Breathing (3 page)

There’s a bunch of kids from school laying out for a tan as if the sun was shining right through them clouds, but I don’t see no sign of Surferboy. I’d go on over and say hey to them, but they’re just a bunch of rednecks that live out to the farms up the road, always looking for trouble—tipping cows and whatnot. You may think I’m country, but you ain’t seen nothing till you met them farm folk. I’m talking country as a bowl of grits.

Oh Lord, I got a prickling on the back of my neck. Either somebody walked over my grave or else I’m being watched.

I turn to look and there he is, staring right at me from up by the snack shack. Some kind of crazy zingy feeling goes shooting right on up my chest. I should have brung my inhaler—all the sudden my breathing is clunky. Hell ’n’ high water, he’s headed this way. And he’s got that big ol’ smile plastered on his face like I’m his long-lost best friend. And I haven’t a clue what his long-lost best friend would say. I drop my bike down in the sand beside me.

“Hey,” he says, just like last time.

Ah, hell. “Hey,” I reply, promising myself that no matter what happens I will not run off like a baby.

“We met behind the library,” he says.

“I remember you,” I say, all shy-like. “I’m Savannah, you know, as in Georgia.” Hells bells, I should have kept my mouth shut.

But he smiles at me with those sparkly sea-green eyes. “Jackson,” he says, “as in Mississippi.”

I’m fixing to fall out just turning that name over in my mouth. I knew he weren’t no John or William. And that’s when it happens. I feel my chest cave in, and all the sudden I can’t get no air. Mama’s going to kill me for forgetting my inhaler. My eyes seem to pop right out of my head. I reckon I must look like the devil’s own bride.

“Sump’n wrong?” he asks as I gasp and cough. I know my face is turning red.

“Asthma,” I croak, feeling desperate and dumb as a dishrag, both.

“You got one of them inhalers or something?” he asks, looking concerned.

“At home,” I manage to say.

He pulls up my bike and sets me on the seat, then straddles it in front of me. Without so much as a look back to his cousins, he rides me straight on home to my house, me sitting sidesaddle on the banana seat, my hand grabbing hold of his shirt to keep from falling. Even in my terrified state of oxygenless existence, I can’t help but enjoy the warmth of his body so near to mine. I guess it’s a good thing he drove by with his cousins earlier, ’cause I ain’t exactly in a state to give directions.

He follows me inside, and I take a couple of hits off my inhaler. “Sorry about that. It don’t happen too often,” I lie, feeling like God’s own fool.

“Ain’t your fault,” he says. Now ain’t that a gentleman?

“Naw, my daddy’s more like,” slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“How you reckon?” he asks.

Blushing, I wave off his question. “Sorry you had to carry me home. I mean, thank you.” It suddenly dawns on me how much trouble I’ll be in if Mama comes back and finds me there with a guy all by myself. I ain’t technically allowed to have boys over unsupervised.

He seems to catch my brain wave, ’cause he says, “I guess I best be going.”

But I so do not want him to leave. “I could give you a ride back down,” I offer, grinning ear to ear. “I owe you one.”

He laughs. It’s a magical sound—richer than I would’ve imagined. “A’ight then, but I get the seat this time,” he warns.

And then, as it often does right after an asthma attack, that funny feeling comes over me where I suddenly somehow know what’s heading down the pipe. It’s like when you’ve been trying real hard to remember something, and as soon as you quit, bam! There it is. This time what pops into my head is a big old feeling of heartache. But I set it aside and ride that grown boy right on down to the beach, him hanging onto the pockets of my shorts, as I stand in front of him, pedaling.

“Where’d you get off to?” Billy Jo asks soon as we hit the sand.

“We been looking all over for you.”

“I guess I better go,” he says quietly, looking away.

“Thanks again,” I say.

The Channings hoot and holler as if we’ve just been rolling around in the hay. And before Jackson and I can exchange so much as one more word, they haul him off, and I’m left there feeling as disappointed as a raccoon after the trash truck comes.

“S
avannah, what are you carrying on about?” Mama asks me one afternoon as I’m blessing out my brother for leaving his crap all across my bed.

