The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (16 page)

Her frown was back as she
calmly removed his hand from her arm, and leaned on her back foot,
locking her knee, while putting more space between her and him at
the same time.

“
I have some money. I have
put it away for you. Upon my untimely death from lung cancer, it
will be yours, so you have the creature comforts as you live on
without me. And… it’s quite a substantial amount.”

Lung cancer, my ass!
You’re no Walter White, James!

“
Oh god,
James, the
very
last thing I’d ever want from you is money!” she growled at
him, stomping the foot she’d been tapping moments
before.

He didn’t seem to notice.
“Twenty thousand, four hundred dollars can go a long, long way,” he
uttered smugly, expecting to be astounded by the sum. “I want you
to have it when I am gone, because over the past few months you
have come to mean so much to me, my Sophie.”

Caught up in the mire of a
million different confused and intersecting thoughts and emotions,
all Sophie could bring herself to do was laugh, and laugh loudly
she did. Before her, James confident expression melted to pure
incredulity. Her response to his more than generous offer baffled
him beyond his ability to do anything else. To gape at her seemed
the only motor function he remembered.

“
W-w-why are-are you
laughing?” he asked astounded.

Her guffaws persisted.
Even his moronic question didn’t stop her. She struggled to gain
control.

Minutes later, she was
still stifling giggles when she replied ruthlessly, “That wouldn’t
even pay twenty-five percent of the tuition for a single year at
any of the colleges I’ve been accepted! That’s why I am
laughing!”

“
What you do mean? That’s
a ton of money,” he tried to convince her, his voice strained. “How
come you won’t let me take care of you?”

She inhaled sharply, the
last vestiges of mirth evaporating from her. “When you grow up
enough to emerge from your childhood fantasies, you will realize,
James, that twenty thousand dollars isn’t shit. Just like your
notion that you and I were
ever
together isn’t shit. I was never
with
you, James. I don’t
want to be with you, James. Can’t you get that through your thick,
fucking skull!?!”

She didn’t let him speak,
and continued forcefully. “We shared an art class together last
year. I asked you nicely, one day, to pass over some of the
materials Mrs. Reynolds was giving out. I had to ask, because you’d
zoned out again and weren’t paying attention. Then, we didn’t talk
for almost a month, until you finally got the courage to small talk
with me in front of the sink when I was washing out the paint
brushes I’d used that day. Politely, mind you, I carried a
conversation with you for no more than a few minutes and that was
it. That was
it!
Does any of this ring a bell with you, James?” She was
glaring at him.

He just stared back in
semi-shock, or what she deemed was semi-shock. He cold zone-out on
a moments’ notice

“
Then,” she began anew,
“then, you started ‘bumping’ -,” she made quotations with fingers
from both hands, “- into me in the hallways. Next, it was during
lunch, and then, it was nutrition. Until you finally started
showing up here, like this, after practice when I’m tired and worn
out from yet another long day. There’s nothing more I want, when I
leave practice, than to get home, eat something and relax. I let
you walk me home a few times, because, frankly, I didn’t care if
you did or if you jumped off a cliff. I’m too damned tried to care
at this time of day, James. Don’t you get it?” She was pleading
through anger and frustration, the palms of her hands splayed to
either side.

“
After that, you sent the
flowers, which I refused.”

His eyes
bulged.

“
Yes, I
refused them! They didn’t get ‘lost in transit’ as you
rationalized. I told you I couldn’t accept them, because, to me, it
was inappropriate for the kind of relationship we had between us.
You just sort of blocked all that out, didn’t you? Yeah, you sure
did and that should’ve given me a clue, you know? I should’ve
realized right then, what kind of a sick person you were. I
should’ve done something more to dissuade you.
BUT
, I let it pass, because, again,
I didn’t really care. I didn’t want to spend the effort, because
you are sooo exhausting.” She paused to stare at his eyes,
searching for cognizance. “You do understand what I am telling you,
right?” She stepped closer, her eyes level with his, her finger
gesturing toward the ground, an exclamatory motion, punctuating her
question. “Do you?”

He just stared back, his
mouth hanging slightly ajar, stupefied.

“
Dammit, James, are you
listening to me?”

More of the same, he was
motionless, expressionless.

She gazed at him,
blinking, and then clicked her tongue.

“
What
came next, James? Huh? What happened after that?” she forged on,
her anger unwilling, incapable of allowing her to stop. “What was
it, James? If my memory serves me correctly, wasn’t it the phone
calls you made next, right? Yeah, you made the phone calls to me,
calls on my unlisted, private line that I only give out to
my
real
friends,
James, my close friends.

“
And,
when I asked you how you got it, you said you got it from Marlene,
right. But, when I asked her about it, she looked at me like I was
crazy. She said she’d never give out my number to a fucking weirdo
like you. Those were her words exactly. When I confronted you the
next day, you said
she
was lying, which is totally absurd, because she has no reason
to lie to me, James. She really does
not
like you.”

“
B-but, she did -,” tried
James, but Sophie would have nothing of it.

“
Oh, bullshit!” she
shouted over him. “Bullshit!” She stomped her foot again, her hands
now balled into fists. “You know why it’s all bullshit, James?
Well!? WELL?!?”

He shook his head very
slowly.

