London Harmony: The Pike (3 page)

Leigh sighed and looked at me with that wistful smile she gets that warms me inside.  She was my itsy bitsy huggable woman.  She signed shyly as she spoke, “We should get going, Ash.”

I could see her anxiety building, she really didn't like being around groups of people.

I nodded and signed back, “Ok, I'll pull Gerty up front.”

She blushed.  I knew she wanted to argue that she could walk from the worker's cabin here at Valentine's Cascade Experience, to the parking lot where my beat up old 1977 Chevy Vega sat.

It was a banged up rusted bucket of bolts, but it was mine.  My grandpa, Remington had bought it brand new back then, for just under three grand.  They were mocked as 'disposable cars' at the time and were prone to catastrophic breakdowns.  But old Gerty had beat all the odds and forgot to die, and was handed down to my mother when she turned sixteen, then to me when I turned sixteen.  I viewed the dark rust marks on the orange paint to be badges of honor.  Three generations and still rolling.

I grabbed the keys off the counter and almost skipped out the door.  I waved to Steve over by the stables as I walked to the main parking lot of the lodge.  We were invited to the wake for Mrs. Zatta by her business partner, Zoey.

I had really liked Mrs. Zatta, she was always nice to Leigh and me whenever she had me over to the Pike to fix her imported equipment.  And she could get my Leigh to smile.  I was going to miss the woman.  We would have been at the funeral, but they had already invited the maximum people for the occupancy rating of the funeral home.

I paused at Gerty's door with the key in my hand when I noticed Vernon at the main vehicle bay door of the log framed lodge which served as the headquarters for Valentine's.  The huge mountain man looking guy with this shaggy beard, was having troubles fixing the track rollers that had failed yesterday.  He was always working, always in motion.

The man never spoke much, he suffered from severe PTSD from his time in the military and wound up on the streets.  Sandra Callahan had recommended him to Bobbie when she was looking for a handyman.  The man is brilliant like his son, Tim Phearson.  Though he fancies himself a loner, he certainly was close to the people here at the lodge that he views as his family.

Grandpa Remmy was his best friend and they lived in the worker's cabin together until Grandpa passed away.  Leigh and I share Grandpa's old room when we work the summers here at Valentine's.

Vernon sort of took us under his wing.  I think partly because he feels he owes it to Remmy to look after me.

I walked over and saw his conundrum, with only two hands it was hard to hold the segmented door panel in place while hefting the weight of the door against the torsion springs, and aligning the roller in the bushing and sliding it into the track.

I stood in front of him and grinned, rocking on my heels.  He glanced up at me and grunted, hiding his smile.  Then he asked, “So are you going to stand there babbling all day or are your going to help?”  He grinned and held out the roller to me.

I snorted and signed something unladylike to him which made him grin.  I smiled back and took the roller as he stood, hefting the twenty-foot wide bay door up like it was made of aluminum foil.  I slapped the roller in place and guided it into the slot on the track.  I grabbed the power driver on the ground and fastened the little keeper plate over the slot.

I grinned again and held the driver out to him.

He rolled his eyes and said, “Nobody likes a smartass.” With a thud, he dropped the door down.  He took the driver and mussed up my short, pixie cut hair like he always did and said, “Thanks, you're a godsend kid.”

He typed the code on the manual access panel beside the door and it started to rise smoothly.  I watched it then turned to Vernon with a satisfied smile.  God damn it!  I hated it when he did that!  He was gone, nowhere to be seen, and his tools were gone too.  One day I was going to learn how he did that.

I wheezed out my hoarse chuckle that sounds more like a loud, shaky exhale to most people, shook my head, then headed back to Gerty.

I pumped the gas pedal a few times and turned her over.  You had to coax her, like she needed a running start to get going, like getting a child to eat their vegetables.  The engine turned over slowly then gained speed until the motor finally caught.  I gave her a few seconds to catch her breath to smooth out the choppiness of her engine and get up to speed, then ground her into gear.

One day I was going to adjust the clutch linkage before I stripped the gears.  I grinned, I have been saying that for a couple years now.  I never seem to have the time to tinker now since I started at the art school.

I try to fill most of my down time getting to know my Leigh better, it is my new awesome hobby.  I thought back to the first time I saw her while I drove over to the worker's cabin where she waited by the door.

In my freshman year, I had attended a party near the Academy.  Well, party is sort of a misnomer.  It was more like a kegger.  It seemed that everything in college was a kegger.  I'm not really comfortable around groups of people.

A lot of people just stare at the scars on my neck.  I got them when I was three.  Mom was tending her flower beds at the side of the house when a dog jumped our fence and attacked our dog, Sir Wiggles.

I tried to stop the other dog and got caught in the middle.  The stray almost ripped my throat out before Wiggles was able to chase him out of the yard.  I was terrified.  It was the first time I realized I might die like Grandma had.  I tried screaming as I held my hands to my bloodied throat, but nothing came out.

I know it all happened so quick, in only a few seconds.  Mom had run to my side and carried me inside as I cried.  She could make it better right?  The ambulance and fire department came and brought me to the hospital.

I had to go through three separate surgeries to repair the damage to my neck, but my vocal cords were irreparably damaged.  I would never be able to speak again.

I cried when the police came to the hospital to tell us that the stray had been located and put down.  I know it hurt me bad, but it was still a dog and I loved dogs.  They didn't have to kill it.  Mom explained to me that dogs who bite and injure people have to be put down, they aren't safe.  I still don't agree with that today.

Mom and I went to classes to learn American Sign Language so that I could speak with her.  By the time I went to the special school the councilors had recommended for me until I could learn to read and write to communicate better, I just thought I had a normal life.  Even if the kids in the neighborhood called me dummy since I couldn't speak like them.

