The Girl in the Road

The Feeling is Mutual

Cam

I know, I know—I should just man up and apologize to Blue.

It doesn’t feel right, though. Aspen’s right that he's sensitive, and that his anger toward me comes from a place of hurt and abandonment, but the fact remains that I never actually abandoned him. He saw what was happening; he knew the life that was being laid out for me. More importantly, he knew how important it was to my dad that I seize that life—how much better I was treated at home when I did. For him to drop me as a friend over it was just… harsh.

“Cam?” asks Tanner, nudging me. “You okay, bro?”

“Yeah,” I say, pretending to turn my focus back toward the teacher. “Fine.”

It’s Friday—last period. I’ve spent most of the week debating whether or not to apologize to Blue, and I still haven’t made up my mind. Every time I cross paths with him, I feel an overwhelming sense of resentment; yet, every time I watch him get into that ugly blue Beemer after school and remember that he gets to go make music with Aspen and I don’t, I tell myself it’ll be worth it to just man up and do it, already.

I can’t stop thinking about her—not even when I sleep. It’s not just that she’s pretty—unfairly and distractingly pretty, I might add—it’s how… intriguing she is. How much do I really even know about her? What’s it like for her at school? Surely the boys are all over her, right? Does she have a boyfriend? Just because she’s not with Blue doesn’t mean she’s not with anyone.

Also… what’s her singing voice like? I have a feeling she’s got a lot of range—a real Christina Aguilera type. Not exactly my favorite musician, but you’ve gotta admit, the woman’s got lungs.

I have to know. More importantly, though, I have to see her again. We’ve made no weekend plans, and Mel has made about a thousand for us. If I don’t find a way to their band practice today, I might not see Aspen until… well, I don’t even know when.

As soon as the bell rings, I sprint out of class and make for Blue’s locker. He freezes in his tracks when he sees me, then asks coldly, “Is this about Aspen?”

“No,” I lie. “It’s about us.” God, that sounds dorky. “Our… friendship.” Even worse.

He snorts. “Please. It’s about Aspen, and we both know it.”

Well, he’s never been stupid. “Look—maybe it is, sort of. But it doesn’t mean it’s not true. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for ditching the band. I’m sorry for making you feel like I was ditching you. I never actually wanted to ditch you—never actually thought I’d lose your friendship over it. If I had…” I trail off, suddenly realizing I might just be saying too much.

“If you had, what?”

What was I about to say? That if I had known leaving Rocket Glower would end our friendship, I wouldn’t have done it? That if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t join the football team at all?

It doesn’t exactly sound half bad. Then again, if I hadn’t joined the team, I wouldn’t have been at Rebecca Johnson’s party that night, and thus I wouldn’t have been there to save Aspen.

Maybe, in that parallel world, someone else would have. But I really like the world where it was me.

“I don’t know,” I finally tell him. “But I would have done something differently—even if it was just apologizing to you sooner. I never meant to hurt you, man. You were my best friend.”

Blue holds my gaze for a moment, then says, “Aspen said you wanted to come to practice. Is that still true?”

“Well… yeah. Not all the time, I mean. Just to see.”

“Hear,” he corrects.

“Right—hear.”

“And what about your precious football team? Isn’t Friday game day?”

Normally, yes. But since we’re a prep school and not a public school, our game schedule is a bit… light. Today is just a practice day, not a game day.

That being said, they still won’t love me missing my second practice in one week. Nor will my father, which is a much more daunting thought.

But I don’t care. I want to go. I want to see her.

So I say for the second time that week, “They’ll be fine.”

And I follow him to his car.

- - - - -

“Does this mean I have to take you to school on Monday?” grumbles Blue as he drives us down a road called Gresham that seems to contain more abandoned houses than functioning ones.

“No,” I say. I know I should have taken my own car, but I knew he’d be picking up Aspen from school, and I wanted to be there. “Not unless you want to.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Not exactly a huge surprise. He never actually accepted my apology, after all.

He turns from Gresham onto Magden. The houses on Magden are less abandoned, but also less qualified to be called “houses” at all; it’s really more of a trailer park. There aren’t many people hanging outside, but the few that are send us horribly dirty looks when they see our car driving through their neighborhood.

“Weird route you’re taking to Rucker High, isn’t it?” I ask him as I smile politely at someone who I’m pretty sure only has one eye.

“Rucker?” he repeats as he pulls off to the side of the road and puts the car in park. “I pick her up from her place on Fridays. They shortened them this year because of budget cuts.”

They shortened school hours on Fridays because they didn’t have enough money? Is that even legal?

Deciding to let that one go for now, I glance around. I’m glad to get to see her place, only… this can’t be her place, can it? “Which one is hers?”

He gestures to the decrepit-looking trailer we’re closest to. I question whether the entire thing might fall down at any moment. “That’s hers.”

There’s no way.