“
Because, even when I
asked you not to call me on that number anymore, what did you do?
James, what the fuck did you do? You kept calling, right? You kept
calling me, calling me and calling me, at all times of the day and
night, asking the stupidest questions, trying to be witty or smart
by broaching random topics. It was always, “what are you doing?’,
or, “what’s your favorite type of hard candy?’, or, ‘who was your
childhood hero?’, or, ‘are your parents nice to you?’, or, ‘do you
ever just pretend…?’ It went on and on, until I couldn’t stand it
anymore. So, what did I do then, James? What did I do?”

He shuffled from foot to
foot, both of his hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans.
“Y-you developed some problems with your telephone lines… they…
they stopped -.”

“
I
CHANGED THE NUMBER, JAMES!
” She yelled at
him, at the top of her lungs. Her voice echoed across the school
campus, loud, audible for nearly half a mile. “There was no problem
with the telephone lines, you idiot! I changed the number to get
some peace and quiet. I changed the number to get the hell away
from you!” She stopped, breathing hard now.

James’s lower lip
trembled, stopped, and then trembled once more.

“
That
was when you came up to me a few weeks ago, in front of
all
my friends, and
asked me if we were still going out. That was the time I told you
to leave me alone, and yet, you kept on and on, asking repeatedly
until Dillon and Neal had to literally pick your scrawny ass up and
haul you away like a maniac in a straightjacket. I almost went to
the Boy’s Dean, James, to make him get your parents involved,
because I felt, at the time, you weren’t safe to be around. But
nooooo… little nice and proper me felt maybe you’d work things out
on your own. Maybe you’d
realize
, finally, that I don’t like
you, that I don’t even want to be your friend. I thought you’d get
the hint that, more than anything in the entire world, I would
consider myself blessed if I never saw you again. Did that work,
though? Was my little plan sufficient? Was it?

“
Um, I’m not sure -.” He
trailed off into silence, glancing from side to side, agitated,
cornered.

“
Hell
no, it wasn’t enough, because last week,
last fucking week
, what did you do?
Remember, James? You tagged along with me and my friends the whole
time at the freakin’ school trip to the Huntington Library. You
followed us around like a retarded puppy, butting into our
conversations, pretending to know
every
single detail about the
grounds and the plant-life, and everything else we came across. Do
you recall that?”

James’ eyes were open as
wide as they could go before her onslaught, puzzlement and a tinge
of something new beginning to dominate his face. The cast of his
lips altered. His cough and pain was long forgotten. A memory
seemed to slap him in the face. “But, but, but, we held hands in
the cactus garden, talked through lunch about Japanese culture in
the Zen garden don’t… don’t you remember?” he was pleading
again.

Sophie rolled her eyes and
half-turned to walk away. “You have issues, James, serious ones.”
She did turn from him and walked a few steps away before she
thought better of it, wheeling about to face him once
more.

“
We didn’t hold hands. I
stumbled and you stopped me from falling, and maybe we touched
hands,” she clarified with a demonstrative shake of her body. “And,
it wasn’t just you and me talking in the rock garden, James, there
were like… four other people with us.”

He just stared at her like
a deer in the headlights.

“
What is wrong with
you!?!” she asked with so much vehemence, he leaned back up against
the wall again.

“
I’m dying… Sophie,” he
mumbled, his face wrinkling with the beginnings of a
sob.

“
You
know what, James, that’s it; you just stay away from me, ok? Don’t
you ever come around me again, because, right now, if you tried to
pull this stupid shit on me again, I’m gonna just kick the shit out
of you and ask questions later, you got me?” Her eyes threw daggers
at him. “We were
never, ever
together!”

He just stared back,
silent, unmoving, except for his lower lip, quivering again, so
slight, but of its own accord.

“
Do you
understand me, James?!?” she demanded. “I want you to leave me
alone! I don’t want
anything
to do with you! Do you understand that?!?
Nothing!
I don’t want to
see you within a football field of me and my friends, you fucking
weirdo!” With that, she spun on her heel and began to make her way
toward the back of the school where her mother was waiting for her.
There was little doubt in Sophie’s mind she’d be pissed off by
now.

Behind her, James Henley,
Jr. stared after her retreating form, his eyes locked onto her,
savoring her curves through misty eyes. His heart was thudding in
his chest, the blood racing at his temples.
She walks like she’s walking through the clouds, so light, so
delicate. She walks…

A long time later, a voice
sounded in the quiet. It began tentatively at first, but grew in
strength and conviction as each new syllable emerged into the cold
air of the day. The warm breath made false clouds in the failing
light. “I know you’re just hiding how much you truly love me,
because you’re being brave. I know, Sophie, don’t worry, I know.
One way or another, we will have
our
time together,” he spoke aloud,
subdued, but to no one in particular. His thoughts, once vocalized,
were made real in his mind. How could she not love him, especially
after all they had been through together? Why would the rest of the
world want to keep them apart?

Sophie, my Sophie, being
so brave by hiding your true feelings from the likes of everyone
else, but I know your secret. You’ve shared it with me many times
when we were lying down together on top of the covers of my bed,
touching, feeling. Under the loving caress of my hand, you told me
the truth. Yes, I remember now. You said you had to hide your
feelings, because you had no other choice. You had said it so
earnestly.

“
James, I
must!”

Then you were in my arms,
our clothes falling away. I was lost in you. Yes, I
remember.

Oh god, you are so
brave... and so beautiful…, my Sophie, my Sophie Reed… my woman, my
love…

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