Happenstance

Chapter Seven

Friday morning, I stepped out of my home to see a white SUV parallel parked next to the curb. Mrs. Pyles rolled down the window and waved.

“I told you I would be here!” she called, a big grin on her face.

I looked up. The clouds were gray, the sidewalk and grass were wet, but the raining had stopped. “I think it’s okay to walk.”

“It’s supposed to rain on and off all day, Easter. Get your rear in this car!”

I turned around, double-checking that Gina wasn’t watching me from the door then hurried to Mrs. Pyles’s vehicle.

“Buckle up,” she said, twisting the key in the ignition.

“Can we please hurry?” I asked, hearing the click at my hip as I fastened the seat belt.

She pulled away, and moments later, paused at a stop sign. A blue pickup passed through the puddle that always filled the corner of that intersection when it rained, splashing water all the way up the sign.

“If you’d been standing there, you would have been soaked,” Mrs. Pyles said, shaking her head.

“Thank you,” I said, biting at my thumbnail.

She pulled forward, and after a block, stopped at another stop sign. I looked over at the Dairy Queen. It was dark and the parking lot was bare. If it kept raining, we wouldn’t be much busier after school. Just as that thought crossed my mind, the sky began spitting on us.

Mrs. Pyles turned right toward the school, her blond hair grazing her shoulders as she leaned forward to turn on the windshield wipers. “Do you have plans for Spring Break?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“You’re not going to South Padre with the other seniors?” I gave her a side look. She smiled sheepishly. “I’ve noticed you’ve been spending time with Weston Gates. I thought maybe you would. Hoped maybe you would.”

“You’ve noticed?” I said, my heart beating fast. I thought we were being careful. Weston had been taking up for me in class, but I thought no one knew that we’d actually been spending time together.

She smiled her sweet smile. “Veronica Gates is in my women’s auxiliary church group. She’s talked about you two a little bit lately. That’s all. Just to me.”

“She doesn’t want anyone else to know, I’m sure.”

“She doesn’t want to cause problems.”

“For Weston and Alder.”

We parked in the teacher’s lot, and Mrs. Pyles turned to me. “He’s a nice boy.”

I waited, imagining she might tell me to stay away from him, or something equally offensive.

“You sure can pick ’em,” she said, winking at me.

She got out and shut her door. After briefly processing her words and feeling half a second of appreciation, I got out and hurried to walk next to her. We strode toward the school, dry under Mrs. Pyles’s umbrella. She pointed her key ring at the white SUV, and it made a stunted honking noise as it locked.

In grade school, before I realized I wouldn’t get a car at sixteen, I dreamed about what car I wanted. No matter what it was, it always had keyless entry. Something about holding that remote in my hand while the keys dangled from it seemed so cool. Then sixteen came and went, and so did seventeen. I went ahead and got my license, just to have an ID, but there was no point. Owning a car seemed so impossible. So I would just do one impossible thing at a time, starting with somehow getting myself to OSU’s campus. But even if I had to start walking in July, I would get there. Maybe, if he wasn’t already at Dallas or Duke, Weston could drop me off.

That thought warmed me as I walked down the long hallway lined with lockers, across the commons area to a set that sat alone in the middle of the floor next to the library. I specifically requested a locker here because, even though it wasn’t with the rest of the seniors, the library was surrounded by a wall of glass, and the librarian, Mrs. Boesch, always kept a watchful eye between classes.

I pulled books out of my backpack and hung it up on a hook. The morning sun streaming in through the front windows of the school was suddenly blocked, and I looked to my right to see Weston leaning against the locker next to mine.

“What are you doing after work tonight?”

I shrugged.

“Let’s eat at Los Potros.”

I looked around, and then nodded.

Weston beamed and walked away, not trying the slightest bit to conceal our conversation. I shut my locker, and Sara Glenn stared at me with her big, dark eyes.

“Are you screwing Weston Gates?” she asked.

I narrowed my eyes at her, disgust weighing down my face. What was it with small-town people automatically assuming that because two people of the opposite sex were speaking, they must be having sex? “No.”

“What was that, then? He just asked you to dinner. Why is he asking you out?”

“He didn’t ask me to dinner. You heard him wrong,” I said. Technically, it was the truth. He didn’t ask.

“I heard him,” Sara snapped. “I’m telling Alder.”

“Go ahead. She won’t believe you. She’ll assume you’re trying to get them to break up so you can take a stab at him.”

Sara thought about that for a moment, and then walked away, her confidence gone.

I took a deep breath and continued to class, my hands shaking and my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. That sudden burst of courage came from deep inside; a place I didn’t know existed. The thought of Sara ruining my little bit of happiness made me desperate enough to offer a threat that I myself found frightening.

Everyone was too excited about South Padre to bother giving me grief. By the time I’d made it to seventh period, as weird as it was to say, I’d actually had a pretty good day. Weston had pulled his stool over to my desk, and a combination of nausea and exhilaration swirled in my stomach.

“Check this out,” Weston said. His poster-sized project was spread out across the table, and I looked it over with an uncontrollable smile. It was a girl looking out the window, her face in shadow except for her bright blue eyes. She held her knees to her chest, and a small necklace hung loosely from her fingers. It was a silver heart with intricate detail chiseled around the border. In the middle appeared one word: Happenstance.

“It’s incredible,” I whispered. “She’s so pretty.” I felt an urge to run my fingers over it, but didn’t want to smear the charcoal.

“It’s you.”

I looked up at him, in shock. We’d been working on this project for three months. My eyebrow shot up, and I shook my head, unconvinced. “You’re such a liar.”

“I’m completely serious.”

