2006
So this is what it’s like to be a fifth wheel, I think.
I’d kind of expected it, if I was honest. Ever since Kitty Ellis had got a new boyfriend, it was all I could do to get her to talk to me, let alone suggest hanging out. It seemed that anything that didn’t involve her having Ryan’s tongue down her throat was just surplus to requirements, as far as our friendship went. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised when she’s suggested I come down to the lake with them that day.
‘Come on, Carrie,’ she’d said. ‘My Mom won’t let me go unless you’re there. She knows you’re responsible.’ The way she said it, it felt like she intended it to be a compliment, but it didn’t feel that way.
So I’d agree to go with them. First it was just me and Kitty and Ryan, and then Ryan’s friend and his girlfriend turned up and were supposed to be coming too – which was cool, in a ‘Hey, new people’ kind of way, but kind of gave me the idea that maybe me being invited had less to do with my so-called best friend wanting to spend time with me and more to do with the fact that I was a good cover for her and her secret loverboy to sneak off for an afternoon without being questioned.
I manage to snag some bread rolls and cold-cut ham and cheese from the diner, along with a couple of bottles of coke for the cooler, figuring that we were going to be there all day. Mom had walked me to the Ellis house – like I was a goddamn five year old and hadn’t been going to the lake every summer since I was thirteen – and checked with Mrs. Ellis to make sure that everything was cool. Kitty’s mom seemed to be under the impression that it was just me and Kitty going to the lake, and the death glare I got from her daughter made it pretty clear that I wasn’t supposed to mention anything else, so I stayed quiet.
Five minutes after we get there, the couples have peeled off and are doing their own thing in the bushes, and I’m left on my own. All I can hear is them giggling with each other, and then the unmistakeable sound – even to my poor virgin ears – of teenagers going at it hot and heavy.
Perfect. Just perfect.
The thing about spending time at the lake, once you get past the fact that Texas summers are hot as balls and any opportunity to swim is something to be relished, is that it’s very much a social activity. When you’re with friends, there’s no place nicer to be than out on the dock, laughing and splashing around, cannonballing into the water and doing your best not to think about what might be lurking below the surface. When you’re on your own… well, then it’s just a four-hour debate over whether the sunburn and mosquitoes will ruin your day first.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ I shout out to no one in particular, and get no particular answer in response – just a vague mumbling from the long grass. Damn it, Kitty, I grumble as I set off going down a barely-there path that someone had obviously cut through a couple of summers earlier. He’s not all that special.
Maybe I was jealous, but… was, I really? It was one thing for her to ditch me this summer to hang out with some boy, but what if she does next year, in the last few weeks we’d have together before I went off to college? That really would suck – even more than this did already. People always tell stories about how you lose touch with your old friends once you head off to college, and when we were younger me and Kitty always laughed and said that would never happen to us. But what if it’s already started? What if we’re a year early?
I pick up a large stick and begin swatting at the nearby trees, sending leaves flying with every stroke and step. Stupid Kitty. Stupid Ryan.
I’m so busy rage-walking my way through the undergrowth that I don’t notice the music drifting over the lake. It’s the voice that comes through first, crisp and clear and soulful, like something from a CD. It’s a while before I even notice the guitar being strummed behind it, providing an accompaniment to the lyrics. I stop walking, content to just stand there and listen for a minute, scared that if I make too much of a noise whoever it is will stop singing.
His voice is rich and mellow; he sings to no one in particular about how he was born by the river, and how – just like the river – he’s been running ever since. I recognise it, in some far-off part of my mind: it’s one of the songs Dad plays around the diner from time to time, a throwback to a time way before I was born, a song of hurt and pain and perseverance.
And that’s when I know listening isn’t enough. I need to see him.
I’m almost surprised, when I part the leaves, to see that the slow caramel voice comes from a skinny white boy around my own age. He’s sitting in a small clearing in the shade of a fat boxwood tree, his eyes closed in concentration as he sings, a lock of dark brown hair – so dark as to be almost black – having fallen down across his forehead. He’s wearing a pair of jeans, dusty and ripped across the knee, and sitting on a leather jacket bundled up underneath him to give some cushioning against the hard ground. When he strums, I can see the stress of the tendons in his forearms, popping underneath the beginnings of a summer tan.
