“Friends tell their friends when they’re about to blow their entire senior year out the window. You’ll look back and regret it. Listen to me, Jess. I know what I’m talking about.”
My eyes narrowed on their own and contemplated that for a second. “Who taught us that? This isn’t a competition. Stella Mason has just as much right to be here as you. Without being bullied.”
“Uh, one...no, she doesn’t. Two...I’m the furthest thing on this earth from a bully. I might break a nail,” Wendy giggled, turning to the left and then the right, seeking a stroke for her ego from her followers.
“Here’s what I think. Instead of you worrying so much about who your boyfriend is, what label you’re wearing, or being the head of anything, maybe you should be a real friend,” I said, spewing words I wasn’t sure made sense. Spinning half a turn, I dropped my arm over Leigh. “Do you even know that Leigh is an amazing artist? She’s got a painting in the library that won a thousand dollar scholarship during a summer art class. Did you know that? I don’t remember Leigh ever saying anything about a summer art class. Do you? Why would our “best friend” hide something like that from us?”
Wendy frowned and looked right to Leigh. “You took a summer art class? Why?”
“Hey, loco, coming?”
All the drama I’d seemed to find myself in the middle of was gone with a call from a boy at the end of the hall. Long hair, sideburns, and a great big smile. Slamming my locker behind Wendy’s head, I dismissed myself for something with meaning. Something that did matter. “I gotta go. I’m so proud of you,Leigh. You’re an amazing artist.”
“Th... thanks.”
I skipped down the hall, dodging in and out of students all ready to get the hell out of there, feeling light. Like a weight had been lifted from me that I didn’t even know I was carrying.
Royal and I walked down the stairs together, side by side, chatting like we’d never parted ways. “So you moved to Sarasota when you left here?”
“Yes. On a vegetable farm. Acres and acres of cabbage.”
“Was it a good place?”
Shoving the door open for me, Royal nodded for me to go ahead. “When I wasn’t working my ass off it was.”
“You weren’t working at seven, I hope. I meant like right after you left here.”
“I worked,” he said with an assuring glance. “But I also had some pretty cool experiences.”
I wanted to be sad for him for a moment, picturing him working in a hot field as a little boy, but he wouldn’t let me. “You worked? Like in the fields?”
“Remember that 110 camera I bought at the flea market the summer before I left?”
“Yeah?” I questioned, stopping at his bike with a peculiar stare,not understanding what that had to do with anything, I waited for him to continue.
“Wait until you see all the photos I took. I’ve got an entire album of an alligator building a nest all the way to the babies going into the water. Oh, you’ll love this one. One time I was on the beach taking some sunset photos when a herd of horses came racing down the beach right in front of me. They escaped from a race horse ranch miles away just for me to get those shots. I sent it to National Geographic. They gave me a hundred bucks and half a page in the photo section.”
“You’re into photography? That’s so cool.”
We both turned to the thump beside us, seeing Stella Mason trying to open the door with an armful of books and some poster boards. Royal took a step around me and opened the door for her.
“That’s probably a good smell. Tampon girl and Your Royal Hind-ass.”
“Seriously, Wendy? I can’t wait until you watch the movie Mean Girls. Remember this day when you do. Mean girls raise daughters who are mean girls. Don’t forget that.”
Wendy burst into a gut laugh, looking around her for her so called friends to join her in the comedy. “You’re so stupid. Come on. I’m not wasting any more time on people who want to hang out with stinky losers.”
“Thanks,” Stella said with a genuine smile to Royal and me.
“Anytime,” Royal replied with the same genuine smile. I was in awe, and I wasn’t even sure why. Because the boy had gone through hell and still found joy in the little things. “I’d offer you a lift, but this thing’s a piece of shit. It barely gets me over the mountain.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got my gram's wagon.”
“Not the wagon.”
I laughed, nodding in shame. “Yes, yes. The wagon.”
“That thing’s still running? Noooo.”
