Chapter Three-
I didn’t hear from Derek for the rest of the weekend, which I wasn’t too upset about.
On Monday, I had to go to school and Alex had to go to work. I probably could’ve called Andy, but since the party I didn't feel right asking Andy for favors.
Normally I would have just walked to school, but on this particular morning it was raining and I didn't want to show up at school drenched. So, as I did quite often, I got up a little earlier and took Alex to work, then drove myself to school in Alex's car.
Derek was in my first class but he didn't pay much attention to me, merely glancing up at me as I sat down before turning his attention right back to the girl he had been talking to before I walked in.
I was hardly offended, if that had been his intention.
I went through my next few classes never once thinking of Derek, just talking to Stephanie in one class, Andy in the next, and before I knew it, it was time for lunch.
I was buying lunch but when I went for my money, I realized that I left it in the car, so I told Andy I would find him when I got back and I went outside to get my cash.
It wasn't raining anymore, and actually hadn't been for a while. I probably could have walked to school, but it truly had looked like it was going to rain all day.
When I saw Alex's car I frowned a little, thinking it looked like there was something on the window, but too far away to be able to tell what it was. It didn't look like bird poop, because it looked red... maybe it was just a reflection.
I hastened over to the car, and saw that in red marker, someone had written "whore" in capital letters across the driver seat window. I was so busy looking at the windows that I didn't realize until a moment later that my car for some reason looked shorter.
When I looked down at the tires, I saw that the left front driver side tire was flat... I backed up, noticing that the back tire was flat, too...
I could feel the anger coursing through my veins when I realized that all four tires were flat, and not like I ran over glass; all four tires had multiple vicious gashes in them.
Alex's tires.
That I would have to pay to replace.
I felt like I might burst into tears, but rather than do that I decided to go inside and take my fury out on the culprit.
I stormed back into the lunch room, growing angrier with each step. I quickly scanned the room, locating Derek, and made my way to his table, digging my nails into my own palms with the anger that I could practically feel seething from my pores.
Without saying anything else, I stopped at the head of his table and demanded, "Did you do that to my car?"
If he had been mad at me before, he saw by my expression that I had just won the anger match. "What are you talking about?" he asked me.
"Don't play stupid," I spat angrily. "Are you the one that did that to my car?" I asked, my voice actually breaking.
"Nicole, I have no idea what—”
I cut him off, grabbing his arm and yanking. "Here, let me refresh your memory."
He frowned, but followed after me anyway, allowing me to drag him by his shirtsleeve. "Nicole, I didn't do a damn thing to your car," he said.
"Then who did?" I demanded. "Who else but you would write 'whore' on my window?"
His frown deepened, but he didn't say anything.
When we got to my car I stopped and pointed, showing him the window and the tires. "My car looks like it has feet, Derek. It looks like it could get up and walk away if the mood hit it."
He tried to stifle a smile, but that made me mad, too.
"This isn't funny! All four of my tires are slashed, Derek. This isn’t my car! My father doesn't even like me, so he sure as hell isn't going to buy new tires because I have an enemy. I don't even know how much tires cost!"
"Okay, calm down," he said, lightly touching my arm. "No one died. It’s just a car. It's okay."
"It is not okay!" I was humiliated that I felt tears burning behind my eyes, but I didn't dare let them fall. "Who would do this, if it wasn’t you? Why? Who else would know enough to write whore on my window, Derek? Who did you tell?"
"I didn't tell anybody," he said absently, kneeling down to inspect the gashes in my tires. “Somebody sure doesn’t like you though.”
All I could think was, How am I going to pay for this? How am I going to get this fixed without telling Alex?
I walked up to the window and tried to use the flat of my hand to rub the marker off, but it didn’t work. Aggravated, I smacked the window and hid my face in my hands, resting my forehead against the door and closing my eyes against the reality of the situation.
Alex was going to kill me. I would never be allowed to use his car again. I only had maybe 10 hours at Wendy's that week, and after taxes that might leave me about $40. That wasn't enough for even one tire, and I had my cell phone bill and the internet bill to pay, too.
What the hell was I going to do?
I felt Derek come up behind me, his body pressing up against my back, his hands on either of my shoulders, a gesture of support that I wasn't used to. Honestly, it made me feel better. For just a moment, he rubbed my arms, then I heard him say quietly, "Come on.”
I turned to face him, oddly missing the feeling of his weight pressed against my back. "What?" I asked tiredly.
He just nodded in the opposite direction of my car, where he started walking.
