Walk Me Home (14 page)

“The role he was born to play,” Carly said.

“Yeah, huh? That’s bad, though. Because I’ll never find them.”

“And if you did, they might accidentally shoot you.”

“I’ll just go down by the lake with Heather. There’s toaster waffles in the freezer.”

She rose from the table. Stretched as if just now waking up, showing a bare midriff with a silver belly button ring. Then she wandered away.

Carly ate two toaster waffles with artificially maple-flavored syrup. She drank two cups of coffee. No one came around. She had the place to herself, which felt like a relief.

She staked out a spot where she could sit in the sun to keep warm and see the lake if she looked down and see the road to the cabin if she looked up. That way she would know when Dean came back.

Trouble was, the sun moved directly overhead, then slanted distinctly to the west, and still Dean did not come back. And still Carly sat. For lack of any other ideas.

It was only about an hour before dusk when she admitted to herself that she had never in her entire life been so thoroughly bored.

Dean and Hunter came back at early dusk. Carly watched them drive in. Watched the plume of dust the SUV kicked up on the long dirt driveway.

There was no deer strapped to the hood. Carly felt a clear sense of relief.

She got up, brushed off the seat of her jeans, and walked up the hill.

Jerry was out in the driveway when she got there, raising a fuss over their coming home empty-handed.

“Hot dogs again,” he said.

Dean held out the keys to the SUV. “Go shoot a deer, Jerry.”

“Did I mention the hot dogs were good?” Jerry asked.

Carly shifted slightly, and the movement caught Dean’s eye.

“There you are,” he said. “Just who I wanted to see after a lousy day.” He reached into the back of the SUV and pulled out a stiff tan blanket. “You can be the only good thing to happen all day. Let’s go for a walk by the lake.”

Dean held Carly’s hand on the walk down. It felt good. Then he let go, and Carly had no idea why. And she couldn’t bring herself to ask. A moment later she felt his hand slide into her back jeans pocket. She smiled to herself and returned the gesture.

When they found a nice spot to stop—private and in the trees—Carly expected him to wrap them up in the blanket. The way he’d done the night before. Instead he spread it on the ground.

“What are we doing?” Carly asked.

“What do you think we’re doing? We’re lying down.”

“Oh. OK.”

She settled herself on the blanket. Well, physically settled. Inside, she felt more than a little unsettled.

Dean lay down beside her. But less than half a minute later, he rolled on top of her, his full weight resting on her. He didn’t even kiss her first. He had never kissed her.

“Wait. Whoa,” she said, wondering if that had even been enough volume to get his attention. It was hard to talk with a big guy resting on your chest.

Carly felt him back off her some. She heard the zipper of his jeans come down.

“Wait!” she yelled.

This time she had her lungs back, and the volume was strong. Too strong. Carly wondered if a wandering neighbor might have overheard.

Dean climbed off her and sat up. She sat up beside him and looked at his face in the dusky light. His eyes were closed-down and dark.

“What is your
problem
, Carly?”

She received it the way she absorbed tongue-lashings from her mom. Like a blow. She didn’t feel the urge to cry, because it felt more like a physical wound. Like he’d punched her in the gut. With a knife in his hand.

“I thought we agreed we didn’t even know each other.”

“That was yesterday,” Dean said, not one tiny scrap of friendliness left over in his voice. Not one.

“Yeah. Exactly. That was yesterday. I said we’d barely said ten sentences to each other. You thought I meant I wanted to wait
a day
? I haven’t even seen you today.”

“I didn’t think you were so high maintenance.”

Carly sat and breathed for a minute. Thinking about transporting herself home in some magic way. But then the minute was up, and she was still at the lake with Dean. And she had to say something. So this is what she said.

“I always figured it would be…you know…more…special.”

Dean looked at her as if she’d just spoken Dutch.

“You’re a virgin? You’re trying to tell me you’re a virgin?”

“Yes and no,” Carly said. She’d meant only to think it. Yes, she was a virgin. No, she hadn’t been trying to tell him so. “Technically.” It really wasn’t all that technical. It was really pretty clear. But “technically” sounded better than “completely.” “I’m just…not…I don’t feel ready. You know? I’m just not quite ready.”