“Afraid so.”
Royal and I parted ways, agreeing to get together later that evening. He had a few things to take care of at home, and then we were going to meet where we’d met a gazillion times. In the barn nobody even used anymore.
I drove home feeling like I was on top of the world with my entire life ahead of me, but was it? And if it was, what did that mean for Royal and me? What did it mean for Eric and me, and the twins? Deciding I didn’t like the way the deep thoughts made me feel, I moved them to something else. To Royal, the years I’d missed with him, and the questions I still didn’t have an answer to. Bouncing from the past to the future, I wondered why I cared about what Royal had been doing for the past ten years now, but I never even thought about it the last time, or from my future.
What did that mean?
What did that say about me?
Chapter Nine
“Hey, Grams,” I said in a bubbly tone as I entered the kitchen.
Popping the sucker out of her mouth,she wiped her hands.
“Your mom just called. She’s not happy about you quitting basketball.”
“Oh, well. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She says she’s doing some secretary work for some lawyer down in the Keys. Who knows about her.”
Sitting at the table with my history paper and my book, I watched my grams peel potatoes and listened to her hum to Amazing Grace for the entire song. “I always loved that about you, Grams. I’m never going to forget it.”
“What happened to you?”
Shrugging, I took a deep breath and pulled my chemistry notes from my Trapper Keeper. “I don’t know. I guess I finally realized how my whole life was wrong. You’re what matters to me, Gram, not basketball or this. I’m never ever going to need to know what the most common isotope of hydrogen is. And just because I’m being forced to remember it to pass a test, doesn’t mean I’m going to retain it. You know? Why am I wasting valuable time I can never get back on this shit?”
My grams glanced over her glasses and wiggled her paring knife at me. “You watch your mouth while you’re sitting at my table. I might agree with that statement, but that doesn’t change the fact you’ve been awfully weird the past couple weeks. I went upstairs to clean your bathroom today, and it was already clean. So was your room. It’s like you went to bed one way and woke up the next different. I’ve been around you since you were born, and I can tell when something ain’t right. Something ain’t right. You haven’t even mouthed off to me in days. I’m starting to have withdrawals.And the dishes? You hate doing dishes.”
I smiled, trying to keep it light. “You want me to stop helping with the dishes? I just figured it was the least I could do for all you’ve done for me. Thanks for taking care of me, Grams. I mean that.”
“Well. You’re welcome, and no, you don’t have to stop doing the dishes.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll do the dishes every single night if you promise not to smoke anymore.”
“I ain’t making no promises I can’t keep.”
“You can keep it. I know you can.”
Grams grumbled, protesting something under her breath I couldn’t understand.
“Grams?” I questioned to her back.
“Hmm?”
“Do you remember Royal?”
“How could I not? My grocery bill was cut in half after that boy moved away. I guess he’s back at school now, huh?”
I chuckled a
little at the thought. Royal ate enough for five boys. “You knew he was back?”
“Evelyn Parton came by today for coffee. She told me. I think you’re better off without that boy in your life. You have no idea why he’s back here.”
I hadn’t gotten around to asking him yet, but I’d planned to later that night. “Do you?”
“Evelyn said his mama sent him back here because he’s on drugs.”
I knew what drugs looked like, and Royal didn’t fit the bill at all. “I talked to him today. We’ve got a couple classes together. He’s not on drugs.”
“You don’t know that, Jessie,” she said with great conviction, turning to force eye contact so she could see that I was listening. “You can’t trust people nowadays. I’ve been on this earth a lot longer than you. I can’t be there to keep you safe all the time. You’re gonna have to grow up and take some responsibility for yourself. I don’t think I want you hanging around that boy.”
Even though I knew anything she said would be hypocritical and probably came from the gossipingchurch ladies, I asked anyway. “Do you know why they left?”