Jesus Christ, he’s beautiful.
Not handsome; handsome is a word reserved for grandmothers and great-aunts, pinching the cheeks of young relations. The boy – well on his way to being a man – doesn’t have the kind of beauty you see in catalogues or movie screens. He’s only maybe a year or two older than me, but he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he carries an air of maturity about him. It’s there in the concentration on his face, in the tension in his arms, in the way that – when he finally opens his eyes, and I see the clear sky-blue colour of his irises for the first time – he seems to stare right through me, so focused is he on his song.
Intensity.
That’s the word I’m looking for. He’s in his own world, all alone with his guitar and the sun beating down on him. Nothing else matters but the music – and there’s a beauty in that intensity that radiates out from him, a soft glow that lights up everything it touches.
He’s two more songs in before he finally spots me. Immediately, I see him tense up, his fingers curled around the neck of the guitar. He’s staring at me with an expression that would be more suited to a police interrogation room than a lazy lakeside; his gaze does more to raise a prickle of heat in my cheeks than the afternoon sun managed.
But he doesn’t say anything, and that makes it so much worse. Suddenly, I feel less like an audience and more like a voyeur. Even though he was out singing in public, I might as well have been listening to him sing in the shower.
Such a creep.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t hiding or anything. I just heard your music, and… you know.’
And you know. Jesus, Carrie. It’s almost a shame you didn’t try out for the debate team with smooth lines like that. You’d have been regional champions for sure.
‘You play nice,’ I say, fumbling, wishing I could go back to thirty seconds ago, when he had no idea I so much as existed. ‘Real nice.’
Nailed it.
‘You reckon?’ the boy asks after an eternity has gone by. He’s still frowning at me, but it’s not quite as cold now. It’s almost as though he’s trying to figure out if I’m mocking him.
I nod. He doesn’t quite smile back at me, but for a moment his face seems to lift up. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘glad you enjoyed the show.’
In the silence that follows, I get the impression that he’s waiting for me to leave. He doesn’t look quite at me, but slightly off to one side; his fingers stay curled around the fretboard, but he makes no attempt at starting up another song.
‘I’m Caroline,’ I say.
I know I should go. I know it. Everything about him screams that he wants to be left alone, to play his instrument by himself and just wait for the afternoon to drift on by, but my feet are rooted to the spot. All I want is to hear more.
‘Hale.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Hale,’ he repeats. ‘H-A-L-E. Hale.’
The name rings a bell; it’s not the kind of thing you hear all that often, and so it stands out in my memory. There’s a Hale at Westbridge High, I’m sure of it – perhaps a year or two older than me. I’ve heard of him, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him around. I wrack my brains trying to think of who it might be, but I’m coming up blank. All I can piece together is a few half-forgotten details about a fight, way back when; Aaron Scanlon coming to school with a black eye, claiming he’d been jumped by a whole gang of trouble from out at the Grove, led by some Hale kid. No one believed him, of course – he’s always been a goddamn bully, right from sixth grade, and he wasn’t shy about embellishing the truth – but it’s the only Hale that springs to mind.
Or… wasn’t there a guy who got so pissed off at something or other than he punched a wall one time, stormed out and never came back?
Surely it’s not the same guy?
‘Do you go to Westbridge?’ I ask.
He smirks. ‘Occasionally.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know. When I get the urge. Not in a while.’
‘You graduated?’
‘Not yet. Probably sometime around 2012, I reckon. If I keep my grades up.’
It’s hard to tell if he’s joking or not. That face of his is stone-still and unmoving, more like a marionette than a man. There’s not a hint of a smile. You’d make a hell of a poker player, I think, even if you do drop out of school.
‘So how come you’re out here all by yourself?’ I ask.
‘Got into a fight,’ he says simply. ‘Figured it might be better to let us both cool off for a little while.’
‘With who?’
‘My old man.’
‘What about?’
He furrows his brow at me. ‘Nosy little thing, aren’t you?’
