6
Danielle’s Diary
Today, I talked Mom into letting me walk to Old Lady McNeill’s house a mile down the road for milk and eggs. Mom was baking a cake and she ran out. Big fun. But you’ll see what happened . . .
This is the first sunny day in a week, and I feel like a flower that has been kept in a closet, starving for light. I promised I wouldn’t be gone long, and I took Ginger our lab, who can’t walk far because she’s old and puffy. Still, as we started down the hill, I broke into a run. Free of Mom!! I was free of Mom!
And then, I tripped over a root and fell to the ground, scraping my hands and knees. I lay there, struggling, in pain, smelling the wet dirt around me and thinking how stupid I was. I’ve lived here my whole life, know every rock and root, including the one I’d tripped on. How could I fall?
Thinking back, I wonder if it was MEANT to happen.
When I tried to pull myself up on the trunk of that same malevolent old tree, I found that not only had I scraped my leg—I’d also twisted it somehow. In my paranoid mind, it felt broken. I couldn’t walk at all. I contemplated my situation—could I send Ginger back to tell Mom somehow? Considering she wasn’t actually like dogs in movies who did that, probably not. As I thought about this, Ginger began to bark. I looked up to see what she was barking at.
It was a man. Or, really, a guy around my own age, the very same guy I’d seen outside our house a week ago. The one Mom had seen fit to imprison me for looking at. He was about ten feet away, but he walked closer.
I tried to push myself up. Competing instincts warred with each other. A stranger on a deserted road could be a rapist or a serial killer or both. Yet, I knew I couldn’t run and, what’s more, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Not only has it been weeks since I’ve seen anyone but my mother—it may have been YEARS since I’ve seen anyone new. No one new comes to Slakkill. Why would they? Everyone has been here forever. And don’t they say you’re most likely to get murdered by someone you know?
Of course, it didn’t hurt that this guy was gorgeous. As he came closer, I could see that he was tall with white-blond hair that glowed in the morning light. His walk, too, was different than anything I’d ever seen. People in Slakkill walked quickly and with hunched shoulders, as if they were cringing from the constant cold or just weighed down by their pointless lives. The only exceptions were the jocks, who walked with a swagger that revealed they didn’t realize they were someday going to end up as beer-bellied car salesmen, like their dads. This guy had neither. He looked open. And, did I mention cute?
Even Ginger must have noticed because she stopped barking as he approached. In fact, she trotted up to him and licked his hand like she knew him.
“Hey, girl.” He petted her head.
“That dog would kill you soon as look at you,” I joked.
“I can see she’s very protective.” He laughed. His eyes were the brightest blue I’d ever seen, the color of the ice-blue mint cough drops Mom used to give me when I had a cold. He held his hand out. “Can I help you?”
I started to take it then hesitated. I knew nothing about this guy. Yet, what choice did I have? I was injured, stranded someplace where a car passed maybe every few hours. Mom was inside, probably watching General Hospital. Did I refuse his offer and try to crawl to safety? Even Ginger, my supposed line of defense, was now happily sniffing the guy’s very cute butt.
“I’m not going to abduct you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
But wouldn’t he say that even if he was?
“You just looked like you could use some help. I could go away and call the volunteer fire fighters, and they’d be here in an hour or so. It’s just, the situation has sort of a romantic quality, like the novels girls like—a fair young maiden takes a tumble and a handsome young man comes to her rescue.”
I said, “You consider yourself handsome, do you?”
“Is there any question.” He grinned. “Can I help you up?”
I tried one last time to push myself up, then winced. I decided to take a chance. “Yes, please.”
I grasped his hand. It felt hard, calloused, a man’s hand. But when I tried to stand, I yelped in pain.
“You probably shouldn’t put weight on it,” he said, and then, before I could protest (even if I would have), he scooped me up in his arms and started to carry me away.
“Wait. Where are you taking me?”
“Just my car.”
“Your car?” I saw an old blue Pinto parked by the roadside. Visions of abduction once again began dancing in my head.
He laughed. “Nothing like that. I have some crutches in the back from when I sprained my ankle last month. Should be able to adjust them to fit, and then, I can take you wherever you want to go. Do you live there?”
He pointed to our house, which looked suddenly really old and dirty. Obviously, I should have let him drive me up the driveway, but I knew Mom would freak if I came home in a strange car with a strange guy. The way she’d been acting lately, she’d probably lock me in my room forever. Also, I didn’t want the day to be over so quickly.
“Um, yes, but I’m supposed to go buy eggs from our neighbor, Mrs. McNeill. That’s where I was going. My mother called and told her to expect me. She’s probably waiting outside.”
That wasn’t true. Mom wasn’t friendly with Mrs. McNeill. They’d fought when the McNeill goats had gotten out and terrorized my mother’s precious garden, and now, she only let me buy eggs when she didn’t feel like going to town. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have him think someone was expecting me.
“Okay, Mrs. McNeill it is.” He managed to open the car’s passenger door and lowered me to the seat. “Just a sec.”
