“You’re killing him!” Jandilyn yelled, coming down to Michael’s side. Durgan pushed her over with his foot and she rolled a couple of feet away. Mike pulled a sliver of air molecules through his gritted teeth. He again stood up.
“Man, do you see that?” one of the goons asked.
“What?” the other goon asked. “See, what?”
A smaller light than the one Durgan used now clicked on in Mike’s face. Mike thought the weight of the light alone might make him fall onto his knees.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Durgan asked, backing away, as Mike assumed the light was now shining on his pale eye.
“Busted… lip… maybe… concussion,” Mike worked out.
“Your eye, man,” Durgan said, pointing as if Mike weren’t painfully aware of it. “The… the light doesn’t shine on it, it kind of sucks it in. Shut the fucking thing off!” Durgan said as he pushed the light from his friend’s hand.
The flashlight hit the ground and went out. Nobody moved as everyone readjusted to the moonlight.
“Had enough?” Mike was able to get out in one breath.
“Whatever, man,” Durgan said, clearly scared but not wanting to let his cronies know. “You can keep her, she doesn’t put out anyway. Let’s go.” The trio streamed by Mike, careful to stay more than an arm’s length away.
Mike found himself swaying from their wake.
Jandilyn stood up and rushed over to Mike’s side. “You alright?”
“Is it Tuesday?” he asked her.
“What?” she asked, wondering if he had possibly just suffered some brain damage.
“Because that’s where I feel like I’ve been knocked into,” he answered back.
“Is that a joke?” she asked as she led him back to the blanket.
“Sorry, they’re usually better than that but having a hard time thinking clearly at the moment.”
Jandilyn sat Mike down, and wet a napkin with some juice like substance from the little cardboard box, she very gently wiped the dirt grass and blood from his lip.
“Does that hurt?” she asked wincing.
“Only when you touch it,” he said as he rested his throbbing head against the trunk of the tree, his eyes closed as she applied her ministrations.
“This is going to fucking kill then,” Jandilyn said as she placed the most tender kiss he would ever feel on his lips. A spark of electricity from the contact coursed through his body.
“Did you feel that?” he asked as she pulled back.
“I did,” she said slightly out of breath. “You’re my hero.”
“Yup, I can take a beating like no one’s business.”
“Shut up,” she told him as she tenderly kissed him again.
They stayed like that for another hour, she would occasionally kiss him as she tended to his cuts and abrasions.
At some point she had re-lit their candle and now held it up between them, Mike slightly turned and closed his left eye.
“Don’t,” she said, putting her hand softly on his chin.
Mike turned to face her, his heart pounding wildly. Here was someone he cared for and seemed to care for him also. He couldn’t afford to lose her.
She did not pull back as she stared long and hard into both his eyes.
Shadows danced around her but all of that was drowned out by the shimmering bright pink light dotted with red that surrounded her like an oversized cloak.
“I’ve never met anyone like you, Mike,” she said, still staring intently at him.
“Probably a good thing. We’re going to have to go soon, I think there’s a rock under my butt trying to get intimate and not for nothing, but I would like a little more food than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“You have a problem with my cooking?”
“I think maybe you should take home Ec next semester.”
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a sexist.” She laughed, helping him up.
Mike shrugged and immediately regretted the move as his bruised gut let him know exactly what it thought about that.
“You’re a mess,” Jandilyn said as she quickly picked up all the night’s offerings and placed them back in the bag. Mike tried to be as chivalrous as possible by not applying too much weight on Jandilyn as she became his crutch, but vertigo, lack of depth perception and a mild concussion had him staggering as if he had funneled a twelve pack, and that last was a feeling he had been acquainted with.
Crossing over the train trestle had been a particularly slow endeavor. Mike could only manage a step or two before he would need to take a rest, the dizzying height to the rushing water below was playing havoc on his misfiring synapses.
“I feel like I’m eighty,” he said to Jandilyn.
“You’re not going to make it that long if you don’t get off this thing,” she said looking back down the tracks where she wholeheartedly expected a train to come roaring any minute.
“Relax, the trains don’t run this late.” And almost as if in a direct response, a distant train whistle blew.
“Why, Michael Talbot, I think that is your first lie to me,” Jandilyn said in mock shock.
“They’ll be more, no need to celebrate this one. Hurry up and get me off this thing.”
It was five full minutes after they were both sitting in Jandilyn’s mom’s car that the sixty-two car freight liner passed them by.
“I don’t think even you could take a punch from that thing.”
“Probably not. Home James my pillow beckons.”
Jandilyn drove him home and helped him up the steps and into his house.
“Is no one home?” she asked, wondering why the house was in pure black out mode.
“My parents are.”
“They don’t leave a light on for you?” she asked.
“I don’t think they believe I’m coming home.” Ever. Mike’s head was now in full tilt mode as he opened the front door. He could barely keep his eyes open. Eyes closed meant less spinning. If he had looked, though, he would have seen the figure that was darker than the surrounding gloom standing in the corner of the room.
“I’m good from here,” he told Jandilyn.
