accustomed to using with Gorman, but
Teacher Woman actually seemed to lose her edge when she saw Katelyn
wasn’t going to give her trouble.

“Hmm,” Katelyn let out in amazement. I’ll
have to try this more often.

“And I’ll be handing back your poems after
the test begins. Some are quite original and their authors should
consider submitting them to the poetry contest.” Teacher Woman
droned on until she realized most students had already completed
the first page of the test. Their impatient turn of the page
whipped through the air.

Katelyn turned to her booklet. She should be
able to do well on this test. She read the play. There was not much
else to do in Gorman’s office after she finished her work. Other
than the thou’s, thee’s and other language she’d never heard of,
she understood where Romeo and Juliet were at—their fear, their
hope.

Twenty minutes later, the test loomed in
front of her, throwing some fastballs at her. Tragedy structure?
Dramatic irony? Allusion? Why did school have to ruin a good story
by testing stupid stuff? She wondered.

Teacher Woman had been walking around the
classroom sliding papers face down on student’s desks. When she
came to Katelyn’s desk, Katelyn couldn’t help be a little
surprised. She didn’t always get things back like most kids because
she didn’t always hand things in.

Teacher Woman placed first the journal and
then a paper face down on the corner of her desk. Katelyn knew she
should keep working on the test, but couldn’t resist seeing what
she earned on the assignments. Somehow, she always held out hope
that she’d be good at something at school. Plus, she’d worked hard
on this assignment, the poem.

Katelyn waited until Teacher Woman walked
down another isle and then she picked up her poem. She turned it
over and her eyes widened at the A-minus at the top of the page. A
couple of grammar corrections were noted, but the comments under
the grade brought even more awe. “Nice work. Your poem reflects the
innocent passion of young love. Adding the required couplet would
make this assignment complete.”

Katelyn looked around. She saw that Melissa,
her desk neighbor, had already looked at hers and put it down on
her pile of books on the floor. It was face up. “B+” stood out on
the top of her paper. Melissa was slouched over her test,
absentmindedly pushing her pencil’s eraser into the depression of
her chin while she read a question.

Katelyn knew she should get back to the test,
but she decided to reread her poem.

Good Night

By Katelyn Wells

By day the promise hides

Charting its shape in light’s shadow.

The sun, burning with a parent’s force,
steals the shine of stars.

Only at night,

Desire driven by need’s own orbit,

Will a pulsing pattern perfect itself and
intersect another.

Together they reflect their secrets like
questions:

Are you brighter than me?

Do you know me?

What shape do we take together?

Do you love me?

Will you stay?

And each night, after day’s distance,

Across the laced sky, they burn toward each
other again.

The poem was already a week old, but so many
of the emotions were still true. She still questioned herself,
still felt uncertain about her place with Tim. But, she still felt
the rush of feelings, the attraction and need to know more, to be
more with him.

One of the brainiacs walked to the front of
the room. He put his test booklet and answer sheet on the front
desk and looked up at the clock before he turned back to his desk.
Katelyn looked at the clock, too. She cringed. She had 18 minutes
left. She looked over at the “test race winner” with a begrudging
frown. He didn’t notice because he had already picked up a novel
and was leaning back comfortably reading.

She took a deep breath, straightened, and
skipped to the character matching. When the bell rang, she had
completed all the questions she felt good about and was finishing
up with guessing on the others.

Since it was the last day of class, a couple
students went up to say goodbye to Teacher Woman. Suckups, thought
Katelyn, and she slid past them into the hall.

“Hey, Katelyn. Need a ride?” Emily said as
she came up behind Katelyn just as she reached the doors of the
school’s main exit.

Katelyn looked up from her phone where she
had been reading her last texts that came during English class. She
hadn’t dared to read them in class. She finally had her phone back;
she wasn’t going to blow it now.

“Oh,” Katelyn said with genuine surprise.
Emily had been ignoring her since the bathroom scene. There were no
messages on Katelyn’s phone from Emily when she checked it after
Gorman handed it over. Besides a couple of messages from Jenny and
many from Tim--sent before he knew she was grounded, there was only
one from the friend category. Even though Katelyn knew most people
probably heard that her phone was taken away, she couldn’t help
feeling disappointed that no one tried to contact her.

Emily fell into a slow walk after pointing
into the back rows of the parking lot. “I’m parked over there. Got
here kind of late this morning.”

Katelyn wasn’t going to turn down a ride,
especially since it was Thursday and her mom would be at work. Tim
would be over in an hour. That would give her some time to study
for her last tests tomorrow. “Sure, thanks,” she offered to Emily
and followed her out to the mob of activity in the parking lot.

“How were your finals?” Emily asked.

Katelyn questioned Emily’s sudden acceptance
again. “Not too bad. I might pass a few classes,” Katelyn
joked.

“What do you have tomorrow?”

“Science and math,” Katelyn slightly
groaned.

Emily turned her face into a wince. “Oh,
yuck. I remember that test. Beef up on your elements.”

“Yeah, I don’t have a prayer in science, but
I should do okay in math.” Katelyn had been able to catch up on a
few late assignments during her in-school suspension, and Mr.
Brooks came in at least 10 minutes during his prep period each day
to get her started on the daily lessons.

They reached Emily’s car, actually her dad’s
car. Emily had gotten her license this year. Katelyn had to wait
another year, but her dad let her drive on the highway sometimes,
when he was around.

Katelyn looked around. “Is Maci coming?”

Emily didn’t look up, but opened her door.
Just before she ducked in, she said, “I don’t think so,” in a
disgusted voice.

During the ride to her house, Emily dished
out the latest fight between herself and Maci. It involved a boy,
of course, and Emily hadn’t come out as the preferred party. She
was just finishing her accusation that Maci had told lies about her
in order to hurt her chances. Katelyn played naïve.

“Maci doesn’t seem like the kind of person to
do that.”

“Oh, I should know, she’s the biggest liar.”
Here, Emily reached her hand over to place it on Katelyn’s arm.
“Um, like, you know that iPod she said you had stolen?” She paused
for effect. “Well, it turns out that her older brother pawned it
for pot money or something. She actually thought that she’d get a
new one from the school or insurance or something if she reported
it stolen.” Emily’s eyes were wide in disbelief and offense.