The Purity of Blood: Volume I (9 page)

“And I thought I
could be paranoid,” I said teasingly as he turned and smiled at me over his
shoulder.

“You?
 
Paranoid?
 
I just don’t see that,” he said with a sly smile.
 

Was he flirting with me?

“Maybe you
should look closer,” I replied.

Did I just flirt back?
 
Holy cow!
 
I don’t think I’d ever flirted with a guy before in my entire life.

“Maybe I
should,” he replied as he started my way with that swaggering outdoorsy walk of
his.
 

Oh, my …

“What are you
two talking about?” Ryan asked coming over to join us, on purpose I think.

“Has anyone seen
any animals yet?” Ben asked, quickly changing the subject.

We all looked at
each other and shrugged our shoulders no.
 
Of course I was still thinking of the semi-suggestive way he’d said
maybe I should
.
 

Would he?
 

Did I want him to?

“Yeah, neither
have I.
 
That’s strange.
 
Usually by now I’ve spotted at least a dozen
deer, not to mention rabbits and a few foxes.
 
I haven’t even seen as much as a squirrel so far this morning.”
 
Ben paused, still obviously thinking about
something.
 
But I had the feeling it was
his odd feeling and not me now.

“They must be
farther along the trail,” Mike said.
 
“Maybe we’re not the first ones down here today.
 
It’s possible someone scared them off before
we arrived.”

“Must be,” Ben
answered to himself as he turned back to the woods.
 
I was closest to him and heard him quietly
mumble to himself “But I didn’t see any other tracks.”

After a few
minutes break we started again, climbing the rocks and following the creek for
a mile or so until the trail branched off into the woods.
 
The terrain was easier to traverse here, all
slow inclines and down hills. Eventually the trail began to follow the top of a
ridge, and at one spot the trees cleared along one side allowing a breathtaking
view of the valley below.
 
It was too
beautiful for me not to stop and snap a picture, so I pulled out my camera and
peered through the lens to frame my shot.
  

Would look better with that branch in the
foreground
I thought to myself, and without taking the camera away from my
eye, I took a few steps forward.
 
Then I
took a few steps to the right.
 
That’s
when I bumped into a pine tree and started to wobble unsteadily to the
left.
 
I should have grabbed the tree for
support, but I held my camera in that hand.
 
I was on the verge of falling over when Ben appeared out of nowhere and
steadied me, his hands holding my hips securely.

“Where did you
come from?” I asked surprised.
 
“I
thought you were back there.”
 
I pointed
down the trail we’d just followed.
 
“You
stopped to look at the map.”
 

I remembered
this clearly as it was the reason I felt I could steal a few moments to take
the picture.
 
He was about fifty feet
behind me and I didn’t want to get too far ahead of him.
 
I was sure of that.

“You almost fell
again,” he said softly, his hands still on my hips.
 
“Why do you keep doing that?
 
I didn’t think you were the clumsy type,
you’re usually much more graceful.”
 
His
glasses now off, I could see deep into his soulful brown eyes.
 

“Graceful,
huh?
 
Must be the new shoes,” I mumbled,
forcing myself to forget that he hadn’t answered my question.
 

He laughed
softly.
 

“That must be
it.”
 
Then he took my hand to help me
back onto the trail.
 

As I turned, I
looked out on the stunning vista below.
 
A group of large birds were circling down in the valley.

“Look,
birds.
 
They’re animals.”

“Looks like
vultures.
 
Something must have died,” Ben
said.
 
“We’re headed down that way; maybe
we’ll see what it was.”

“Yeah, I’ll take
a pass on that.”
 
I must have made a face
because he laughed again.

“What’s going on
back there?” Ryan called, appearing from around the next bend in the
trail.
 
Following his stare, I glanced
down to see Ben still holding my hand.
 
When I looked up, Ryan was frowning.
 

“Nothing,” I
said.
 
“I was just taking a picture.”

Blushing, I let
Ben’s hand go and hurried along after Ryan to catch up with the others.

“Did you see
that?” Ben said from behind me.

“See what?” I
asked as I stopped to turn back towards him.
 
He was standing in the middle of the trail looking off into a thick
stand of trees.

“Nothing,” he
answered, shaking his head.
 
“Must have
been a squirrel or something.
 
Come on;
let’s catch up with the others.”
 

Forcing a smile on his face, he turned and waved me up the
trail ahead of him.

Just before noon we reached our
designated picnic spot at the base of a small gorge where a waterfall fell
about thirty or forty feet into a river.
 
The sun was high enough now that it filled the steep gray rock walls of
the gorge, bathing it in warm light that illuminated the translucent white mist
coming off the falls.

Tabitha and I
pulled out the blanket and spread it on a large flat rock as we handed out the
sandwiches, chips and salads we’d packed.
 
Taking a seat on the rocks, we ate hardily, our morning’s exertions on
the trail having given us a hearty appetite.
 
After a dessert of Mike’s homemade chocolate chip cookies we all spread
out on the rocks to relax.
 
Like myself,
everyone seemed introspective, preferring the quiet of their own thoughts than
feeling the need to fill the silence with chatter.
 
Stretching out, I leaned back and soaked in
the beauty and peacefulness of this remote spot far from the bustling NPU
campus.
 
It was nice here, really nice, but
all things considered, I’d still rather have been at the beach in Wading
River.
 
I laid back on the flat rock we’d
eaten on and gazed up at the clouds as they lazily rolled by above my
head.
 

“Look.
 
There they are again,” I said, pointing to
the sky.
 
Everyone looked up.
 
Circling nearby were four very large, dark
birds.

