Running From Mercy (5 page)

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Authors: Terra Little

BOOK: Running From Mercy
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SIX
Chad was still in the midst of a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend Leslie, whom he was forced to leave when his parents suddenly decided that Georgia was their next destination. His father was in the business of revitalizing failing small businesses and offering his services on a consulting basis when larger ones floundered. The move would make the family's third since Chad's fourth birthday.
Before Georgia, they had lived in Arizona for nearly four years and then in Nevada for six. Chad was just starting to believe they would put down roots in Nevada when his father was summoned to Georgia to try his hand at saving a black-owned communications company from bankruptcy. The company's main office was located in Atlanta, and the plan was for the family to lease a house in the city so Chad's father could be close to work. They were still living out of their suitcases in a hotel room when his mother decided to go house hunting, got her directions mixed up, and ended up in the little town of Mercy, Georgia.
She should have taken a left on Highway 25, but she took a right, and then she exited on the wrong ramp and ended up in College Park. On the drive back to Atlanta she merged onto Highway 205, when she should've stayed on Highway 25 and then she took Chad on a sightseeing excursion that led them to Highway 210. There, they stopped for lunch at a dusty little diner and asked for directions back to Atlanta. They were told to keep straight on 210, that it would put them off on 25 and, from there, they'd be less than an hour outside of Atlanta's city limits. They filled up on gas and set out.
With a full stomach and the certainty that they were finally on course, Chad slept for most of the drive back to Atlanta. He didn't wake until they were in Mercy, and when he did, he found his mother talking to an old woman about the
For Rent
sign she'd seen in the window of a two-story house there. He could see in his mother's eyes that she liked the town and wanted the house. He knew what it meant when his mother got that look in her eyes and he'd started feeling sorry for his father right then and there. What should've been a thirty-minute drive to work every day was suddenly about to be stretched to almost an hour, one way.
Chad was fourteen when they moved into the house on Northrop Lane. He started his freshman term at Mercy High School halfway through the school year and stuck out like a sore thumb, with his designer jeans and funny accent. He talked in clipped, rapid tones while everyone around him spoke slowly, almost musically. More than once he'd had to ask for something to be repeated before he fully understood what was being said to him, which made the other kids laugh and shake their heads at him. They were under the impression that he was the one with the speech impediment.
Finally, Nate Woodberry took pity on him and struck up a conversation with him in gym class. Nate was popular, and through him, Chad gained acceptance. Suddenly, people were coming up to him, wanting to talk, inviting him to sit with them at lunch, and inviting him to come along when they went to their hangout spots after school and on weekends. Apparently, hanging out with Nate meant he was worth the time of day.
He was introduced to Pam and Paris on a Saturday a few weeks later when he accompanied Nate to a pool party a classmate was hosting. Nate came by to pick him up so they could walk together, and Chad had come jogging out the door with a purple towel draped around his neck, his swim trunks slung low on his hips, and his mind on all the havoc he planned to wreak. He remembered every detail of the moment he first laid eyes on Pam. She was riding piggyback on Nate's back, whispering something in his ear as Chad crossed the porch and met her eyes. It had taken him a full ten seconds to get around to noticing Paris, who was busy pulling her sister's hair into a sloppy ponytail and looking anxious about the fact that Pam wouldn't be still.
“Chad, this crazy girl on my back is Pam and the other one is Paris.” Nate grinned up at Chad. He slapped Pam's bare thigh playfully. “Pam, get down. You're too big to be riding on my back anyway.”
Pouting, Pam lowered her thighs and slid down the back of Nate's body to her feet. Chad thought the contact was uncomfortably intimate and cocked a curious brow. Sensing his thoughts, Pam cocked one in return and they stared at each other as he came down the steps and joined them on the sidewalk.
“How come I never seen you around school?” Chad asked the back of Pam's head. She was walking ahead of him, next to Nate, and they were so close that their arms were brushing as they talked back and forth in low voices. He was trying unsuccessfully to catch the drift of their conversation, but he kept getting distracted by other things. Namely, the shorts Pam was wearing—denim cutoffs that were frayed around the hem and riding high on her thighs, almost like panties. And then there was her hair. It was dangling down the middle of her back in a loose ponytail, the ends trailing across the clasp of her bikini top. He waited for her to turn around and answer him.
“We don't go to the high school,” Paris said from beside him. By contrast, she was wearing a one-piece swimsuit underneath an open camp shirt and a denim skirt that stopped just above her knees.
Chad remembered that she was there and looked down at her politely. Her eyes were the same shade as Pam's, sheer green and weird looking, shining out of a honey-toned face. He blinked from the intensity of them, thinking that Paris was cute and then he thought that Pam still hadn't answered him.
“We go to the junior high.”
“Oh.” He was shocked, but he thought he hid it well. At least until Paris's knowing chuckle reached his ears. He couldn't stop staring at the rhythmic sway of Pam's hips.
“They're best friends,” Paris supplied quietly. “Since Beacon.”
“Beacon?”
“The elementary school.”
“Oh.”
“You're a freshman, too?”
“Yeah.”
“So you're what, fourteen, fifteen?”
“Fourteen,” he said, scratching the back of his head lazily. In front of him, Nate reached out and hooked an elbow around Pam's neck, catching her in a headlock. The laugh she uttered in response hit him straight in the gut. He tried to picture Leslie's face in his mind and found the image fuzzy and out of focus. Lines of confusion creased his forehead as he looked down at Paris. “Why?”
She shrugged primly. “Just asking. She's thirteen, though. In case you was wondering.”