“It’s been a long time ago, and I can’t remember exactly who told me,” she began, her eyes shifting to the ceiling while she thought. “Linda Wright. Yes, it was Linda. Her cousin worked for the welfare department. She was the one who went there with the cops to get him.”
“Get who?”
“Royal. I guess they gave Gale an ultimatum. If she wanted Royal, she couldn’t live in the same house with Rick.”
I had a lump in my throat I couldn’t seem to swallow, but I asked anyway. With hurt in my heart and a raspy whisper. “Why?”
“That man beat that girl once a month and she stayed.”
“Did he beat Royal too?”
“I guess so. That’s why the welfare came to take him away.”
“Did you know, Gram?”
“Know what?”
“Did you know Royal was being abused?”
My grams paused, turning to me with a look I couldn’t read. “Why do you think I fed the boy?”
“I feel horrible, Gram. We should have done something. We could have done more. Why didn’t I know? How could I have been so stupid?”
“It’s not your fault, Jessie. Rick Pierce isn’t a nice man.”
“So, you didn’t do anything because you didn’t want to get involved?”
Her eyes drifted slowly to the floor and back to me. “I guess so,” she admitted, once again dropping her eyes to the floor. This time shamefully. Or so I thought. She turned back to her meal preparation and her hypocrisy. “That’s why I want you to stay away from him. I’m sure that boy has been through the wringer. Trust me, Jessie. You don’t want to take on that challenge. Stick with Johnny Dixon. Boys like Royal never grow up, they never hold down a real job, and they never have a pot to piss in. Stay away from him.”
I thought about that for a moment, realizing how much my grandma influenced my life. She meant well, and she was only relaying what she’d been taught by the influences in her own life, but it wasn’t right. Slipping into a state of déjà vu, I remembered this conversation a different way the last time. Nothing was mentioned about abuse. “You want me to shut him out because he was handed a shitty hand? That’s what you want me to take from this? Really, Gram. Because, I’m a little confused here. You dragged me into that church every single Sunday for all those years to teach me to do...to do what, Gram? You’re judging him for no reason at all. Because he had a rough start in life?”
“That’s just the way it is, Jessie. I’ve been around a lot longer than you, and I’ve seen a lot more stuff than you. I’m not saying it’s his fault. I’m merely saying, you don’t walk out of stuff like that and remain okay. He had a drunk for a dad and a crazy mom. Of course, the boy’s scarred.”
With my mouth wide open, I pondered what was really going on here. My grams was as close minded and shallow as Wendy, and I didn’t understand that. If wisdom came with age, my grandma hadn’t caught it yet, but what really had me baffled, was why did I? I’d worn the same blinders and believed the same rumors. I’m sure, had I gone back to being seven again, I would have been wiser, and I would have done something about it. I wouldn’t let him ever be hurt or hungry. I knew that without a doubt.
I didn’t continue with the conversation for two reasons: one, it wouldn’t have done any good because she saw it one way. Hers. Two, I didn’t know what was true anymore. Instead of keeping it going, I listened to my grams hum while she cooked, using my book to do the worksheet and answer the multiple-choice questions for history.
While my grams fixed our plates, I set up our metal tv trays in the living room, giving her the Dukes of Hazzard and me the Smurfs. One of the little things I’d forgotten how important they were to me. It was a set of four my grams got me for Christmas when I was like five or something. My favorite was always the Smurf one and I still chose that one. I think it was the village and the magic. How they didn’t have money controlling their lives, but they had everything they could possibly need. Sure, they had Gargamel always after them, but it was a lot better than we all had after us.
Turning the television on, I searched for something to watch, realizing how the littlest thing had been such a big part of my life. While my girlfriends in town collected Barbie’s, I collected Smurfs, but it wasn’t just the Smurfs. It was everything Royal and I brought with it. I could see us right there in front of the same television every Saturday morning, laying on our bellies watching cartoons. The Smurfs were one we really talked about though. We were going to build houses like that and live around all our friends and we weren’t gonna go to work. We were going to build moats to float around in, swinging bridges, and tire swings.
