Flecks of Gold (2 page)

Mom had gone through a lot of lousy boyfriends throughout my life, but no one had ever tried to hurt us physically before. After Mom’s tears dried, we sat in silence on the floor, staring at the advertisement on the back of Joe’s magazine. It was a real estate promotion for Tucson, Arizona.

“How many months are left on the lease for the apartment?” Mom asked suddenly. It was no surprise to me that Mom had lost track of how long we’d lived in our Portland apartment. Days, weeks, years had no meaning to her, so I kept track of all our expenses.

“We’ve been on a month-to-month lease for awhile now.”

“Good. I think we need to leave. I know not all the police in Portland are Joe’s friends, but I don’t want to risk it.”

I reluctantly nodded. I wanted to see Joe go down, but neither of us knew what kind of support he had at the police station. “I’ll call the manager and give him our notice,” I said.

“I don’t care about losing money for the rest of the month. We need to go now.” She looked around as if unsure of where to start.

“Look in the phone book under movers while I call to cancel our utilities,” I directed.

Mom hired some people to pack up and move for us. She offered to pay them extra to come in an hour, and we rushed to pack a few days’ worth of clothes and toiletries so that we could help load boxes by the time the men came.

“Where are we going to go?” I asked, closing a box of living room junk.

Mom grabbed the People magazine off the coffee table as the movers lifted it. “Here.” She jabbed her finger at the sun-filled picture in the ad.

“Okay. I’d better call the number and see if they can start looking for something while we’re driving there.” I spent the next hour trying to sort out living arrangements for sunny Arizona.

Two days later the screen door of a tiny red and pink brick house slammed shut behind me as I hefted my backpack higher on my shoulders and headed to my first day of school. The sun was out, dispelling the slight chill of night. The morning’s warmth startled me, and it hit me again how little I knew about Arizona. Cactus arrangements were a popular yard design at the houses I passed. I found only a few plants that looked at all familiar.

A strange bush with tiny, orange, egg-shaped fruits caught my eye, so I picked one to examine it. It had a smooth outer skin and was about the size of a salad tomato.

“They’re called kumquats,” a voice said over my shoulder. I jumped, lost my footing, and backed up quickly to recover my balance. The voice belonged to a tanned guy with dark brown hair who looked about my age. He wore slacks and a letterman’s jacket that almost matched the blue of his eyes. He was handsome and he smiled invitingly. The thought of Joe flashed through my mind.

“Thanks.” I turned to walk quickly toward school.

“Wait.”

A whoosh went through me like a cool blue blanket of weblike fibers. It covered my mind, stopping thought, and spread through my body in a chill. My feet halted of their own volition.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I just saw you looking at that kumquat and thought you didn’t know what it was. It’s actually pretty strange that any are left on the bush so late in the season.”

He caught up, and I started moving again, bombarded by foreign wisps of fanciful thoughts. I shook my head to dispel the strange feelings.

He nodded toward the fruit I still held. “You don’t have to peel it or anything. Just pop it in your mouth. Kumquats are good, though they’re kind of sour. You’ll have to tell me what you think. By the way, my name is Kelson. What’s yours?”

“Mary Margaret.” The two-word version of my name sprang out of my mouth as if summoned. I scowled at the sidewalk and tried to fight a completely out-of-character desire to tell this good-looking guy all about myself. I couldn’t help but like his name. It was distinctive, much better than mine. I’d never understood why Mom, so creative and non-traditional in so many ways, had fallen in love with such a boring name. We weren’t even Catholic.

“Mary Margaret. I don’t know why, but it seems to fit you.”

I almost snorted, but I didn’t want to look
too
unfeminine.

“Are you going to school?” he asked. Part of my mind couldn’t help but note how completely obvious the answer to his question was. Did he think that I walked around wearing a backpack simply to examine kumquats? But the greater, fog-filled part of my brain wanted to impress him. All sorts of silly words flashed through my head. Thankfully, before I could open my mouth and embarrass myself, he spoke again. “Do you want to walk with me the rest of the way?”

