Jamie McGuire - Happenstance

I didn’t respond.

He smiled. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I said, trying not to smile the way I had after he’d left the DQ.

“It looks like you’re walking home. Do you have plans tonight?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. He knew I didn’t.

“Wanna hang out?” he asked.

“Aren’t your friends at the ball fields?” I already knew the answer. They were there every Friday and Saturday night if there wasn’t a party. What I really wanted to know was why he was driving next to me, instead of hanging with them.

“I told them I was tired and going home.”

“But you’re not?”

“Well . . . more like bored. But then I saw you . . .”

I looked down. “I’m not really dressed to hang out.”

“You’re talking to someone who loves ice cream. You think it offends me that you’re covered in it?”

I laughed.

“C’mon!” he said with a smile that had been perfected by braces. He’d only gotten them off the summer before. “I’ll beg if you want me to.”

“You don’t have to beg,” I murmured.

“What?”

I chuckled. “Fine! Just . . . let me change first.”

“Deal!”

I pointed at him. “Park right there. I’ll be out in a second.” We were still half a block from my house, and I didn’t want the absurdly loud glass packs of Weston’s Chevy to attract Gina’s attention.

Trying not to rush, I walked to my house, up the two stairs to my porch, and pulled open the door. Out of habit, I listened for Soul Asylum, but no such luck. I pushed through the door, to see Gina sitting on the stained, gold velvet couch in the living room. A ripped-open case of Keystone Light was next to her feet on the floor. She didn’t even look up.

I went straight to my room, dropped my backpack to the floor, pulled off my apron, the rest of my clothes, and re-dressed. Everything I wore to work inevitably smelled like grease, so it all had to come off. I put on a black T-shirt and a pair of heather gray cotton shorts, slipped on some flip flops and grabbed my purse. My second pair of jeans was on the floor spattered with chocolate syrup. It was the day before laundry day, so even though it was a little chilly, the shorts were the only thing I had clean.

I closed my door quietly and tried to rush past Gina, but she noticed me walk by and sat up.

“Where the hell you goin’?” she asked.

“Riding around. I’ll be back in a little while.”

She sat back against the couch cushions. “Bring me back some cigarettes.”

I nodded and hurried out the door. She would be passed out before I got back and wouldn’t remember that she asked me for anything. Unfortunately I’d only learned that after wasting over a hundred dollars of my own money buying her smokes to appease her.

I stopped in the yard, half expecting Weston’s truck to be gone, but there it was, in the exact spot I told him to wait. His eyes lit up, and he waved. As I made my way to his truck, he leaned over and pulled the lever, pushing the door open.

“Climb in!” he said with a sweet grin.

He wasn’t kidding. I had to use the door and climb up via the running boards to reach the passenger seat. I bounced into the black leather and shut the door.

“Wow,” I said.

He shrugged. “Don’t be too impressed. It was my dad’s.”

“Better than nothing,” I teased.

“Where do you wanna go?” he asked.

I smiled. “Anywhere.”

Weston sucked on the straw of his enormous cherry Icee, and we bounced over the potholes and patches of Blackwell’s roads, listening to the Chance Anderson Band on full blast. Within five minutes, we were outside the city limits. Weston parked at the peak of an overpass that arched over I-35, and we watched the headlights of cars and semis flow beneath us, traveling north and south.

I pushed open the passenger door and walked over to the edge. The rural overpasses didn’t have rails. It was just concrete up to your belly and common sense. A chilly breeze kissed my face, so I turned around, not exactly surprised to see lightning crackling across the clouds gathering to the north.

“I love how the storms always suck the wind into them,” I said.

Weston’s door slammed shut, and he was standing next to me. He drank the last of his Icee, and the straw against the Styrofoam made a loud slurping sound. “I just love storms.”

“So . . . are you going to tell me?” I asked.

Weston could barely pull his eyes away from the storm. “Tell you what?”

“Why you brought me out here?”

He shrugged. He was chewing on his straw, which I found oddly appealing. “Why not?”

“There are a hundred reasons why not. I was asking about the one reason why I’m here.”

“Because I asked?”

I laughed once and looked down. “Okay. If that’s the way you want to play this.”