“You’re sixteen, right?” A flat indictment. Judge, jury, and executioner.

“Yeah. But…that’s not so weird. Is it?”

A long wait. Carly already knew she wouldn’t like the answer.

“It’s very weird. It’s, like…freakish.” He levered to his feet. “I can’t believe I wasted all this time with you. Shit. Nothing’s right today. I hate this fucking day.”

Another knife punch to the gut. But now Carly’s gut was ready. She had shut off all the nerve centers, and the blow landed in a field of nothing in the darkness inside her.

Dean walked away.

“Where are you going?”

It sounded so thin and pathetic and lame that she’d gladly have pressed an off switch on the entire universe if that would have deleted it.

He stopped. Looked down at her over his shoulder. In more ways than one.

“I’m gonna go make some time with a girl who’s not looking for something so…special.” He imitated her voice on the last word.

The final insult.

Or so Carly thought.

Halfway back up to the cabin, Carly passed Dean and Heather. Walking down to the lake. Hand in hand.

Dean grabbed the blanket off Carly’s shoulder.

“We’ll be needing that,” he said.

Heather flashed Carly a smile of smug and utter victory.

Carly quickened her steps and trotted double-time up to the cabin.

There she grabbed her suitcase from the corner of the bedroom floor. Threw in any of her clothes she happened to see lying around. Latched the bag with the sleeve of a long-sleeved T-shirt still hanging out.

She marched out the front door of the cabin and up the driveway, shifting the heavy bag from hand to hand as she walked down the road. In the direction of somewhere that wasn’t the lake.

It was already nearly pitch dark.

Ned’s Bait & Tackle stood out in neon in the night, the only man-made object for a mile. There was a pay phone out front. Just like she remembered. Just like Dean had said. It made her feel saved.

She followed the directions on the phone to place a collect call, punching in her home number by heart. When a recorded voice asked her to say her name, she said, “It’s me, Carly,” in a slightly shaky voice. Then she decided she could say she was only cold. That maybe it had sounded like she was trying not to cry, but really her teeth had just chattered slightly.

The line rang six times. Then the answering machine picked up.

Carly hung up and pressed her forehead to the phone. Closed her eyes. Snow began to swirl. Lots of it. Big flakes, quite suddenly. She glanced over at her shoulder and watched the flakes settle on her jacket in the neon glow.

She scoured her pockets for quarters and found six. If she hadn’t found any, she had no idea what she would have done. Even dollars would have been of no use. She dialed Teddy’s cell phone number by heart.

He picked up on the second ring.

She said his name, but it was noisy wherever Teddy was. She could barely hear him. He could barely hear her.

“It’s Carly,” she shouted into the phone, though he probably still couldn’t hear her. And she didn’t have much time. Not for six quarters.

“Wait,” he said. “Let me take this outside.”

The background noise faded, then sharply cut off, replaced by almost complete silence.

“Teddy, it’s me. Carly.”

“Carly. Where’re you calling from?”

Only then did she realize how close she’d been to losing it. To falling apart.

“I’m in trouble, Teddy. I need to get home. Can you come and get me?”

In the midst of those words, Carly couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

“How much trouble? What kind of trouble? Should I be calling nine-one-one here?”

“First I need you to call me back. Before we get cut off. Let me read you the number of the pay phone.”

“Wait. Let me see if it comes up on my cell phone. Yeah. I’ve got it. I’ll call you right back.”

Carly set the phone gently in its cradle and pressed her forehead against it again. When it rang, the vibration made her jump. She picked it up.

“Now where were we?” Teddy asked. “How much trouble? Should I be calling nine-one-one?”

“No. Not that much trouble. I just couldn’t stay there. I just walked away. And now I’m at this little shop that’s closed, and it’s snowing, and I can’t go back there, and it’s cold, and I have to get home somehow. Nobody answered at the house. Why didn’t somebody answer at the house? Where are you? Where is everybody?”

A long silence. Then Teddy said, “When it rains, it pours.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’ve got ourselves a situation here.”

“Still not following.”

