Payton Hidden Away (25 page)

We migrate to the backyard where
there’s a hammock and some shade and absolutely no breeze to speak of. We try
to fit three into the hammock by sitting on it like a porch swing, but it sags,
smooshing us together and bringing about a lot of laughs. At first, I’m okay
with the close proximity of two gorgeous girls pressing up against me until I
realize I’m pinched between two gorgeous girls pressing up against me—one of
which is my girlfriend and the other is my girlfriend’s sister. This reminds me
of the stunt they pulled down by the Old Beaver, and suddenly our arrangement
on the hammock feels awkward.

“Why do you have
to go?” Kristie asks suddenly. She’s referring to Georgia, of course. She
brings it up every time she starts feeling insecure, and since tonight is the
big night, she must be feeling awfully insecure. She doesn’t want me to go away
to a big school. She wants me to stay in Michigan, go to school here and get a
safe little job working a desk at the bank. Nothing too extravagant, but nice
enough to afford a three-bedroom rancher, a couple of kids, a family dog and a
nice little life for ‘us’. She doesn’t want me to leave, because she knows she
can’t. Her grades have been ‘intimidating,’ meaning community college is her
only option. If I’m at UGA, and if she’s here, then there’s 900 miles between
us, and there’s 900 other girls vying for my attention.

“I told you,” I say.
“I’m coming back.”

“Well, call me
crazy, but I think you’re running away.”

“I’m running
away?”

“You could get
your associates here and save a ton of money, but you’re so eager to get out of
town and get away from
me
, that you’re jumping on the first bus out.”

“It’s not you,
and you know that.”

“You don’t even
know what you want to do. You haven’t even picked a major.”

“Please don’t
make me feel even more guilty than I already am. UGA is a huge opportunity.
It’s a big time school with endless potential. If I don’t jump on it now, it
might not be there in two years.”

“If you got a
four-point over at Lawton Community, you might have a shot at something even
bigger.”

“Is that where
you’re planning on getting your masters?” Joanne smirks.

“You shut up,”
Kristie warns.

“You shut up.”

“Both of you
shut up,” I snap.      

“He’s never
coming back,” Joanne sneers.

“Enough,” I
interrupt before turning to Kristie. “I love you. And I
will
be back. I
promise.”

“He’s never
coming back,” Joanne repeats.

“I’m coming
back,” I snap. “Jesus, what is with you two today?”

“You’re coming
back?” Kristie asks. “As what? A high-powered executive? A VIP? Shiny shoes and
pressed slacks? You’re leaving, Tony. Jo’s right. I have no idea who’s coming
back.”

“This is entirely
unfair,” I say. “I thought you’d be supportive. This is a big deal—for both of
us. It’ll open doors.”

“Fuck doors. God
opens windows.”

“You don’t even
go to church.”

“I call it like
I see it.”

“I invited you
to come with me.”

Joanne snorts.
“She doesn’t exactly have the grades.”

“I’m not talking
about school. I just said she could come with me.”

“Lucky me,”
Kristie pouts. “I get to
tag along
. I can wring my hands with worry
while my big man is away at school getting an education so he can provide for
his stupid little wifey who’s back home scrubbing the toilet.”

“That’s not what
I meant.”

Joanne giggles
again.

“This isn’t
funny!” Kristie shouts. “God…”

“She’s kidding,”
I say softly as I wrap my arm over Kristie’ shoulder and pull her close. The
thing is, it doesn’t feel natural. It feels like we’re playing a role, so I kiss
her forehead and stand up before taking a few steps away.

“I don’t want
you to go,” Kristie says.

“I’m coming
back. I promise.”

“That’s not it. Something’s
wrong. I can feel it. Something’s off, like it’s—”

“I’m not sure
Travis is right for me,” Joanne interrupts suddenly, and Kristie and I are quickly
reminded someone else is here too. When we turn around, Joanne looks somewhat
pitiful sitting on the edge of the hammock, the hammock wrapped up around her,
squeezing her in.

“What do you
mean?” Kristie asks. “He adores you.”

She shrugs.
“There just isn’t much chemistry. I mean, I like him, but I don’t know that
it’s going anywhere. You know, like with you and Tony.”

“Oh, my god, in the
last five minutes, what kind of chemistry have you been smoking, because I want
some.”

“At least you’re
fighting because you’re afraid of losing each other.”

“Is this what
you want? To be fighting with your boyfriend in the last few hours before he
abandons
you?”

“I’m not
abandoning anyone.”

“You and Travis
have been together for a week,” Kristie continues. “You don’t know anything
after one week.”