‘Sorry.’
I’m just about to turn on my heel and leave him to it when his voice juts up into the silence. ‘So what are you doing out here?’ he asks. ‘You don’t often see people out this far.’ The way he says it implies that that’s a large part of the appeal for him.
‘I came with some friends.’
‘And where are they?’
I shrug. ‘Third base, probably.’
If he’s still trying to maintain a look of stony seriousness, he fails miserably; he lets out a short, sharp bark of laughter and then looks almost ashamed at letting the veil slip. ‘So it’s like that, is it?’ he says. ‘They just came out here to get some alone time?’
‘Yep.’
‘And they’re your ride home, I guess?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘And so now you’re stuck wandering in the woods until he gets off and she wipes herself down?’
I wrinkle my nose in disgust. Just because I know it’s happening, it doesn’t mean I want to think about it. ‘Don’t be gross.’
‘Who’s being gross?’ he says. ‘I’m not the one who brought my friend along while I give some dude a handjob in the bushes. That’s messed up.’
‘That’s not why they brought me along.’
‘Then why did they?’
‘I brought the food.’
I was trying to crack a joke, but the way Hale’s eyes light up at the mere mention of food puts me in mind of a starving orphan kid in a Red Cross charity campaign ad. There’s only one reason to get so excited about something so simple, and that’s if you don’t have it. I wonder how long it’s been since Hale last ate. That would certainly go some way to explain how skinny he is.
‘Really?’ he says.
‘Yeah. My folks run the Red Rose Diner in town. We’re always lousy with food.’ I can see him practically salivating. ‘Do you want some?’
‘Nah, I’m OK.’ He doesn’t sound convincing. ‘You eat, though. If you want to, I mean.’
If he thinks I don’t notice the way he steadfastly refuses to make eye contact with me when he turns down what I’m pretty sure is his only square meal that day, he’s dumber than I’ve given him credit for. If he thinks I’m just going to let it slide, he’s dumber even than that. I grew up in a restaurant, for God’s sake. No one goes hungry on my watch.
‘I don’t mind. I packed enough for an army. It’d only go to waste otherwise.’ I pause. ‘You’d be doing me a favour, really. My parents don’t think I eat enough. My mom won’t be happy until I’m the size of a house.’
‘Looks like you’ve got a way to go, then,’ he says, looking me up and down. Somehow I don’t mind that. ‘You’re sure? About the sandwich?’
‘I’m sure.’
He takes it from me, unwraps the foil, and in three bites the thing is gone. I hand him another, and he stops himself from inhaling it at quite the same speed. Instead, he puts it down on the ground next to him, still in its wrapper. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asks. ‘For later, I mean.’
‘Nope. It’s yours. Do whatever you want with it.’
He grins. ‘Thanks. Your folks make a damn fine sandwich.’
Is it weird that such a minor compliment brings a blush to my cheeks? ‘Actually, it was me,’ I say. No big deal.
‘Oh really?’
‘Yeahuh.’
‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Well, thanks.’
There’s a soft sort of silence between us now, easier than it was before. Now I don’t feel like he’s waiting for me to leave. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that he wants me to stay, exactly, but it’s a start.
I hate myself for thinking it, but Hale reminds me of the stray dogs that sometimes hang around the diner, before Animal Control turns up to spirit them away. They lurk in the alleyway, always keeping their distance, not willing even to scarf through the trash bins for scraps of food until they’re absolutely sure you’re back indoors and away from them. When I was little, I was in love with those dogs. I used to sneak out scraps of food for them, putting half-eaten cheeseburgers down just where I could see them, watching them from behind the brick wall of the restaurant as they came out, cautiously sniffing the dinner that had been laid out for them. Eventually, I’d leave the food closer and closer to me, so over the course of days or weeks they’d get used to me. Sometimes I was lucky enough that they’d let me get close enough to pet them, and when I did I saw that same look in their eyes that I saw in Hale’s: pride, self-sufficiency, and gratitude.
