I can't seem to shake the habit of slapping my back jeans pocket, reaching for a cell phone that is not there. Not that I have anything of importance to tell anyone, but some random friend's text would help so much right now.
We finish the pigs and Gram makes us turkey sandwiches and then settles into the living room to catch the beginning of her soap operas. She doesn't give me any more chores to do so I assume I'm free for the afternoon and that actually sucks more than cleaning. It is so boring here. There is no cable TV so the only channels are playing soap operas, divorce court, a show about cheating spouses and Spanish soap operas.
I decide to take a walk outside, hoping I'll trip and fall off the porch, slip into a three-month coma and wake up in time to go back to school. A police car turns into the driveway. Dust from the gravel road puffs around the four tires. Grandpa was tending the flowerbed and now walks up to the officer's car door to talk to him. I sit on the porch swing. If a cop showed up at my house I would be all sorts of excited, dying to know what the drama was about. But in this small ass hick town, everyone knows everyone and I wouldn't doubt if the cop is here just to invite Grandpa to a rip-roaring fun game of bingo in the town square. And then I hear yelling.
“You have got to get control of your town, Sherriff!” Grandpa is actually yelling, and at a police officer. God, what I would give to be able to tweet about this. I stop swinging to shush the creaky wooden porch swing.
“I understand Ed, but there's nothing I can do. The boy owns the land now.”
Grandpa gazes at the neighboring piles of dirt and haphazard newly dug lake. He frowns and shakes hands with the officer. “I know Richard is turning over in his grave. He would have never wanted his house to become a motorcycle playground.”
As soon as the cop is gone and the dust settles in the driveway, I run to the flowerbeds to talk to Grandpa. “What was that about?” He hands me a pair of gloves from a bucket of gardening tools.
He points to a weed. “You remember Richard from when you were a kid?”
I grab the weed and pull it from the ground. “Yeah.”
“He died 'bout five years ago. Left everything to his ungrateful brat of a grandson. He never did talk to his own son after that big fight they had.” I'm blown away at how much Grandpa's talking to me. I'm almost scared to ask another question incase he's used up his word quota for the day.
“So the grandson made all those dirt piles?”
He nods.
“Why?”
He shrugs, letting his face go back to a grimace. I guess I've made him talk too much. I pull a few more weeds as penance. We work in silence until all of the weeds are gone. Finally he talks, and I've almost forgotten my question. “He rides a motorcycle on it. Every day.” He wipes sweat from his brow. “Surprised he ain't out there now.”
I smile. Grandpa's warming up to me.
After dinner, during which Grandpa didn't say a single word, I retreat to the balcony for another afternoon of stargazing and nothingness. Only it isn't yet dark, so I make do with finding shapes in the clouds.
The first cloud blob is shaped sort of rectangleish which reminds me of my cell phone. I roll my eyes. I must be completely insane if I'm creating cell phones out of clouds. My heart aches for my phone as much as it does for Ian.
A grasshopper appears out of thin air next to my shoe. I pick it up, cupping it inside my hands like I did as a child. It hops around, tickling my fingers. Catching bugs has become my new past time in this stupid small town. I sigh. I'm pathetic.
A firecracker-like roar fills the air and revs a few times like a motor. I jump and the grasshopper escapes as I jerk my head around looking for the source of the noise. Puffs of smoke sneak out of the neighbor's backyard shed. The motor revs again, in quick spurts. A man pushes a motorcycle out into the yard. He pulls back on the throttle a few times and the motor screams. Soon, the smoke stops and I can tell that it isn't really a motorcycle, at least not a Harley type motorcycle. It's a dirt bike. The recreational kind my brother wants so badly. Now that I get a better look at the guy, he's closer to my age. He's wearing these funky-looking red and black pants and a white undershirt. Muscles ripple through his arms as he grips the handlebars.
I grab a hold of the wooden rails of the balcony, pull my face up to the crack between them and watch. He can't see me, but I can see him. For the time being, my cell phone is the last thing on my mind.
Chapter 8
Like some kind of creepy stalker, I watch him for the next hour. He rides laps around his yard using the piles of dirt as jumps. Once he landed on the front wheel first and almost flew over the front of the handlebars. I thought I would scream in horror for a second. He put on a helmet after that and my secret presence got to remain a secret.
When the sun shuffles behind the trees enough to make it harder to see, he shuts off the bike and props it up on a metal stand. My feet tap against the railing. I want to talk to him, learn his name, get to know him. Yelling from the balcony hardly seems like the way to make a good first impression. It's almost dark so I have no reason to be casually walking around outside so I could “bump” into him. Leaning into my beanbag, I think. And then I cough. It's accidental at first, a piece of dust caught in my throat, but then it gives me an idea.
I suck in a deep breath and force myself to cough again. It sounds unconvincingly fake and worse, he doesn't notice it. He keeps working on his bike, the back tire is off now and he's holding the chain in his hand. He takes off his shirt and uses it to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Oh my god, oh my god. Ian doesn't look like that with no shirt on. I walk back into my room, pace in front of the mirrored dresser. What can I do to get his attention?
Mom's childhood bookshelf displays her collection of snow globes, each cheesier than the one before it. It would be a shame if one fell off the balcony…
“Oh my god, no!” My mouth stays open. My hand grasps my chest. I lean over the railing, seeing all of the broken pieces. Pretend to actually give a damn about them. “This sucks,” I say, louder than a normal person would talk. I run my hand through my hair, try to look dejected and sneak a glance in his direction. He's watching me from the overturned plastic bucket he's using as a chair. Bingo.
I run through the house, down the stairs and out into the yard. Dropping to my knees, I pick up the pieces of the snow globe and turn them over in my hand. The ground crunches behind me. I whip around, faking surprise.
“Hi,” he says. He does a little hand wave.
“Hello.” I stand up and shake his outstretched hand. “I'm Bayleigh.” It's warm and kind of sweaty.
“I'm Jace. What happened?”
