The Sweet Gum Tree (9 page)

I suddenly remembered why I’d come to the Burger Zone in the first place, and I didn’t like his tone. “No. I’m having fun.”

Devon slipped his arm around my waist. “Beat it, Anderson. She’s staying with me.”

“I don’t think so.” Nick’s eyes narrowed and danger radiated from him like a miasma.

Smelling blood, the other kids surrounded us like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Casey and Cody appeared from the crowd and took up positions on either side of Devon and me.

“You heard her, kid. She doesn’t want to hang around with trash like you anymore.”

Oh, now that was going a little too far. Maybe I was mad at him, but nobody called Nick trash when I was around. I put my hands on Casey’s chest and shoved with all my strength. His arms windmilled and he sat down hard. “You shut up,” I snarled. “The only trash around here is you!”

While everyone was off balance from my unexpected attack, Nick grabbed me and shoved me behind him. “Get in the truck,” he hissed.

And leave him alone with these animals? Not a chance. I dodged around him, closed my fist, and swung at Devon, yelping when I connected with his chin. All hell broke loose. I have a vague memory of crawling between someone’s legs, over the rough gravel of the parking lot, and sinking my teeth into a thigh. Everyone was fighting, swinging indiscriminately at whomever was closest. I don’t know how it would have ended if someone hadn’t seen the cops tearing down the road toward us.

Kids scattered like puffs of smoke in a high wind.

I spit a piece of material from my mouth as Nick scooped me up, tossed me over his shoulder and ran for his truck. “Did we win?” I inquired from my upside down location.

“Just shut up, Alix.”

He threw me onto the seat, scrambled over me, and peeled out of the parking lot, gravel spraying from beneath his tires.

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“How about that,” I commented weakly, eyeing his cut, bloody lip. “You got new doors on the truck.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he roared. “I tell you not to be alone with your cousins and what do you do? You crawl in a car with them, get drunk, nearly get raped, and start a brawl.”

Miserably, I scrunched down by the door. “Why do you care what happens to me?

You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

At least he wasn’t snarling now. “Yes, you do. You never talk to me anymore. You won’t even look at me.” A tear oozed from my eye and dribbled down my cheek. When he didn’t answer, I swiped it away, getting mad all over again. “See? You won’t even talk to me now. Well I’ve got news for you. You don’t own me and you can’t stop me from coming to the Burger Zone every night if I want to. I don’t need you around to take care of me. I’m not some damn baby!” My voice kept getting louder until I was yelling the last few words.

“That’s the problem,” he muttered, without looking at me.

But right then I developed a new difficulty. “Stop the truck.” He took one look at my face and whipped the truck over, slamming it into park. We were out in the country somewhere, on a gravel back road beside a field. I stumbled out and bent double as my stomach went into open rebellion. After what felt like thirty minutes of violent heaving on my part, Nick thrust an orange shop towel into my hand.

“Maybe you’ll feel better now.”

Better? The only way I’d feel better was if I died. “Where are we?”

“I don’t have my license yet. I’m taking you home, but we have to stay off the main streets.” He reached back into the truck, retrieved a bottle of soda, and handed it to me.

“Rinse your mouth out with that.”

I did, then leaned weakly against a rusty fender and pushed my hair away from my face. The moon was big and full, and a whippoorwill called from off to our right. “How did you know where I was?”

“I heard the Judge yelling at your mother for letting you go.”

“So you decided to come after me?” I glanced at him from under my eyelashes. He was leaning next to me, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Yeah.”

If I hadn’t been half-drunk, I’d never have said what I did then. “I’ve missed you.” He looked down at his feet. “I’ve missed you, too.” I turned toward him, tears streaming down my cheeks again. “Then why are you treating me like this? What did I do wrong? If you’ll tell me, I promise, I’ll never do it again.”

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Katherine Allred

Awkwardly, he put his arms around me and pulled me close. “It wasn’t you,” he rasped. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me.”

“I don’t understand!”