I eat my own sandwich quietly, and when I fish out a pair of coke bottles from my lunchbox, he barely protests the offer. Perhaps he knows I’d force it on him if he said no. Perhaps his thirst is just too great to ignore; it’s one hell of a hot day, and no one’s stupid enough to turn down an ice-cold drink no matter where it comes from.
All the while, he keeps his hands on his guitar, as though he’s unwilling to risk it getting away from him. When I was little, my mom always used to say that you could tell what a person’s most treasured possession was by the fact that, if they were on a sinking ship, they’d head for it before they’d head for the lifeboats. For Mom, it was me; for Dad, it was Mom.
I’m getting the impression that for Hale, it’s that black-lacquered, beat-up, six-string dream machine.
‘You don’t need to stop playing on my account,’ I say, and he grins.
‘Typical,’ he says. ‘A pretty girl gives you a sandwich, and suddenly all she wants is her own a private concert. You think you can buy me off with a couple of slices of ham and a bit of bread?’ He pulls himself up to his full height, his chest puffed out with mock sincerity. ‘Well, honey, I’m no one’s performing monkey.’
It might have been a more convincing performance if he hadn’t immediately started pretending to pick lice out of his scalp and pounding his fists against his chest like the gorilla at the Dallas Zoo. It’s the sort of immature clowning that normally would have had me rolling my eyes, but on Hale it looks good. A desire to make people laugh, to put them at their ease. There are worse traits to have, I guess.
But I don’t laugh. I do crack a smile, but it’s not at his Great White Ape impression.
A pretty girl gives you a sandwich…
Well, I hadn’t heard pretty much anything after that. The idea that someone like him thought someone like me was pretty was a little more than I knew how to process in the moment.
Unless he’s just saying it to get a rise out of you, I think to myself, then immediately regret letting the idea take hold; I can almost feel the throwaway compliment wither on the vine, turn to dust, and disappear before my very eyes. After all, here’s a guy whooping and jeering like an orangutan to try and get a laugh out of me. Obviously he’s just saying it. A guy like that would say anything to get a smile.
Obviously.
He’s just trying to be charming, that’s all.
Don’t get your hopes up, Caroline.
‘I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t…’
‘Relax,’ he says, still pulling a monkey face. ‘I’m just kidding. Are you always this tense?’
Not always, I think. Just when I don’t know which way is up anymore.
‘I’m not tense.’
He snorts. ‘Sure you aren’t, kiddo.’
‘And don’t call me kiddo. I’m like, a year younger than you. Tops.’
He shifts on the floor, pulls his jacket out from underneath him and spreads it out so it covers a space large enough for two. ‘Sure thing, kiddo,’ he says. ‘You’re the boss.’ When I don’t move, he pats the side of the jacket next to him. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I’m just screwing around. Have a seat.’
‘Yeah?’
He lifts up the coke bottle. ‘Hey, you bought me a drink. It’s the least I can do.’
There’s barely room for the both of us on his jacket, but I don’t mind that at all. When I sit down next to him, I can feel gooseflesh creep along my arms, and a flush spreading down from the back of my neck. Up close, Hale is even more beautiful than he is at a distance. When he leans back against the tree, the skin of his arms touches mine, and I’m shocked and amazed by how cool it is: it’s like pressing my arms against marble. Then again, everything about Hale is cool. It must be a hundred degrees out here, even in the shade, but there’s not a drop of sweat on his forehead – and looking into his eyes, it’s easy to believe that he’s got some sort of internal blue-ice glacier that’s keeping him at a breezy normalcy.
Those eyes. Jesus, those eyes.
That jawline, strong even on his young face; there’s no chubbiness in his cheeks, no padding at all, but he doesn’t look gaunt. He looks lean, almost predatory. I think again of the dogs from the alleyway when I was a kid. This is what it felt like, when one of them let you get close. Yes, there was always that sense of acceptance, that I’d been allowed to be near to them – but there was still that mouth full of teeth, and that hungry, untamed look in their eyes.
I wonder just how tame Hale is, really: a boy content to be by himself, who plays and sings like an angel. A boy with a reputation that precedes even his name.
