Page 90 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

They were a Homestead family. Good Christian people who homeschooled their only daughter and wanted a simple life with chickens and a horse and a vegetable garden out in the middle of nowhere in the beauty of the Appalachians. Savannah was about my age, maybe a few months younger, and as innocent as an angel. Sweet brown eyes, a wide face with pouty lips and pink cheeks, long blonde hair that she curled into ringlets with scraps of cloth at night, and a thin, lithe figure.

A big truck came up the mountain and dropped all their shit off. Movers put it all in, and the pretty blonde girl stood on the bridge that connected our properties and stared at her new house. It wasn’t in great condition, and her parents were far too excited to live in the old rundown thing. I took no notice of her. I wasn’t interested in girls.

Girls were annoying, and they didn’t do much else than giggle loudly and poke fun. They never paid attention to me other than to be intimidated by me. But that was normal for me, considering I’d been the biggest man in the room from the time I was twelve years old.

One evening, a huge storm rolled in, and I knew the bar was going to be packed for the rest of the night. Those of us who lived higher up on the mountain lost power when it rained too hard, and since dad’s bar was one of the only actual restaurants in the area, people inevitably ended up down here during storms. The Thornburg’s came in and took a table in the corner, looking uncomfortable in the grungy atmosphere.

I took their orders, hoping it wouldn’t be awkward, but no such luck.

The wife spoke up. “Oh, you’re that nice boy who lives next door to us.”

Not nice. Not a boy.“Yes Ma’am.”

“It’s so nice to meet you. We dropped some cookies by your house yesterday.”

Lumps of oatmeal, peanut butter, raisins, and salt are not cookies.“That was very generous of you, ma’am.”

“We have a strange request,” she said, and I noticed the young girl who sat beside her seemed to wilt under her mother’s words. “My daughter here, she has some allergies. Can you make something that accommodates her needs?”

She then listed off a long, absurd list of things that their daughter could not eat. By the time she was done, it would have been easier if she’d just given me a recipe for something shecouldeat. But I had to be polite, because dad let me keep 50% of my tips, and I could really use some pocket change.

I thought through all the food that she couldn’t eat, and everything we had in the kitchen, and eventually concluded that their daughter was to be subjected to a portobello mushroom grilled in olive oil, with no spices or seasonings other than salt and pepper, on a bed of lettuce, with no dressing.

Poor girl. Portobello steaks were good, but seasoning was a must.

“I’ll bring you something you can eat,” I said, and turned to enter the kitchen.

We were busy that night since there were so many people who had lost power and couldn’t cook. I finally brought out the orders for the table in the corner. I watched Savannah Thornburg bite into the perfectly grilled mushroom steak I’d prepared for her, and I saw her eyes flutter closed. She sighed in pleasure, and then opened her eyes to meet my gaze. Her eyes said what she couldn’t say out loud.

There were very few things in my life that were satisfying, but watching the young pretty girl savor the meal I’d set in front of her got me through the evening.

Months later, I wished I had burnt the damn thing. Because even though Savannah Thornburg looked sweet and innocent, she turned out to be nothing but trouble.

School ended, and Ihad a whole summer of sleeping during the day to look forward to. The bar was slow during the summer because the college students all went home, so sometimes I didn’t even have to go into town. I spent most of my free time outside, walking in the woods, throwing rocks into the stream, and sometimes reading by the lake. I knew the area well enough to know all the safe places, and all the not so safe places.

Savannah, however, did not.

Savannah discovered all my favorite places to hide out and be away from the world. Within two weeks of school being out, it felt like my summer was ruined. Where before I would relish the afternoon sun coming through the leaves while I sat on the bottom branch of my favorite tree, now I glared up at the sky while I tried to block out her endless questions. I used to sit by the lake and fish, or close my eyes and listen to the water lap at the rocks. The experience was ruined by Savannah, who would follow me to the edge of the river, throw things in, talk, or worse, trip and fall in, squealing from the cold water.

There were a few times she nearly put her foot in a bear trap or walked across a fucking snake, and I had to save her ass. “You can’t run around here blindly, Savannah,” I snapped. “We’re in the woods, not a park. You’re going to get yourself hurt. For fuck’s sake!”

She winced when I shouted at her. She was so fucking annoying.

Telling her to leave me alone did no good. “We’re neighbors,” she would say, big innocent eyes looking up at me. “We should be friends.”

“We’re not friends. You’re an annoying girl and I don’t like you. Go away.”

“I’m not annoying.”

“You’re a bitch,” I snapped at her once. She didn’t answer me right away, and when I looked over my shoulder at her, her big brown eyes were glassy and filled with tears.

She took a shuddering breath and forced herself to look at me once before she turned and ran back into the woods towards her house. And I decided she looked much prettier with tears in her eyes and a quivering chin than she did when she was yammering.

The bullshit continued all summer. Even after I called her names, told her I didn’t like her, and even tried completely ignoring her, she kept coming back to annoy me. It almost became a game after a while. How long could I hide from her before she found me, and how long would she last before she ran home crying from my insults? The game went on all summer.

Dad kicked me out of the bar the first few weeks of my Senior year of High School. Someone had complained that their kids were afraid of me, which was valid because their kids were little assholes and I’d scared them into sitting quietly at their table and not disrupting the place. Dad hired some college students to do his dirty work instead, so I had my afternoons and evenings free. I felt like a million bucks for the first time in years, and started paying attention in some of my classes. But that also meant I had my afternoons free, and I found myself outside wondering where Savannah was. Surely she didn’t homeschool all day, did she?

Three weeks later, she finally emerged into the sun, looking stark and pale. She saw me and smiled tentatively, heading my way.

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