He walked around to the trunk and took out not only the crutches but an ace bandage. “Look what I found. Can I put it on you?”
“Um, shouldn’t I know your name first?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s Zach. You can put it on yourself, if you want. I just thought—”
“No, it’s okay. The name was all I wanted. I’m Danielle, by the way. But everyone calls me Dani.”
“Nice to meet you, Danielle.” He knelt beside me and drew my foot up to his bended knee. He pushed my pant leg up, and when he touched my skin, a cold spark ran through me. I shivered.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just static electricity, I guess.” It wasn’t, but I didn’t know what else to say.
He began to massage my ankle and, with each touch, I felt the same electric thrill.
“You’re not from around here,” I said.
He smiled. “How do you know that?”
“It’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone else.”
“Oh, I thought maybe it was because I was so special you’d have noticed me if you’d seen me before.”
I rolled my eyes, even though it was true.
“I’d have noticed you,” he said. “Pretty girl like you. I bet you’re the prettiest girl around here.”
“Hardly.” I laughed. I certainly wasn’t. Emily had been, but I wasn’t even a close second. I’d never even had a boyfriend. Of course, that was partly because everyone was scared of my mother.
He finished rubbing my ankle and began to wrap it with the ace bandage. His hands were firm, strong. “I find that hard to believe. Is this a town with inordinately beautiful girls?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been out of it. Well, except sometimes to go to the mall down in Glens Falls for school clothes, but that’s not a big city either.”
“You’ve never been away from here? And you’re how old?”
“Seventeen, almost eighteen. And a lot of people have lived here their whole lives. I’m not some stupid hick, you know.”
Although saying it made it sound like I was. And, really, how did I know I wasn’t?
But he said, “I didn’t say you were. You might be the most brilliant person in the world, but how would you know if you never see anyone else?”
It was like what I’d been thinking, only sort of the opposite, sort of turned on its ear.
Of course, I’m probably not brilliant. At least, I’d always been a C student in school. I was always bored in my classes. Besides, what’s the point of killing yourself in school when you know you aren’t going to college, aren’t going really anywhere? Still, I secretly have always thought, hoped I was smart. I also hoped maybe there was something I was good at, best at. And, more than anything else, I hope that someday, something will HAPPEN.
But, so far, in nearly eighteen years, nothing has.
He finished wrapping the bandage and looked up at me to see what I thought. I nodded. Actually, it didn’t hurt at all.
“You could be really good at something and not even realize it,” he said. “I think about that kind of thing sometimes, like what if the world’s greatest baseball player lived in a place where they didn’t have the game? Maybe he’d never know how great he was. He’d become a goat herder or something and never realize his potential.”
I laughed, but I liked the idea of it, that I might still be special somehow and just not realize it, that the best part of my life wasn’t already over.
“How about you?” I said. “Where are you from?”
“Me, I’m from nowhere. Or everywhere. My family moved around a lot. I’m twenty, and I’ve lived in at least twenty towns, almost as many states.”
“And now?”
“I’ve been living in New York City for a while, trying to make it playing guitar and singing, but it’s hard. I wait tables, street perform for tips, but there are about a million other guys doing that there. I heard they were looking for an act at the Red Fox Inn in Gatskill, so I tried for it.”
Gatskill is the next town over. My friends sometimes go to the Red Fox Inn for dinner, but I never have. “So you work there? You’re a professional singer?”
He grinned. “I guess you could say that.”
I noticed a guitar case in his backseat. “Will you play for me?”
“Next time, I will. Right now, I think I need to take you to Mrs. McNeill’s before I turn into a pumpkin. I double as a waiter at the Red Fox, and they open at five.”
I glanced at my watch. It was three thirty. He’d said next time.
“You want to see me again?” I asked.
“Danielle, I want to see you as much as possible.”
I smiled inside at the thought of it even as I shuddered to imagine Mom’s reaction. He stood and walked to the other side of the car. He took me to Mrs. McNeill’s. When the old lady looked through her cataracty eyes and asked who my young man was, he didn’t correct her, didn’t say he wasn’t mine. Even though my ankle had stopped hurting, I held on to him anyway. I liked how it felt to be beside someone.
When he drove me home, I told him to stop at the bottom of the driveway.
“You’ll be okay?” he asked. When I nodded, he said, “When can I see you again?”
“I’ll walk my dog this way again day after tomorrow, same time. Or I’ll try to.”
“I’ll be here.”
And then, he took my hand and pulled me toward him. He kissed me. I knew he was going to do it only a second before his lips touched mine, and when they did, I felt the same electrical impulses, like a wire leading from my stomach to my mouth had become electrified, and I was exploding.
I told Mom I’d fallen near the McNeills’ and Mrs. McNeill had given me the crutches and driven me home. She didn’t question me, so I mentioned how much Ginger had enjoyed the walk, how I thought she was getting fat and needed to exercise, so I planned to do it every day.
I do. For once, something is happening to me.