Page 25 of The Cadence
“What?” Audrey asked.
“I was new to the school and I was already failing my classes. My grandma didn’t know what to do, so she had been showingup at the principal’s office to get me help. She went a few times a week to meet with them, and seeing her there must have given someone an idea. They made Will tutor me as community service, a punishment for the fight, and that’s how we met. He was really good at school, really smart,” I explained, “and he helped me a lot. Even when he didn’t have to come over anymore because the vice principal wasn’t making him, he kept on showing up to read with me and to study. And he would help my grandma, too, like with moving heavy things or doing yard work.”
“But you said you didn’t keep in touch,” Kasia noted. “Not even after all that?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t talk for years.” I watched him finally approaching, a glass in each hand. I took mine, said thank you, and introduced him to these ladies. Then Kasia also introduced me to her fiancé Tyler, a guy that I hadn’t really noticed before when I’d watched the Woodsmen games. When the offense was on the field, I had read a book or done some cleaning.
We all talked for a while, and it was a fun party. There were a few people who were loud and a few who acted too good for the rest of us, but I enjoyed myself a lot. Most of the other guests asked how Will and I knew each other, and his story was different from mine.
“We were friends in high school,” he answered simply, and didn’t include any information about my failing grades and how he’d been forced into that relationship with me. I guessed that it wasn’t very important anymore. I wondered if he would mindthat I’d shared—maybe overshared with those two women. They weren’t under any obligation not to pass along the story, either.
I tugged on his sleeve. “I think I did something that you won’t like,” I announced.
“What?” he called back, and I gestured so that he would lean down and I could talk into his ear.
“I told Kasia and Audrey that you got in trouble, and that was why you had to tutor me,” I said louder, but he shook his head.
“What did you say about tubers? Do you mean potatoes?” he asked.
It was too noisy for us to have this conversation. I took his hand and pulled him toward the front but with me in the lead, we weren’t getting very far, not very fast. Will stepped ahead and plowed a path for us so that we made it outside. The parking lot was quiet due to the two guys guarding it, although there was a small crowd on the sidewalk that got excited when they saw Will emerge. I pulled his hand again and we went around the side of the bar.
“What did you need to tell me, and do you have to do it here?” he asked. We were next to the dumpsters and it wasn’t the most pleasant spot.
“We’ll go back in soon. I was trying to say that I told some people that you had to help me with school as a punishment. I said that you got in trouble for defending Albert, too.”
“Who?”
“The little guy who was getting pushed around when you stepped in,” I reminded him. “You threw his bully down the stairs, but it was by mistake.”
“I meant to throw him against the lockers, but I missed,” he said. “I didn’t know the little guy’s name.” He paused, and looked above my head. “He was crying and trying not to let them see.”
“Albert and I had an art class together and he was always so grateful that you stood up for him. For the next three years, nobody ever touched him again, either. It’s a wonderful story and it says a lot about you, your character, but I started thinking that I shouldn’t have said it. Maybe you wouldn’t want people to know that you’d been in trouble, even if it was a good kind of trouble.”
“I don’t care about what happened when we were in high school. What else are you telling people about the two of us, how we are now?”
“Us now? I only say that we knew each other a long time ago and because you’re a generous, caring person, you offered me a job. Someone asked me about leaving Chattanooga and I said that I’d had to, because you were worried about me living in my car.”
“What the hell? You broadcast the news that you were going to have to live in your car?”
“Not broadcast! I only told one woman named Ember, and she didn’t seem to think anything of it. I won’t repeat it,” I promised.
“There is no way, no way in hell that I would have let that happen,” Will told me. His voice, already deep, had dropped low enough that it sounded like an earthquake rumbling, if thatwas something that happened in real life and not just in my imagination.
“What did you have to do with it?” I asked. “I might have moved into my car at any time at all and you wouldn’t have even known. Until you came over after the funeral, we hadn’t seen each other since the day of your graduation.” I had gone and sat in the hot bleachers to watch the ceremony on the football field, and I had clapped as hard as I could when they’d announced William Franklin Bodine and when he’d given his speech as the class valedictorian. Afterwards, I’d hung around his car so that we could talk, and things had progressed. That day marked the last time we had spoken for seven years.
“I wouldn’t have let it happen,” he repeated. “Don’t tell people that.”
“They’re not thinking any less of you,” I assured him. “They’re not blaming you for my financial situation.”
“Consider how this looks, Calla. Here I am, making more money than I can spend, and I allowed you to live in poverty. I swear to you, I didn’t know. I didn’t know about your grandmother being so sick, either.”
“Will!” I reached up to put my hands on his shoulders. “Why are you talking like this? No matter what happened when we knew each other before, it doesn’t mean that you owed me anything afterwards.”
“Doesn’t it?” He looked over at the overflowing dumpster and grimaced. “Should we go back inside?”
“Sure, and I won’t admit to anything else about me. I wasn’t doing it to upset you or make you look bad, I swear.”
He reached up and took my hands. “I know that.”