“I wasn't,” he lied.
“Oh.”
He was busy trying to touch Melissa Henry's breast underneath the water, without seeming to be doing so, when Pam slipped out of her shorts and headed over to the pool. Since they had arrived, she'd helped with setting out food and drinks and then she'd disappeared inside the house with some of the other girls. She'd stayed inside and out of sight for over an hour, but now she was ready to swim and she hadn't so much as looked in his direction all day.
Pam jogged the last three steps to the pool and cannonballed into the deep end. She stayed under for several minutes, then finally resurfaced less than a foot away from where Chad stood in the shallow end of the pool. His eyes locked onto the imprint of her nipples through her bikini top and he forgot all about trying to touch Melissa's breast. He swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out.
She played Marco Polo with some of the other kids. She joked around with some of the boys and seemed completely unaware of the lustful looks she received for her efforts. She swam lap races with Paris and lost two times out of three. She threw her head back and laughed with her mouth wide open and she ran her fingers around the rim of her bikini bottoms to smooth them out five times.
Chad knew because he'd counted while he was staring at Pam. He was perplexed by her face, couldn't seem to figure out the symmetry of it. Her eyes were wide and deep-set, her cheekbones jutted out sharply over hollowed jaws, and her lips were just plain too big. They sat on her face like a ripe peach, split in half and full of juice. She smiled and he saw that her teeth were straight and white, but too large for her mouth. He thought she resembled the Pink Panther with all those teeth. Her nose should've helped balance everything out, but it was narrow and slightly turned up at the tip, which made her look even stranger.
She looked like a cat, he decided. Moved like one, too. Tight little body, small breasts, narrow waist, and a round, plump butt. Her skin was barely brown-tinged, and he didn't know what it was about her that kept his eyes straying in her direction. By the time they left the party and headed back to his house, he was pissed with himself for allowing a thirteen-year-old kid to get his goat.
He took his frustration out on Pam. He walked behind her next to Paris and tried to stare a hole into the back of her head. She continued to ignore him, which made him even angrier.
“What's your problem, Pam?” he asked when he could hold it in no longer.
“Excuse me?”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. At fourteen, he was nearing the six-foot mark and she had to tilt her head back to catch his eyes. “You heard me,” he said. “You think you're too good to talk to somebody?”
“I didn't hear you say nothing to me.”
“I've been talking all day.”
“To Paris and Nate and all those other girls, but you ain't said nothing to me. So what's
your
problem?” She propped her hands on her hips and shifted her weight to one side. Neither of them noticed the look that passed between Nate and Paris because they were too busy staring each other down.
Chad's eyes darted over her strange-looking face rapidly. Somebody must have reached in a bag, pulled out facial features and put them together on her face with no rhyme or reason. He sucked his teeth and looked away. “Whatever. You're blocking my way.”
“You got a problem with me, you need to tell me what it is.”
“I'll tell you when I'm good and ready to tell you.”
“Whatever,” she snapped and resumed walking. And Chad resumed staring at the sway of her hips.
They fought like cats and dogs every time Nate had the bright idea to force them together, which was often. She was like Nate's shadow, and Chad couldn't resist temptation. He began to look forward to the times when he could make her face flush red with a few sharp words or make her so angry he could hear the sound of her breath whistling through her nostrils. She pretended to be so tough, but he didn't have any trouble wriggling his way under her skin and taking her attitude down a few notches. It became like a game to him.
He took it a step too far the night he tagged along with Nate to walk Pam home. Earlier in the day the four of them had gone to a movie and then split up. Pam hadn't materialized again until well after ten o'clock, coming out of the shadows at the side of Nate's house like a ghost and jogging up on the porch, where they were kicked back talking trash. She had sneaked out of the home after everyone was asleep and would sneak back in when she was ready to join them.
Chad wondered how she'd managed to get past her parents and out of the house to roam the streets at all hours of the night. He was staying over at Nate's house and Nate's mother was down at the speakeasy, but what was Pam's deal? Plus, they were almost fifteen to her thirteen. She should've been in bed counting sheep, where apparently, Paris was.
He said this to her and she told him to shut up. He kept poking and prodding at her until he had her right where he wanted her, knee-deep in the middle of a heated argument that had Nate shaking his head and cracking up. For him, it was all in fun.
Until he said, “Where's your momma, anyway?” just as they came out of the woods and approached the back of the children's home where she lived. He looked from her to the home, clearly surprised.
“I don't have a momma,” Pam said. “A daddy, either. Still think it's funny?” She left them there and disappeared through a window she'd left cracked for the purpose.
They didn't speak to each other for a week, mostly because Pam was giving Chad the silent treatment. If he thought she was standoffish before, it was nothing compared to the way she treated him after the night he put his foot in his mouth. He waited for an opportunity to catch her alone to apologize, but she went out of her way not to be left alone with him. And she was good at it.
When the opportunity finally presented itself, he followed her from the movie theater and caught her before she could turn off into the girls' bathroom. She hadn't known he was on her heels until he cuffed her arm, dragged her down the walkway to the rear of the building, and caged her in a dark corner.
“What's your problem?”
“You said if I had something to say I should say it, right?”
Her back was to the wall and he leaned in. She flattened a hand against his chest and nudged him away from her. His face was in her face and she couldn't breathe without sharing air with him.
“Hurry up and say it because I have to pee.”
“I didn't know you lived there,” he said softly.

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