Amy Westerhill glanced across the classroom to where Alex Daniels sat a couple of rows over and two seats forward. He poured over the notebook on his desk, and didn’t seem to sense her fawn over the side of his face. She sketched the outline of his cheekbone and nose with her smoke-gray eyes while his busy pen scrawled down lecture notes.
The last time she tuned in, their US History teacher yammered on about Nathan Hale and his heroic contribution to the Revolutionary War. At least she thought that was today’s subject. For now, the din from the front of the classroom might well have been the monotone drone from the living room TV while the local anchor read the evening news—just a murmur in the background. What did she care about some guy who died over two hundred years ago when the rest of her life sat just across the room?
She tore her eyes away from Alex long enough to check the time. Her heart took a heavy beat and she had to catch a deep breath. This class period would be over in minutes. Not only would the bell signal the end of the school day, but it would also launch the next stage of her life. And that couldn’t come soon enough.
Earlier that week, while she helped her mom snap string beans from the garden for canning, Amy had asked for the day off from her chores on Friday so she could spend the afternoon with a friend. Of course, since dating wasn’t allowed until she turned sixteen, she didn’t admit the friend was a boy. In fact, when her mom asked her friend’s name, Amy tried a skill she had been working on—misdirected facts. Her mom was not easily tricked, but Amy forged ahead with nothing to lose but privilege for a week or so; such a small price for such a promising prize. Amy drew her eyes down toward the green beans in her lap, snapped the stem off one, and tossed it in the pile destined for compost.
“Alex,” she said. At the top edge of her vision, as she felt for the other end of the bean, she watched for her mother’s reaction. As expected, she jerked her head up and glared at Amy. Amy rolled her eyes up with an innocent, dimpled smile.
Her mom snarled, “Alex?” The weathered creases of her face were ruled with contempt and judgment.
Now came the true test, bare-faced eye contact while telling a full-on lie. Pull this one off and a new world opened up for the fourteen year old. “Oh, not that Alex, Mom,” she said and stretched her smile a little broader. She shook her head side to side as if her mother’s assumption was completely without merit. “She’s a girl in my history class.”
Actually it was that Alex. Amy had known him for three years, but he had always ignored her. She thought it because she was scrawny, immature, and two years behind him in school. Her mother had said Amy was a late bloomer and seemed happy about it. If she could dress Amy and fix her hair so she looked like an elementary school-girl until the day she graduated high school, so much the better. But since Amy got her first period a few months ago, and saw in the mirror the rapid changes her body had already undergone, she had also noticed that the same boys who used to strut past her in the hall like she didn’t exist, now turned when she walked by and undressed her with their leers. Besides, this didn’t really qualify as a date anyway. It’s not like we’re going as a couple to Dairy Queen, the county fair, or a school dance, she had justified in her mind. They were just going to take a bike ride together.
After the bell rang ending class, she and Alex walked to the bike rack. Amy had thought about this moment all day … all week, and had a vision of him holding her hand or at least talking to me. But rather, Alex, a step ahead, went straight to his bike like he either had a fire to go to … or was nervous. She understood that. Nerves had taken her as well, but she tried to keep them in check with a sweet smile she hoped appeared genuine. If he’d look at me anyway.
“Everything alright?” Amy asked when she caught up with him at the rack.
He didn’t answer, but retrieved a key from his pocket and unlocked the wheel. “Follow me,” he said, and then tore out of the school yard.
Amy watched puzzled for a couple of seconds, and then fumbled with her lock. When she got to the street, he was waiting.
“Ready?” Alex asked. He gave her a strange grin she had never seen on his face before.
She ignored it and pulled the pins holding her hair in a tight roll. With a shake of her head and a shoulder shrug, she said, “Sure, let’s go.”
She sped off ahead of him down State Street, passed her church, Henry’s Hardware and Two Brother’s Grocery. The wind tousled her shoulder-blade length blond hair as it flew behind her like golden angel wings. The afternoon’s dry heat blew across her freckled cheeks and chapped her oval lips. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.
Once they reached the edge of town, Alex took the lead, and for the next several miles they raced down country roads lined with cornfields. Ahead of Amy a couple of bike lengths, he made a sudden right turn she didn’t expect. She trusted him, so she kept in tight and followed him between two rows of young corn plants. She drew a breath of warm air expecting to smell the familiar fresh scent of the immature stalks but rather got a lung full of dust from the dirt kicked up by Alex’s bike-tires. That forced a cough and she peddled faster, gaining on him a little.
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Jearl Rugh 2012
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