Page 15 of The Wrong Track
“Were you a good runner?” he asked.
“I was ok.” Fifteenth in the state in my sophomore year before I’d quit.
“So you are telling me that I am crazy,” he said, and now he shifted again.
“Read a book,” I told him. “Watch TV. Isn’t there football on?” Everyone here was nuts about the local team.
“The season’s over and I don’t like reading,” Tobin answered. “You can see why I’m desperate for companionship.” He smiled a little, the expression incongruous in his pale face.
“I’ll get Hazel for you,” I told him. I stopped when I was in the doorway. “Maybe you haven’t read the right books. I’ll look for some at the library. Bye.”
I heard him say my name but I didn’t stop. I called toward the kitchen that I was leaving and then quickly did exactly that before Hazel could try to intercept me. My shoes skidded a little on the fresh snow on the path but I didn’t slow down, not even when she opened the front door and waved and said my name again. Why were they all so stuck on me living with one of them? Did I need a keeper? Did they think that I was so inept that I couldn’t take care of myself? I buckled the seatbelt over my stomach and then I had one of those moments when everything clears up.
It wasn’t me that they were concerned about: they thought I wouldn’t be able to take care of my medical issue. Even though thousands, millions, billions of women did it every day, they thought I would fail. And that was fairly galling but they did have reason, since they had no idea how I could take care of myself. I’d taken care of my sister, too, and maybe for the last few years I had been cowering and useless, but now I could do it again. Couldn’t I?
Anyway, I had plenty of time and I was getting out of here, so they wouldn’t have to worry about me and my problem. I drove home very carefully and as I did, I thought that I had to give back this car. Immediately. It didn’t feel right to accept an expensive piece of machinery and, at the same time, reject all the advice and other “help” they were trying to give me. I decided to drop it off the next day—after I figured out another way to get my ass around. Bike? Walking? Either of those things seemed miserable. I shuffled up the path to my cold, dark house, still thinking.
There was, of course, another option. I looked at the brown chair, studying it and considering for a moment before I sat down. I had the rest of the night to consider, because I knew I wouldn’t sleep away all those empty hours. I looked through the window with the view to nowhere for a long time. I thought about Tobin and if he were sleeping, and if Hazel had stayed there or if his mom had. I knew how full Hazel’s schedule was and I bet his mom had a good job, too, something that made money and kept her really busy. When I’d seen her next to his bed, it had struck me that sitting still was not her usual mode.
I thought about Tobin sitting next to my bed when I’d been in the hospital after Thanksgiving. I hadn’t even known him then, hadn’t even met him yet, and suddenly he’d appeared and showed off a badge and told the staff there that he needed to stay with the victim. Me, the victim, because Kilian had thrown me around a little and Hazel had discovered us as he was using my hair as the mechanism to pull me back inside our townhouse. He’d given her a busted lip when she’d tried to stop him, and then her boyfriend Hatch had shown up and that had led to Kilian’s arrest. I’d gone to the hospital because Hazel had announced my medical issue to everyone and I’d been a little hurt, too. Not bad, but enough.
And Tobin had sat there with me, not saying too much, getting me another blanket because I’d been freezing, getting me water, staying through all the questions that the other officers had about Kilian and why we were in Michigan.
To get away, that was the answer, as much of an answer as I could give them. One night, late, he had come home to our apartment in South Carolina and turned on all the lights. He’d yelled at me to wake up and then had started throwing everything in bags. “Pack,” he’d ordered, and I had, stumbling around, dropping things, and tripping over my own feet. I’d been dead asleep because of my health problem knocking the life right out of me, and my dazed clumsiness had made Kilian so angry that I thought he might really kill me instead of just inflicting the pain I’d become accustomed to. As much as I could have become accustomed to that.
But after only a little while and well before all our belongings were packed, he’d told me that it was time to go. We gotten into his car and we’d driven and driven, through the night and most of the next day, not stopping to eat much or even go to the bathroom, although I’d run into a few gas stations when he’d stopped to fuel up. Each time I did that, I’d thought he might leave me wherever we happened to be and each time, I wasn’t sure if I’d be sad or grateful if he did.
We’d driven through places I’d never seen and over highways that stretched forever, and we turned onto smaller and smaller roads until we’d stopped here, in front of a group of new-looking condos partially hidden behind a tall hedge.
“This is where we were going?” I’d asked him, since he hadn’t said more than ten words to me through the duration of our trip. I’d seen the sign welcoming us when we crossed the border from Ohio into Michigan, but I honestly wasn’t sure if we were still in that state or we’d passed into another one. I’d never known exactly why we’d taken that trip, and Kilian had never said. I’d pieced together that we were here because no one knew him, because he’d been close to getting arrested and had thought that this place was about the farthest he could go on Earth from where he’d originally been based in the Southeast. Michigan might have been Antarctica for the two of us.
And now I’d be leaving again, as soon as I cleaned up a few loose ends. The car, tomorrow, then the rest, and then I really would go. But before that, I had the whole, long night to get through, and I found that every time I tried to make my eyes stay closed, I would see Tobin Whitaker lying on his bed, wincing and in pain, and me walking away and leaving him there.
Chapter 4
Beth Ellen glanced at the pile I put on circulation desk and then she tilted her head and smiled. “Not your usual fare,” she noted.
It turned out that I had no idea what kind of books a guy like Tobin would enjoy. I’d wandered through the rows of shelves, studying the titles, and finally I’d grabbed ten or so that seemed the most likely. There was no porn or even sexy anime in the library, which was what I thought most men would pick up. I chose a biography of a football player named Warren Wilde and another about the Native American history of the area, because I was interested in that and maybe he would be, too. I got one on geology, I got one on astronomy. Then I grabbed more, enough to fill my arms, and called it. I didn’t need to do this anyway.
My day was already not going the way I’d wanted it to. First off, Hatch, Hazel’s boyfriend, had refused to take back the car.
“No. No, get on in there,” he’d told me in his garage after I’d pulled up, and he’d waved his big hand like he was going to blow me back into the driver’s seat.
I’d tried to insist, even though I was nervous around this guy. As I’d said, he was huge and one punch from a fist that size would have leveled me. “I appreciate you letting me use it,” I’d said, and gingerly offered the key fob.
“Keep using it,” he’d dismissed that, then told me to come into the kitchen. I’d followed, with the keys still held in front of me. But Hatch wanted to give me a snack, because he and Russell the dog were going to have one. “How were you planning to get around without the Bronco?” he’d asked.
I had to look back into the garage to make sure, but yes, he’d meant the big car he’d loaned me. “I was going to take the bus and I’m leaving soon anyway,” I answered. By that point, Hatch had managed to force a greasy tortilla into my hand that held the keys. “Why did you just give me this?”
“To eat,” he answered. “Look at what Russell learned.” He sat the dog on his broad shoulder, like a furry parrot. “I keep my hand up there just in case, but he has excellent balance. He’s really amazing.”
Russell looked bored and he rested his chin on Hatch’s head. “That’s a trick,” I agreed.
“I’m going to work a lot on his training. He’s such a smart boy, aren’t you, buddy?” Hatch took the dog off his head and smiled at him. “I have more time now that the football season’s over.”
I’d nodded. “The car—”
“Hazel told me that you’re going to take care of her friend.” He and Russell split a section of cheesy tortilla, a very small piece for the dog.