“You sure?” she asked suspiciously. “Or is this lie number two?”
“This is going to be a depressing relationship if we count the untruths.”
“Relationship?” Jandilyn asked. “You still want to go out with me?”
“I could ask you the same. Go home. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Mike gripped the loveseat, doing his best to keep from toppling over.
Jandilyn stood up on her toes and once again kissed him softly. “Goodnight, hero.”
Hero, Mike thought. That’s hilarious, the only thing between me and the rug is my death grip on this seat.
The door shut softy. A chill raced through Mike as he bumped from wall to wall down the hallway to his room. He knew somewhere from his football days that he should not go to sleep with a concussion for at least 24 hours, he was too tired to care. He noted that his pillow was wet with the tears from his mother as he fell into a blissful peaceful sleep, Jandilyn’s name upon his lips as he dozed.
The remainder of the school year went by without incident. Mike mostly drifted from class to class if he showed at all. The majority of his time was either up at Indian Hill mourning the passing of his friends or with Jandilyn who kept the ‘grays’ as he came to call them at bay. With summer rapidly approaching the couple became inseparable. Not that either one had a plethora of friends who would give them too much of a hard time about it anyway.
***
“What do you mean you don’t want to go, Jandilyn? You worked hard to get an internship at the Museum of Modern Art and it’s in Paris. You won’t get another opportunity like this.” Gina Hollow said exasperatedly to her daughter. “It’s about that boy isn’t it?”
“His name is Mike, mom,” Jandilyn said, almost rolling her eyes at a mother who didn’t get it.
“Boys are a dime a dozen, Jandilyn. This i
s a once in a lifetime chance.”
“Not this one, he’s different,” Jandilyn said, defending Mike.
“Does he have a penis?” Gina shouted.
Drew Hollow had walked into the room to find out what was happening and just as quickly left when he heard the ‘P’ word.
“Mom!” Jandilyn shouted back.
“Because if he does then he’s just like three billion other swinging dicks.” Gina was upset and was having a hard time reining her tongue in.
“Could you be any more crude?” Jandilyn asked. “We’re in love and that’s all that matters.”
“Did he tell you he loved you before or after?” Gina was full-throated shouting now.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but we haven’t done anything,” Jandilyn answered evenly.
Jandilyn’s dad did a small fist pump in the other room, thankful for his daughter’s intact virtue.
“Well, you can be assured that when you do he’ll be done with you and your chance to go to Paris will be long past.”
“He needs me, Mom,” Jandilyn said.
“It’s one summer, Jandilyn, you need to think this through.” Gina tried a more rational approach. And maybe that loser will off his morose self. Gina had tolerated Mike because her daughter seemed infatuated with him but now he was actively destroying her daughter’s future and she could not idly sit back and watch the disaster as it unfolded.
“I have thought it through,” Jandilyn said, trying to put finality to the argument.
“This has been your dream for the last three years and now that you’ve achieved it you don’t want it? I gave up so much in my life when I shacked up with your father, I don’t want you to do the same.”
Hey! Drew thought, I’m right here! But he remained silent, this was not an unfamiliar argument that was directed at him. They had also been high school sweethearts, both had intended on attending college but Gina had gotten pregnant and both of their lives had been forever altered, not that either complained about the outcome but, it had been a difficult first few years.
“I’m not like you,” Jandilyn said. “I know what I’m doing,” she stressed.
“When it all comes crashing down on you, I won’t tell you ‘I told you so’, but I’ll be thinking it,” Gina said cruelly.
Brutal, Drew thought. He didn’t know his wife had that sort of mean streak in her. He wondered what she said about him behind his back to her friends. He shuddered. Better to not think about that.
Gina stomped out of the kitchen and right past a surprised Drew. If she noticed him she made no acknowledgement, her anger had tunneled her vision.
“You alright?” Drew asked his daughter. She had her back to him and he thought she might be crying.
“Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing, Dad?” she asked, slightly hitching.
“Affairs of the heart are a serious thing. If you truly feel that strongly for the boy, who am I to say differently? Do I think you are giving up a great opportunity? Yes, I do, but I don’t think it will be the only shot you have. You work hard for what you want, Jandilyn, and very rarely do you let anything stand in your way. This summer is going to be a living hell for you, though. Your mother isn’t going to let this go anytime soon. And if something should go south with you and this Mike character you had better at least pretend to keep going out with him.”
Jandilyn laughed at that. “Thank you, Dad,” she said, turning around to give him a hug.
Yup I wouldn’t change a thing, Drew thought as he held her close.
As the summer wore on the heat outside did little to defrost the icy build-up between Jandilyn and her mother. Drew noted that the further Gina pushed away the closer Mike and Jandilyn got
. He could not fathom how his wife wasn’t privy to this parenting fundamental. More than once he had tried to broach the subject with her or at least diffuse the tension and she had told him in no uncertain terms if he ever wanted to have sex with her again then he’d better back off. Gina was not one for idle threats. Much to his chagrin, he acquiesced.