I glanced back at the car, hesitating to leave it alone with a vandal on the loose, but I slowly followed him. "Where are you going?"
He didn't answer me immediately, so I repeated my question.
"We're blowing off school for now," he said.
I stole an uncertain glance back at the school. "What? Why?"
"When will your dad notice the car missing?" he asked, not answering my question.
"At seven, when I'm supposed to pick him up," I responded, dread settling in the pit of my stomach.
He got into his car and unlocked the doors, telling me to get in. I listened, hoping I wouldn't get into too much trouble for it, not even sure what he was doing.
"Okay, I'm in the car," I said. "Now where are we going?"
"To get you some tires," he said, putting the car in reverse. "If we don't take too much time, I might just be able to put them on your car before it's time for you to pick your dad up."
I could only stare at him in a vague state of shock as he pulled out of the school parking and took off down the road, his only motivation being to help me.
Apparently Derek had a friend who worked at some tire and alignment place, and he left me in the car to go in and talk to him.
I sat in the car by myself, angry that someone vandalized my car, confused as to why Derek would actually help me. I also didn’t understand why when I was upset, not only did he offer me a little bit of physical support, which I had never experienced in my life, but he went into rescue mode and took me out to get new tires before my dad found out.
When Derek came back he leaned in my window and said, "I can get you four tires for $310."
I grimaced at that big number.
"That's the best deal I can get, Nikki. He’s cutting me a break. Can you afford it?"
I thought of my savings account, which had a balance of exactly $357.86. "I can, but I don't have the cash on me, it's in my savings. Can you take me to the bank?"
He nodded. "Yeah, let me just run in and tell him we'll be back."
Derek ran me up to the bank, but when we got there, we ran into another huge problem.
I had the money in my bank account, but I was still 17 and minors couldn't withdraw money without a parent or guardian present.
"Are you serious?" I said to no one in particular after the people at the bank rejected me.
Derek gave me a dark look, sighing as I grumbled and complained about how much life sucked.
"This is great," I said, shaking my head. "I can't even get the money out of my account without Alex, so I can even get the car fixed."
"Will he let you take the money out?"
"What?" I asked, looking over at him.
"If your dad was here, would he let you take the money out?" he clarified.
"Yeah," I answered. "He doesn't care what I spend my money on, it's just a matter of him not being here… If I can’t get the money without him, he’s going to find out, and if he finds out he’s going to kill me and never let me use his car again."
He sighed, muttering a few swearwords under his breath and muttered, "You better be right," as he walked into the bank.
"What are you doing?" I asked, following him.
"I'm 18," he stated. "I can take money out of my accounts without anyone's permission."
My jaw fell open and I could only gape at his back.
Then he turned around, saying, "And I am not joking, Nicole, if you don't pay me back—”
"I will!" I said eagerly, cutting him off. "I promise. I'll pay you back tomorrow after school. Alex doesn't have to go in until four tomorrow, so he'll be able to take me to the bank."
Derek nodded, walking over to the line to wait for the next teller.
I couldn't help it, I walked up beside him and said, "Thank you so much."
He looked disgruntled, but he gave me a sideways glance and said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just don't tell anybody."
This caused me to grin at him, thinking maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
Derek took me back to his house, which was a strange experience, although he did tell me again to stay in the car. I wasn't offended that time, because the last thing I wanted to do was walk into his house and see Mike, or maybe a picture of the happy little family hanging on the wall.
For just a few hours, Derek and I seemed to have forgotten the history that our family shared, and since he was doing me a huge favor, I wasn't inclined to push my luck by reminding him.
Luckily, I didn't have to see Mike at all, and when Derek came back with a toolbox, I was pretty happy to leave. For some reason, being there kind of gave me the creeps.
Derek took me back up to the empty school, and even though he had been nice that day, I was still glad no one was around to see us together.
While Derek was in the middle of changing my second tire, Alanis started singing again, and I looked down to see that it was Andy.
I had been dreading that call, but I had expected it all day. I wanted to push ignore and call him back later, but I knew he would be worried.
"Hello?" I answered quietly, even though Derek was right there under my car, so he could hear me even if I whispered.
"Nicole! Where did you go? Are you all right?" Andy asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, ignoring the twinge of guilt that I felt at hearing his voice.
"One minute you're in the lunch room yelling at Derek about your car and then you both just vanish. By the time I got out there to see what had happened, you were already gone. Did he do that to your car?"
