So this is another small piece from a larger one I'm working on. I could fill you in on all the background, but I'll spare you and let you just pretend you know what happens before this. So I know it might not make sense, but hopefully you can critique and comment without knowing everything. Please tell me what you think.
Sam
The first time I saw Katy she was barley dressed in a little blue tank top and a little teeny tiny pair of shorts. I think she must have been embarrassed or something because when she came down the stairs, she jumped and ran back up… or maybe I just scared her when I dropped the casserole and it spilled all over the floor… I don’t know. Anyway, she was different than I had expected, way different. So I went with my mom a couple more times, just to be polite, and we sort of became friends.
Apparently yesterday while we were visiting, my mom told Katy that Beth used to teach the little girls in the neighborhood how to do ballet in that barn behind her house and that it has real nice wooden floors and mirrors on the wall and everything. So today when I got to her house, Katy came bounding out the front door and climbed into the truck asking to go see the barn.
We got up there around noon and I introduced Katy to Beth and asked her if we could hang out in the barn for a while. Beth was busy working at her computer but she said we could go on in as long as we took Dylan with us. Dylan is Beth’s two year old son who learned to talk before he could crawl and hasn’t shut up since. We took Dylan outside and opened up the barn. When Beth took up her online business and got pregnant with Dylan she stopped teaching dance so the barn was a little musty and some little mice and a big robin had decided to make it their home.
The pissed look that Katelyn insisted on wearing for the past month melted off her face as soon as she stepped in. She looked up at the worn wood of the ceiling letting in little streams of golden light and the grungy floor carved with the footprints of tiny dancers, and then the dusty mirrors, reflecting it all so that every image swam in her head and then rebounded off the glass and back in again so Katy was speechless for a minute while she digested the old studio.
She walked around the perimeter of the rectangular floor. It was old, worn down, but it felt more like home than she had felt in a month. Katy sat down on the wood floor in front of one of the mirrors and stared into it. I held Dylan by the arms and swung him around so he would stop talking. He giggled and giggled as he went round and then I slowed and put him down. He swerved like a little drunken man and smacked right into one of the mirrors. Beth heard him crying and came out. “I leave him with you for one minute and you let him break his nose,” she said and carried him back inside.
I looked over to where Katy was sitting. She had pulled her legs toward herself so her cheek was resting on one of her knees and she stared into the mirror; I saw a pretty blonde girl, seventeen years old with shining blue eyes, but she saw a homesick little girl who just wanted things to go back the way they were. I sat down next to her and we just stared for a while.
“I want to run away,” Katy said after while.
“Where to,” I said.
“I want to go back home,” she said, “back where my mom wasn’t sick, where life was easy—simple and carefree.”
I laid back and looked up at the ceiling. It’s one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen; the air is really dusty so the light that comes through the holes in the roof creates beams of musty light that crisscross and weave through each other, like there is some sort of pattern that governs their arrangement. “I ran away once,” I said, “when I was twelve years old.”
Katy lay back next to me, “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, my mom got really mad one day, she took me and left my dad and my home behind. That’s when we moved here. I didn’t hate it, but I loved California. I loved my dad and his jokes—he was the funniest guy, but I didn’t know he was only funny because he was drunk, so I took my suitcase put my skateboard and my Lakers jersey inside of it, stole a hundred dollars from my mom’s sock drawer and left. I almost got all the way to town before my Grandma tracked me down.”
“What did she say?” Katy asked.
“She asked me if I needed a lift to the airport because I was going the wrong way.” Katy laughed and turned her gaze from the ceiling to me. “And when I got home,” I said, “my mom was panicked. She had called the police and they were already at the house. I thought I was in deep shit… and I was. She didn’t let me out of her sight for the next two months. She walked with me to the bus stop for school and was there right when I got home everyday… and she moved the money from her sock drawer. “
“When did she stop being mad?” Katy asked.
“After a year she completely forgot about it, but I hadn’t. I remember asking my Grandma if running away made me a bad person.”
“And?” Katy raised her eyebrows.
“And she said no, not if your path eventually leads you home again.”
Katy smiled and looked back up at the ceiling.
I wouldn't have guessed that there was more that we hadn't read, I think you filled us in pretty well.