“Mama, I can’t take no more of this. I’m near ’bout ready to kill him,” I say, trying to keep myself from tearing Dog’s head off. It’s bad enough I’ve got to live with NASCAR posters plastered across his side of the room, but when there’s baseball bats and gloves and balls and dirty dishes all over the floor and his stinky clothes and comic books strewn across my bed, I have got to draw the line.

She takes one look at our room and says, “Young man, you best clean up this mess directly or you gonn’ be outside cutting me a switch.”

Now Dog and I both know perfectly well that’s an empty threat. Mama ain’t never used a switch on neither one of us. She may talk big, but she don’t hit.

So Dog says, “I’m heading out with Dave to play some ball.”

“Indeed you are not,” she replies, giving him that look that’ll set your teeth on edge.

I can see the exact moment when he caves. “Fine, but Vannah better help.”

“Don’t one piece of that mess belong to me,” I start in, but Mama cuts me off.

“Hush your mouth,” she says, shooing me out of the room. I leave, but I can hear her talking to Dog all civil, telling him how she needs him to straighten up right quick, and she ain’t just meaning his things.

I ambush her as soon as she steps out to the living room. “Please let him move in here. I am too old to be sharing—”

She interrupts me. “You are wearing on my last nerve, girl. I told you it ain’t gonn’ happen. You think I want his mess all over the house? It’s bad enough when it’s confined to y’all’s room.”

I know I’m pushing my luck, but I can’t stop myself. “Maybe we could get some church folk over here to help build us on an extra room or fix up the cellar.”

“I am warning you, I can’t think no more about this today,” she says, sounding evil as a goat.

I know when to leave well enough alone, so I head outside to get out of her hair before she blows her top. I believe I’ll take myself a walk along the railroad tracks. It ain’t like I’m planning on going over to the Channings’ place. I ain’t that crazy. But you never know who you might could meet when you’re out walking.

Before I know it, I find myself just up the hill from the Channings’. I haven’t met a soul along the way, and the house looks still. I reckon nobody else is crazy enough to go out walking when it’s 95 degrees and humid as all get out. I choose me a spot in the tall, itchy grass to sit down and see if I can’t catch sight of Jackson. A fierce but silent trill runs right up my chest at the thought of that name. They could have gone out fishing first thing this morning for all I know. No matter. Long as I don’t got to be putting in my hours at the library or doing chores at home, I can spend my time however I like.

To be perfectly honest, during the school year, I study as if my life depended upon it, which, if you ask Mama, it very well may. She’s been on me since day one about getting good grades so I don’t end up working slave-wage jobs like her. I reckon all that work has paid off, though. I’m at the very top of my class, and I ain’t just bragging on myself neither.

Ever since I can remember, Mama has given me some kind of workbook to keep up my skills during the summer. They’ve got titles like
Get Ready for Kindergarten
, or
Math Every Sixth Grader Should Know
, or in this year’s case
Preparing for the SAT
. Some kids come home from school on the last day and get a swimsuit or maybe a new pair of skates for good report cards, something to encourage them to enjoy their summer. Not me, a workbook is my reward for a year of hard work. She gave up on Dog even opening his, somewhere around the first grade. Every year, I’ve got mine finished by the time school starts back. It may sound geeky, but I like being able to make her proud. All my brother has to do to please her is stay out of trouble.

Anyhow, since it’s only the beginning of summer and I don’t have to be at work until four, I’m going to just sit here and watch the daggum grass grow.

Holy Mother of God! There’s Jackson. He’s heading up to the tracks by himself, and here I am spying on their house plain as day. I hadn’t thought about the likelihood of having to explain myself. It ain’t even like I’m laying out at the beach or somewhere normal. I’m hiding in the grass right out by their place. My face is burning up. I can’t think what to do.

He’s got headphones in his ears, the music turned up so loud I can hear it all the way over to here. Maybe he won’t notice me. Okay, the grass ain’t that tall. But then all the sudden I get a feeling that something just ain’t right. I haven’t a clue what it’s about. I just feel edgy is all. I’m thinking real hard on what it might could mean, when, holy swear word, there is an honest-to-God train coming up behind him. I swear there ain’t been a train on these tracks my entire life, and there is one racing up behind him faster than hell on wheels.