“I know you don’t, and I should have explained before.” With a lot of false starts and hesitation, he told me about his father, how he brought women home with him all the time, how he treated them. His chin rested on top of my head as he talked.

“I promised myself I’d never do that to any woman, act like she was a piece of meat, just someone to use and then forget about. But I started getting all these strange…feelings whenever you touched me. I kept telling myself you were only a kid, and as long as I believed it, everything was okay. I could control it.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “That day in the cellar, I wanted…” His words halted. “I didn’t want to stop. It scared me. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Alix. I’m not going to let anything hurt you, not even me. I figured I had to stay away from you for your own good.”

I leaned back and stared up at him in amazement. “You mean to tell me you put me through hell because you got horny?” Okay, so I was a little more than half-drunk. And still mad. I stepped back and took a swing at his head. He stepped under it and grabbed my arms.

“Damn it, let me go!”

“Not until you settle down.”

“I can’t believe this,” I yelled. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have something to say about it if I thought you were going too far? Or were
you
planning on raping me?” From the expression on his face, it
hadn’t
occurred to him that I might not simply fall over and spread my legs. “What kind of person do you think I am? I thought we were friends, I thought you knew me.”

“So did I,” he mumbled. “But I’d have sworn you’d never do anything like you did tonight, so maybe I don’t.”

“That was your fault.” I glared at him. “I only went because I was mad at you.”

“You’ve got a weird way of looking at things, Alix.”

“I do not.”

He finally let go of my arms. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve been acting like an asshole.”

I studied his face. “Are you going to stop ignoring me?” For the first time that night, he smiled. “Yes.”

“And you’ll start talking to me again?”

“Yes.”

He staggered when I threw myself into his arms. “Then I forgive you,” I whispered.

“Just promise me one thing.”

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The Sweet Gum Tree

“What?” I’d have done almost anything at that point, I was so happy to discover he didn’t hate me.

“Don’t drink anymore. ‘Cause I got to tell you, Alix, you are one mean drunk.”

“Deal.” I laughed.

Nick took me home right after that, and I managed to make it to my room without rousing my family. I was still awake when Mama opened the door and tiptoed to the side of the bed, gazed down at me, and sighed with relief, but I pretended to be asleep.

When she left, I sent up a silent prayer that she’d never find out what had happened, and promised to be good from now on.

My relationship with Nick settled into an uneasy pattern after that night. We were still friends, but something had changed. Now I knew that while I was dreaming about him, he was dreaming about me, and we couldn’t go back to the way we’d been before.

Every time we were together, awareness crackled between us like static electricity. Our touches were no longer innocent, but done deliberately and at every opportunity. One of us would be talking, then suddenly stop and we’d stare at each other in silence.

Things were different at school, too. Rumors about my rapid degeneration and subsequent rescue by Nick flew over the grapevine faster than a brush fire after a ten year drought. My classmates looked on me with a respect bordering on awe. The seniors glared at me every time we met. Most of them still sported bruises and various injuries when school started, and Devon had a limp that kept him out of basketball practice for a month.

The first break between classes, Jenna dragged me outside and demanded all the details. I gave her an abbreviated version, after which she did a lot of glaring at Devon and my cousins.

“Bastards,” she declared.

She’d gotten a short haircut that did wonders for her face, making her eyes look big and gorgeous, the way it curled softly on her cheeks. And she was wearing makeup.

Looked like I needed to have another talk with Mother.

“So what’s up with you and Nick? I heard you two were an item.”

“We’re just friends, you know that.” Whatever was going on between Nick and me was too strong, too personal to talk about, even with my best friend.

“Yeah? Well, he sure isn’t looking at you like a friend. Let me put it this way. If you were a rabbit and he were a wolf, you’d be dead meat right now. Lord, I wish a guy would look at me that way.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see what she was talking about. Nick was standing fifty feet away, propping up a tree while he stared in my direction. There was something strange about this picture, but it took me a second to figure out what it was.

He wasn’t on the steps guarding Lindsey. He returned my gaze steadily until I turned back to Jenna.