It was a school for the deaf, even though there was nothing wrong with my hearing.  I made tons of great friends there and was sad when I went to junior high and mom put me in a regular public school with a little portable computer that had a God awful speech synthesizer on it.

By the time I graduated high school, I had made a new batch of good friends, many of which had learned at least some sign language so that I didn't have to use my speech synthesizer as much around them.

Technology by then was so much better and I just used an app on my iPhone instead of lugging around a laptop all the time.  I hated the voice.  In my head, my voice sounded like a younger version of my mother's, but none of the synthesized voices I could choose from sounded anything like her and they all sounded like adult women.  So I chose to use the tinny, generic, computer-like voice instead.

When I went off to college, mom fretted and fussed about me.  I assured her I'd be fine.  She made me promise to make friends.  Regardless of what I just told you, I don't make friends easily.  It usually takes a couple years before I feel safe enough around people to let them in.

Grandpa Remmy would often scold me and tell me that you couldn't build friends without getting out of the comfort zone of our own cocoons and actually meet people.  He was always so smart, who the heck was I to ignore his advice?

To honor his memory, I decided that I would at least try to get out of my comfort zone when I started at the Academy and try to meet new people.  That's how I wound up at my first kegger.

It was like one of those bad teen movies you see on TV all the time.  The place was crowded, loud music blaring.  Everyone seemed to be in various stages of drunkenness and a lot of them flinched away from me when they saw my scars.  I was getting self-conscious and chided myself for not wearing a turtleneck like I first wanted to.  It took a while for people in a new setting to get used to seeing the ragged scars on my throat and not react.

I made my way to the back wall and just sat on a loveseat to watch the people.  It was sort of fun to see how stupid alcohol made some people.  There were a few I was sure were just as vapid as they seemed even without the help of alcohol to kill a few brain cells.

That's when I saw possibly the cutest, tiniest, and shyest girl I had ever seen coming to the back wall.  She seemed to shy away from everyone, avoiding contact as she just looked down at her feet while she wrung her hands.

I had to smile and stop myself from staring at the pixie.  My fellow wallflower.  And let me tell you, it was so damn hard not to stare at her, she was... just wow. I had to stop myself from biting my lower lip.

She looked to be ready to pass out from anxiety as she absently rubbed her arms, keeping them crossed protectively across her chest.  She was wearing a cute white blouse with a black satin vest, that matched the black knee length skirt.  Her chestnut colored hair was braided and even then hung all the way to her waist. I wondered just how long her hair was.

She glanced down at me.  I tried not to blush over being caught staring.  So I just smiled,  cocked my head and then patted the couch beside me.  I tried to act aloof and just turned to survey the room as I hoped she'd take the invitation.

My heart skipped a beat when she looked around then sat beside me, and whispered, “Thanks.”

I turned to look her over and gave a single nod, this is usually where I make a fool of myself or scare someone off when they notice my scars and find out I can't speak.  Worst is when their expressions turn to pity and they start speaking to me like a child.

I had to blink.  She had a mist of fine freckles punctuating her pale complexion.  But what stopped my breathing were her eyes.  They had to be contacts or something, they were an almost impossible bright emerald green that threatened to suck the air from my lungs.  Surely this wasn't really a woman, it was a fairy or a pixie come to life.

Then she blushed and dear lord, I was a goner.  I had always been attracted to girls but had never pursued it or even acknowledged it to anyone.  This tiny woman who couldn't even be five feet tall struck a chord in me, like a tuning fork vibrating inside.

She looked me over, I tried not to blush, she was checking me out.  Her eyes lingered on my neck before moving on, I braced for the cringe that never came.  Instead, she started blushing and looking down at her hands that she was wringing.  She looked terrified to be in a room full of people.  Introverts would name her their fairy queen.

She took a deep breath then chanced a look at me and said, “Hi, I'm Leigh.  Leigh Johnson.”  Leigh?  I liked that.  And her voice surprised me.  It was a chirpy alto instead of the soprano I had been expecting for some reason.  Maybe because of her size.  Stereotype much Ash?

I tilted my head then reached out with a hand and she shook it.  Her eyes shot to our hands and I caught that blush that her veil of freckles couldn't hide.  Then she looked up, capturing me with those impossibly green eyes.  It felt like I was free falling into something beautiful.

I realized she was waiting for me to reply.  Crap.  I thought about using my phone to speak with her but I found myself biting my lower lip in indecision instead.

I released her hand and raised my hand to my throat then shrugged in apology.   I brought my hands up to my head and made dog-ears then bared my teeth and snapped.  I shrugged again as I motioned my hand toward my mouth.  Damn, it would have been so much easier if she could sign.

To my surprise, she nodded in understanding, and I could see that she really got it.  She looked down at her hands again.  She was so full of anxiety, it looked like she would bolt at any instant.  That brought on this irrational need to protect her that I couldn't quite understand.  Well, I do now, but not back then.

She started rubbing her hands with her thumb like she was trying to get something off of them.  I tilted my head and placed my hand over hers to stop her in concern.  I didn't want her to be anxious around me.

She had glanced at me, smiled nervously and shrugged, saying, “Sorry.  I get really anxious around people.  My best friend...” She pointed at a gorgeous girl, dancing with an older boy. “Tries to get me out in public.”

She tilted her head at me again, smiled, and nodded in understanding.  She just turned back to watch the crowd.  I was acutely aware that I still had my hand covering hers and she never pulled back, so I left it there, reveling in our contact.  I decided to take a chance I never thought I would ever have the courage to do, and quickly inhaled and exhaled and then laced our fingers as I bobbed with the music.

We both chanced a glance at each other and I sighed in relief when she giggled a little.  Then she started shaking her head and chuckled.  What was that about?  I tilted my head again and gave her a silly grin and prompted her with my eyes.