“Almost two,”
she counters.

“You know what I
mean.”

“Yeah, but
shouldn’t there be some kind of…spark or something?”

“No yeah-buts,”
Kristie snaps. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve been waiting for a good guy,
and Travis is a
good
guy. At least give him a chance before you throw
him back and whine about how the only guy that’s willing to put up with your
retarded stutter is Ritchie Hudson.”

“She’s not retarded,”
I murmur.

“And it’s not a
stutter,” Joanne quips.

“Whatever.”
Kristie says, raising her hands. “It’s not a stutter, and you’re not retarded.”

“I’m out of
here,” I murmur.

“Tony…” Kristie
gripes.

“Tony…” Joanne
begs.

I stop walking,
but I’m not ready to turn back yet. “This is not how I wanted my last day here
to go.”

“She’s right,”
Joanne says.

“I am?” Kristie
asks.

“Which part?” I
ask.

“The part where Ritchie
is the only guy willing to put up with my retarded stutter.”

“Accent,” I
correct.

Joanne shakes
her head. “Travis hates it. It’s obvious.”

“He doesn’t hate
it,” Kristie argues.

“Like you know.
You don’t know what it’s like to be looked at like the town clown. You’re Miss
Perfect.”

This is a fun
conversation. I’m glad I stuck around...

“Besides,”
Joanne continues. “I’m tired of him. He bores me.”

Kristie stands.
“How could he bore you? You just met.”

“It means I’m
bored,” Joanne returns. She’s angry, shifting back and forth from her spot on
the hammock.

“Maybe I should
just go,” I say.

Kristie holds up
a finger. “I’ve got you for the next five hours, so you’re not going anywhere.”
She turns back to her sister. “And you’re never happy unless you have something
to bitch about.”

Joanne frowns.
“Says the princess with everything.”

“It’s really hot
out here,” I murmur.

“I have
everything
?”
Kristie says all shrilly. It’s not a pleasant sound. “You think I have
everything? You’re GPA is over a full point higher than mine. You think I’m not
jealous of how easily trigonometry comes to you?”

“I think I’m
going to go,” I suggest.

“You’re going to
stay put,” Kristie snaps.

“I really don’t
want to be a part of this.”

“Travis is a
good guy,” Kristie says to Joanne, ignoring me. “He’s sweet, good looking,
smart and aside from your paranoid allusions that he’s merely putting up with
your slur, he seems okay with you just the way you are.”

“Delusions,”
Joanne corrects.

“Huh?”

“Paranoid
delusions
.”

“It’s really hot
out here,” I complain.

Both girls stop
talking and turn on me. Kristie looks pissed. “Would you like cheese with your
whine?”

“Maybe I should
just go.”

“You’re not
going. This is the last time I get to see you until Christmas, so you’re
staying.”

“I’m really
thirsty.”

“Then I’ll get
you a
fucking
glass of water!” She storms toward the house leaving me
feeling like a heel.

I turn to
Joanne. “That went well.”

She giggles and
pats the hammock beside her.

“I think I’ve
had enough of the hammock for one day.”

“Hammock or
Kristie?”

I frown. “What’s
that supposed to mean?”

“Do you love
her?”

I think a second
before nodding. “Well, I…sure.”

She shrugs. “I’m
convinced.” She gets up off the hammock and stands, stretching. She’s showing
off her body, or if she isn’t, then that’s how I’m perceiving it. She has a
sultry walk that doesn’t look all that natural, but it’s sexy anyway
because
it doesn’t look all that natural. And she’s using that unnatural sultry walk as
she steps closer, her eyes locked on mine. I frown. Again. I’m doing a lot of
frowning, because I’m pretty confused.

“Why Kristie?”
she asks as she reaches my side.

“Why Kristie
what?”

“Instead of me?
You and me have more in common than you and her.”

“What?” I ask.

“Why her?”

“I’m sorry, what
I meant to say was
what
?”

She doesn’t bite
at my poor attempt at humor. Instead, she takes another half step closer. Now
we’re practically touching. We’re so close that I can smell her perfume. It’s
the same stuff her sister wears, which only heightens my confusion. They’re the
same. The two of them are exactly the same, except for the mere fact that
they’re not. Joanne and I actually do have more in common than Kristie and me.

“When you look
at me,” she says, “what do you see?”

“Is this a trick
question?”

“No. I’m being
serious. What do you see?”          

“My friend.
You.”

She says
nothing.

