It Starts With Him

11

Picture: Hayes Dyer

I tidy up my dressing table as I hum a song mom used to sing. I move my array of perfumes to the side and color-coordinate them, keeping an extra-long glance on the one from mom for my fifteenth birthday. 

When I'm bored, I clean. Shocking, I know. It gives me something to do and always gives me a sense of satisfaction at the end. I start to fold clothes I just recently pulled out of the dryer as I sing more loudly, knowing no one's home to hear me.

"You've got a thing about you, I just can't live without you, I really want you, Elenore, near me," I sing, putting my shirts into my closet. "Elenore" by the Turtles was one of mom's favorite songs. She'd sing it while doing anything: dishes, making breakfast, laundry. After a while, it sticks.

As I put a pair of faded jeans into my closet, I remember that these are the same ones I wore the night of the amusement park, almost a full week ago. I stare at the pocket that held my wallet that night.

I made the executive decision to not tell Ace about my missing wallet. After the pizza party, part of me wanted to run outside back out onto my porch and stop him from leaving. Tell him that it was gone. But then I realized it would probably just cause more damage than good. Now that I know how he reacts around the Outlaws, it would probably just stress him out, and probably send him into another whiplash-inducing mood switch.

I even went back there that night. Took out the beat-up pickup truck back to where I had dropped my wallet. I was hoping that maybe they hadn't seen it. Maybe it was still in the same spot, the bottom of it scratched up from the rocks in the gravel, totally untouched. But it was nowhere to be found. And neither was anything else except sets of footprints around exactly where it was.

Then my mind found another thing to be hopeful for. Maybe all the Outlaws are as nice as the young one who let me go - Max, I think Ace said his name was - but I quickly mentally slapped myself. Of course, they aren't. At least there was nothing too important there. Just my state ID, maybe something for my car, and a couple of half-used Barnes and Noble gift cards. Luckily I keep my license and cash in my phone case at all times.

Now, I can only hope they don't do anything with it. Don't act on it. I'm sure as drug dealers they have more important matters to attend to than tracking down an 18-year-old girl from Madison, right? Hopefully.

I continue to sing the song, the next lyrics flowing from my lips like water. 

"Your looks intoxicate me, even though your folks hate me, there's no one like you, Elenore, really." I do the finishing touch to my room by straightening out my comforter when my door flings open. I gasp, and instinctively grab a mint green throw pillow and whip it towards the intruder. It takes my eyes a moment to focus on who it is, and I watch in shock as Hayes hits the wall behind her from the impact of the pillow.

She bursts into laughter and stands up, chucking the pillow back at me. I grasp my headboard trying to catch my breath. "Trying to kill me?" she says, making herself at home by cuddling up with my blanket I had just laid out. I smile and sit down next to her, pulling my hair off to the side and off my now sweaty neck.

"I thought you were Lucas," I respond, laying down next to her. She props her head on her elbow and looks down at me, her blonde hair tossed into a ponytail at the top of her head. "I was on my way to the surf shop and thought I'd stop by to say hey. But I was outside your bedroom door for like three full minutes. Dev, where'd you get a voice like that?" she asks, and I feel my cheeks immediately redden at the unexpected compliment.

I shake my head and roll my eyes. "It's really nothing special," I reply, even though I've heard the opposite my whole life. I've gotten my voice from my mother. It was something she was always passionate about, although she never pursued it. She sometimes sang in local pubs, but that was the extent of her fame. Her favorite, though, was the White Anchor Tavern, here in South Carolina.