Citrus County (23 page)

Shelby backed into the shadows and reclined herself on some boxes. Toby wondered if she was on shoes or bibles. She undid the buttons of her shirt and calmly drew one arm out of its sleeve and then the other. She was wearing nothing underneath. Toby’s mouth was dry from nerves and it was dry from the lack of Shelby’s mouth. He’d been watching her body for months and now here it was. Shelby was so pale and somehow her breasts were an even lighter shade. They were of a shape and character that Toby could not have imagined. He reached and placed his hand on one of them and a husky squeak escaped Shelby. Toby didn’t want to be scared again. He didn’t want to feel like a sucker. He wanted to feel what you were supposed to feel.

Shelby wanted this to go further, but she wasn’t going to lead Toby anymore. She wanted
him
to do something. He reached with his free hand for her shorts, no idea what was going to happen. She was right in front of him, but it seemed like he had to reach a long way. He fumbled with the button for a moment, his fingers stupid, and then Shelby was reaching for him, clutching at him.

Toby stepped back into a stack of boxes and they teetered and almost fell.

“I don’t want you to touch me this time,” he said.

“Why not?”

Toby didn’t know what to say. He wanted to be able to keep his nerve, to touch Shelby because that’s what she wanted. He reclaimed the space between them, and then both of them were holding still and listening. They heard a car. The noise got steadily louder until it was right outside the warehouse. The car didn’t have a muffler or something. The doors opened and then slammed. Toby handed Shelby her shirt and she accepted it and began buttoning it up. The two of them crept over to the wall and found a warped spot where they could see out. There were two men, both with flattop haircuts and one with an enormous class ring. They were talking about which statues to take, which would sell for the most, their voices raised because of the grumbling engine. Toby and Shelby could see the men but not their vehicle. They kept carrying statue after statue. It must’ve been a big pickup truck. They must’ve been piling the saints and knights one on top of the other in the bed like a bunch of dead bodies. The men may have owned the statues or they may have been stealing them.

That evening, Shelby asked her father to drive her to the library. She’d done enough walking in the woods for one day. They cruised along the edges of some cow pastures, slowed at a recent sinkhole that had collapsed half of a diabetes clinic. They pulled onto the dusty road, passed the power substation.

Lately, Shelby’s father’s breakfasts had gotten more elaborate—honey-pecan sausage, omelets, pineapple juice. He made himself read the paper each morning, grinding through the major stories of each section no matter how little they interested him. He gave Shelby gifts, the latest a book in which a bunch of poets wrote about their favorite pop songs. Shelby’s father had learned how to force his mood, to keep himself in the middle ground, neither manic nor hopeless. He seemed a bit lighter in spirit, perhaps because he had less of it. He would find peace, even if it were some compromised brand. Shelby could feel it; he would survive.

Shelby’s father parked the car and the two of them sat staring at a poster for a fundraising picnic to benefit the manatees. Shelby looked out her side window and saw the high school boys, with their falling-off black jeans and frayed shoes. They were cowardly and dangerous, a pack of hyenas.

“I don’t get manatees,” Shelby’s father said. “I don’t get the big fascination. If I’m still around when they kick, let’s have a party. We’ll make margaritas.”

“I understand manatees,” Shelby said. “They’re like friendly dinosaurs.” She got out of the car and leaned in the window. “Back in ten.”

Shelby walked along the front planters. As she passed the high school boys, one of them mumbled something, too low for Shelby to make out. Shelby went up the stairs without looking at them and went inside and got into her e-mail. If Aunt Dale still hadn’t invited her to Iceland, she was going to have to come out and ask. It was a rude thing to do, but less rude, Shelby thought, than leaving someone hanging for weeks. And maybe, as strongly as Shelby had been hinting, Aunt Dale hadn’t really comprehended that Shelby wanted to visit right now, as soon as possible, that Shelby wasn’t being hypothetical.

There it was, the message in the inbox.