I say nothing
though I get what she’s driving at. I can’t say it, but I get it. I see a
pretty girl. A gorgeous girl. I see someone I’ve known since grade school but
never looked at in
that
way. Not until now. Now I suddenly see her as
the perfect girl. The girl who would support my choice to go away to school
instead of fighting it. Hell, she’d go with me. We’d both excel, and we’d both
wind up with MBAs, high-paying jobs, a fancy house on some cul-de-sac and two
BMWs parking in our three-stall garage. She’s every bit as pretty as Kristie,
and I just realized that her goofy slur, while annoying at times, is kind of cute
in its own right. She’s smiling as though reading my mind, and I can’t help but
feel that this guttural, knee-jerk, nose-pinching, breath-holding moment is
nothing more than teenage hormones screwing with my head. Joanne tries to wrap
her arms around me, but I back off—holding her at arm’s length. “What are you
doing?”

“One kiss,” she
pleads.

“I can’t...”

“If it’s
awkward, then at least we’ll know. We won’t have to wonder all the time.”

“But I’m with
Kristie.”

“You two are entirely
incompatible, and what’s more is you know it. You’re dating her because she’s
pretty and she showed you attention. It’s convenient.”

“I love her.”

“You love the
idea of her. One kiss. If it’s horrible, we’ll laugh about it later, and I’ll
never bother you again.” She just stands there looking exactly like Kristie.
The same pale skin—smooth and soft. The same pretty blue eyes, the same dirty
blonde hair. She presses up against me. She’s shorter than me, so it’s her
lower belly that presses against my mid-section, but there’s a flicker of
knowing light in her eyes, and this has officially gone from weird to wrong. As
conflicted as I feel emotionally, logically I already know—

“Jo, I can’t do
this.”

There’s disappointment
in her eyes, but I think she understands. Unfortunately, it’s at that moment
when I start to think that while I’ve demonstrated loyalty to Kristie and saved
face with Joanne that I hear the sound of glass shattering on pavement followed
by something even worse.

“Joanne?”
Kristie shrieks. She’s standing at the top of the steps. The drinks she had
carried out are lying in pieces on the sidewalk below, two puddles running in
streams toward the grass.

Kristie hesitates for only a
moment at the top of the stairs before she comes running. She doesn’t look
surprised, anxious or even concerned. She looks pissed. Doing what I tend to do
be doing a lot of lately, I shove Joanne behind me, thereby placing myself in
the middle of exactly what I had tried to stay out of in the first place.

“Nothing
happened,” I try, but Kristie will have none of it. Her hand comes out of
nowhere and slashes me across my neck with four fingernails that feel like
razorblades. I cringe as she goes right around me and pounces on her sister.

I touch my hand
against my flaming neck and feel the broken skin beneath the tips of my
fingers. Kristie and Joanne are rolling around on the ground and shrieking, and
while this scene might be humorous if set to Benny Hill music, now I’m angry
too. I jump in, wrap my hands under Kristie’s stomach and pull. The two
separate, though they continue to swing and kick. I struggle to control
Kristie, but she’s a fireball, screaming at me and her sister. Her arms and
legs are flailing like a wriggling fish, but I wrap her up and hold on until
she tires. She’s still mad, still crying, but at least she stops fighting.

“Nothing
happened,” I say softly. “Nothing.” I can feel her heart thundering in her
chest. “We were just talking.”

“Talking,” Kristie
says, her voice breaking with sobs. “You were talking.”

“Talking,” I
repeat.

Joanne is on her
feet, her face covered with tear-streaked dirt. There is real rage boiling in
her eyes. “Another two minutes,” she hisses, “and I’d have had him on his back.
I’d have been riding him like a rodeo cowgirl.”

“You’re not
helping,” I murmur.

“I’ll kill you.”

“I hate you.”

“Enough!” I
shout.

“The feeling’s
mutual, bitch,” Kristie hisses.

Joanne is in
tears. She looks one more time my way before turning her back and storming off.
“I’m out of here,” she calls. “For good!
For good!
”

I want to go
after her, but Kristie pulls me back. “Let her go,” she whispers.

Turning to Kristie,
my heart is racing. “I swear nothing happened. I swear it. I didn’t do
anything.”

“No, you
didn’t,” she answers coldly. “But she did.” She wraps her arms around me and
holds on desperately. “And I saw it.”

“Nothing
happened,” I whisper, so afraid of losing Kristie that I’m relieved she’s
holding onto me so tightly. Now she’s crying, and if there’s one sound I can’t
stand, it’s the sound of a girl crying. I look after Joanne, but she’s already
almost out of sight. She’ll be back. This was just a fight among sisters, but
she’ll be back, because they’re family and they love each other. She’ll be back,
they’ll make up, and everything will be okay.