“Is everyone ready to reveal their final project?” Mrs. Cup said as she sauntered into the classroom, dressed in a black shawl and pants suit. “I know you have all been working incredibly hard. In years past, you’ve taken home these projects and framed them, given them away, or did with them as you choose. But I’ve asked more from you this year. We’ve learned about Faulkner’s lessons and that as artists, you must learn to kill your darlings.” She sighed. “For your final grade, I’m going to ask this of you.” She held up Shannon LaBlue’s poster-sized painting and ripped it in half, length-wise. It made a quick, high-pitched sound, and we all gasped.

Shannon’s mouth fell open. She looked around, unsure of what to do.

Mrs. Cup walked to Zach Skidmore, who sat next to me. “Well?”

“Are you serious? I thought this was going to be the crowning project of my high school years. I worked my ass off on this, Mrs. Cup!”

“It’s your final grade.”

Zach stared at the ground for a moment, breathed out through his nose, and then took his project, a beautiful landscape, and ripped it in half. We all winced, as if he’d cut his wrists.

The teacher stood in front of my desk. I had worked hard on my project, a charcoal piece featuring a dark hallway with Victorian paintings. It made a horrid ripping sound as I separated one side from the other.

Mrs. Cup took a step, standing in front of Weston. His project was still laid out on my desk, behind him.

“Weston.”

“This is cruel,” he said.

“It’s a lesson. Not all lessons are easy. The best ones—those you learn the most from—are the most difficult.”

“I’m not doing it,” Weston said, shifting just slightly, protecting his elegant and tender rendering of me.

“It’s your final grade, Weston. It was the whole point.”

He stood, pulled his poster from the desk, and rolled it carefully. “Then I guess I fail.” He left the classroom and walked down the hall toward the parking lot.

Mrs. Cup shook her head, then took a step toward the next horrified student.

“It was you?” Frankie asked, a little stunned.

I nodded.

“An art project he’d been working on for three months . . . and it was you?”

“It was me.”

“Whoa. And he failed his art class to keep it. That’s . . . that’s kind of poignant.”

“I kind of thought that, but I wasn’t sure if I was reading it wrong.”

“How can you read that wrong? It’s so romantic I could die!” She bent over, nearly in half, pretending to sob in a very unflattering way.

“That’s ugly,” I said, trying to stifle a grin.

“It’s soooo beautiful! I can’t stand it! Agh ha ha!”

“Stop,” I said, scooping M&Ms into the cup of vanilla I’d just pulled out.

She stood up. “Sorry. I had a moment.”

I handed the M&M Blizzard to the little girl. She turned on her heels, revealing my next customer, Alder. Her eyes were red, and she was beyond pissed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice already breaking.

“We were just joking around. What can I get you?” I asked.

“Fuck you. You know what I’m talking about, Easter,” she seethed.

My mind raced for a response, but she hadn’t come for a fight. She was alone, and that wasn’t like the Erins.

She cocked her head a bit, impatient with my silence. “Answer me. And don’t you dare pretend to be innocent. We both know what’s been going on.”

Frankie stood beside me. “She’s working, Alder. You can talk about this later.”

“No, I can’t,” she said, her eyes glossing over. “Because I’m leaving in half an hour for South Padre. I was supposed to be riding with Weston, but he’s suddenly decided that he doesn’t want to go, so I’m riding with Sonny. Explain to me why that is, Easter.”

“I can’t speak for him.”

“Well someone’s going to have to. The only thing he said was that it wasn’t working out between us.”

“He broke up with you?”

Alder put both of her hands on the little counter in front of the window, palms down. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“I never expected him to,” I said. It was the truth.

“He didn’t have a lot of time to go into details, because he was taking some stupid drawing to Ponca City to have it framed.”

I choked. “He . . . what?”

“So you can tell me, Easter. Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, that same anger I felt with Sara bubbling up again. “Why am I doing something to you?”

“Has he been cheating on me? I deserve to know!”

Frankie put her hand on her hip. “If he broke up with you, does it really matter?”

Alder’s eyes targeted Frankie. “Oh, go push out another kid, Frankie.”

Frankie slowly moved me to the side and leaned down. “You need to leave right now, or you’re going to have to try to enjoy your senior trip with no boyfriend and a new black eye. Because I will come through this window at you.”

Alder rolled her eyes. She walked away, but stopped and came back. “You watch yourself, Easter. When I get back, I’m going to make it my mission to make you so miserable you’ll have to finish high school at home. You think I’ve been mean to you? You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“That sounds like a threat.” Frankie narrowed her eyes at Alder.

Alder smiled, but she looked more frightening that I’ve ever seen her. “I don’t make threats. I’m just giving her an idea of what the next six weeks of her life are going to be like.”

“Same thing,” Frankie said.

“I’m going to go enjoy my Spring Break. You should really try to enjoy yours.”

“I will,” I said, lifting my chin.

She shot me a look that made my blood run cold and returned to her Honda.

“Whew! You lit a fire under her ass!” Frankie said, nearly euphoric from the confrontation.

I leaned my butt against the counter. “She’s serious. When she gets back, it’s going to be hell.”

“Who cares?” Frankie said with a wink. “You’ve got Weston.”

“I don’t have him.”

“He’s framing your drawing.” She sighed. “He’s got it bad.”

“This is all really weird. Everything has been the same every day since first grade. Things have steadily gotten worse, and now they’re . . . I don’t know.”

“Amazing?”

“Different.”

Frankie nodded. An SUV pulled into the parking lot, and four kids hopped out, followed by their toddler-toting mother. Frankie and I got back to work.

I was feeling even more excited for Spring Break. If I was going to be punished for it, I was going to make sure every second was worth it.