I stepped outside into the muggy afternoon sunshine and started walking toward my car. I remembered my thought about trying to be a normal girl again, do normal girl stuff. "Um, well, yeah, okay, that sounds good. Sure, I'd love to."
"Okay, great! We'll pick you up. Nine okay?"
"Yeah, that's good. I'll be ready." I gave her my address and she knew right where it was, and so we said goodbye and hung up.
Just as I was putting the key in my lock, I noticed a group of boys about ten or twelve years old on the other side of the street, laughing uproariously. The bigger of the boys was pushing a smaller kid who was wearing glasses and had an arm full of books. As the big kid gave the smaller boy a particularly hard shove, the boy lurched forward, his books scattering on the sidewalk. The other boys laughed some more and walked off, one of them calling behind him, "Nice one, freak!" Even from across the street, I could see the embarrassment that washed over the small boy's face right before he squatted down to pick up his books.
Little jerks. God, I hated bullies.
I headed across the street to help the boy.
When I got there, he looked up at me cautiously, his chin quivering slightly. I noticed that he had a light scar where he must have had surgery to fix a cleft palate. "Hey," I said quietly, smiling a small smile at him and bending down to help him pick up the books. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he said quietly, his eyes darting to me and then away as his cheeks colored.
"You're a reader, huh?" I asked, tilting my head toward the books.
He nodded, still looking shy.
I looked at the title in my hand. "Harry Potter… hmm. This is a good one. Do you know why I like this one so much?"
His eyes found mine and he shook his head no, but didn't look away.
"Because it's about an underdog who no one at all believed in–this funny looking kid in glasses who lived under his aunt and uncle's stairs. But guess what? He ends up doing some pretty cool stuff despite everything he has going against him. There's nothing better than watching someone no one expects to win, come out ahead, don't you think?"
The little boy's eyes grew wide and he nodded his head.
I stood up and so did he. As I handed him the books I had collected, I said, "Keep up the reading. Girls love it." I winked at him and his face broke into a huge grin, beaming at me. I smiled back and turned to walk away when I noticed Archer Hale standing in a doorway just a few stores away, watching us, an intense, unreadable expression on his face. I smiled at him, tilting my head, and something seemed to pass between us again. I blinked and Archer looked away, turning to walk down the street. He looked back at me once as he moved away, but when I caught his eye, he immediately turned again and kept walking.
I stood there for a couple seconds, watching Archer walk in one direction, and then turned my head to see the little boy walking in the opposite direction. I huffed out a breath and turned around and walked back across the street to my car.
I stopped at the local nursery on the way out of downtown and picked up some flowers and soil and a couple plastic planters.
When I got home, I changed into shorts and a t-shirt and spent a couple hours re-potting the flowers, placing them on my porch and doing a general yard clean-up, including weeding and sweeping off the front stairs. One of them was loose, and getting looser, but I was a disaster when it came to home improvement projects. I'd have to call George Connick.
When I stood back to admire all my work, I couldn't help smiling at my little cottage. It was adorable.
I went inside and took a long shower, scrubbing the dirt from under my nails and shaving everywhere. Then I turned on the small radio that was in the cottage and listened to a local music station and took some extra time doing my hair, drying it, and curling it with a curling iron so that it was long and wavy. I put on my make-up carefully and then lotioned my legs up so that they would look nice in my stretch knit, dark silver dress with the scoop back. It was casual yet sexy and I hoped it would work for where we were going tonight. I made it even slightly more casual with my slip on black sandals.
The last time I had worn this dress was a graduation party my dorm threw. I had drunk my fair share of keg beer, laughed with the other girls on my floor, and made out with a guy I had always thought was cute, but hadn't spoken to until that night. He wasn't a very good kisser, but I was just drunk enough not to care.
As I stood there remembering, thinking about the girl I was, I missed her. I missed my old self. I hadn't been a girl unmarked by tragedy. I wasn't naïve to the ways of the world. I knew that you weren't guaranteed anything and that life wasn't always fair. But my father and I had survived the tragedy of my mother's illness together and we were strong. I had never once considered that he would be snatched from me in an instant, in a senseless moment that left me alone and reeling. And that I wouldn't get to say goodbye.
Perhaps this road trip that I was on wasn't the answer I had hoped it was. It hadn't really been a conscious choice though.
Everything in Ohio had reminded me of my dad, my grief, my fear and my loneliness. Several numb months after that night, I had packed a small suitcase, put Phoebe in her dog carrier, got in my car and drove off. It felt like the only option. The sadness was suffocating, claustrophobic. I needed to escape.
I forced myself to snap out of it before I sunk too far down into fear and melancholy. It was Saturday night, the weekend. And on the weekend, normal girls went out with their girlfriends and had some fun. I deserved a little bit of that, didn’t I… didn't I?