Young Writers Society

6

I awoke the next morning to the horrifying realization that I was not alone in my sleeping bag anymore. The instant my eyes opened I saw Ed’s face only mere inches from mine. I felt his arms wrapped around my stomach and his legs touching mine.

And he was awoken by a blood curdling scream as I jumped out of my sleeping bag and instantly rushed for my knife.

“What?” Ed demanded urgently, bursting from the sleeping bag and holding his hands out in front of him. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

“What the hell are you doing?” I screaming, holding the knife out in front of me like a gun and looking him up and down from his undressed feet to his tired face.

“What do you mean?” He asked, squinting his eyes and adjusting his shirt.

“Why did I wake up to you next to me, huh?”

He tilted his head in a confused way and let out a sigh. “What are you talking about, Beatrice? It was freezing last night. I asked if I could sleep in the sleeping bag with you because I was too cold to even be able to fall asleep. Don’t you remember?”

“No!”

“Calm down!” He demanded, holding out his hands again. “It’s no big deal, nothing happened. Maybe you were still pretty much asleep when I asked you if I could, But you said yes anyway!”

I let out a frustrated groan as I shook my head. “Don’t ever do that again, okay?”

“Fine! God!” Ed emitted a deep breath as he put his hands on his hips and looked away from me. “I was freezing for God’s sake. It wasn’t that big of a deal, anyway.”

I flicked my knife shut, shoved it in my pocket and started for my backpack. I could feel his presence standing near me. I could still feel the hair of his legs and the firm hug of his arms. It sent a shiver down my spine and I did little to hide my disgust.

“You hungry?” I asked quietly, grabbing a can of peas and a bag of berries I had found before bringing them towards the seats we had made in the ground.

“Yeah,” he grumbled, taking the bag of berries with a grateful nod before pouring them down his throat.

“North is that way,” I said, pointing behind us. “I’ve been traveling south this entire time. North should bring us back to my truck, or at least to the road I took out here.”

“How long have you been moving?”

“Only about three days now,” I said with a shrug. “I move slowly, though. This pack is weighs more than me, and I stop a lot to find food and to rest. So we could maybe make it back by sunset tonight if we keep a good pace.”

“Sounds good,” Ed muttered. He had pulled out a cigarette and was smoking it as he ate his berries. “The faster we can get back the better.”

And then we set off. Ed had taken over half of the weight of my backpack and stuffed it in his own to make it easier on me. He walked fast and easily for a heavy smoker. At times I even found it hard to keep up with him.

For the most part we traversed in silence, the only conversation being the heaving of our exhausted breaths. At times I would sneak a glance to my side and admire his defined arms and think about what it felt like to have them wrapped around me. I looked at his stoic face, the way his lips hugged the cigarette between his lips, and how his green eyes lit up in the sunlight.

“Are you really from New York?” I asked suddenly, watching his strong gait as he pulled out his lighter and lit up another cigarette.

He shot a curious glance over at me. “Why do you ask?”

I shrugged my shoulders. There was a twang in his voice that he tried too hard to cover up, and he tried in vain. His walk reminded me of the farm boys down the road, and the walk of my brothers. The way he smoked his cigarette, the way he spoke to me, the way he went about everything just didn’t seem like a New York kid to me. “I was just wondering.”

“Nah, I wasn’t raised there. I’ve lived there for the past three years, but that’s it.”

“Where are you from, then?”

“Oklahoma.”

“Why’d you tell me you were from New York?”

He let out a deep sigh and shot me a look. “Because I hated my life down there, and I like to do my best to not have to talk about it.”

There was a moment of silence as I looked over at his stoic face once more and allowed myself to marvel at his virile features. “I didn’t like where I came from either,” I added, pulling out my compass to give me something else to concentrate on. “My dad left me and my six siblings all alone. He was an alcoholic, and my mom became an alcoholic too after he left. Two of my brothers and one of my sisters got out of there, but only one made it worth their while. The other two flushed their lives down the drain. And I left too, so hopefully I didn’t do it in vain as well.”

Ed looked over at me contemplatively for a long second, and I could feel his bright eyes searching my face. It made me uncomfortable so I looked the other way. “My father was an alcoholic too. My whole family was just messed up. They’re the reason I got this nasty habit,” he stated, waving his cigarette in my face before throwing it into the dirt. “They drank and smoked the nights away and didn’t give a damn about me or my brother. My mom at least had wanted to get out of there and start a better life, live in a real house, not the trailer we called home. But every time she’d start saving up money, pa would go and gamble it all away as if he were made of the damn stuff. I was lucky enough to get a good scholarship so that I could get out of there, but my brother didn’t have the same luck. As far as I know he’s still stuck down there. I keep telling myself that someday I’ll go back down and take him with me. But, who knows. I suck and sticking to my word.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just allowed us to walk in silence. The air and atmosphere that surrounded us changed as the day moved on. By the time the sun was leaning far to the west the world seemed almost ominous.

“I like you, Beatrice,” Ed told me sometime that evening, breaking the silence and smiling at me with his large teeth. “You’re different, but I like you. You’re a nice gal. I don’t meet a lot of people like you anymore.”