But that thought soon fades away into nothingness. Before long, all I can think about is how soft his lips look, and how much I’d love to kiss them – or better yet, for him to lean in and kiss me. God, wouldn’t that just be something? Forget about whatever Kitty Ellis and Ryan are getting up to out in the bushes; I’d trade it all for a single kiss from a boy I didn’t know existed until half an hour earlier. Nothing fancy. Nothing sordid. Just a kiss from those beautiful lips, like something out of a goddamn Disney movie.
Although, I think, if he didn’t want to stop there…
‘What?’ he says when he spots me looking at him. ‘I got mustard on my face or something?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope. Sorry.’
If he’s weirded out by me staring at him, he doesn’t show it. If anything – dare I say it – he doesn’t seem to mind at all.
‘So,’ he says as he begins picking out the first few notes of a song I almost recognise. ‘Private concert it is. What do you think of Otis Redding?’
I couldn’t have given much more than a shrug before the fact, but three minutes later – just about the length of time it takes Hale to strum and warble his way through a pitch-perfect rendition of These Arms of Mine – I’m willing to state that I like Otis Redding very, very much.
~~~
‘Caroline Ann Walker, where the hell have you been?’
My mother’s voice beats her into the hallway, but it’s a close run thing. When she marches out, she’s got a face like a thunderstorm. I can practically see white-hot lightning bolts of rage and worry coming off her. It’s hard to blame her. I am, after all, four hours late.
‘I can explain,’ I say, and I do. Mostly. I choose to leave out certain parts of it, like the fact that my friends spent most of the afternoon fumbling with each other in the undergrowth, that I wandered off by myself, and that I spent most of my time sitting by the lakeside, listening to my new friend play me the best of Motown. I definitely skip over the fact that by the time I got back to the clearing I found the truck gone and no sign of Kitty or Ryan or their friends anywhere, and that I spent most of my time walking home alone with a boy I’d never even met before. Who was, I have to say, a perfect gentleman about the whole thing.
Mom listens, and tells me that Kitty Ellis told her mother that they’d looked for us but hadn’t been able to find us, and how worried they’d all been in thinking that I might have drowned. No damn chance of that, I thought. Not unless she was looking for me in her boyfriend’s jockey shorts. Although I have to say, after the shitty way they treated me? I do kind of hope she was worried. She almost deserves it.
Of course, it’s spun out as being my fault: for getting separated from the group, for letting my cell phone battery die, for not calling them from a payphone – as though the lake is just lousy with payphones, and I was passing them one by one and just choosing not to call her in order to be difficult.
I feel like I’m watching the argument that follows through a misted glass window. I can see the vague outline of what’s happening, but the details are lost on me, even though my parents hardly ever fight – and especially not about me.
Mom is in favour of grounding me for a week. Dad tries to talk her out of it, but for once there’s some pushback. ‘Don’t you get it, Walt?’ she says, exasperated. ‘Your daughter was walking out by herself. Anything could have happened. Anything. It’s but for the grace of God that it was her at the door and not someone telling us she’d been murdered, for Christ’s sake. They could have been fishing her out of the lake right now, and then what?’
Dad tells her that things are OK. That everything worked out in the end. That there’s no need to be too hasty.
Mom retreats back to the bedroom, mumbling something about how I’m my father’s daughter and that the two of us are always in cahoots with each other, that she’s tired of playing against a team.
Dad sighs and says that he’ll talk to her, that he’s glad I’m safe, and that I make sure it doesn’t happen again, before he goes back into the bedroom to have that particular fight in private. He’ll win her over once he turns on the charm, I’m sure of it. She just worries, that’s all. Even in a place as safe as Eden, my mother is convinced that there’s an evil lurking behind every corner and a stranger with a gun or a knife just waiting to bundle me into the back of his van and turn me into another statistic on the nightly news. Perhaps a tall stranger, a year or so older than me, with a guitar and dark eyes and a voice like an angel. The kind of stranger who gets angry enough to punch a wall hard enough to split his knuckles open. If my mother knew that’s who I’d spent my afternoon with, rather than Kitty Ellis and the girls, she’d just about pitch a fit.
But I don’t care. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be capable of caring about anything else for a good long time.
I am sixteen years old, and I’m in love.