The Wrong Side Of The Tracks (Leighton) (2 page)

The last bell rang
and everyone bolted from their seats, abandoning their teacher in mid-sentence.  Alexandra walked past Maria and made eye contact.

“
I like your boots, I see we both have amazing taste,” she said over-confidently.

Maria snorted at
her, “Too bad now I can’t wear mine again.”

Alexandra
’s eyes widened, horrified.  She didn’t see that coming.  She rushed out of the classroom; for fear that anyone within ear-shot could hear the hissing noise of her quickly deflating.  She didn’t have to be such a bitch!  She stopped at Camryn’s locker and leaned against the cold metal door.  She looked down and didn’t make eye contact with any of the kids in the hallway in case they had heard her get shot down by Maria.  There was no sense adding injury to insult              .  She unlocked her I-phone and punched in Cam’s cell number.

“
Oh muhhh god! I’m SO sorry!” 

The rest of Alexandra
’s confidence hissed out of her as her stomach dropped, “Where are you?”

“
We skipped eighth period and went to the diner.”

“
Oh okay, don’t move I’ll just walk down.”

“
No, Mr. Camdon busted us and called our parents.  I’m on my way home right now with my mom.”

“
Why would you skip eighth period if you knew I was meeting you here afterwards?”

“
I gotta go Alex.”

Tears stung her eyes as sh
e rushed through the crowd toward the door.  She and Camryn were supposed to skip school together, and get caught together.  That’s what best friends did.  Why would she bail on her?

Her phone was vibrating as she stepped out into the hot September sun. 
She took a deep breath, and put on her fakest happy voice.

“
Hey Mom!”

“
I just wanted to make sure you checked with Mrs. Rollins about going to her house after school.”

“
Mom!  I told you she’s fine with it.”

“
Well, I’m going to give her a call…”

Alex cut he
r off, “Don’t you dare call her! This is embarrassing; I’m in high-school now.  You don’t need to check with someone’s parents because I’m going to their house for an hour.  Trust me, she doesn’t care.”

“
Fine, I'm going to trust you.   But if you screw this up you won’t be going to anyone’s house for the rest of the school-year.”

“
Whatever. I gotta get on the bus before it leaves.” Alex hung up without saying good-bye.

There was no way she was going to go sit at Donavon
’s football practice for two hours after she just got dissed by a sophomore and ditched by her “best-friend.”  Alex walked across the parking lot, taking large strides.  None of the students in the parking lot even noticed her, they were too busy gossiping and making plans for after-school.  She had to get away from the school before Mrs. Raker showed up for Donavon’s practice.  She couldn’t walk down Main Street, because she would drive past her and definitely see her.  She was going to have to cut through The Boxes. 

She took long strides ac
ross the parking lot weaving in and out of all the students’ cars that cost more than most working class adults’ homes.  Students stood around gossiping and making plans for after school, not even noticing her or acknowledging her.  How did she go from running Leighton Middle side-by-side with Camryn to becoming invisible?  She reached the last row of cars and hovered along the brush embankment, she looked over her shoulder momentarily to make sure no one was watching her (of course no one was, no one even had made eye contact with her while she crossed the entire length of the lot), then she darted down the steep worn-down walking trail to the tracks.

Alexandra came to a stop at the bottom of the path in front of the tracks; she had never been this close t
o the tracks before, ever.  Of course she had ridden over them in the car with her family, but this was different.  She hadn’t realized how large they were, she couldn’t just step over them.  She was going to have to take two or three strides to cross over.  She had expected big shiny steel, but was surprised to see rusty deteriorating tracks with wooden boards across them; every other board was broken or missing.  Nervously she kicked an old dusty beer bottle with the toe of her boot across the tracks; it rattled and clanked over the metal ties.  The seniors liked to sneak down the path and smoke cigarettes next to the tracks after school; she heard shouting and giggling coming down the bank behind her.  She darted across the tracks without any hesitation before she was seen.

About fifteen kids played in front of The Boxes with balls, dolls, and some plastic trucks.  She started walking along the side of tracks, and not one of the kids looked up and acknowledged her.  Great, she was even invisible to five ye
ar olds.  The children milled across the yards, and there weren’t any visible sidewalks or roads between the houses, just dirt paths.  She didn’t dare walk directly through The Boxes, with the luck she was having today an old woman with a baseball bat would come outside and attack her for trespassing.  She was going to have to cut through a line of trees and brush; about twenty feet wide and then she would come out on Sherman two streets over from her house. 

             
Alex had never been in the woods alone before.  It was only three thirty, so it wasn’t even close to sundown, but it still gave her the creeps.  And why was it so damn hot outside?  She pushed up the sleeves of her baggy gray Michael Kors sweater, and inhaled deeply.  Then she pushed herself into the brush.  She obviously wasn’t the first person to take this shortcut, and followed the narrow path across the strip of small trees and bushes towards Sherman.  Every time she heard an animal scurry or twig snap, she’d freeze and hold her breath until she found the source of the noise.  The red and orange leaves crunched under her Uggs with every step. 

The third time she froze and strained her ears
, she realized quick heavy footsteps were getting closer, and they weren’t hers.  Frantically Alex looked around for a bush or tree to duck behind, and then she seen him.  He had to be about sixteen years old and at least six feet tall.  But he wasn’t skinny, he was solid.  She could see every inch of his chiseled caramel skin that wasn’t covered by his lonely red mesh shorts and white Nikes.  Usually long messy hair repulsed Alexandra, but she had never seen wild black chin-length ringlets like his before.  His curls were the only part of his solid body that bounced as he walked towards her.  Her heart rate didn’t drop down to normal, but she wasn’t scared anymore.