Shelby,

I want you to know that I would really enjoy a visit from you, but unfortunately I’m not going to be able to make it work as soon as this summer. I’ve been hoping my schedule would clear a little, but it’s only grown more impossible. I’m hoping to take real vacation time (what’s that?) this spring, a sabbatical I’m going to call it, so maybe we can work something out, maybe on your spring break. It’ll be good and snowy for you. That may be better anyway, because I’m sure your dad still needs you around down there. I’m really glad we’ve gotten back in touch like we have. I’m sure there are a lot of interesting things you can get into down in Florida, and I’d like to hear about all of them—not too interesting, I hope. Wink, wink.

Shelby signed out, but she didn’t get up from her chair. The people in line could wait. Aunt Dale was ditching her. Shelby didn’t need to read it again. She got it the first time, she was being ditched. Aunt Dale was bowing out. The only reason it had taken her so long to say anything was that she knew she was going to hurt Shelby’s feelings. And she had. Wink, wink? What was that about, Toby? Of course Shelby’s dad needed her around, but what about what Shelby needed? Next spring. Next spring felt like another eon. The world could end before next spring.

Aunt Dale, Shelby saw, was a coward. Maybe next spring, like everything was fine. She was full of shit, this lady. Nobody was
that
busy. And using Shelby’s dad as an excuse. Aunt Dale was afraid of helping her flesh and blood. She was scared of Shelby, like everyone else.

Shelby picked up some pieces of scrap paper and tore them into little pieces and brushed them off the counter and into a wastebasket. She was annoyed that she was still susceptible to disappointment. She still lost her balance when a rug was pulled. She didn’t want to e-mail anyone ever again. She looked around at the other people, all staring at their screens. They were researching God-knows-what. They were trying to figure out what to feed a sick sheep, trying to buy a used engagement ring, looking for a cheap fishing boat. They were all better people than Shelby’s aunt. They would do anything for their families. They knew what was important. Aunt Dale was conducting a busy, glamorous life, and Shelby was a burdensome interruption.

Shelby stalked through the library and shoved the front doors open, then sauntered down the front steps. She rounded a planter and jumped across the walkway, landing a couple short feet from the high school boys, causing the closest of them to give ground.

“The only way you guys will ever get to second base is with each other,” she said. “None of you, in your lives, will lay your hands on a girl like me.”

The boys glanced nervously toward Shelby’s father in the car. They laughed a little, believing they could turn Shelby’s words from an insult into a joke.

“That’s why you stand out here and make remarks,” she said. “You’re not even rednecks or thieves or perverts or drug dealers. You’re worthless.”

“I am too a redneck,” one of them said, the one with the closest-set eyes and tightest ball cap. “And I’m the type of redneck doesn’t allow people to insult me.”

“Nobody thinks you guys are funny and nobody’s afraid of you.”

“We’re just some boys who like fresh air and company,” one of them said, the one with the wispy, pitiful mustache. “You like to read, we like fresh air and company.”

Shelby looked at the one who said he was a redneck and he was champing at the bit. She wished he would jump at her or raise his voice. She wanted to see her father beat the hell out of one of these kids. This was what she was stuck with. Citrus County. These were her people now. No one in Iceland was hers. Her mother and her sister were not hers. Toby—who knew? The whole county was full of these kids, these punks, full of their parents.

Shelby looked toward the car and her father was indeed peering rigidly in her direction, the look on his face all business. He was trying to figure out if these boys were her friends or what. Shelby looked individually at as many of them as she could, into their hollow eyes. The boys didn’t move. There wasn’t a peep to be heard. They were of one mind, done in. They were survivors, these boys. They couldn’t afford to have fight in them like Shelby did. They knew when they were beat.

After the final bell sounded and Mr. Hibma’s last class of the day spilled out into the hall and blended with the rest of the freed students, Mr. Hibma shut off the lights in his room and sat at his desk. All the clubs had wrapped up. Most of the sports were over. This was the time of year when even the teachers bolted right after the final bell. It was the beginning of summer, a time to be happy. Mr. Hibma clacked the heel of his shoe down on the linoleum and listened to the echo, and for once it wasn’t a dispiriting sound. The clack of Mr. Hibma’s heel was not in a minor key; it was the first note of a crescendo.