“Wonder where Lindsey is?”

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Katherine Allred

“I heard she quit.”

“Why would she do that?”

Jenna shrugged. “Liz dropped number seven a few weeks ago. She needed Lindsey to stay home and take care of it while she worked.”

“She got a job?”

“Yep, out at the roadhouse, waiting tables. Lots of folks think the kid might be Frank Anderson’s.”

Why hadn’t Nick mentioned any of this to me? He must be upset about something like that. I sure would have been. But Nick wasn’t the kind to talk about his problems. It was nothing short of a miracle that he’d told me as much as he had about Frank the night of the brawl, and I suspect that if I’d been stone cold sober, he wouldn’t have.

“So, what’s it like to get drunk?” Jenna asked, as though she’d read my mind.

I shuddered and she laughed. “That bad?”

“Worse. I wasn’t that sick when I had my tonsils taken out. I’ll never touch liquor again.”

Several boys arrived then, Hugh Morgan among them, and we dropped the subject.

Hugh didn’t pull my hair anymore, or egg me on to feats both reckless and dangerous.

Now he only teased me unmercifully and dogged my steps like a lost puppy. But I wasn’t interested in Hugh or any of the other boys, and I didn’t feel like flirting. I pasted on a smile and edged around until I could watch Nick without being too obvious about it. When it was time to go back in, I made sure I walked right by him.

Neither of us said a word, but our hands skimmed, clung for a moment, and then let go.

For now, it was enough.

A few days later I finally got to ask him about Lindsey and the new baby. We were in his room, me in the easy chair, and Nick on the bed.

“Did you know Lindsey was going to quit school?” I asked.

“I didn’t know for sure until the day before we started back, but I figured she would.”

“Because of her mom’s new baby?”

He shrugged. “Partly. But mostly because she hated school. Being around people always scares her.”

I got up and went to the bed. Nick scooted over to make room for me, and I sat down and put my hand on his arm. “People are saying the new baby might be your father’s.”

An inscrutable expression filled his eyes. “He’s not.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Take my word for it, he’s not.”

Not long after that talk, I ran into Liz at the drugstore. She was holding the baby in front of her like a sack of potatoes, so I got a good look at him. His hair was a mass of 52

The Sweet Gum Tree

fiery red corkscrew curls, and he had huge blue eyes. In short, he looked enough like Jenna to be her twin. Nick knew the first time I saw that little boy I’d realize the truth.

And it didn’t take the rest of the town long to figure it out, either.

Jenna became pale and withdrawn, and cried on my shoulder a lot. I gave her what comfort I could, which wasn’t much. For a while she nearly lived at my house, and Aunt Jane finally had a long talk with her. Things started to get better after that, but Jenna could never look at a Swanner again without flinching.

My fourteenth birthday came and went, and then my fifteenth. Casey and Cody graduated and left for the university in Little Rock. Nick and I continued to tiptoe around each other, both of us longing for more, but neither willing to risk what we had by pushing it too hard. Until the year I turned seventeen and my life took a direct hit from the hands of fate. If I’d thought Uncle Vern coming home was a shock, it was nothing compared to the turmoil my father brought with him.

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Katherine Allred

On my sixteenth birthday, the Judge put me behind the wheel of the Chevy and took me to the police station for my driver’s test, just like he’d done with Nick. When I passed with flying colors, he handed over the Chevy’s keys and the title as my present from him. I was ecstatic.

“At least I know you’ll survive if you have a wreck in this one,” he told me. The Judge put no faith in the fiberglass bodies on new cars, said they offered about as much protection as an eggshell.

Nick had graduated from high school that spring and now worked full-time as a mechanic at Paul Hawkins’ garage. On the evening of my birthday, he took me out to his room and gave me my present. It was one of those necklaces that look like half of a broken heart. His name was on the back, and while I was trying not to cry, he pulled the other half out from under his shirt and showed me where my name was etched. I couldn’t help myself. I kissed him. And I knew right away that I might have bitten off more than I could chew.