Kristie finally
starts to settle down, but it’s been ten minutes—maybe longer, and Joanne has
disappeared over the hilltop. Payton isn’t all that big, so it’s not that I’m
concerned about her safety, but I’ve never seen her that broken up before, and
I certainly don’t pretend to understand the ‘logic’ of a female. Everyone has a
breaking point, and given how freaked out she was, I wonder if she’s passed
hers.

“Let’s go
inside,” I say softly. Kristie agrees, though I think she’d agree to pretty
much anything. She’s not altogether with it, so I lead her back to the house,
up the porch steps and into the living room where we sit on the couch. Just a
little while ago, we were all in here, playing a game and having fun. Now the
mood has turned sour, and the room feels oddly empty.

“Please don’t do
this to me,” she whispers. “Please don’t go.”

“I have to,” I
answer. “I mean…everything’s been arranged. I
have
to go.”

“You don’t
have
to do anything. You could stay if you wanted to, but maybe you don’t want to.”

“You want to
know the truth?” I ask. “I actually don’t want to
go
. I actually want to
stay. I’m scared shitless, and I don’t want to leave you. I want to bail on
this whole stupid idea more than I can even put into words. But you know what?
I have to do this. I have to do this for us. I’m leaving tonight because this
is something I
have
to try. And as shitty as that might sound, there’s a
silver lining, because I
will
be back, and I’ll be back for you.”

“I hate you,”
she whispers.

“You don’t hate
me.”

She’s crying
again. “Yes I do.” Then, using the soft tips of her fingers, she brushes the
cuts she raked across my neck.

“Does it look as
bad as it feels?”

“She likes you,”
Kristie whispers, ignoring my question as another tear rolls down her cheek
before she presses her face against my chest. “I’ve felt it ever since you and
I started going out.”

“She just wants what
we have. It’s not me. She just wants someone.”

“You heard her
today,” Kristie murmurs. “She’s not even all that into Trevor.”

“Travis,” I
correct.

“She likes you.
I know it. I
saw
it.”

There’s nothing
I can say to convince her otherwise, and there’s nothing I can do other than
hold on and hope the storm passes. I want to leave, but there’s no manual that says
when it’s okay to. Joanne’s out there, and it’s not like her to go off on her
own like this. With Ritchie going postal, Joanne taking off, Kristie flipping
out, and the clock counting backwards until I’m supposed to leave with all
these things unresolved, it feels like my world is falling apart.

“I have to go,”
I say.

“Go where?”

“I have to go,”
I repeat as I gently separate myself from her.

“Why?”

Why? Because I
have to fix it, and if I can’t fix it, then I at least have to try. Not that I
know how to say it in a way that’ll make sense to an emotional teenage girl, so
I lie, because truth is elusive, my world is fucked, and I can only work on one
problem at a time. “I promised Ritchie I’d meet him,” I say. “Maybe shoot some
hoops or something.”

“I thought you
two weren’t getting along.”

“We’re not, but
he’s still my friend, and I need to patch things up before I leave.”

“You promised me
until ten.”

“I’m trying,” I
say. “I swear to God, Kris, I’m trying. I’m trying to do everything and be all
things to everybody. And I’m failing miserably.”

She just stares
at me, forcing me to commit to a decision.

“I have to go,”
I repeat.

“Fine. Then go.
If you’re so eager to go, then go. Have a nice life.”

I bite my
tongue. “It’s not like that.”

“Of course not.”
She’s wrapping herself into a ball upon the couch. “It never is.”

“I’ll call you.”

She nods, but
she won’t look at me, and she’s wiping fresh tears from her cheeks.

“I love you.”

Still nothing.

Dating sucks,
which means dating really sucks. I’m not trying to hurt her. I’m not trying to
hurt anyone. I’m trying to do the right thing, and right now Joanne needs me
more than Kristie does. I have to go. I
have
to.

Retreating from
the house, I trot down the steps, follow the sidewalk and step onto the road
leading toward the edge of town. I have no idea which way to go, but I have to
try. I have to look. I try to put myself in Joanne’s shoes and wonder what I’d
be thinking if it had been me. In a small town with eyes and ears everywhere
with nowhere to hide, where would I go?

And just like
that, I think I’ve figured it out. I’ll need my bike to get there, but I
haven’t ridden that damn thing in years. It’s under the porch, a big
conglomeration of rust and sprockets. I have no idea if it’s even roadworthy,
but I’m about to find out, because I’ll need it for where I’m going—all the way
to the edge of the earth and beyond.