Page 2 of Full Circle

The boy grabbed one of my hands and hauled me to my feet, helping me to wipe off all the mud on my shins. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment. “It’s fine. I’m not hurt.”

He brushed the hair away from my face. “Yes, you are. This cut is bleeding.”

Having a stranger’s hands on my face made my heart race in a way that spooked me. I took a step away from him, backing myself up against the tree. “It’s fine. Just a scratch.”

The boy smirked at my retreat and stuck his hand out as if to shake mine. “I’m Wesley. Wesley Madden.”

Staring blankly at his offered hand, my mind went through a rolodex of Smithson County. I knew every child in our small town of River’s Run, Georgia. This boy did not belong here. He had to be a tourist. “Where are you from?”

He smiled, a megawatt smile that made my heart race again. Stuffing his hand back in the pocket of his cargo shorts, he explained, “Originally from Atlanta, but I live here now.”

That didn’t make sense. Marla was the gossip queen of our county and she hadn’t said anything about a new family moving here. Whose house did they buy?

Wesley must have recognized the look of puzzlement on my face because he clarified, “I moved in with my great-aunt Shirley.”

I nodded. Miss Shirley Jones was a regular down at The Comfy Cushion, although she had to be pushing 85. “Ain’t she a little old to be taking you in?”

He shrugged. “My dad works too much and my mom took off when I was a baby. I hated all of the nannies, so he reached out to my mom’s family. Shirley was the only one who offered.”

It took everything I had to hold back a snort. What kind of family used a nanny? Was he some rich, spoiled brat?

Rather than responding, I turned and started to climb back up the tree. This boy, no matter how sweet he seemed, wasn’t my problem and I was still too depressed to care.

“Wait!” Wesley grabbed onto the leg of my jeans as I paused on the lowest branch. “We need to go get your eye cleaned up. It could get infected.”

“How would you know?” I scoffed.

He smirked again. “Let’s just say, I’ve gotten into my fair share of fights.”

The retort on the tip of my tongue died with his statement. He looked too scrawny to be much of a fighter to me, but maybe he was just a bully.

“How old are you?” I asked instead.

“Twelve. Thirteen in June, just a couple weeks from now.” His blue eyes twinkled as he perused my body, still hoisted onto the lowest branch. “What’s your name?”

A warning bell was ringing somewhere in the back of my mind that befriending Wesley Madden would be a bad idea, but there was a gleam in his eye that reminded me of my mama.

Hope.

He looked hopeful, and that was something I didn’t have in me to crush.

“Celeste Hendricks,” I finally offered.

His megawatt smile returned. “That’s a pretty name.”

As if sensing my hesitation, Wesley leaned forward with an outstretched hand, waiting for me to accept. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but give him a soft smile in return as I enclosed my hand in his. With one tug I was out of the tree and standing next to him, peering up into his crystal blue eyes. Even though I was a few months older than him, Wesley towered over me. He held my gaze far longer than was necessary and I felt something shift inside me, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I wondered errantly if it would ever shift back.

For the rest of the afternoon, Wesley and I walked around the park and the playground, telling each other more about our lives. I let him do most of the talking, still too in awe of this angelic boy who paid me this kind of attention. He told me that his dad owned a big corporation and had plans for Wesley to take it over one day, but Wesley kept getting into trouble and fighting at school. I gasped in shock as he described the number of fights he had won, supposedly against much older, bigger kids. It never crossed my mind to question him. Wesley didn’t seem too keen on the idea of joining his father’s company, but when I asked what else he would want to do with his life, he merely shrugged. “That’s a long ways off,” he said. “I have plenty of time to figure it out.”

We had circled the area more than five times before he threw himself down on the edge of the field beyond the baseball diamond, yanking me down to join him.

“Look at all the clouds! That one kinda looks like a rabbit,” he said, pointing upward.

I flopped down so that my head lay right next to him, my body extending in the opposite direction. We were so close that his stray hair tickled my ear. If I turned my head to the left, my face would collide with his.

The shapes he saw in the clouds became increasingly ridiculous, with elaborate back stories that he swore were Native American legends, and I couldn’t stop giggling. I never offered my own interpretation of the shapes, content to let him continue talking. After several minutes, his voice faded away and we laid there quietly.

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