“People like me?”

“You know, the lost souls. The people wandering the earth trying to find what life really means to them because their real life was hell. I understand you and you understand me, and it’s been a long time since I’ve met someone like that. You and I both came from virtually nothing, but we have potential, you know? We can make something out of nothing, and that, Beatrice, is something special if you ask me.”

I stared at him for a long second before allowing myself to grin. “You’re right. We are special, aren’t we?”

He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and smiled as the smoke poured out. “We deserve a damn star.”

I laughed, and so did he. And we laughed for a while. Just two lost souls trying so hard to be found, laughing at the world that keeps bringing them down whenever they fight to get up. I had to strain myself to keep the tears of realization from pouring out of me, but I somehow managed to mask my deep sorrow with playful giggles.

“So, tell me about the three siblings of yours that left,” Ed asked minutes later. “One of them is doing alright, you say?”

“Yeah, he is. His name’s Andy and he’s a bigtime business man in Boston right now. He was always real smart, and he knew how to use it, I guess.”

“What about the other two? What happened to them?”

“Well, my older brother Curt was just bad from the start. He left home when he was 16. He had gotten into drugs and drinking, and he still hasn’t let go in the slightest. The last time I saw him was a Christmas that my sister and I went to go see him, and he looked like hell. I don’t know how he’s even still alive.” I let out a deep sigh and brushed a stray piece of hair out of my face. “And my sister, Miranda, is almost as bad. She graduated high school, at least, and started going to NDSU in Faro, but got kicked out after they caught her drunk in her dorm. She sleeps around and parties a lot. I haven’t seen her since she came back for Christmas two year ago; I don’t know if she’s changed at all.”

“Hm,” Ed mumbled. “Sounds like quite the Brady bunch if you ask me.”

I raised my eyebrows and forced a laugh. “Of course we are.”

“So, if you left your home for good then, why the hell are you out here in the middle of nowhere? You on some spiritual journey or something?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I didn’t have a plan when I left, and I wound up here, so I thought I’d take a look around is all.”

Ed laughed and looked at me again with those piercing eyes. “You’re a curious little thing, Beatrice. You really, really are.”

And before we knew it we came to a road. We were further east than when I had set out, so we followed it down towards where my truck would be waiting for us. The walk was long, but it was no longer filled with the silence we had had between us before. We talked of our lives, our dreams and what we were in the midst of fighting. Throughout the entire time I couldn’t keep myself from gazing over at him and admiring every contour of his body.

“That ain’t it up there, is it?” Ed asked, pointing off into the distance at the faint glimmer of a tailgate.

“It sure is,” I replied.

We threw our backpacks in the back and climbed into the truck, the musty smell of leather and dust hitting me as I put it in reverse and pulled out on to the road. I drove slower than I normally did, relishing in the company of one so much like me.

Eventually I reached Custer and asked him where he would want me to drop him off at. He told me to bring him to a small convenience store at the edge of town, and that was where I brought him.

“Well, I sure didn’t expect my trip to go like this,” he told me with a smile as he hopped out of my truck and began taking my food out of his backpack.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” I replied back, watching his face and his hands as I leaned on the side of my vehicle.

“Thanks, though,” he said, taking his nearly empty backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. “For everything. For putting up with me eating your food and sleeping with you.”

I blushed and looked away, uncomfortable but happy with the way he smiled at me. “It was tough, but I managed.”

He stood there for a long moment, holding his backpack but unwilling to leave. Staring at me with those big eyes of his, he finally dug out a piece of paper from one of his pockets and fished around for something else. “Do you have a pen?”

“Um,” I looked through my truck and pulled out a pencil from the glove compartment and handed it to him.

“That’ll work just fine.” He took the pencil and paper and walked over to the hood of my truck, leaning over and writing something down. “I’m gonna give you this, and if you ever find yourself lost in New York sometime, you can find me.” He handed me the piece of paper and I saw:

Ed Thorson

334-567-8973

I couldn’t help but give up a smile as I held the piece of paper in my hands and stared at it.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Ed told me with a grin and a pat on the shoulder. “And, if you wind up near NYU and still haven’t, I’d be happy to help as long as you’d be happy to help me.” There was a moment’s pause as he chuckled and stared over at me. “And, hopefully I’ll have a new phone by then” he added with a playful smirk.

I looked at him and nodded. It was hard to fight the tears that welled just beneath my eyelids for no logical reason, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I watched him go into the convenient store without hardly muttering a goodbye, and as I backed my truck out the parking lot I finally let the tears roll free. I slapped and hit myself for being so pathetic, but even I couldn’t change what my body did without my permission.

I drove back out into the hills on a deserted dirt road and pulled over. Crying until I couldn’t cry any longer, I eventually climbed out onto the hood and watched the stars rotate in the sky. I wished I hadn’t yelled at him for sleeping next to me. I wished I had kissed him. I wished I had delayed our trip back so that we could have spent more time together. But my wishing was in vain, and all I could do was stare at the stars as I held that little slip of paper next to my heart and dreamed of moving to New York.