I was afraid to answer in case one of my nonsensical thoughts popped out, so I just nodded and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

“Come on now, you don’t strike me as the kind of girl who’s shy. Give me something to work with here.” He increased his pace to keep up with my staccato steps.

I combed my brain for something neutral to talk about. “Have you lived here very long?” I finally muttered.

“Have
I
? I think the real question is, ‘Where are you from that you don’t know what kumquats are?’ ”

“Oregon.”

“Really? What’s that like?”

“I liked it. It’s a lot greener than here.” I stopped, realizing I sounded juvenile.

“That would be really strange. I’ve lived in a desert my whole life. The only green here is cactus, desert brush, and transplanted trees. You must be having a hard time with the heat. How long have you been here?”

“Two days.”

“Oh, was it you who finally took that ugly pink house? I saw the moving van. I live on the corner, two houses away.”

“It isn’t so bad on the inside,” I said, feeling protective of the tiny house.

“I’m glad. I can never look at that thing for long—hurts my eyes.”

“It’s not like it’s fluorescent pink,” I snapped. I instantly felt horrible for being rude.

To my surprise, Kelson laughed. “Whoa there. I didn’t realize you two were so attached.” He smiled teasingly. “I won’t say anything else about your house.”

I flushed and resolved to watch my tongue. I was prone to speak before thinking and only afterwards would I realize that I’d been abrupt, tactless, or rude. I felt terrible later, but it was like demolishing a house only to realize afterward that you were just supposed to paint it.

We walked in silence for a while, and I was grateful. With my churning emotions, silence was safest, but it was still pretty uncomfortable. I held back a sigh of relief when we finally reached the school.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Mary Margaret. See you around.” Which probably meant, “I might see you, but don’t expect me to talk to you.”

“Yeah, see you. Thanks for the kumquat thing,” I said, holding the little fruit up like an idiot.

“Right. Tell me what you think.” He waved a final decisive good-bye.

I berated myself for my complete cheesiness. What was up with me this morning? So I’d never been the world’s most popular kid. Even if I was a bit of an outcast, I’d never had this much trouble making small talk before.

I went to the office and got my schedule, then headed to my first period class—chemistry. I found the room a little before the bell rang. Two girls in designer outfits were talking and laughing near the back of the class. Several boys drooled openly over them. The back was my favorite place to sit, so I approached the seat next to the girl with perfectly styled blonde hair wearing a tight, blue v-neck shirt and black pants. She looked up at me. I felt a twinge of regret for not choosing my outfit more carefully. My jeans were two years old, and my green washed-out shirt and old jacket hung on my body like a limp rag.

“This seat is saved.” The blonde girl eyed my towering height as if it disgusted her.

“Sorry.” I smiled tightly, looking into her eyes.

She recoiled. “Wow, Suze, take a look at this girl’s freaky eyes.” The rest of the students in the room turned to look. I dropped my gaze and quickly sat down a few seats away.

“Seriously, they’re like tiger eyes or something. It’s scary, and she’s like ten feet tall,” the girl continued loudly.

The bell rang, shutting the blonde up, but I kept my eyes cast down through the hour to avoid curious classmates trying to snatch a glimpse of the one-woman freak show. After awhile I felt the other kids’ eyes drift away and ignore me again. I noticed that no one ever came to sit in the “saved” seat. I slouched in my chair and simply endured, wishing I’d put off coming to school.

After class I went up to the teacher to ask him what I needed to do to catch up.

“I’m sorry,” he said in an oddly high voice. “I didn’t even see you. You should have said something.”

“It’s okay.” I was used to being overlooked. Sometimes I felt like it was almost magical the way my giant, tiger-eyed self could go unnoticed.

The teacher gave me my assignments, and I glumly left the room.