“OK, I’ll say it clearer, then. My whole world’s falling apart here, Carly. Yours, too, you just don’t know it yet. Everybody’s world is falling apart. And here I thought it couldn’t get any worse. But if you need to get home, fine. Of course I’ll come get you. Where are you?”

“I don’t know.”

Another long silence.

“You do realize that doesn’t help our situation.”

“I don’t know the name of this road. But I’m in front of this little store called Ned’s Bait & Tackle. It’s near a town called Fish Fork, which is like the tiniest town in the world, hardly even a town, but this is sort of on the other side of it. It only took us an hour and a half to drive up here from Tulare.”

Silence.

“Fish Fork? No. Never mind. This’s no time to make jokes. Besides, it’s too easy. Ned’s Bait & Tackle. OK, fine. I’ll look that up. I’ll try to get the address from a listing on the business. And I’ve got the number of the phone booth in case I can’t find you. Hold tight, OK? I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Teddy? What’s going on there?”

“Please, Carly. One disaster at a time.”

When she’d let him off the phone, Carly sat down on her suitcase. Leaned her back against the bait shop window. Waited. Set her internal clock so she’d be prepared to wait a long time.

The snow covered her in light veils as she sat.

It might have been a cold ten minutes or a cold hour later when Dean’s dad’s four-wheel drive SUV pulled up. Pulled off the road and into the dirt parking lot in front of Ned’s Bait & Tackle. Carly didn’t figure she could handle seeing him until it came clear why he was here. Maybe to apologize. Maybe to share more thoughts on what a freak and a loser she was. So she kept looking up into the falling flakes. It was a world she could almost live in. If she just never looked down again.

The engine shut off. For a few moments, it had been the only sound in her world. It felt good to get back to all that snowy silence.

In the absolute still, Carly heard the window power down.

“You OK?”

It was not the voice of Dean. It was not even the voice of a boy.

Carly looked down.

It was Janie. Janie had gotten the keys somehow and driven all the way out here to find her. To see if she was OK.

“I’m fine,” Carly said and tipped her head back up to the sky again.

“You need a ride or something? Want me to drive you back down to Tulare?”

“That’s a nice offer,” Carly said. Still without looking down. “But I called my friend Teddy, and he’s on his way up here to get me.”

A long silence. Carly listened to it with great care.

Then Janie said, “You know. I dated Dean about three times. Sophomore year. He’s a total jerk.”

Carly said nothing for a long time. Right up until the time she said, “Thanks.” Without even knowing she was about to. “Why’d you even come up to his cabin, then?”

A question she probably had no right to ask. But it was too late.

“Because Hunter was here.”

“Oh. Hunter’s nicer?”

“No. Hunter’s a total jerk, too. But he’s so hot, who cares? You sure you’re OK? You want to sit in the car till your ride gets here? Are you freezing?”

Yes and no, she thought. She’d almost gotten used to the cold. Accepted it as normal. She thought of the inside of Dean’s car, the ride up. She should have known, even then, that she was never a part of anything. Now
that
had been cold. This was fine.

Carly wanted nothing less than to go backward into any part of that world. And Janie’s pity made her uneasy. Made her feel like even more of a jerk.

“No, I’m good,” Carly said. “Thanks, though.”

Flakes swirled down into her face for a couple of moments more. Seconds or minutes, Carly didn’t know. She’d lost the ability to judge. Swirling flakes against a black sky gave no frame of reference. For anything. Life was not demarcated in any way. Not anymore.

The engine of the SUV fired up again.

“Merry Christmas,” Janie said.

Then she powered the window up, backed out onto the snowy road, and disappeared around a hairpin curve.

Carly looked down, briefly, watching her go.

Yeah, Merry Christmas, she thought. ’Tis the season to be jolly. Oh joyous night. Oh wondrous freaking everything.

She leaned back even farther, so that the crown of her head rested on the cold front window of the bait store.

At some point, without realizing it, she must have drifted asleep.

A slamming car door brought Carly bolt upright. Her neck screamed complaints when asked to suddenly straighten out again. But she didn’t voice that pain.

Teddy was standing right in front of her.

She looked up into his face for what seemed like a long time. Watched the swirling flakes gather on his shaggy hair. She couldn’t see his face well enough to gauge the look in his eyes.