Solstice - Of The Heart (14 page)

“Some technique,” I said. “How’re you
doing this?”

“I’m not. You are. I’m just carrying
your pack and holding your hand.”

“And the gloves off?”

I could see Aaron struggling to find
an answer. The wait was worth it.

“I like touching you.”

What do you say to that? I still felt
there was more to the technique than he offered, but I wasn’t going
to pass up the chance to bask in the emotion generated by his
answer.

“I had a dream about you last night,”
I told him.

“Oh yeah. What about?”

“It’s a bit corny.”

“That’s okay. Most dreams
are.”

“I was supposed to take this test,
this big final. All of us, the students, were milling around not
knowing where to go to take the test. Finally this teacher comes
along and shows us this door. We go in and it’s like going outside.
There are hills, and trees, and flowers, but there are also places
to sit.”

“Sounds like a place I would like to
take a test.”

“It gets better. We’re given these
pizzas, you know the kind you take home and bake?”

“Papa Murphys?”

“Yeah. Like those.”

“So I’m carrying this pizza in one
hand and trying to find a seat. All the other students are sitting
down, taking the test and leaving, one by one. Now I have a
seat.”

“Good. Now you can sit
down.”

“No, I can’t, because I don’t know the
answers to the test, but everyone else does. They’re finding the
answers.”

“Really. So where do I come
in.”

“In a minute. So I’m searching,
searching, running around trying to find someone to tell me where
to find the answers. All this time I am carrying this pizza around
like you see the waiters do in a restaurant with it held up high in
the air.”

I made the motion with my free
hand.

Aaron squeezed my hand as we
maneuvered around an ice caked corner.

“This sounds like one of those dreams
where your wish never gets fulfilled.”

“Oh, but it does. And you’re the one
who fulfills it.”

“How?”

“All the other students leave. They’ve
all found the answers. They’ve finished the test. I see an exit
that leads out onto this street in some town. I don’t recognize it.
The streets are narrow, the buildings high and old fashioned like
you would see in Europe.”

“I gotta say, Julissa, you have vivid
dreams.”

“Last night I did. Anyway I start
wandering the streets still in search for the answers on the test.
I’m still carrying the pizza, holding it up high in the
air.

And then I see you.”

Aaron smiled. “Now we’re getting to
the good part.”

“Yes we are. You’re in this big black
car, like one of those stretched limousines. It has a sun roof and
you’re standing up in the car facing toward the rear looking at me.
I chase you down the street for awhile.”

“I don’t stop the car?”

“You’re not driving.”

“Still, if your dream was real I would
stop the car.”

“That’s good to know. Anyway, I catch
up to the car, because I think it did stop for a red light or
something.”

“And I tell you the
answers.”

“No, you don’t. You show me. You reach
out and pull the plastic wrap off my pizza. You take the
instructions for baking the pizza and flip them over. And guess
what?”

Aaron shrugged his
shoulders.

“There were the answers for the
test.”

“You had them all along.”

“Yes, I did.”

“That’s quite a story,
Julissa.”

“What do you think it
means?”

“I don’t know, but it sounds that
whatever you are looking for you already have the answers. You just
don’t know where to look.”

“But I now know that if this dream
were to be true, you would be the one to show me where to
look.”

“Answers come from the sea of
consciousness.”

From the sea of
consciousness?

Heavy thinking.

Aaron stopped.

I looked up. We were
standing in front of the school. I was a bit disappointed. My time
with Aaron had gone too fast. And I had done most of the
talking.

I apologized.

“Not at all,” Aaron said. “I loved
your dream story, especially since I was in it.” He let go of my
hand and handed me my backpack.

I heard the first school bell ring.
“Will I see you later?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

He smiled, a more mischievous smile
than before. “Whether or not you ditch biology class.”

“And miss cutting apart a pig? Never!
What are you doing for lunch?”

Aaron looked to the sky.

Snow fell in big fluffy
flakes.

I framed the picture of Aaron’s face
turned skyward in my mind; a beautiful picture, one of a handsome
young man with long blonde hair and blue eyes, with lips parted and
his tongue stuck out in an attempt to catch a snow flake. A picture
of a young man, caught in a childish act.

I noticed he wasn’t the only one
sticking his tongue out to catch a snow flake.

Others were to.

But where others lapped up snow flake
after snow flake, Aaron’s tongue remained dry. No flake touched
him. They swirled around and about him, but not near him. In the
snowflake pattern, I could see a bubble.

No flake touched him.

I felt and saw the flakes on my hair.
I felt them on my face. They touched and melted and made my face
and hair wet. I looked around. Other students playfully passed us.
Flakes touched their faces, their hair, and their gloveless hands.
Some stuck, some melted. Their faces turned wet, their hair mussed,
just like mine.

But no flakes touched Aaron’s
beautiful face. None touched his hair. He looked perfect. Too
perfect. No smudges. No wet hair.

The drama queens would be
envious.

Aaron cut into my thoughts. “I have to
go home at lunch,” he said. “With this amount of snow the driveway
will need shoveling.”

“You do that here, in
California?”

“Shoveling? Yeah. A bit of hard work
is good for the soul. Least that’s what Bernard tells
us.”

