Taken by Storm (12 page)

Authors: Angela Morrison

Tags: #Social Issues, #Dating & Sex, #Christian, #Friendship, #Juvenile Fiction, #Sports & Recreation, #General, #Religious, #Water Sports, #Death & Dying

Who is this girl who applies
watermelon lip gloss, wraps
in her accidentally sexy thrift store find,
and creeps down the stairs?
she hustles past my parents
nodding to the late news
into the safe basement
dark.

the stairs creak and I know
who she is: a criminal.
I flee into the cold
night, shivering, ashamed
that this all feels so
delicious.

I perch on the bottom step,
my top lip perspiring,
and await
my michael,
gray hoodie, black jacket,
jeans that hold him too close,
biblical hair, the stubble hiding
his face—his warm mouth that betrays
him more than he knows—
a pain in his rich gray eyes
that starts me
praying he’ll need me
again.

chapter 15

THERAPY

MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG—VOLUME #8

i launch into the night in Gram’s old blue Chrysler wondering if Isadore can attack while i’m driving. Would i crash and burn? Am i that psycho?

i must be. If i’m sane, what am i doing driving out to see Leesie? i should be heading down the highway toward Lake Coeur d’Alene. When i couldn’t get her online earlier, i tried to book a dive trip, but all i could think about while i surfed for deals was her hair. She thinks i’m a freak, or a patient, or her next convert. i don’t want that.

What do i want? i want to feel like a normal guy out with a hot chick, but i couldn’t even kiss her at the lake. i’m not even sure she wanted me to. Sunday night there was something precious and holy about her. Touching her, connecting, gave me the first moments of peace i’ve had since Isadore. i’m crazy to taste it again. Is that enough for her? Will she be okay if i just want to hold her hand, sink into her cool blue-green eyes, and breathe down her hair?

i take the first curve on the gravel road out to her farm too fast and spin out. Freaks me. i cut my speed and put on my high beams. The road twists again and then goes straight up and down steep hills, past empty fields, and, every mile or so, a house surrounded by low corrugated metal buildings, old wood barns, or a square grain elevator tower.

Leesie’s old-fashioned farmhouse sits back from the road. She waits for me, wrapped in her fringy suede, sitting on the bottom step of a short flight of cement stairs that lead from the road up to the yard. i can see the front of the house from the car, wide steps and a big porch. The light shows pumpkins and cornstalks crowding around the door.

When i get out of the car, she greets me with, “You shaved.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you look—” She trails off.

i washed my hair, too, so i know that barnyard smell isn’t me. i pull a face.

“Gross. I know.” She stands up. i wish she’d smile. Her hair refracts the floodlight shining on the yard. “It doesn’t always stink like this. The barnyard’s still drying out from that thunderstorm.”

“What
is
that?” i plug my nose.

“Hogs.” She crinkles up her nose. “Just up the road.” She motions toward the curved outline of a huge barn, dark against the bright night sky.

i glance around. From what i can see, the place is full of neat gardens like Gram’s used to be. The shape of a grain elevator hulks across the road from the house.

Leesie takes a step toward me. “You want a tour? Most of the plants came from your gram. Must be hard on her not being able to keep her garden up like she used to.”

“Naw.” i focus back on Leesie. “Maybe another time when we can see better.”

“We could walk down to the sow barn. There’s a new litter of piglets.”

i can only imagine how that place stinks. “Can’t we just go inside and talk?” i step closer to her.

“You want to meet my parents?” Leesie drifts over to the front fender. “I didn’t tell them you were coming. Just slipped out.”

“You don’t have a ‘family rule’ about that?” i back up to the car, lean against it, close to her but not touching.

She finally lets loose a smile. “Not yet. I better not be out too long.” She lifts her brows. “I don’t usually—”

“Sneak around with a guy?”

“And you’re not even a member.”

“Of what? The butt-pinching club?”

She laughs. “My church.” Her shoulder settles against my arm.

i lean into her. “Is that a prerequisite for sneaking?”

“Kind of.” Her words come out sort of breathless.

Standing next to her, touching her again, makes me feel breathless, too. Maybe i can do more than hold her hand. “i came all the way out here on your crazed road.” i touch her hair. “What do you want to do?”

She starts away from me. “That gives me an idea.” She walks around Gram’s car, sizing it up. “You ever been hill jumping?”

i shake my head. i want to touch her hair again. Smother my face in it.

“Better give me the keys.”

i hesitate. Gram loves her car. She’s had it for decades.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been driving this road since I was fourteen.”

i drop the keys into her hand. i’m ready to agree to anything as long as she doesn’t disappear into her house and leave me to pig stink and Isadore reruns, trying to find my way back to her lake alone.

