Like dragonflies, p.5
Like Dragonflies, page 5
When I get outside, the chilly October air hits me and my teeth start chattering again. Dad is my knight in shining armor. He already has the passenger side door open and waiting for me. I slide in and click my seat belt on without a word.
“Hey, you okay, kiddo?” His voice is soft and comforting.
“Not really. Mom got so pissed over a spilled glass of water,” I say in shock.
“Yeah, not her proudest moment.” He shakes his head and gives my knee a gentle pat as he drives. “She’s stressing herself out. Ever since she’s taken a more prominent role in the women’s group, she’s been a little high-strung.”
“A little?” I grumble and fold my arms tight against my chest. My blouse is starting to dry but it’s still damp to the touch.
“Hey, why don’t I take you by The Grind House and you can grab your cookies ‘n cream latte? I know it’s your favorite.” He looks over at me when we stop at a red light and something takes over my stomach.
Butterflies.
Mars is working tonight. It’s Wednesday.
The thought of seeing Mars has a smile fighting its way onto my lips. I bounce my knuckle against my mouth and say, “Yeah. That sounds perfect.” The more Mars swarms my mind, the more my hands tingle and my ears heat. “Can you wait in the car?” I ask him.
He smiles at me a little and I know what he’s going to say before the words leave his mouth. “So the barista is a boy. I was right.”
“Just stay in the car, Dad. Please.” I’m smiling like an idiot now and the realization smacks me in the face…I have a crush on Mars.
When Dad pulls into the parking lot, I hop out. I steer my anxious feet toward the front door and a tingle twists up my spine when the brass bell jingles.
I can see the top of Mars’s head. His dark hair is casting a shadow over his face while he works on something I can’t see. I take another step closer then another and another until I’m at the counter.
He looks up and I see he’s been working on a sketch. I can’t make out what it is before he sweeps it from my view.
He’s an artist.
He’s like me.
Mars
Sometimes, when I’m feeling incredibly low, I try to sketch my mother. Sure, I’ve seen pictures, but I never knew her. I was just an infant when she died. In my head, she’s this beautiful, innocent woman who stares at me as though I’m her entire world.
Unfortunately, meth was her entire world.
Not me. Not Dad.
Drugs.
My drawings start out the same. Big, wide eyes. Pert, freckled nose. Full lips curving into a smile. Her hair is wispy and messy from the humid, Duncan, late summer air. She sits on the top of a hill with the starry night behind her.
I can never leave well enough alone.
Because as I draw her, my thoughts grow dark. I wonder why I was so bad she turned to drugs. It was especially hard when I was sixteen—the same age my mom would have gotten pregnant with me. If someone had handed me a baby, I’d have loved it with everything I had. But she didn’t.
So my portraits of my mother turn sinister. The darkness shadows her face, especially under her eyes. Her teeth narrow, the darkness growing wider between them until some spots on her teeth are missing altogether. I end up shading the freckles until they become sores from her scratching, deep and pitted. The darkness from the night wipes away all the stars and all her flyaway hairs until her hair is limp against her head, the backdrop solid black.
Those pictures do not go on my wall.
I hate they even exist in my mind.
I’m lost to the encroaching darkness. I’m shading in when the ding on the door drags me from the deep place I’ve been shackled to. From beside me, Haley’s headphones are so loud I can hear whichever feminist podcast she’s listening to clear as day. I barely have time to shove my sketchbook away as I meet the brilliant green eyes of Sage.
Sage. Sage. Sage.
All the shadows in my mind scatter like rats as this girl steps right into my world and brightens it up. For one moment, she sees. She sees the real man behind the façade of smiles and jokes and my big mouth.
Heartache, loneliness, and guilt look back at her.
She doesn’t shy away though.
No, Sage with the glittering gray-green eyes steps closer. Her cheeks are pink and her ears are red. Embarrassed and shy, but determined. That small glint in her stare, coupled with the way she lifts her chin slightly, pulls me the rest of the way from my dark, clouded mood and tethers me to her light.