“Jackson! Jackson!” I yell, imagining that train plowing into him and his body flying off the tracks in a million bits. But he ain’t hearing me with them headphones plugged in. I’ve got no choice but to hurl myself at him like a crazy person. I run as fast as I can and literally throw myself at him, knocking him down to the grass as the three-car train whistles on by.

You can see he’s all confused and trying to make sense of what just happened. I can’t speak at all, I’m so choked up by the whole thing. And he’s sitting there looking at me like I’m Jesus himself.

“You saved my life,” he says all addled-like.

I shrug—what else could I have done? “I reckon I owed you one,” I say, finding my voice.

And then, glory hallelujah, that smile comes over his face that like to set me on fire.

“Sump’n tells me I may as well make a point of knowing you, Savannah as in Georgia,” he says, which sends a shiver right up my spine.

“I hurt you a-tall?” I ask, noting how he’s rubbing his neck.

He looks off after the train. “Not so bad as that woulda. I thought there weren’t no trains on these tracks.”

“There ain’t.”

“How’d you get here, anyways?” he asks.

Ruther than get into all the specifics of what I was doing sitting out in the grass practically stalking him, I just say, “I had a feeling is all.”

“That I was about to get run down by a train that ain’t s’posed to exist?” he asks.

I shake my head, not sure how to explain myself.

“You had a feeling, huh?” he says, staring at me. “I had a sense there was sump’n unusual about you.”

I like to fall out the way he’s looking at me. Is it possible he may actually think I’m cute? Is it too much to hope for? I mean, I know I ain’t ugly or nothing, but I ain’t exactly model material neither. I guess most folks would call me about average—that goes for my weight, my height, and pretty much everything else—just sort of plain, although I have been told my eyes are the color of cornflowers. (Does it count if my own mama said it?)

Junior and Billy Jo stroll out of the house, and I fear our moment has ended.

But Jackson goes, “Shh. Let’s get outta here,” and points at his kin as if to tell me he doesn’t want them to see us. We creep over into the bushes on the far side of the tracks, then take off running.

I don’t know if it’s the high from saving Jackson like that, the nearness we came to seeing heaven’s gates, or just being so close to the guy I’ve been crushing on that makes me so giddy, but before I know what I’m doing I find myself squealing like a toddler while we run. Now I am just as embarrassed as a pig at a picking (naked as a jaybird and a roasting spit up his backside). Jackson busts up laughing, not like he’s funning me or nothing, just like he understands how durn-all happy I am. He takes my hand and tears on down the hill toward the beach, running so fast I’m all but flying.

Why is it whenever you find everything feeling right, it’s all the time got to go and turn wrong? Soon as we hit the sand, Dog starts to yelling at Jackson, “You best watch out for her, dude. She’s a handful! She’ll wear you out!” He’s playing baseball with Dave and some other kids. And now they’ve all turned to look at me.

“Shut up!” I call. Damn, my brother has got to be the most annoying human being on the face of this earth.

“You want me to tell Mama you got a boyfriend?”

I’m about ready to take that baseball bat out of his hands and knock him to kingdom come, when Jackson pipes up. “Go on and play ball. I suggest you leave her ’lone.” And you can hear in his voice he means it. Ain’t nobody ever looked out for me like that.

“Act like you got some raising!” I add to Dog.

“Whatchoo gonn’ do ’bout it?” Dog insists on being his sorry self. That boy ain’t got a lick of sense.

Jackson jumps like he’s going to get him, then laughs when Dog turns tail. As we walk on, Jackson says all quietlike, “You got a boyfriend, huh?” And he’s smiling at me from here to tomorrow.

The red rises right up my cheeks. “He don’t know nothing,” I say, not wanting Jackson to think I’m presuming anything. I haven’t had a serious boyfriend yet. I mean, I’ve messed around some and there were guys I liked and all. But they don’t count for real. That was just kid stuff.

“Come on,” he says, taking my hand again and heading down the beach away from where everybody lays out.

We walk till we find a spot where there ain’t so many folks all over and sit down in the sand to watch the surf with its bubbling white foam.

I can see Jackson drifting off in his thoughts, like something’s on his mind. I ain’t sure what to say really, but I know I want to bring him back here with me. “Where you from?” I finally get up the nerve to ask after practicing it in my head sixteen times.