My Stupid Girl (6 page)

He'd had a few short relationships after my
mom died, through my younger years. Every time he broke up with a woman he
seemed to go deeper into depression. That always seemed to affect me. The last
real “girlfriend” he’d broken up with resulted in me being taken away from him
for almost two years. My father had to do counseling and parenting classes to
get me back. The weird thing was that (if my social worker wasn’t lying to make
me feel better about it) he had shown up early and stayed late in every class,
several times a week, for over a year. It seemed like he actually worked at
getting me back and I often resented him for it. Things didn’t really change
when I got back. We just both got more careful. I didn’t want to be back in
foster care anymore than he wanted me there.

Like I said, I was glad I didn't have to
see his guilty face as I left again.

The car ride went quick; the police officer
who drove me was pretty cool. He didn't talk much except for a few questions
here and there. He told me I was brave and he laughed when I rolled my eyes. I
had asked him and the other one, who had taken off in another car, if I could
just drive over there on my own. But they wouldn't let me near my car because I
was under their care until they handed me off to my grandma. They weren't
letting me out of their sight. They sure weren’t letting me drive anywhere on
my own. I would have to figure out another way for me to get my car over to my
grandma’s. All I wanted to do was get to her house, make sure my stuff was all
together and take a shower. I wanted to fold some clothes, find spots for all
my stuff, and put it all away in some kind of order that made sense to me. I
wanted to lay face down on my pillow and listen to music. I definitely didn’t
want to deal with human beings anymore.

Yesterday I not only jumped into a freezing
lake to save a complete stranger, I was undressed by the crazy Christians in my
school and then I slept in a bed with the prettiest girl I would probably ever
encounter in real life. More handshakes and more questions than I’d ever had in
my entire life had come at me in the last 24 hours. Lucy had come in to hug me
before she’d left for home and, to Mike’s chagrin she’d handed me her phone
number on a piece of paper and told me she would "hunt me down" if I
didn't call her. Near-drowning, near-nakedness, handshakes, sleepovers,
questions, and a beautiful girl’s phone number. So, was this girl like, in my
life now?

I didn't even want to think about it, there
was no use in getting my hopes up or stressing out about it.

"Ok, David, looks like we’re
here," Officer Hershman said as he drove into a little cul-de-sac in a
middle-class neighborhood not much different from the one I lived in with my
father. This one was a little nicer than my dad’s, with real lawns and fruit trees
in almost every yard. My grandma, a little woman who must have weighed 96
pounds soaking wet, came walking over to the car. She was a hyper little thing
who smelled like carrots and stale water. Her hair was short, a silver-gray,
and thick. She wore it close-cropped to her head, not in those loose curls a
lot of old ladies wear to hide their hair thinning out. She smiled at me when
she reached the car; as she did her little face dissolved into a million tiny
wrinkles, built up over a lifetime of smiling. She held my face for a moment,
staring straight into my eyes, before she patted my right cheek with her knobby
hands then let go. Even though I usually hated to be touched, it always kind of
fascinated me that it didn't bother me when my grandma did that. She was the
only one (before Lucy) who I had even let come that close.

"David. You look awful.” She grinned
at the cop as she said it. “Worse than usual." She wasn't kidding. That’s
what I enjoyed about her the most. There was no sugar coating with her; she
said it like it was. Take it or leave it.

"Yeah, I could use a shower." I
gazed down at her and realized I was actually happy to be here, with her.

"Well, your stuff is in your room,
dear." She gave me a nod that indicated I should go find it. I turned to
the police officer who drove me here, gave him a hurried nod, and walked toward
the house with my hands deep in my pockets. My grandma had stayed outside to
talk to the officer. It didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what
they were talking about. I was almost sure I was going to be staying with her
until I turned eighteen. I tried not to think about how Lucy would fit into
that equation. I’d be going to a different high school. I hadn't given her my
number and I had almost talked myself into the fact that I would never be
calling her. Honestly, the thought alone of having her on the phone gave me a
slight panic attack. Then I got a whiff of myself, smelling like dried pond
water and too many hours without a shower. I picked up the pace.