I caught a shooting star.
Lassoed that thing just like Jimmy’s cousin, Buckie, lassoes his livestock when they break free from their fence.
She’s soaring through the darkness and I’ve grabbed hold. I don’t want to let go. I like the feelings she evokes from me. An invisible tug unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before.
“Hi,” I say in greeting, my usually big mouth soft for her. Only for her. Right now, she’s not some coffeehouse patron. She’s my savior. My relief from pain.
She bites on her bottom lip, her eyes dipping for a moment, hidden beneath her dark lashes. “Hi.”
“I missed you,” I blurt out.
Her head lifts. “You did?”
Rubbing at the back of my neck, I quickly recover. “I mean, I missed seeing you in here because I don’t work Tuesdays and Thursdays.” God, I’m such an idiot.
She smiles and arrests my heart. “I know. I came here yesterday and you weren’t here.”
“Same as last time?”
Her brows furl together making a cute crease between them. “Yeah. You remember?”
“I remember everything about you.”
I stifle a groan because that sounds like such a stalker thing to say.
Luckily, she doesn’t seem offended. If anything, she seems surprised. Pleasantly surprised. “Uh, to-go cup though. My dad is in the car waiting for me.”
It’s then I really take in her appearance. She’s dressed impeccably in a demure pleated skirt and a fancy white shirt. Her dark hair is smooth as silk, and for one second, I crave to reach over the counter to curl a finger through the strands to see what it feels like. I fist my hand before I do anything else creepy and fixate on the pearls wrapped around her pink neck. Like a white collar, keeping her captive.
And expensive.
When I glance out the windows, a black sedan sits outside. It, too, looks expensive. This girl is way out of my league. The girls I date are Duncan girls. Fast, loose, more baggage than me.
Not pretty, bright, shiny girls with innocence that drips from them.
I would make her dirty.
“Got it,” I utter, my voice husky. I try to hide my disappointment as I turn my back to her. I busy myself with a to-go cup and make her the same cookies ‘n cream latte as last time. A fancy design with the cream gets bypassed this time because the lid will hide it anyway.
When I turn around, she’s rubbing at something on her hand. At first I think it’s blood, but then I realize it’s paint. Like last time. Crimson and beautiful. I want to ask her what she was painting, but I don’t. I can’t. She deserves someone like one of the guys who comes in here after class. One of those who drives a Lexus, or some other equally nice vehicle, on his way to something great.
Not me.
Not Mars.
I’m just like the planet. Desolate. Lonely. Empty of life.
I pick up a Sharpie and doodle the same dragonfly I drew on Monday at home. Two rings instead of wings orbiting its body. I draw a small dot on one wing ring and a larger one on the other.
Sage and me.
Existing in the same space, but not on the same path.
In another world—another life.
This one, we exist alongside each other but never intersect.
I sign MM for Mars McKinney before setting it on the counter between us. Finally, her eyes lift again to meet mine. Something akin to concern contorts her expression, but I shake it off and offer her my best Mars smile.
“This one is on the house,” I tell her.
“You can’t actually do that,” Haley chimes in. “Dave will fire you.”
Sage flinches as she fumbles for her purse.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a five before waving it at Haley. “It’s on me then.” My eyes meet Sage’s. “It’s on me, Sage.”
“I…you didn’t…uh…thank you.” Her cheeks blaze red. “That was sweet.”
When she smiles, wide and unencumbered by her shyness, I’m once again yanked into her brightness. Before I can consider the repercussions of my actions, I scribble my phone number on her cup.
I hold the cup up to her and her soft fingers brush against mine as she takes it. And much too soon, she’s pulling away.
“I guess I’ll see you Friday,” she murmurs.
I think about my number on her cup. “Or you could call me and we could see each other sooner. I don’t work tomorrow night. I could take you out to dinner or something.”
