I walked up to her, now hyper aware of every snap of a stick my feet caused, but still she didn’t look up. As I walked up behind her, she pulled a pack of clove cigarettes from her pocket and lit one, the exhale audible in the still air. As she released the smoke into curling spirals around her head, I whispered into her ear.
“One hit wonder,” I said, chuckling as she jumped.
After that, it had just been so hard to end the conversations. She was so sweet, and her eyes never left my face while we talked. It was like she was the first person in a month who had been interested in anything I’d said. I kept willing myself to wrap it up, to find a way to get away from her, but every time there was a natural lull in conversation, something kept me there, rooted to the spot in the middle of the woods.
I rationalized my way through it and with every allowance I made for myself, I spun farther away from the idea of never talking to her again. I started with an innocent enough excuse to stay: a conversation with a stranger was innocent. This conversation wasn’t the start of anything. But as our eyes stayed locked on each other and the air grew more electric, my thoughts spiraled from that safe path. Just because I was completely captivated by her didn’t mean she liked me. The sparks could, theoretically, all be something made up in my head. There was no real reason I couldn’t make a friend and if my parents didn’t like it, that was there problem, not mine. What was the worst they could do? I didn’t even have to answer that. It didn’t matter. Let them do their worst: I had to see her again.
Chapter Three
Hannah
The next time I saw Lennox, she was already there, sitting on the rail of my bridge almost like she was expecting me. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since I’d last seen her, but I still felt a jolt when I realized she was there, in the same spot where we’d last met. Her hands were pink like she’d been sitting in the bracing December winds for a while and for a second, I felt hopeful. Maybe she had been waiting just in case I showed up. Maybe she’d actually wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see her. It had to be to be more than a coincidence that we were at the same spot at the same time, both there. With a forceful swallow, I stuffed down my hopeful thoughts and tried my best to saunter over and sit beside her. Realistically, my sauntering had such a jerky quality that I more resembled something from a zombie film than someone with a cool, effortless swagger, but whatever. They say practice makes perfect, so maybe with enough involuntary, spasmic movement, I’ll eventually have some sex appeal.
“I hoped I would see you here today,” Lennox said, turning her head to face me. I searched her face for clues about how she meant that. A piece of her bangs fell into her eyes like something out of a movie and I just about fell off the bridge in a swoon.
“You did?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. I liked talking to you the other day and I figured it would be nice if I knew at least one person when school started back up.”
My face fell, but I quickly looked back up, not wanting her to see how disappointed I was. So, her excitement to see me had nothing to do with me and everything to do with not being completely isolated when school resumed. I mean, I wasn’t mad at her for that; I got it, it just sucked for me.
“Right. I get that,” I responded. “Well, hey!” I continued with a pasted-on smile that felt so tight that it was like my skin had become a few sizes too small for my face. “We don’t have to accidentally meet in the woods every time. We could exchange numbers and hang out like normal teens.”
With a smirk that crinkled the corner of her left eye, Lennox pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it to me. I fumbled with the numbers and letters as I programmed my information into her phone and, though I wanted to blame it on my gloves, they were fingerless. I handed the phone back to her and mine immediately started to vibrate. I pulled it from my pocket, saw the unstored number, and hit decline.
“See? Now we can call each other and everything.” I stammered.
“Indeed, we can,” she replied and that cocky, clipped way she answered made something in my stomach lurch. She was just so effortlessly cool, the kind of person who shouldn’t even be able to exist in the awkward void of adolescence. Then I realized I was staring as I had all these thoughts and felt my cheeks redden as I pictured myself as this moony eyed girl looking all smitten at this chick I barely knew. But what could I do? I was smitten.
My lips were chapped. The thought occurred to me from nowhere, but suddenly I fixated on them, thinking about how they were so dry and cracked that there couldn’t be anything appealing about them. I didn’t have any Carmex and I was painfully aware that as soon as I started thinking about the chapping, I’d jumped right into my habit of running the edge of my teeth against the skin like I was trying to peel off the dead skin. I told myself to stop and I did for a few seconds, but as our conversation lagged and the wind made my lips tingle from the friction, I started it up again.
“Can you drive?” I blurted. I gripped the railing so tightly that rust dug into the palms of my hands.
“Yep,” Lennox responded with a chuckle. “I have an old Volvo 240 that I bought for like five hundred dollars last year because there’s almost two hundred thousand miles on it, but my dad read online that they can get almost 300. It’s shit, but I like it.”
I knew nothing about cars, like Jon Snow levels of nothing, but I nodded like I knew what she was talking about. My mom bought me a car on Craigslist. It was blue, the stereo mostly worked, and the air conditioner had enough Freon that it could turn your skin a similar shade as the car. That was literally my entire working knowledge of the thing. Well, I knew those things and I also knew that my mom refused to let me drive it to school because she was sure that having my own car on campus would cause trouble. It had probably been the biggest argument we’d ever had because I couldn’t see her side. I hadn’t ever been in any trouble, so I didn’t see how a car would change anything.
“I like driving,” I said. “It’s one of my favorite things to do when I’m bored. I just get on the highway and turn up the radio and go.”
I stopped myself before I rambled too much, but I imagined myself on the interstate for a minute, windows down, music washing over me. I had always been accused of being a little flighty and I really did like driving because when I was behind the wheel, it was one of the only times I felt focused. Like I had this one small, manageable task and I could totally handle it, but it was still important. Like there was this thing at stake, but it was something within my control. That was a good feeling.
Mom taught me to drive on the backroads behind the art museum. Narrow and winding, the roads turned and curved around the hillside so suddenly that full attention was required at all times. The first couple times she took me out, I was terrified that someone would come flying around the corner and crash into us, but by the third time, it felt like I’d always known how to drive. One hand beside the other, eyes straight ahead, and get in the zone.
Lennox looked at something above and behind me, her eyes squinting off in the distance as she asked, “Can I tell you a secret?”
My heart missed a beat and then resumed with a vengeance, bouncing in my throat. “Yeah, absolutely.”