“I like this.” She holds up Gram’s crocheted bunny. “Really you.”

She starts the car up. i get into the passenger’s side, fasten my seat belt. She flips a U-turn and drives, slow and stealthy, for about half a mile, then revs the engine. We squeal up the first hill, spraying gravel in our wake. Leesie guns it at the top.

i feel my face relaxing into an idiot grin as we speed down the other side. “Whoa, left my stomach back there.” This is a feature of the Palouse hills Dad never shared. i can see him doing this—in this same old car.

Leesie keeps her face straight, glances over at me with one eyebrow raised. “Next one’s steeper—you get more of a pop.” Before i know it, Gram’s ancient Chrysler roars up another hill.

“How fast are you going?” i yell over the straining engine.

“Just seventy. I don’t want to push it.”

We pop over the second hill. Leesie yells, “Yee ha!” like a bronco buster in an old western.

“Are all country girls like you?” i hang on to the dashboard.

She giggles and guns it over another hill. “Yee ha!” She fish-tails it down the backside. “You want me to spin it? This is a good spot for a 360.”

i shake my head and yell, “No!”

She barrels up the last hill, flips a U-turn in the loose gravel, and heads back through our dust cloud for another round, laughing and yelling, “Yee ha!” all the way.

i almost feel like i can laugh with her, yell like a cowboy, not care about anything except the next hilltop gut rush.

We get back to her house too soon. She parks by the steps.

“Are we done?” i don’t want it to be over, don’t want her to leave. “Can we go again?”

“I don’t think we should put Gram’s car through anymore.” She cranks the gearshift into park, shuts off the engine.

“Do you think we left any of it back there?”

“Should I check the bumper?” She tries to look serious. “I think I heard something clank.”

“Gram’ll kill me.”

“It’s fine.” She pats the dashboard. “Poor old thing needed a workout.”

“What happens”—maybe i should have asked this sooner—“if you meet another car coming up the other side of the hill?”

“That’s why I hang to the right at the top.”

“No way.”

“Way. There’s room for two cars.” She tips her head sideways. “You just don’t want to meet a grain truck or some doof in a tractor.”

“i trusted you with my life?”

“And Gram’s car.”

i undo my seat belt, stretch. Gram’s car predates bucket seats. i move along the bench a few inches closer to Leesie. The pig stink doesn’t penetrate the car. i find the scent of her jacket, but i’m not close enough to whiff her hair. i stretch my arm across the back of the seat.

She tries to turn in her seat, can’t because of her seat belt. She unlatches it, twists sideways with her right leg up on the bench, hooked under her left. Then she puts her foot back down. Her hand drifts toward the door handle—no—back to the steering wheel. Yes.

i need to feel that she’s warm and real. Solid. My hand slides down the seat back and picks up her free hand, the one i hurt. The calm from Sunday night returns. i examine her cuts, curved to fit my fingernails. “How is it tonight?”

“Okay, I guess.” Her clear eyes fill mine. “How are you?”

“Better.” My voice sinks low. “Thanks for letting me come out.”

“If you want to talk about it—”

“Naw.” My voice is husky. i press her hand.

She draws it away. “I’ve got to go. I can’t—” The other hand is back on the door handle.

No. Please. i edge closer to her. “What did you do at church tonight?” i whiff her hair. “Burn incense? Talk to more angels?”

“Incense?” She leans toward me. “Mormons don’t do incense.”

“Not even the hippie kind?” i flip the fringe on her jacket, keep a couple pieces to play with. “No angels, either?”

“If you have to know”—she watches me twist her jacket fringe together—“they just showed the Sex Lady video again.”

“At church?” Maybe Mormons are hipper than i thought.

“It’s about abstinence. Very churchy.”

i drop the fringe. “So you’re totally brainwashed?”

“Taught the truth.” She untangles the suede strips, combs the rest flat with her fingers.

“That’s why you have that rule?”

“You mean: ‘do not go into a house alone with a member of the opposite sex’? That’s only the beginning. My whole life is a list of rules.” She pulls a card out of her pocket and hands it to me. i can’t read it in the dark.

She sits forward, stares out the front window. “Keep both feet on the floor. Never go into a guy’s bedroom. No parking. No necking. No petting. No fornication. No tongue.”

“No tongue?”

She drums the steering wheel with her fingers.

“Seriously, you can’t even French-kiss?”

“It’s not like I can’t. I have a tongue.” She licks her lips. “I just choose not to use it.”

“Fornication?”

She nods, won’t face me. “That’s the biggie.”

“Lightning bolts fall from the sky?”

“Something like that. Painful confession, eternal salvation put on hold, and it would break my dad’s heart. My mom would strangle me.”