Before she can open her mouth to respond, Haley is up in our business.
“Oh, Romeo. Does this really work on girls? Women these days will ask a guy out if they want to date them. I swear, society is still so archaic. Why is it the man’s job to initiate—”
“Yes,” Sage blurts out, interrupting Haley’s newest feminist rant this evening. Whatever podcast she’s listening to has her on a roll tonight. I much prefer boring—ignoring me—H—aley rather than feminist Haley. I’d been doing everything I could to ignore it until Sage arrived.
“You’ll go out with me?”
Sage nods and shoots Haley an annoyed look. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Me too,” I say. I can’t help but rub at the place on my chest over my apron that seems to be thumping wildly inside.
Sage’s gaze falls to my hand and she smiles before giving me a small wave. “I have to go. I’ll text you.”
I wave back and then watch her scurry out of the coffee shop. Soon, she’s in the car and gone.
Darkness looms over me like a tidal wave. Higher and higher, threatening to swallow me whole.
Mom was like Sage once: innocent and trusting. She trusted my dad and he messed up. He accidentally gave her me. I tainted their love and destroyed their lives.
Everything assaults my mind at once. My criminal record. My past with drugs. Every single time my dad put his hands on me. The aching, overwhelming weight of despair I’m in, this life sucking everything good and beautiful into my void.
I’m not Mars
I’m a black hole.
I glance over at my sketchbook. My destroyed mother’s face looks back at me. Accusation stares back at me in her dead eyes. I want to rip the page from my book and tear it to shreds.
But the past doesn’t disappear that easily.
The past can’t be undone simply because you don’t want it standing behind you, shadowing every single thing you do.
All I can do is turn the page.
And I do.
I flip the sketchbook to a blank, white page.
Pure and untainted by me.
Yet.
Cringing away those dark thoughts, I think about Sage. She’s like a flower in a field of weeds. I think about last spring when I cleaned out the flowerbeds at our trailer. The weeds had taken over, but right there in the middle grew a pretty pink flower. Bugs buzzed around me, but they all knew the flower was too pure for them. Nothing touched the flower. Nothing but me. I’d reverently run my dirty thumb along the petals, leaving my remnants behind. I had dirtied it up, but it was still pretty. All too happily, I’d plucked the offending weeds from around it and gave it space to grow. I watered that flower and admired it way too long.
The next morning, I came out to look at the pretty thing.
It was gone.
Dad, in his drunkenness, drove his truck into the yard. Smashed the only pretty thing in our trailer park beneath his tire. I can’t help but feel like it was my fault. I touched it and brought with that touch, my luck.
Bad, bad luck.
With soft strokes, I draw that flower. No weeds. No dirt on the petals. Safe from big tires. But then, because I can’t help myself, I draw a dragonfly, too. Not a normal one with thin, opaque wings. I draw one that doesn’t belong here. One with planetary wings fit for Saturn or some other planet in the universe. The dragonfly hovers just close enough it can admire the flower, but doesn’t ruin it.
Maybe she won’t call.
Maybe I can admire her from afar. Just far enough, I don’t ruin her like I ruin everything else.
Nothing will taint her. Nothing will crush her. Nothing will destroy her.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Unknown Number: You like dragonflies.
I stare at her words. It’s her. Sage with the sweet smile and wide green eyes.
Don’t reply.
Don’t do it.
Me: I like flowers more.
I save her name into my phone, allowing myself the simple luxury of seeing who it is that actually wants to talk to me.
Sage: Not me. I like dragonflies. Flowers are stuck rooted to one spot. Dragonflies get to see it all.
I rub at the back of my neck and stare at her text.
Me: Not everything to be seen is pretty.
Sage: When you’re surrounded by flowers, they lose their prettiness. Even flowers wish they could be dragonflies.
And dragonflies wish they could be with flowers.
