Aurora

3. HARD HEAD

3.  HARD HEAD

WHEN VESTA LEFT THE CHAIR IN THE MORNING, SOMETHING WAS different.

    It was the light. It was still the gray-green light of the cloudy day in the forest, but it was clearer somehow. There was no fog veiling the window.

    A fine layer of snow covered the yard, dusted the top of the truck, and whitened the road. All the icy rain from yesterday had frozen solid — coating the needles on the tree in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, and making the driveway an ice slick. Vesta gazed out with bleak, apathetic eyes.

     It had been three days since she fled from Benedict's shed, and each morning since then she was seized by an awful feeling of dread. It was even more frightening than the empty, hollowness that accompanied her every time she was alone. In some ways, she wanted the dread to be drowned out by the vacuum of the emptiness.

     Charlie had left for work before she got downstairs. She sat alone at the table, the weight of dread pressing between her shoulder blades. The cereal felt like cardboard in her mouth but she persisted, doing everything to delay climbing into her truck and driving off to school. She was scared and it terrified her.

    Vesta had been avoiding Benedict Lowry for the past two days. And she was not very successful in her attempts since she was acquainted with his friends and they've come to look at her as their new friend, so when she decided to sit at a different table away from theirs, it prompted them to migrate to her new one. All except for Benedict who didn't come to lunch at all.

     She'd arrived early to the classes they shared so she could pick out a different seat from the one before and tried hard not to look when Benedict strolled into class. Vesta had felt his arrival. There was a change to the air; a palpable electric tension. It was different from the soothing heat she'd felt from and around him before. She wanted to talk to him, wanted to acknowledge him so bad but his knowledge frightened her. Even if it wasn't a complete knowledge and he probably knew next to nothing about her or why she was here, it was still too much.

     Mr. Patton had repeatedly told her to keep her head down and not draw attention to herself. She wondered where she'd gone lax in the persona they'd created for her. It terrified her to think she'd probably slip up to someone else and now they were going to find her. She should distance herself from Benedict and try not to raise anyone else's suspicion.

  Yet it hurts. It was almost a physical ache whenever she had to look away from him or dash out of class before he did. She felt his absence whenever she went to class alone. It frightened Vesta that she'd grown so used to him and his comforting presence in such little time. She got tongue-tied whenever she pictured his face and warm smile. She was aware that she must cut him off. So she shouldn't be anxious to see him even through the dread.

  The icy-slick proved to be dangerous — Vesta almost lost her balance twice. She had to concentrate and slowly pick her steps to the truck.

     Driving to school, Vesta distracted herself from Benedict and her fear of his suspicions by thinking about the Trig homework. Her truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads but she drove slowly, not wanting to crash because of her distracted mind.

     When she got out of her truck at school, she saw why she had so little trouble. Something silver caught her eye, and she carefully picked her way to the back of the truck to examine the tires. There were thin chains crisscrossed in the diamond shapes around them. Charlie must have gotten up who know how early to put snow chains on the truck. Her throat suddenly felt tight. A wave of conflicting emotions washed over her. She was touched by the kindness and his unspoken concern but her heart ached for her dad who would secretly repair the tires on her bike in secret, read to her when she was sick and trapped in bed. She was struggling to push back the tears, fighting the vise-like grip around her eyes — black spots were forming in her vision and she was gasping — when she heard someone call her.