"No," I said. "I don't know who did it. Someone who hates me, I guess, so that narrows it down to... well, everyone but you and Steph."
"Derek hates you the most," Andy stated.
"It wasn't him.”
"How do you know?" Andy shot back. "Because he told you so?"
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I knew Derek didn't do it because he was the one going out of his way to help me fix it, but I bit the words back, instead saying a little more sharply than I intended, "It just wasn't, okay?"
Andy didn't like when I got mad at him, so he backed off, asking instead, "What's your dad going to say?"
"I'm going to try to get it fixed before Alex finds out about it," I told him.
"Oh. Well, do you want me to come with you?"
"No, I can take care of it."
"But your tires are all flat, how are you going to get it to someone to fix it?" he asked logically.
"I'm not. A friend knows somebody," I answered vaguely.
"Who, Steph?"
"No," I answered, wishing he would just stop asking questions.
"What other friends do you have?"
I didn't mean to, as I usually wasn't sarcastic with Andy, but he offended me and it just slipped right out. "Oh, you know, all those imaginary ones that only I can hear."
The line went silent. I sighed heavily.
"Look, I'm sorry, Andy, I'm just not having a very good day, and I don't feel like talking about it right now."
"Okay. Well, why don't you call me later? Or if you want to talk," he added.
"Okay, I will," I said, knowing I really wouldn't.
"I love you," he said.
"Yeah, me too," I replied quickly. "Bye."
As I ended the call, I saw Derek smile derisively to himself and shake his head a little. “You too, huh?”
“Not now, Derek.”
Offering a little shrug, he said, “Hey, it’s not my business.”
We didn't talk very much as he changed my tires, but I anxiously watched the clock on my phone.
He finished the last tire at 6:15. Crawling out from under the car, a little greasier and dirtier than he had been before, he wiped his hands on his jeans and smiled.
"There you go, I've removed its feet," he said.
I smiled, relieved. "Thank you so much, Derek. I honestly appreciate this."
He nodded. "Follow me back to my house and I'll see if I can get that marker off the window."
"Okay," I said, walking over to my car.
"One more thing," he said, following after me.
I turned around to face him obligingly. "What's that?"
He grabbed me, bracing one hand around the back of my neck and pulling me into a quick but thorough kiss that actually left me a little off-balance when he pulled back, and I dipped toward him before opening my eyes and regaining my composure.
I blinked at him curiously, but he merely said, "That's all," and climbed into his car.
A bit stupefied, I stood there for a few more seconds before I finally got into my car and followed him back to his house.
I knew they didn't live in the same house they had lived in before the accident. I had heard from my grandma that Mike bought a new house with Sarah's life insurance money, but I had never been interested in hearing how he had benefitted from the death of the two women who loved him most, so I usually ignored her when she would talk about it.
Pulling into Derek's driveway, however, I paid a little more attention. As Derek went into the garage to grab something, I stood outside and looked at the beautiful house they lived in, thinking he had come a long way from the trailer he lived in when my mother met him, and honestly, it was all because of her. They had a two car garage with a basketball hoop in the middle of the two garage doors, and a big, beautiful house that looked from the outside like a log cabin, but a very nice log cabin.
Derek saw me looking at the house, and he remarked, "I would take you in and show you the inside, but my dad's home, so..."
He didn't have to finish the sentence, I understood the rest.
I watched as Derek scrubbed away at the marker on my window, and pondered who might have done it. If it would have just been my tires that had been flattened, it could have been anyone playing a cruel joke, but the word "whore" written in capital letters across my window changed things.
Somebody had a problem with me, and apparently they thought I was a whore—which was ridiculous.
Derek finished getting the marker off my window, making my car look as if nothing had ever happened to it. I was just about to give him a hug, whether he wanted one or not, and thank him for helping me, but I no more than took a step toward him and I heard a man's voice say, "Derek, the burgers are—"
Time stood still, or perhaps rotated backward, and I saw once more the man from the grocery store, but he was older now, and his face had gone white as he stared at me, as if he had seen a ghost.
I swallowed, thinking he probably felt like he had. I wasn't exaggerating my similarity to my mother; we looked eerily alike.
He didn't move, just stood there and stared until I felt so uncomfortable that I just wanted to flee.
Derek finally cleared his throat, and I looked over at him, realizing he looked pretty similar to his dad, too, although not in the spooky way that I resembled my mom. They had the same mouth, the same strong jawline, the same golden hair and the blue same eyes, but Derek had a different nose and he was taller, plus he didn't have the little mustache that his father had.