CHAPTER FIVE - Senior Year
Senior year was a blur. Mike did not attend one football game even though the season was dedicated to him and his dead friends. The Rebels went 3-5, their worst season in a decade-and-a-half. He barely managed to go to a class or two a day, he wasn’t even sure why he bothered. Scratch that—he knew exactly why and her name was Jandilyn Hollow.
“Mike, I know you have Science next what are you doing on this side of the building?” Jandilyn asked as she exited her advanced English class. She feigned anger badly, her heart raced every time she saw him.
“I was lost and now I’m found,” Mike told her, oblivious to the stares from their classmates. The couple had become somewhat of a topic of discussion. Mike had fallen far from his perch but still the ‘inners’ couldn’t believe how far down he would stoop to go out with the class pump. Mike had taken two of his classmates to task about rumors they were spreading about Jandilyn. They both had recanted their statements in blood.
***
“Why are they saying these things about you?” Mike had asked Jandilyn one day a few weeks previous. Jandilyn had been washing his bloodied knuckles.
She didn’t look up as she applied some salve to his cuts. “I got in a fight with Renee McMahon back in the ninth grade—it started then.”
Renee McMahon’s father owned McMahon Mortuaries, ‘Where all your loved one’s final needs are met’. The family was from money and Renee liked to let everyone know. She was the captain of the cheerleading squad and class vice president. Her nose was so upturned she had to go to the chiropractor weekly to realign her spine.
“The ninth grade? Isn’t it over yet?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s over, but we haven’t talked since then. Once the word is out that you’re a slut, there’s no return.”
“But why now?” Mike asked, wincing as she pulled a piece of a tooth out of his index knuckle.
“Are you really so naïve?”
“What?”
“You do remember that until recently you were a co-captain on the football team.”
“Dating a cheerleader,” Mike finished with chagrin. “Jandilyn, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be, it isn’t anything I haven’t heard before, plus I get the added bonus of you,” she said kissing him on his cheek.
“What does she care? What do any of them care? None of them wanted anything to do with me after that god damned accident,” Mike said with vehemence.
“You were one of them, Mike, you were in the ‘in’ crowd. You had everything, at least as much as high schoolers are concerned. Maybe they didn’t want to believe all they had could be taken just as quickly. Better to shun you than to try to accept what had happened.”
“Wow, are we all that shallow?”
“Did you ever talk to me before the accident?”
“No,” Mike said, bowing his head.
“Stop, Mike, don’t go getting all soft on me. It’s us now, we’re a team, you and me. And you’ve got to promise me something.” She looked up at him with her sky blue eyes.
“Anything.”
“No more fights.”
“Shit, I was going to add that exclusion.”
“Mike!”
“Jandilyn, they are lying pieces of shit. I’m defending your honor.”
“I don’t need my honor defended, Mike, it’s still completely intact.”
“One more?” Mike asked.
“Mike!” she squealed as Mike turned and grabbed her midsection. He attacked her feverishly with tickles. He forced her onto the couch where he could use his body weight to hold her in place. “Stop… I… can’t… breathe!”
Mike bent down and kissed her.
“Now you’ve definitely taken my breath away,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck pulling him down on top of her.
***
“You need to get to your next class,” Jandilyn said as Mike walked her t
o her locker.
He wanted to ask her why he should bother. Every teacher was passing him with a ‘C’ or better and for the most part he never attended. He didn’t know if they were doing him any favors or not—the free time it afforded gave him entirely too much time to think.
Mike didn’t show up for graduation. That would have entailed sitting on the football field for the commencement speeches and he still couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He was sitting on Jandilyn’s porch when she and her parents came home from the ceremony.
“Where were you?” Jandilyn asked flushed with excitement to finally be free of the oppression that was high school, especially for those on the outside looking in.
“Hello, Michael,” Mr. Hollow said stiffly. He had hoped Jandilyn would finally come to her senses and let the ‘damaged’ boy go, ending the year long frost between mother and daughter. He had to admit the kid had brought a sparkle to his daughter’s eye, something that had been in serious decline since freshman year. But enough was enough, she was poised to venture forth into the world and Mr. Hollow was afraid Mike might be the anchor his wife said he was.
“Hello, Mr. Hollow,” Mike said politely, but his eyes were on Jandilyn as he stood.
“Did you even graduate today?” Mrs. Hollow asked him.
“Mom, you know he did. They called your name twice,” she said, turning back to Mike. “How come you didn’t go?” She grabbed his hand.
“Seemed like a waste of time,” he told her.
“But sitting on our front porch for God knows how long seemed better?” Mrs. Hollow asked as she pushed past and went into the house.
Mike was about to answer, ‘Yes, yes it was,’ but Jandilyn placed her index fingers against his lips and shook her head no with a big smile. “Don’t you dare,” she said softly.
“Well, he’s here now,” Mrs. Hollow shouted from inside the house, “ask him if he wants a drink of water.”
“See, she’s getting better.” Jandilyn smiled.
“She probably wants to spit in it.” Mike laughed.
“You’re horrible.” Jandilyn laughed.
“But funny,” Mr. Hollow said as he walked past, a ghost of a smile on his lips.