“Sounds like Bernard tells you a lot
of things.”

“He knows best.”

I heard the warning bell go
off.

Bernard stood at the front door,
washing fingerprints off the windows.

I saw Aaron’s face go sour.

“Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll see you in
Biology. Thanks for walking me to school. It was nice. Maybe we can
do it again.”

“My pleasure. No slipping.” He pointed
to the sidewalk as he walked away.

It was hard for me to reconcile the
little boy who had just stuck out his tongue to catch a snowflake
with the boy who had said, answers come from the sea of
consciousness.

Aaron was fast becoming like no other
boy I had known. He was beautiful, but when his face turned sour,
as it did a moment ago, I felt chills run up and down my spine. And
yet, the holding of his hand could melt the coldest of coldest
girl’s heart. I only saw kindness and tenderness in the way he
listened and replied to my ramblings. I sensed a complexity in him
that is rarely found in one so young.

It was way too early to say I was
falling in love with Aaron, but it wasn’t farfetched to believe
that I could or would.

11 SNOW & CRYSTALS

I watched Aaron stop and chat with
Bernard for a moment as he entered the main doors of the high
school. Seconds later, his cousins emerged out of nowhere. They
became, as Cherrie so aptly described it, Aaron’s bookends and the
threesome walked down the hall, unimpeded by the masses.

Jason Chavez corralled me as soon as I
stepped foot through the front entrance.

I offered Bernard a “good
morning.”

He reciprocated with a smidge of a
smile, nothing more.

“Bichin day.” That was Jason’s opening
line.

I couldn’t help myself. “Good morning
to you too, Jason.”

“What do you think?”

“About what?”

“The snow.”

“Believe me, Jason, we have snow in
Minnesota.”

“Yeah, but in August?”

“I can wait. Snow could wait until
November or even Christmas for all I care.”

“Don’t think you
understand.”

“What?”

“It’s snowing on the
mountain.”

I closed in on my first period
class—history. The final bell was about to ring.

“Don’t you have class,
Jason?”

“Phys. Ed. Coach Schatz won’t care if
I’m a few minutes late. He won’t even notice and I dress real
fast.”

“So,” I said, stopping at the entrance
to my class door, “why are you so excited it’s snowing on the
mountain? You a climber?”

Jason almost bit his tongue. “Shit no.
I rip flake. There’s powder to burn. Do you snow board?”

So that was it. Jason was angling.
“No. I’ve never even skied. Well, nothing really big,
anyway.”

“I could teach you to rip
flake.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll teach you.” Jason
turned and started for his classroom. He yelled back. “The whole
town is going nuts. August snow means early money.”

The bell rang as I slid into my seat.
I had forgotten what sustained the city of Shasta was the flood of
money from outdoor enthusiasts, whether they were golfers, snow
boarders or mountaineers.

There was a lot of excited
talk in the classroom about the snow and what everyone’s plans were
for the next day. I hated to remind everyone it was Wednesday and
we still had Thursday and Friday’s classes to get through, not to
mention the week-end’s homework assignments.

I couldn’t find the joy.

Several of my classmates showed me the
way.

“If it keeps snowing,” they said,
“they’ll close school tomorrow.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because the buses won’t
run.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Most of the kids here live out of
town.”

I hadn’t given that much thought.
Shasta City wasn’t all that big, but the surrounding area was
sizeable. Most of our student populace rode buses to and from
school.

I was perhaps the only one in the
room, and possibly the only one in school, praying it wouldn’t
continue to snow.

What if they cancelled the rest of the
day at school and sent us home early? What if I didn’t get to see
Aaron this afternoon? I looked out the window. Snow fell in heavy
concentration.

I fretted as I walked to my next
class. Happy faces everywhere. I tried to not look too
glum.

I saw the drama queen trio
approaching. Too late! No escape.

It appeared it was
Sandra’s turn to do the talking.

“Hey, we hear you’re dating Aaron
Delmon.”

There was no beating around the bush
with these three.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Talk around school.”

“It’s not true. I haven’t dated anyone
from this school yet.”

“We were hoping you were.”

“Why?”

The three of them looked at each
other. “The Delmons...well...ah they’re to die for, don’t you
think?”

“I think,” I said,
“they’re normal guys. Just misunderstood.”

I didn’t believe this for a second,
but I wanted to be nonchalant as possible about my interaction with
the Delmons.

“They’re a bit put-offish.” Charleen
added this.

“You could say that. But
you would be too if people looked at you different.”

Come to think of it, the drama queens
were looked at different, just in a good way versus the way the
Delmon’s were viewed.

I began to suspect the three drama
queens wouldn’t mind hooking up with the three Delmon boys. I had a
hard time working that one through my mind. The prim and proper
queens, hand in hand with Beaumont, Belmont and (NO!) Aaron. Maybe
I should be implying a hands-off relationship with
Aaron.

“Aaron and I have been hanging
together a bit,” I told them.

It was Brittany’s turn. “You know he
was selected to play Romeo.”

My stomach caved. “Who?
Aaron?”

“Yes.”

“In drama class?” Forgive my
denseness. I was still trying to digest the news.

The three DQ’s looked at each other.
The bell rang. We scurried to class.