“I don’t want to play this at all. I just want to sit up here and watch the storm roll in with you, without all the gossip of who’s doing who, and where so-and-so is going to college. Is that okay?”

I nodded. “I can live with that.”

Weston let the Chevy’s tailgate down and climbed up, reaching for my hand. “Well? C’mon.”

I let him help me to the bed of his truck and sat next to him, letting my legs dangle off the edge.

He nodded behind us. “I have stuff to drink in that cooler.”

I shook my head. “I don’t drink.”

“No, like, Fanta Orange and stuff. I think I have a few Cherry Cokes and one Mountain Dew.”

“How could I possibly choose? Those are all my favorites.”

He smiled and reached back. “Mine, too. I’ll just grab ya one.” His hands fished around in the melted ice, and he pulled out a green can. “And the winner is . . . Mountain Dew. You must be lucky.”

I popped the top. “Not so far. Thank you.”

“Maybe that’ll change. For both of us.”

“You don’t feel lucky?” I asked.

He thought about it for a moment. “You’re the last person I should be talking to about my problems.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I just mean that you’ll think I’m being stupid. Because they’re not even close to the kind of hell you go through.”

I shrugged. “It’s not that bad.”

“If I had to endure that every day, I couldn’t do it. You’re pretty damn tough, Erin Easter.”

He rested his arm on his knee and his chin on his fist as he stared at me. His jeans weren’t pulled all the way down over his cowboy boots, and his hoodie was worn. Suddenly he didn’t seem so out of reach.

Lightning from the north sky flashed in his eyes, and we both gasped.

“That was a good one,” he said. “Too bad it’s going to miss us.”

“Good. Bad. It’s all the same.”

“What does that mean?” he said, smiling.

“There’s an old Chinese proverb Mrs. Pyles told me once about an old Taoist farmer. I think about it a lot.”

“Tell me,” he said, nudging me.

“I don’t remember it verbatim.”

“Paraphrase then.”

I took a breath. “One day, the only horse the farmer owned died. It was the only way he could plow his fields. Everyone in the village came to offer their condolences for his bad luck. The farmer said, ‘We’ll see.’ A week later, his son came across a heard of wild horses and managed to bring home two. The village was amazed at their good fortune. The farmer said, ‘We’ll see.’ While the son was trying to break one of the horses, he fell off and fractured both of his legs. The village doctor said he would never walk again. Villagers came to console the farmer, because this was his only son. The farmer said, ‘We’ll see.’ Soon after, war ravaged the land. All of the able-bodied sons of the village were collected for the draft. The farmer’s son was the only one left behind. None of the boys who went to war returned.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. She told me that in ninth grade. It’s always stuck with me.”

“I like it. It’s . . . applicable.”

I arched an eyebrow.

He chuckled, and I did, too. Thunder rolled, grumbling all around us, and the wind picked up.

Weston lifted his chin. “Smells like rain.” His cell phone chirped. He took one look at it and stuffed it back into the front pouch of his hoodie.

I took a sip of my Mountain Dew. “Erin?”

“Yep.”

“You’ve never seemed like . . .”

“Her type?”

“No,” I said, chuckling and shaking my head. “Not at all.”

“I guess I’m not. My parents sure like the idea of it.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. They like the idea of a lot of things.” He leaned back, using his arm as a pillow as he looked up at the sky.

I did the same, noticing that the only patch of clear sky was directly above us. “Will they want you home any time soon?”

“Nope. Do you need to be?”

“Nope.”

Weston took a deep breath, and we just lay there for the longest time. Neither of us felt the need to fill the silence as we watched the storm clouds slowly close in on the stars above.

Walking into third period gave me pause. A familiar face with kind blue eyes and perfectly glossed lips looked up at me. “Hi, there. Come on in.”

Julianne Alderman stood behind Mr. Barrows’s desk, nervously shuffling papers. “Oh, my. I’m not very good at this.”

I just watched her as the other students filled the desks. They barely noticed her and were talking and laughing loudly.

“What the . . . what are you doing here?” Alder said, frozen in the doorway. Her eyes were wide.

Julianne smiled. “Obviously they were very desperate for a substitute.”

Alder rolled her eyes and scampered to her seat, ducking down. “This is so freaking embarrassing, Mother. Jesus.”