CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(26)
My girlfriend and my brother - two people who mostly didn’t even bother to fake politeness to each other - were sitting at the kitchen table, laughing at some private joke like they were brand new BFF’s.
They stopped laughing when I walked in. Just like that. As if someone had flipped a switch.
“Hey,” I said, casually leaning against the counter like it was totally natural to find the two of them gossiping over glasses of lemonade. I felt their eyes on me.
There are certain snaps of time that seem much longer than they are. One of them happened yesterday, during a slow eternity when I lost control of a stolen car.
This was another one.
It was probably only a split second that passed as the three of us looked at each other, as I noticed how Erin’s smile fell from her face as soon as she saw me, how for the first time ever it seemed like they were a team and I was the outsider. I didn’t like any of it. I didn’t like it at all.
“Hey,” my brother finally answered. He tipped his half empty glass of lemonade in my direction. He kept his eyes on me as he gulped it down.
CHAPTER NINE
ERIN
Two things I really didn’t like were walking and heat.
Yet because my head was all cluttered from the fight with Conway (and because I was a little afraid of what I would do if I just sat in my bedroom alone) I decided to go for a walk in this wretched, skin-searing heat.
I had a break from summer babysitting for the next few weeks because my dad had signed Penny and Katie up for some day camp thing that was going on at the library. The camp had been organized by my English teacher, Mrs. Consuelo, and she’d tried to get me to sign on as a counselor. Even though I could have used the money I turned her down because I wanted some relief from looking after other people more than I wanted extra cash. But now that the empty hours stretched ahead I wished I had a way to fill them. Roe was busy packing for the Caribbean cruise her father and stepmother were dragging her to. She’d sent me a picture of the tiny crystal prism I’d given her, which had already been hung carefully in her bedroom window. It made me smile.
Beyond the cinder block fences of my street was a narrow alley and beyond that was a wide wash filled with rocks and sand and the debris of the desert. During the summer storms the wash often overflowed and all the local backyards would be miniature lakes for a day or two. I was glad I’d thought to wear sturdy tennis shoes because the ground was rough and the threat of scorpions always loomed.
Just as I made my way beyond the alley, a startled quail family ran for cover on the other side of the wash. I watched them, a panicked line of birds that quickly disappeared into a greasewood bush. Then there was silence. I knew that despite the barren look of the desert there was life everywhere; lizards and birds and tiny pinch-faced rodents who made their homes underground. I’d learned their names and their habits from my mother.
I walked west along the dry bank of the wash. It stretched for miles. If I walked for long enough I would eventually find myself in the next county. When I was little my dad used to caution me against strolling close to the wash. Even now he wouldn’t be thrilled that I was wandering around beside it.
“Bad people hang around out there,” he would always warn. “Drug dealers, perverts, men just looking for a quiet place to commit violence. Not to mention how thick the rattlesnake population becomes the farther you go from the road. Stay away.”
I kept a wary eye out for perverts and drug dealers. I figured if I saw one I would sprint back toward home. I was a fast runner when I wanted to be.
But the strong arms that grabbed me out of nowhere did not give me time to do anything. My upper body was pinned from behind by an iron grip and I was too shocked to even cry out. In that instant every terrible story I’d ever heard that featured a careless young girl galloped through my mind.
Stranger. Danger. STRANGER. DANGER.
I opened my mouth to scream and only yelped like a kitten.
“Erin! It’s me. It’s Stone.”
“Stone!” Relief flooded through me. Then annoyance. “Let me go for god’s sake.”
“Okay, but don’t take one step. There’s a monster diamondback hanging out just underneath that mesquite tree.”
Stone eased his hold on me and took my right elbow, very slowly leading me backward. I squinted at the sprawling mesquite that was a mere fifteen feet away. Sure enough, coiled at the shady base like a conquering king, was the longest, thickest rattlesnake I’d ever seen. I gulped, unable to take my eyes off of it. The snake lifted its head and moved it from side to side, flicking a tongue out briefly.
“Easy,” Stone whispered, continuing to lead me backward. I stumbled over his foot and he circled an arm around my waist, steadying me.
“You can let go now,” I said when we were safely out of range and the rattler had relaxed once more.
Stone took his hands away. “You should be more careful,” he scolded, glaring. “Don’t you know where we live, Erin?”
“Well, you didn’t have to grab me. You could have just acted like a normal person and said something like, ‘Hey, look out!’”
He sighed. “You would have ignored me.”
“I would not.”
“You would if you’d seen it was me. Then you would have kept right on stomping through the brush without a care because somehow you never learned that it’s not a good idea to parade through rattlesnake territory like you own it.”