He spun his chair around so that he was facing his computer, blew on the keyboard, then backed his head away as a plume of dust rose. He turned the computer on and listened to it come to life, waving dust away with his hand. He watched the green light flicker and then steady, made sure there was paper in the printer. Mr. Hibma got into the word processing program and typed the following:

The moon is more serious each night and the sun sillier each day. I could do without anything. I could do with nothing. The Publix. 1315 Cooper Road. Clermont, Florida. 5 in the afternoon. June 1.

Mr. Hibma walked to the end of the hall and looked out over the parking lot. He saw the buses pulling away, saw the grassy plot where the flag corps practiced. He saw Pete and the Spanish expert walk out together and slip into the same car. He saw Vince drifting from crowd to crowd, offering his gum. Mr. Hibma had no idea if Dale was going to show up. He knew he’d corresponded himself into a corner, and he was glad for that, but whether Dale would physically appear was of little consequence now. Mr. Hibma didn’t need Dale anymore, didn’t care to impress her. He understood that she didn’t take him seriously. She
wanted
to be disappointed. That was how she lived—in search of disappointment. Had she taken Mr. Hibma seriously, even a little bit, she never would’ve responded. Mr. Hibma was trying to change his life and she thought he couldn’t. Mr. Hibma was going to shock her; he was going to stick her with a heavy secret, a problem, and she was going to have to carry it.

He would go to the FedEx in Clermont this afternoon—no messing around with the post office—and tell them to deliver the letter on the morning of the 29th. He didn’t want Dale to have time to think anything over. If she
did
come, he wanted her rushing to get to him, wanted her to arrive bedraggled, beginning to lose her doubt in Mr. Hibma—her doubt, all she had. He wanted to see her screech into the Publix parking lot in her rental car, panicked, hoping she wasn’t late, hoping Mr. Hibma was bluffing, hoping not to have to talk him out of anything. And what would Mr. Hibma do? He couldn’t meet her there. He’d wander the parking lot and watch for her, and he’d know her when he saw her, and he’d pass close enough to smell the airplane and the foreign air on her, and he wouldn’t say a word. Afterward, if she wanted to reveal what had passed between them, wanted to turn Mr. Hibma in, so be it. That would be
her
business.

Mr. Hibma was bursting with a foreign feeling. Or perhaps the absence of a familiar feeling. He didn’t feel defensive. He did not feel put-upon, attacked. He was on the move. No other way to move forward had presented itself, and he wasn’t running from the way he had.

Shelby decided to follow Toby on Friday afternoon. A week left in the school year. She couldn’t think of a thing to hope for, and that was good. What she was going to do was hunker down in Citrus County. If she had to be here, she was going to
be
here. Her passport had arrived in the mail and she had promptly carried it out to the backyard and burned it in a coffee can, the white smoke trailing with the breeze into the treetops. Shelby hadn’t had to coax the fire. The passport went up like kindling, like it knew it was meant to be burned. Shelby had also removed the photograph of Aunt Dale from the hallway. It wasn’t hers to burn, but she’d stashed it out in the utility room. She wasn’t about to pass by the lady every time she went to the bathroom. Her father would ask where the picture went, and Shelby would have to come up with something.

Shelby knew the general direction through the woods Toby started in on the way to his house, but she didn’t want to miss him somehow, didn’t want him to evade her by taking an alternate route, so she blended into a crowd at the end of the science wing and tracked Toby straight from his marine biology class. He nudged past a gaggle of short blondes, crammed his whole bag in his locker, then proceeded at a mourner’s pace out the lunchroom exit. He didn’t stop to talk to anybody. He broke from the parking lot into the woods at a spot that didn’t seem to have a trail. Shelby followed. There was a trail all right, winding and shadowy. Shelby felt exposed in the woods. She wasn’t sure how far behind to stay. Toby kept his eyes on the forest ground, never turning around to check what was behind him. He’d worn a bright red T-shirt that day, so whenever Shelby let him get a few steps too far ahead, she had only to rush forward until the shirt called out through the underbrush. Shelby fell into a rhythm. She kept at least one tree directly between her and Toby. The multitude of bugs in the woods were providing their standard crackling hum, drowning out any noise Shelby made by snapping twigs. She felt dishonest but full of purpose.