Necessary Detours Part II

Necessary Detours Part II

"What’s your name?"  He asks.

"Emily."  I let the silence drag and saunter back to my aunt's.  I go past the stone church and several vacant stucco homes.

"Don’t you want to know mine?"  He stops strolling with me.  His hands slide up to his hips and his nostrils flare.  "I’m the best quarterback at Denman high, the best in the whole state."  I shrug as if what he’s said isn’t a big deal.  And he pouts.

I squint and blink my eyes.  He has become glaring, as if the skin on his face has perfect beads of sweat that don’t slide off and he looks almost photo shopped like the inside of my Aunt Ally’s house.  (Yes, I want to know his name) even though he looks like a bragger, the kind of guy I imagine will tell his buddies: Emily and I went into the woods.  And I bet that being a bragger he’ll even tell them my underpants are cheap, cotton, with way too many flowers.  I figure he will lie about the size and maybe even the color too.  She wore these tiny pink panties.  So what do I need to know his stinking name for?

His eyes no longer beam.  They look hard, angry.

"Forget this," he says.

I watch him stomp away and think about all the things I might say to make him come back.  (I don’t know what to say or which direction to go.)  But I don’t say anything.

I twirl my hair in the place of a friendship locket I had a long time ago and shrug off the memory of what happened to it like I shrug off what happened in the woods.  The ghost of the delicate chain dances around my fingertips, my thoughts drift from Soccer Boy to another distraction that waits for me back at my aunt’s place, a distraction that’s sure to wipe out any of this afternoon’s unpleasantness where all of this excess brightness is replaced by a light I can handle and one that won’t cut.

I’ll be okay in a little while, in a place where nothing and no one can touch me.  And that is all that matters.

How I hate new places.