Only… there is a way. Because out of it steps that beautiful, mysterious girl I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I peeled her bleeding body off the road last weekend.

She’s even prettier than I remembered. Her cuts and bruises have faded, though they aren’t gone entirely. She’s washed and combed her hair at least once since then, and while it isn’t exactly well-groomed, it still maintains a glossy, wavy sort of quality that makes it almost impossible not to stare at. Her light blue eyes are ringed with dark liner, but it’s not quite as heavy as it was the day I met her, which gives the rest of her features a chance to shine through. Each one I notice—heart-shaped face; slender neck; small, slightly crooked nose—is even prettier than the last.

And, of course, she’s wearing another band tee. Today’s is Pink Floyd.

She stops short when she sees me. “What are you doing here?”

“He apologized,” Blue explains grimly. “I suspect you had something to do with it.”

She manages a weak smile at that, but I can’t help sensing that she’s not exactly pleased to see me.

I hop from the shotgun spot to the back seat to make room for her (it’s a convertible, if I didn’t mention that—nice and understated, like Blue), then lean forward and ask her as soon as she’s settled in, “It’s okay that I’m here, right?”

“What? Yeah—of course.” She glances at Blue, waits for him to pull back out so the wind will keep him from hearing her, then adds to me, “I just wasn’t expecting you… here.”

Is it possible she’s… embarrassed?

Granted, I did have a rather extreme reaction to seeing her neighborhood. It’s hard for me to imagine a girl like her growing up in a place like this. But I didn’t judge her for it, did I?

“Aspen,” I say. “I don’t care how much money you have or where you’re from. Did you think I would?”

She holds my gaze for a moment. She really has the loveliest eyes—the sort of eyes that makes you never want to look anywhere else. Finally, she says, “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve quite figured you out yet.”

I can’t help but grin at that. “Believe me—the feeling is mutual.”

- - - - -

It’s weird being back in Blue’s garage. His mom isn’t home—she stays in San Francisco most weekdays to work at her video game company—but his dad greets me with a big bear hug, which is pretty cool, considering how long it’s been. Blue grumbles something incoherent to his dad before leading us to the garage, which looks almost exactly the same as it did when we left it.

“I’ve gotta say,” I tell Aspen as I take my seat on the worn, old couch, “I was expecting there to be at least a bit of a female touch to this place by now.”

“The only feminine thing about Aspen is her boobs,” says Otto, the drummer, as he steps into the garage.

I had almost forgotten about Otto, the third and final member of the band. We were never particularly close friends, nor did we ever really have a falling out when I left the band. I still see him at Hollis from time to time—he’s a year younger than me and Blue, so not too often—and we exchange nods of polite indifference.

“I’d like to think there are at least a few other parts of me that are feminine,” says Aspen with a twisted grin, seeming to take his comment in stride.

There are indeed several other very feminine parts of Aspen that I haven’t been able to stop noticing since she got out of the car. (Hey—I’m only human. And until now, I’ve pretty much only seen her covered in blood and in a hospital gown.)

But I don’t say that.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Otto asks me with a bit of a frown.

“He’s here to see how much better off we are without him,” Blue explains as he lifts his bass guitar from its stand and grabs the amp cable to plug it in.

“Then he came on the wrong day,” points out Aspen as she steps over to the microphone, “seeing as our lead guitarist can’t play until she gets her cast off.”

I had almost forgotten about her broken wrist. Of course, she can’t play.

My eyes trail to the Gibson sitting on its stand—one I can only assume Jane purchased, rather than Aspen. Before I can stop myself, I say, “I could fill in.”

“No,” Blue says immediately. “No way.”

“Just for today,” I say, doing my best not to sound desperate. I glance at Aspen and add timidly, “If you want.”

She grins. “Why not? Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“But he doesn’t know any of our original music!” protests Blue.

“So?” asks Aspen. “That's private, anyway. Let’s do a cover.”

Her words sting me harder than they should. Their original music is “private?” Why can’t I hear it?

“You Know I’m No Good,” suggests Otto. “You know it, right, Cam?”

Of course, I know it. I love Amy Winehouse. But is it really something Aspen can sing? Amy was contralto—the lowest it gets.

She doesn’t seem at all concerned, though, so I nod, and with that, Otto starts the drum beat.

Aspen doesn’t resemble Christina Aguilera after all, I learn as she starts to sing. She’s Amy Winehouse all the way.

She’s… haunting. Shockingly talented. Deep, dark, and strong. Almost like Amy has risen from the dead to join us in this very garage.

It’s not even just her voice; it’s her whole being. It’s the way everything else just seems to float away as she closes her eyes and pours her heart out.

There’s nothing in this world like making music with her. Football, popularity—none of it even comes close.

When the song ends and she opens her eyes, she looks right at me, and I decide in that moment that no matter how my father reacts when he finds out that I missed another practice, it’ll still have been worth it.

I might even have to miss a few more.