Curious to see
what the birds knew that they didn’t, Ben, Mike and Ryan decided to go in
search of what they were circling, while Tabitha and I stayed behind to clean
up after the picnic.
 
After the boys
left, I took my boots off, rolled up my jeans and stepped down into the crystal
clear water of the little wading pool at the base of the fall.

“Cold?” Tabitha
asked, her eye brow raised.

“Yes, very much
so.”
 

I winced, but it
felt good on the budding blisters on the bottoms of my feet.
  

With a laugh,
she decided she’d rather not lose a toe to frostbite and opted to police the
area instead, making sure we didn’t leave anything behind.
 
It wasn’t
that
cold.
 
What it was however, was perfectly
pure water, liked I’d stepped into liquid glass.
 
Somehow, even in the cold it felt deeply
cleansing, washing away some unseen mark on my soul.

“Where on earth
did the boys get off too?” Tabitha eventually asked about a half an hour
later.
 
We’d been lounging on the rocks
talking about nothing in particular for a while now.
 
Her question hung in the air for only a
moment before we heard the sounds of their distant laughter.
 
Tabitha quickly turned to me and whispered
with a sly smile “You know, I think Ryan might have a crush on you.”
 

I was stunned by
her directness, but wasn’t really sure why.
 
It wasn’t like it was news.
 
I’d
suspected his attentions might be a bit more than platonic for a while
now.
 
Regardless, it took me a few
moments to respond.

“I’m not sure
what to think about that,” was all I had a chance to say before the boys came
tromping out of the woods into the clearing.
 
My answer must have sounded cryptic to her.
 
I hadn’t meant it to be, but perhaps that was
for the best.
 
Ryan just didn’t know me
well enough to know any better yet.

“So did you find
anything?” I asked, changing the subject as they approached.

“Yeah,” Ryan
answered with a broad smile as he came bounding up the rocks to take a seat
beside me.
 
“We found a dead deer, two of
them actually.”

“Real bloody
mess too.
 
Good thing you girls didn’t
come along.
 
Must have been a mountain
lion or something,” Mike added.

Ben didn’t say anything, but shifting his weight around
uncomfortably, he looked a little antsy to move on.

It took about two hours to hike
back to the car.
 
My assumption had been
correct; it was mostly an uphill climb towards the end, but not as strenuous as
I’d anticipated.
 
It was kind of a shame,
I could have used a work out.
 
I was
woefully out of shape considering my normal workout routine back home.
 

Our single file line up the one man wide path was in good
spirits despite the fact that they were all tired.
 
Last in line, Ben still trailed behind
me.
 
After we left the waterfall, I began
to notice that he’d periodically stop and pause, like he was listening for
something.
 
Then he’d hurry to catch up
to me.
 
For a really cute guy, he sure
seemed to have some strange idiosyncrasies.
 
I had to chuckle to myself as the thought occurred to me.
 
Boy, if that wasn’t the pot calling the
kettle black.
 
From the look on his face
as he hustled to catch up with me, paranoia might be one of our common
bugaboos.

When we finally reached the end
of the trail, we took a few minutes to shake the dirt off ourselves before piling
back into the jeep for the drive back down to campus.
 

“I sure wish
we’d seen more animals,” Ryan said as he started to pull out onto the
road.
 
“I hear there are mountain lions
up in these hills, but I have yet to see one.
 
I’m guessing those dead animals were proof they’re up here somewhere.”

“That’s a pretty
fancy car for a ranger,” Mike said pointing down a secluded service road as we
started for home.
 
We all turned to see the
tail end of a shiny, black sports car parked in the shadows about fifty feet
off the road.
 

“Not very
practical for off-roading it,” Ryan added with a laugh.
 
“Now this old Jeep of mine can really take
the bumps and mud.”
 

He immediately launched into stories of some of his off road
adventures back home up in Rome, NY.
 
As
funny as they were, I was only half listening.
 
The day’s exercise was starting to take its toll and I couldn’t stop my
head from leaning back and allowing my eye lids to slowly close.

“Time to wake up,” I heard.
 

The voice was soft, a velvety, deep, caramel coated bedroom
voice.
 
I was snuggled up against
something soft and warm.
 
Instinctively,
I didn’t want to open my eyes, but something seemed wrong.
 
When I felt a slight nudge, my eyes instantly
popped open only to see Ben’s smile peering down at me.
 
The soft warm thing was the fleece lining of
his jacket.
 
I’d fallen asleep and my
head had somehow found his shoulder.
 
From the look on his face, he didn’t appear to have minded.
 
With his arm around my shoulder, he almost
seemed amused.
 
Embarrassed, I quickly
shoved over and got out of the car, almost tripping on the way out.
 
Thankfully, he was gentleman enough not to
say anything or laugh.
 
But he did smile
and turn his head away so I couldn’t see the chuckle I sensed was bursting to
come out of him.

I didn’t see Ben again for a few
days.
 
Unfortunately, who I
was
seeing on a regular basis now was
the mysterious Mr. Simmons.
  
It hadn’t
escaped my notice that someone who was nothing more than a phantom my first few
weeks here at NPU, was now a regular fixture in my life.
 
Not only was I seeing him three mornings a
week in class, but he had also taken to regularly eating dinner in the dining
hall.
 
Whether by coincidence or not, he
somehow always managed to arrive either just before or just after I did.
 
Although my friends and I always sat in the
same small grouping of tables, his position changed every night.
  
Which in and of itself seemed odd to me.
 
But no matter where he sat, one thing
remained the same.
 
He always had an
unobstructed view of our table.