I still felt like we were in some sort of twisted deja vu though, and Mike must've shared the feeling, because he finally managed to croak, without having to ask who I was, "What is she doing here?" referring to me with the same tone that I usually used to refer to him.
The wind suddenly blew, giving me chills, and I couldn't take it anymore. I looked at Derek and said, "I really have to go."
Derek nodded, understanding.
"Thank you," I added, nearly running to get to my car, as if the ghosts of our mothers might appear any minute, and I wanted to leave before they showed up.
The following day in class Derek slipped me a note. Instead of demands that time, he said he was sorry about his father's reaction to my presence. I didn't get to respond because the teacher was paying too much attention. I also missed him at lunch, because Kayla seemed to be glued to the side of his body.
After school Alex took me up to get my money, so I called Derek and told him I wanted to reimburse him. He told me he was busy just then, but to meet him up at the park at around seven.
I was going to suggest somewhere else, because the previous day, seeing Mike and everything had creeped me out. I was certain that Derek didn't know it, but that park with the bridge was the park Mike and my mom went to when they were about to start dating, the park where they had first kissed. But Derek rushed me off the phone before I could explain.
When I met him at the park, the sun was already going down. I had his money in an envelope with a thank-you card, although I knew it wouldn’t mean much to him.
"I want to show you something," I said to him, wanting him to understand his father's odd reaction to me as well as I did.
He lifted an eyebrow as I held out a slightly worn photograph. Taking it, he looked down at it, then looked up at me oddly, not understanding why I was showing it to him. Since the only person in the picture he didn't recognize was a small baby, he asked, "Why are you showing me pictures of you holding a baby?"
"I'm not holding a baby," I said simply.
He gave me a strange look, probably wondering if I was crazy, since the woman in the picture was very clearly holding a small baby in a pink blanket sleeper.
"That's my mom, Derek. I'm the baby."
His eyes widened a little before he frowned and handed the picture back to me as if it had burned his hand. "That’s fucked up.”
I nodded. "That's why your father reacted that way. He felt like..."
"He was looking at her," Derek finished.
I nodded, but shrugged. "I guess it's probably because she died when she was so young, so nobody knows what she would have ended up looking like, but... that was her two years older than I am now."
"You look like twins," he stated.
"Yep. Strong genes,” I said lightly.
He shook his head. "I had no idea what she looked like; I've never seen a picture of her."
I shook my head. "No, your dad didn't have any pictures of my mom. She had been planning to give him a framed picture of them together for his birthday, but... that was when he moved in with... your mom."
"Can we not talk about this anymore?" he asked. "It's kind of... weird."
"It's very weird," I agreed.
"How do you know all of this? I know you said you remember your mom, but there's no way you can remember that much. You weren't even born then, because I wasn't."
"My mom kept journals," I explained, leaning against a chilly guard rail. "I've read them front to back. Any piece of information about her life or their relationship, as long as she recorded it in those journals, I've read about it."
He grimaced. "Every aspect of their relationship?"
I smiled, knowing what he was thinking. "Nothing like that. My mom wouldn't write about those things, but even if she did... they didn't... your conception kind of put a halt to the progress of their relationship."
Derek nodded a little. "Yeah, I guess so. I don't really know, I've only heard your mom mentioned a couple times, mostly only during arguments."
"Did they argue a lot?" I asked, as I had always wondered. My mother speculated that they weren't happy, but I didn't know if that was just what she wanted to believe, or the truth.
Derek nodded. "All the time," he said thoughtfully, his thoughts seeming to wander.
I watched him, wondering where his thoughts were. Was he thinking about when his mother was alive? Did he have many good memories, or was it all bad?
I instinctively put a hand on his shoulder, meaning to offer him the subtle comfort he had offered me earlier, but it seemed to knock him out of his contemplation and he pulled away, frowning at me as he walked over to his car.
"By the way," he called after me, opening his car door. "Don't go thinking we're friends now."
I shook my head, stifling my smile and saying as solemnly as possible, "I wouldn't dare."
He glanced at me for a moment longer before sliding into the driver’s seat of his car and speeding off down the road.
I sighed, shaking my head ruefully and turning to look at the guard rail that I had been leaning on. I didn't know which one, but one of those guard rails had been the guard rail that my mother stood against many years before with Mike, gazing at him, basked in moonlight—the night he had finally kissed her, making her a very happy girl indeed.
Finally, I walked back to my car, thinking it was probably better that I didn't know which one.