“The Golden Girls or the A-Team, Gram?” I questioned, wondering why he hadn’t called yet. We’d already run out of daylight, and it wasn’t getting any earlier.
“The Golden Girls. Do you want some apple butter with your biscuit?”
That was another part of my past I’d forgotten I missed. You didn’t get Grandma Grace’s apple butter from a store. That’s for damn sure. I loved it as much as I loved the Smurfs. “Mmmmm. Yes, of course I do.”
I enjoyed my time eating and watching television with my grandma just like old times, but what I really wanted was Royal to call. Every time I told myself there probably was more to the story, I remembered the light in his eyes and the purest smile in the world. Royal wasn’t doing drugs, yet I had to keep reminding myself of that fact every time my mind wandered in that direction. He was probably just busy. Busy doing what, with whom, was the part that kept me from concentrating on the funny show.
Smiling over a Teddy Ruxpin commercial, I remembered always wanting one. There for a while, I think I circled that thing in every sale paper and catalogue I came across. The phone finally ringing from the kitchen pulled me from the talking bear I never did get. “That’s Royal.”
“Are you ever going to listen to a word I say?” My Grams called from over her chair.
Grabbing the phone, I answered with a little more excitement than I meant to portray. “Hello.”
“Hey, can you believe I remembered your number? All these years and I dialed it like I’d just done it yesterday.”
“Hey, you want to go to the barn?”
“Yeah, leaving now.”
“Okay, on my way.”
My socks slid on the floor when I ran back to the front room. “I’m going out to the barn for a little bit. I’ll clean up later.”
“I don’t like it, Jessie.”
“Trust me, Grams. I’m way better off with Royal than I am Johnny, but don’t even worry about that. We’re just friends. We have a history. I want to catch up.”
“Go, I’ll clean up,” she said with a heavy sigh.
I slid into my sneakers and jumped the stairs, rushing to the barn as fast as I could without falling in the dark.
The door was already open by the time I got there, but I di
dn’t see him anywhere. Sliding it a little more, I called to him in the pitch-dark barn. “Royal?”
There was no time for a reaction. From out of nowhere, Royal grabbed my hand and spun me to the inside wall, his lips meeting mine with full force. My lips parted, my arms relaxed, and my existence became blurred. His lips were soft, his hands were callused and rough on my skin, and his heart beat with the exact same rhythm as mine. It was beyond words. We really were part of the same whole, and I knew I could never be complete without him in my life. Nothing could make me not do this. Not even if that meant I were messing with history. Not even my own twins. As of now, I still had the memory, and I was okay with that. I couldn’t live without Royal in my life, and I never wanted to try again.
We belonged to one another, and for the first time in my life, I realized there really was someone for everyone. Someone who felt like Royal. Someone you could be your whole self with. Someone you don’t pretend around because you can’t. Because you can see straight through them, and they can see straight through you. You run off the same vibrational energy and when you come together,the energy is like a euphoric high.
Magic happens when it unites, and things happen. Things like millions of tiny yellow butterflies, and wishing on stars on a summer night. Life takes on a whole new meaning, and you suddenly realize it’s all been a lie. Everything my grams had taught me had been to make someone else happy and not me. I didn’t need a five-bedroom house by a lake, a nicer car than the last one I had, an employee of the month parking spot, or a 401K. None of that mattered anymore. This did.
I don’t even know how long we kissed, but it was long. Every time one of us tried to pull away, the other pulled back. A hunger I’d never felt before kept me from letting go. My hands moved up his sides and he tightened his arms around me, but finally...we did separate.
“I’ve never stopped believing in this, you know,” Royal started, kissing my nose and my lips again.
I didn’t kiss back because I wanted to hear more. “Believing in what?”
“This whole twin flame thing. I knew we’d find our way back to each other, but I didn’t know it was going to be so powerful.”