Sage
My room smells like a salon. I only notice it once I unplug the flat iron. I hate the smell of hair products, because it reminds me of tagging along with Mom to get her hair done. Before she joined the Ladies of Ashton Hills, she spent her free time in the salon gossiping under the guise of concern.
That’s when I first realized how phony people could be.
I stare at my bone straight raven hair in the mirror. I wonder if I’m becoming one of them. I hate being groomed until I’m shiny and perfect, but here I am with perfect hair, shiny lips, and an expensive outfit.
My stomach flops and I blink rapidly at my reflection.
I’m turning into my mother.
Without a second thought, I brush my hair into a high ponytail and take off the overpriced clothes. I feel much better in a pair of jeans and a vintage Pearl Jam concert tee. I glance at myself in the mirror once more and decide to keep the lip gloss. I like the way it makes my lips sparkle.
A knock on my bedroom door sends my hand flying to my chest. It has to be Dad. Mom always knocks demurely. Besides, she’s out with the Ladies of Ashton Hills planning another pointless charity event.
Thank God I embarrassed her so much at the dinner, because she didn’t ask me to come along this time.
I open the door for Dad and he strides in, then sits on my bed. “You look beautiful,” he says. A genuine smile makes his eyes light up.
“You sure?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow at him. “I was going to wear something fancy, but then I decided I should just be comfortable.” I look to him for a response and he chuckles at me.
“Sage, you could wear a brown paper sack and look beautiful. Now, you wanna tell me where you’re going?” he asks. He regards me with curiosity but I remain tight-lipped.
When Mars asked me to go out with him, I was stunned. He wanted to go out with me. In public. Like a date.
Most boys thought I was boring and wouldn’t even talk to me unless it was about helping them with schoolwork. Mom tries to set me up on dates all the time, but I manage to wiggle out of them.
This will be my first real date. The first time a guy asked me out because he saw something in me he liked. My knees go soft at the thought.
“I’m going to grab something to eat,” I tell him with a nonchalant shrug. I don’t tell Dad I’m going on my first real date with a boy I actually like. He’ll make a big deal over it, and I’ll be more nervous than I already am.
I’m wishing I hadn’t put my hair in a ponytail now because I know my ears are bright pink. Stupid ears. They’re like a freaking neon sign, letting everyone know I’m hiding something.
“With who, exactly?” he probes. Now his arms are folded and I know I have to give him something to chew on or we’ll be here all night. I tap my knuckle against my lip and clear my throat.
“Just a friend I met at The Grind House.” Right on cue, my phone chimes with a text message and I race to pick it up.
Mars: I’ll be there in five minutes.
My cheeks burn from smiling so hard. I slide the phone in my back pocket and look at Dad with wide innocent eyes. He’s not buying it though.
“It’s a boy. Isn’t it?” he grumbles. “The barista.”
“It’s a friend,” I tell him as I make my way to my bedroom door. I can see unspoken words mounting behind his eyes, but I make a break for it and rush down the steps to the foyer.
“Sage Emerson,” he bellows. He’s leaning over the rail, giving me his best fatherly glare. I respond by batting my lashes and offering him a sweet smile.
“Love you, Dad. Gotta go!” I’m out of the door before he can come downstairs and interrogate me more. I love him but I don’t need to be nervous before this date.
Mars is the only person I’ve ever been around who doesn’t send the stone wall rolling in. I want to keep it that way.
Cool wind wraps around me, making me wish I’d grabbed a jacket, but going back in the house means getting hit with questions I’m not ready to answer. I glance over my shoulder and see the curtain in the living room move.
Come on, Mars…
In the distance, I hear rumbling and knocking. I turn my concentration toward the sound with pure curiosity. It moves closer and I stretch my neck to see where it’s coming from. Headlights bend the corner and start moving down the private road that leads to my house.
Mars?
I step into the driveway just before the noisy pickup truck stops in front of the house. I see slices of Mars’s handsome face hidden in the shadows and excitement balloons inside of me, ready to pop.