He stopped right in front of her and stared at her with angry dark green eyes.  The path through the brush was too narrow for him to pass her without her moving to the side.  For the first time all day s
omeone was being forced to acknowledge her.   Judging by the beach towel he was carrying and the water dripping from his shorts he was on his way home from the swimming hole.  Lost Creek flowed behind The Boxes, under a few bridges in town, and deposited into the Hudson River.  During the summer Donavon always begged their mom to take them to the swimming hole, at the bend in the creek there were huge boulders along the bank and the water was about four feet deep.  When you drove by you could see people swinging on an old rope tied from a tree and flopping into the water.  Mrs. Riker always made comments about unsanitary conditions and how dangerous the current was and opted to take them to the indoor pool at the club.  Kids at Leighton always told ghost stories about the girl from The Boxes that drown at the swimming hole in the early nineties and haunted Leighton.  Alexandra shivered as she thought about the ghost girl wandering through the woods dripping wet just like him, and then he interrupted her thoughts.

“
What are you doing on this side of the tracks?” he demanded.

“
Uhh I was just taking a short-cut,” she stammered.

She broke eye contact and looked down at her fresh French manicure; she nervously chipped away at her white tips suddenly feeling
self-conscious of their perfection.  What made him so sure she went to Leighton Prep?  Did he own this side of the tracks?  She had every right as he did to be cutting through these trees.  Alexandra looked back up at him and he had a devilish grin on his face, not devilish/flirtatious, more like devilish/mean.

“
Hurry home princess, before Mommy and Daddy put your face on a milk carton,” he sneered.

Her lips curled down and she looked at him in disgust.  Today was not her day.  And why was something so mean and ug
ly coming out of something that good looking?  A flood of anger and frustration that had been building up all day inside her began to bubble over.  She swung her designer bag over her shoulder and stomped passed him so aggressively it barely phased her when the back of her hand brushed against his warm bare skin.  As she stomped out of the tree line she heard his deep demeaning laugh growing farther away.

Alexandra
’s mind was whirling as she walked the rest of the way home.  She kept picturing Maria’s look of disgust on her face when she realized she and Alex had on the same shoes, and then she’d imagine how pathetic she must have looked leaning against Camryn’s locker crying because she had been ditched, then she would see the boy in the woods laughing at her and telling her to go home.  It was an embarrassing movie on repeat playing over and over in her brain. 

Alex kicked her boots off on the sun porch, and wandered through the doorway into the kitchen, then yelped.  She had been so busy replaying her day
of shame she hadn’t even noticed her Dad’s huge SUV looming in the driveway.  Her dad was sitting at the counter with his ear-piece on nodding his head and shuffling through papers that were laid out in front of him.  He looked up and smiled, and raised his finger to his lips in a ‘Shh’ position, indicating her was on the phone.  She dropped her bag on the floor next to her feet and waited for him to finish.

Her dad, Davis Raker, probably seemed very intimidating to anyone who didn
’t know him personally.  He was in his late thirties, about six feet tall, and in great shape.  His five mile runs every morning since she was old enough to remember were definitely paying off.  He had jet black hair and pale blue eyes like Alexandra, and dressed impeccably well. His silver Rolex clanked against their marble countertop as he gathered up his paperwork and placed it inside his leather briefcase.    He was obviously trying to get off the phone, but whoever was on the other end of the conversation wasn’t in any kind of hurry. 

“
I told you, we will do whatever you want, AFTER November.  That kind of publicity is not what I need before the election.”

Alexandra smirked, you
’d think she her father was running for president not the mayor of Leighton the way he was talking.  Although he did plan on taking his political career to the next level and run for governor next year, he was taking this election way too seriously.

“
I’m not being inconsiderate. I’m being logical.  I know this is important to you and we can do something huge, it doesn’t have to be the specific date of the accident, it’s the twentieth anniversary all year long.  Okay, we’ll talk about this later I really have to go I’m running late.  I love you too.”

Alexandra
’s ears perked up, she had assumed it was someone he worked with by the way he was talking.  Why did he just say ‘I love you?’

“
Who was that dad?”

“
Your nana, being her usual pain in my ass,” he grunted, noticeably irritated by the conversation.

“
What did she want?”

Mr. Raker stopped packing his bag
and looked up at her.  This would be the moment his wife would scorn Alex for not knowing her place or being disrespectful, but they were two completely different people.  Davis’s face softened, and his lips curved up in a small smile. 

“
Your Grandma wants to do some sort of memorial for your Aunt Sandra, next month will be the twentieth anniversary of her passing.”

Alessandra Raker was Davis
’s little sister by two years, and Alexandra’s name-sake.  Alex had never met her aunt; she passed away when she was sixteen years old after a tragic car accident.  Her death wasn’t a secret, just not something that wasn’t discussed very often.  From bits and pieces of dialogue she had picked up over the years via eavesdropping she learned that her Aunt was an epitome of a spoiled rich girl rebelling against her snobby parents, and according to her mother quite a “wild child.”  Her Grandma always made references to how close her father and Aunt were, and how hard he had taken her death, her mother had no comment on that though.

Alex glared at him, “
Why is a memorial for Aunt Sandra going to hurt your campaign?”

“
Politics are tricky sweetie.  Trust me, your Aunt Sandra was my best friend I would love nothing more than honoring her life.  But, that’s not a good idea to do so two weeks before Leighton goes to the polls.  You know your Grandma is going to pull out all the stops, it’s going to be extravagant, and I’ve been trying to make voters forget that I come from a family made of money.”

“
A memorial could help you get more votes, it’ll show them how family oriented you are.”