Grandma’s house was stuffy, but
cozy-stuffy, not suffocating-stuffy. It smelled like old perfume and lavender
tea. I walked down the familiar hallway, shuffling my shoes through old brown
and white shag carpeting. At the end of the main hall was the little room I
would be sleeping in. I headed toward it, passing a long display of photographs
I knew by heart, but still couldn’t help looking at. It was always like the
first time I’d ever seen them.

My grandma told me a while back that my mom
had wanted a baby so badly it was all she ever talked about. As soon as she’d
started the adoption process she’d started buying baby things. She had a
nursery set up for years before she got the call that they had a baby for her.
From the way my grandma talked about it, the last three months of my mom’s life
were some of the happiest she’d ever had. From what I could see in the
pictures, it looked like she took good care of me. There were photos of her
holding me, feeding me, and wrapping me in a bright blue fuzzy blanket. She was
smiling in every frame.

My mom wasn't particularly pretty in a
conventional way. She had teeth that didn't seem to fit in her mouth the right
way, like they would come spilling out if she opened too wide. Her nose was
long and a little crooked. She had pretty eyes though, kind and genuine. And
her smile was the kind of smile that just makes you happy looking at it. You
know how some people smile and you kind of have to smile along with them, even
if you’re having a terrible day? That’s how my mom looked, especially in
pictures of all three of us. There was one bigger picture with my father and me
in the front, and my mom behind us. I bent over to look closely at it, like I
always did.

I kept walking down the rest of the hall
and opened the door to my bedroom to find my boxes neatly stacked at the foot
of the bed. I had a decent-sized room with its own bathroom, an extreme luxury.
Grandma lived in a single story house that wasn’t really big, but it was open,
so it felt roomy. I was relieved to find that the boxes looked like they were
packed carefully. I took my jacket off and hung it neatly in the closet,
adjusting the shoulder seams so they matched up perfectly with the hanger
underneath. A corner of a piece of paper stuck out of the pocket and taunted me
as I sat down. I put my head in my hands as I sunk into the bed.

The truth was I had feelings for that
impossible girl. I wasn't sure exactly what the feelings meant. All the
emotions about my parents swirled in my head, mixing with my thoughts about Lucy
that just wouldn’t rest. I didn't want to be over-dramatic and think the status
of "the Christian girl and the bad boy" wouldn't work, that was so
overdone. But, I had never pictured myself in a relationship because the
possibility of disappointment was too great. I didn't like depending on people
or, worse, letting them have any kind of power over me.

But, here I sat, stressing about some
stupid girl. Better, a gorgeous, well-liked girl who was dating Mr. Popular.
For as much of a rush as the whole experience had been, I couldn’t figure out
how to get the situation to work past today. The little piece of paper peeking
out of the closet was like an exclamation point on the no-freaking-way sentence
of the last day. It was the stupidest piece of punctuation that had ever
existed.

I shook my head, jumped up, and grabbed the
piece of paper that had her number on it. I ripped it into eight pieces and
threw it in the trash can in the corner of my room. Standing over the trashcan,
expecting relief, I realized I didn’t feel any better. My mind was still
rushing over the weird Bermuda triangle of Lucy, my parents, and how I was
going to get my car. The only comfort I had was in knowing that I was actually
quite good at puzzles. I kicked the trash can a little then straightened it out
again, a little scrolly number three was staring up at me from a visible scrap.
I was done for now. I’d figure it out after I was clean. I grabbed the towel
off the foot of the bed and headed for my new bathroom, in my new house, with a
very new feeling in my heart. I hated change.

