Succession at Seventeen

Chapter 4

Over the next three weeks Diana didn’t see Jeremy very often, they both sat with Ashley at lunch pointedly not speaking until she got tired of it and abandoned both of them after three days. It took Diana another two days to come around and start asking Ashley how he was doing. What surprised her was that every time she did ask Ashley had a lot to say. It seemed the pair were a lot more than just mutual friends through her like she’d thought. He would ride his bike over to her place to walk around her neighborhood with her or whip about in her car doing doughnuts in the parking lot at Belmar after hours. They even drank together. That came as real shocker to her, neither seemed to be the type.

On the other hand Diana and Chris seemed to be getting closer every day. Their date at the movies ended with them making out, and they started hanging out with each other after school. And two weeks later she found herself walking.

The sun was shining through an overcast sky, a chill breeze blew playfully around the street, and Diana was walking instead of driving. Long story short she was miserable. The thick tan jacket she had pulled up tight did nothing for her fingers and nose. “Freaking icicles...” She muttered darkly. She sighed deciding to focus on something else.

The only thing she had to think about to improve her mood was the mysterious little scheme Chris seemed to have. The scheme that had her walking down a street over a mile away from her home and trying to outrun the snow forecast for the evening. She would have asked him for a ride when he called her earlier but she couldn’t get a word in. He’d asked her if she would go somewhere with him that night, didn’t tell her where just somewhere, and she’d jumped at the chance. The second she said yes he said, “Great I’ll see you at my place, I have to help my dad with something, bye sexy!”

That left her wondering, “What had him so...excited, bouncy sounding even?” From what she knew about him he never got excited, he was always calm and collected. Never cold or stoic but calm. So anything that had him so energetic had to be cataclysmic or world changing. “Of course...”  She admitted to herself, He could be excited about something other than the date. He did jump off the phone for something. “...no.” She said grinning, “It’s the date.” She preferred to feel special despite the evidence.

Refocusing on something other than her fantasies for the first time she realized with a start that she was walking passed the spot where Chris had his car parked when he was arguing with Markus. She turned around to look back at the spot but her attention slid to the park beside the street.

Starting with a baseball field closest to her, just beyond that was a foot-worn plain and ending with a wood and steel playground surrounding a wooden pyramid. The whole place looked like the fondest dream of every mother ever.

Diana grinned at the baseball field, “Ash would love this place. Perfect for softball practice.”

She heard a noise and whipped her head around there was a pasture beside the field with horses. Three bays and a sorrel. She grinned, “He has horses.” She imagined mounting that lone sorrel beside Chris on a bay and riding up the path behind the pasture. The same path that she and Markus followed that dark strange night.

She shivered, “He better not be planning to take a romantic walk in the woods.” She sighed and turned back to the road, “Let’s just find out what he HAS planned.”

She walked passed one more minor intersection before finding his street. The road was steep and was soon nearly grunting with the effort of climbing the hill. About halfway up the hill she spotted a house matching his description, a red and brown place with a six foot privacy fence. The house started out as a squat ranch style identical to the others on the block but Chris’ dad had added a second story and was partway through another project in the front room judging by the plastic tacked in place where there should have been walls on the of the house.