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Category: Writing and Poetry
Hey, here's chapter five. Do you thing I should change the dates so that Chapt. 1 is on top, and you read down? Or is it best with the latest chapter on top, like it is now?
Also, I have 6 ready, too. Should I put it up right away, or wait?
Enjoy, and thanks for commenting . . . . .
5
To Syd, it seemed like forever before anything happened with Dean, but finally, not quite three weeks after Hope and Gary's first date, it did.
Syd had to take the bus that day. Mom had borrowed her car, and though she'd rather walk home, she was getting blisters from her saddle shoes, which she wore for a reverse-cool effect with a mini skirt and knee socks.
So she was on the way to the busses when she saw Todd DeMarco getting in Dean's face. The corner of the English wing protected them from the assistant principal who supervised the bus-loading, and a crowd of kids had begun to gather.
"Come on, DeMarco," said one kid. "Take him out!"
She saw Dean turn his back on DeMarco and start to walk toward the busses. Then the gap in the crowd filled and screened them from view. She heard people yelling. The crowd was loose and open at first, vaguely curious, but by the time she pushed through, it was tight and insistent. She slid sideways between the bodies and at the center of the ring was DeMarco, yelling at Dean, who was turned away but hemmed in by a wall of kids.
Syd saw Dean turn, then he was pushed and fell. DeMarco stood jeering above him as Syd crossed the ring.
"Todd," she said, and he didn't seem to hear, his thick neck thrusting his head forward and his arms pumped out.
Syd moved to his left side, touched his wrist, and slid her hand up to his elbow.
"Todd," she said.
He looked at her, and she felt his arm relax a little.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
Dean got up while Syd said, "Come on, Todd, just let it go," and she slid her hand off his arm.
Dean began to walk around and past her, but she hooked her arm in his elbow, and the crowd parted while DeMarco shouted, "Come back, pussy!"
They kept walking, away from the busses now, up toward Main Street. Dean breathed hard, then he took a deep breath and exhaled in a sigh. He started shaking, and Syd could feel the heat coming off him. They didn't say anything until they got to the street and started in the direction of town.
"Thanks," he said.
"Sure," she said. "It helps being a girl sometimes."
"Yeah. Can I buy you a pop at the Breadbasket?"
She laughed—it sounded so old fashioned. "Sure. You owe me."
They kept their arms linked, not talking anymore, and Syd noticed that he wasn't shaking, and she leaned into him a little bit. He returned the pressure.
At the Breadbasket, they got the booth right by the jukebox, but neither one of them played anything. They got 7-Ups and Dean smoked. He told her about the fight in the locker room, and how Gary said DeMarco probably wouldn't pull anything until after football season.
"So I wasn't expecting to get jumped," he said. "Yet. But I guess I had it coming to me."
"Because you defended yourself in the first place?"
He blew cloudy smoke up and away from her, and the movement exposed the smoothness of his throat. His faint Adam's apple moved.
"That's the way it works, right?" he said. "Blood will have blood."
"Who'd have thought the dumb jock would have so much blood in him," she said.
They laughed and he put out his cigarette. She reached for his hand. It was cold and she squeezed it.
"But you've been humiliated," she said. "Saved by a girl, you pussy."
"And gladly."
"Let's talk about something else," she said, and they talked about Ohio and school and Gary and Hope. She kept holding his hand and he smoked some more, lighting the match with one hand so he wouldn't have to let go of hers. She wanted to look at him, to trace his straight eyebrows and push her fingers through his wavy dark hair, but she mostly just looked at their hands together, his large and strong, hers small and freckled. He stretched his legs out and pressed them against hers and she put her feet up on his side of the booth and he dropped his hand and ran it down once from her knee to her foot and let it rest on the toe of her shoe.
* * *
They left the Casket by the back door, Syd leading Dean up Cook Street then over to Summit, which gave them a straight shot to her house. Dean had his arm around her waist, and her warm hand was inside his jean jacket and shirt, pressing on his back.
Walking close like this was easier than sitting across from her in the booth, where the most Dean could do was look at Syd's hand and wrist or at the rounded toes of her shoes. Once in a while he looked up and was caught by the motion of her lips, moving over her teeth as she spoke, the corners narrow and smiling, the middle getting full and round over her little overbite as she formed words. He would have no idea what she was saying then and had to look away. Her green eyes were too much for more than a glance, even in the dim restaurant, even as she looked down or away from him.
Outside in the westering sun, her hair was so red that it hurt his eyes. And it brought all the pain into focus because being close to her and not touching her made his whole body and brain hurt so badly he could hardly stand it, and then with the orange and gold and brown and red of her hair he absolutely could not stand it so he put his arm around her shoulder and they walked slowly and close. This was better. The slight pressure gave only slight relief, just enough to make it bearable, and they walked up the hill toward her house.
"Do you want to see where I went to grade school?" she asked.
He did, so they cut back a block to Grove Avenue School, deserted except for a few kids on the south playground.
"Kindergarten is down at that end," she said, "and fifth grade is up here."
She led him around the north end and they looked into the fourth and fifth grade rooms with the cursive alphabets above the blackboards and Halloween pumpkins already in the windows. At the northwest corner they ducked into a doorway.
In the sudden dimness Dean felt Syd spin away from his side and face him, placing one hand on each of his shoulders. Her face turned up towards his, drawing him down, the hurt getting unbearable again as their lips touched and they clasped together, holding on hard.
Then a janitor rapped on the diamond-wire safety glass, and they went running into the sun across the playground.
They sat on the swings and she took off her shoes and socks.
"These are killing me," she said, dropping them in the sand and pointing her toes as she leaned back in the swing. "I've got to get home."
"We should have called."
"You can call from my house."
Since there were no more sidewalks, they walked on the roadside, holding hands, Dean on the gravelly margin, barefoot Syd on the grassy edges of lawn, gingerly stepping when they came to cross-streets, until Dean picked her up and carried her, laughing, to the next soft grass.
At Syd's house he called home, asking his mom to pick him up at the Casket, and he walked back to town fast, breaking into a jog, hoping to do the mile and a half before she could make the drive from North Barrington.
As soon as he got home, he called Syd.
"Sydney," he said, and she said, "Dean."
"Hi."
"Hi."
Something about the way she said his name and the way they said hi told him that he didn't need to worry, that she didn't make out with every boy who walked her home. He knew he could ask her what had been on his mind since about halfway between the Breadbasket and her house, but still he was terrified.
"Has this ever happened to you before?" he asked.
"No."
"Me neither. I'm sort of freaking out."
"Me too," she said.
"I have to see you. Before school. I mean before tomorrow. I mean . . . I want to see you tonight."
Too much, he thought, too much too fast, but she said, "Me too."
"Can you drive?"
"Yeah," she said. "What am I going to say? Where am I going?"
"To my house to pick me up so we can go someplace and ravish each other."
Too much again, he thought, but she laughed and said, "No—where am I saying we're going?"
"Library," he said.
12:04 PM
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