* * *

My new high school was little, much smaller
than my last one had been. I didn't try to make any friends. I was graduating
at the end of this school year, which was in seven months. If people happened
to be amazingly awesome and worthy of lifetime friendships I wasn’t shutting
them out or anything. I just wasn’t trying that hard to find them so I kept my
head down and did my work. Besides, I doubted the presence of any
best-friends-forever. The school was full of cliques and I caught on quickly
that there were only two main groups: popular and unpopular. Most of the
sub-groups were little moons orbiting around the popular or unpopular planets.

No one really knew what to make of me when
I came walking through the doors my first day. I was instantly appointed to the
popular planet because I was new and different. I was the only boy in the
school who wore make up and had piercings on my face. Obviously I was very cool
and worldly because of my dark hair and piercings. But although they were all
sure it was very cool, they had no idea how to deal with it. Everyone seemed
interested in me but nobody was brave enough to come and talk to me. So, my
daily routine consisted of getting up, eating, walking to school, doing my work
as quietly as possible, coming home, doing my homework, and sharing a nice hot
meal with my grandma. After dinner I’d do the dishes and then I would do my own
thing while Grandma did hers. Usually that meant reading, for both of us.

Sometimes she had me do a few things that
she needed help with. Having a "man in the house," as she said, was
as much a luxury for her as that big bedroom was for me. I was good with light
bulbs and dusting high places, but I usually struggled when she asked me to fix
mechanical things. The DVD player actually spat sparks at me, which cracked
both of us up. As nice as it was living in a house where I felt welcome, it was
still lonely. At least in Kalispell I’d had friends I could escape with. We’d
all gone to a school that we could make fun of together. I’d tried mocking one
of my classmates to Grandma and she’d just frowned and ignored me. No dice.
Even with my amazing light-bulb-replacing skills I felt like the Lone Ranger
riding off into the sunset, alone. On foot.  Because I didn’t even have my
trusty horse by my side.

Not only did I still not have a car, but in
the two weeks I’d been at Grandma’s, I still had not thrown my trash away. I
went out of my way to throw everything in the kitchen trash. In fact, I’d
completely avoided the entire trashcan side of my room. That corner was off
limits, like there was impending doom awaiting me if I gave into its power. I
thought about that dang trashcan every night as I fell asleep, re-piecing the
paper together in my head. Sometimes I dreamed about the little scraps floating
back together all by themselves, and the number being magically revealed to me.
At least three times I woke up excited because I had the number, only to
realize that it was still lying in pieces in the untouchable corner. I didn’t
crack, though. I was going to win the epic battle against the trashcan.

On a rainy and freezing night almost
exactly two weeks after I moved in with my grandma, I was buried under the
covers, trying to ignore the can by reading a book. The book was failing me.
I’d gone to bed early, feeling down, like a chicken whose arms and legs were
tied up as a puppet. The puppet master was asking me, the Goth-chicken-boy, to
walk over to the trash and dig out the girl’s number. I stuck to the book. I
knew I wouldn't call her anyway, even if I’d managed to fit all the pieces back
together. Two weeks was a long time ago.

It was like a fairytale. This gorgeous,
super-happy person didn't exist. There was no way that a girl like that had
even asked me my name. With a few weeks, and all that had come between then and
now, it seemed crazy to me that a kindhearted girl crawled into my hospital bed
and talked to me about my piercings and fell asleep in my arms. I told myself I
was going to throw my trash out tomorrow and that I was going to stop being
such a little wuss. And that I was going to figure out a way to get to
Kalispell and get my dang car so I could drive around in the rain and cold
instead of trying to read a stupid book in my stupid bed, having a stupid
imaginary fight with a trashcan.

I sank deeper into my sheets cursing myself
for being such an idiot when I heard a tap at my bedroom window. My eyes flew
open. I heard it again, faster and a little harder. It couldn't have been the
rain because it wasn’t a random irregular patter. It was hard and sounded like
it was on purpose. I got out of bed cautiously and opened my curtains.

Two inches away from me on the other side
of the window was a pair of excited, bright blue eyes, attached to the face of
a soaking wet, shivering girl.

Lucy.

4. ALMOST