I was glad when it was finally lunch. English hadn’t gone well either, and my nerves were on overload. A traitorous part of me was angry with Mom for choosing pond scum as a boyfriend, but the bigger part of me knew it wasn’t her fault. I really didn’t feel like being rejected again, so I sat down at an empty table near a corner of the lunch room.

I was wallowing in a small, but beautifully decorated pity party, complete with imaginary streamers, so at first I didn’t hear my name.

“Hello? I’m talking to you, Mary Margaret,” someone said.

I looked up, startled. “What? Oh, uh, Kelson. I didn’t hear you.”

“Yeah, I got that. So can I sit here or what?”

“Sure.” I felt confused, but Kelson just plunked down, a sigh escaping his lips. A fresh wash of unfamiliar, worshipful thoughts swooped into my head.

“Today’s been horrible. My teachers must have conspired to assign a dune full of homework for the same day. I think they want to see if they can make us have a break up.”

My brow furrowed at “break up.” Was that a funny new way of saying break down? And what about the “dune” thing? Maybe he was a writer.

Then my cynical thoughts dulled and drifted away. “I’ve wondered if teachers tell each other when they’re going to give tests so that they can all do it on the same day,” I said. That wasn’t too bad. I’d managed to refrain from gushing, but I wondered why I was even concerned about what I said to Kelson. I didn’t do boys. I would talk to the occasional guy in an acquaintance kind of way, but I’d never been interested in pursuing a boy, no matter how cute—or rather,
especially
if I thought he was cute.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like I can study all the time,” he said.

“Hmm,” I said, sorting out my thoughts. Kelson was just a normal person. I could handle this. I’d never let crushes affect my behavior before, but the romantic blue-hued feelings were hard to ignore.

“Sometimes I wish I were magic and could just stop time long enough to get caught up with everything. Do you ever wish that?” He looked at me intently.

I started to grin like a loyal puppy, caught myself, and merely curved my lips courteously. I fought against agreeing with him, even though the swirling cacophony in my head wanted to. “I’m actually glad there’s no such thing as magic. The world has enough complications as it is.”

“Are you sure?” The tide of romantic thoughts receded, and I could almost swear I saw a calculated look in his eyes.

“So, I didn’t see you in any of my classes this morning,” I said.

He grinned. “No. What classes did you have?”

“Chemistry and English.”

“Oh, well I had P.E., then chemistry. What do you have this afternoon?”

I checked my schedule. “American government, then art.”

“Great! I have government too. We can walk together.”

He kept giving me an intense stare that thrilled and unnerved me at the same time. I needed a break from that intensity, so I told Kelson I had to stop at the bathroom for a minute and would meet him at the stairs.

I wanted to relax, but I was caught in the most unusual jumble of sensations. Kelson was gorgeous. I felt irresistibly drawn to him, which was what was freaking me out. I was not the kind of person to be overcome by good looks. In fact, I didn’t trust most men as far as I could throw them. Something had overridden my carefully cultivated safeguards, and I didn’t like it one bit.

As I turned these thoughts over in the bathroom, I remembered the kumquat, still in my backpack. Swinging the bag around, I pulled it out, rinsed it off in the yellowed sink, and looked up into the cracked mirror, scrutinizing myself. I had to have gotten my hair from my dad. No one on Mom’s side had chocolate brown hair.

As I bit the kumquat, juice squirted onto the corner of the bathroom mirror. A sour taste hit my tongue almost as strong as a lemon, but then sweetness spread through my mouth, leaving behind a pleasant aftertaste.

The taste reminded me of my confused emotions about Kelson. He seemed so sweet, but there was this indefinable feeling I got around him, like an aftertaste, that I couldn’t tell if I liked or not. But why was I so determined to find something bad in the one good thing that had happened today? I shook myself and went to meet him at the stairs. When I approached, he smiled, and I chided myself for being so suspicious of every man alive.