Tru Love (2 page)

              His laughter follows Genny. It’s deep and curls slowly through her ears.

              She wonders what country he’s from and if all the people who live there are as irritating.

              For several blocks she hears him behind her, the soft scraping of his shoes on the cement and the crinkling of his plastic bag. She starts to worry that he’s following her, begins assuring herself with crazy logic—like a guy out buying books is no threat to humanity—when he stops at Union to cross with the light. She wants to look over her shoulder but won’t give him the satisfaction of laughing at her again. She picks up her pace and after three blocks turns north, into her Pacific Heights neighborhood.

              She passes several houses, all tall, with small, gated front yards and colorful trim. She climbs the stone steps, pushes the numbers on the keypad entry that will release the door, and steps over the threshold into a ‘radically different world,’ as Hunter calls it. Her mother was born poor and spent the last twenty years making up for it. So the house is big, the floors are covered in marble or aged hardwood, and all the appliances are upgraded annually.

              She recognizes the waste in her mother’s behavior but understands where it comes from. Her mom was seventeen when she wore her first new dress, and she didn’t own it, but was modeling it for Oscar de la Renta in Paris.

              Genny’s mom is a legend. She put super into the term Super Model. She was a founding member of that elite group. Even now, at the age of forty-four, she shoots the occasional magazine cover or puts her face on a memorable product. But mostly, she runs a business. What else, but a clothing line? High end evening and wedding gowns. Celebrities come to her for their Oscar dresses. Once a year Genny accompanies her mother to the Mayor’s Ball and that’s the only time she ever wears anything her mom creates.

              Her father escaped years ago, though he didn’t get far. He bought a penthouse condo with a Bay view just seven blocks from where she lives with her mother. He’s even more famous than Genevieve Senior, if that’s possible. Her father, Ben Vout, is the oldest player in baseball today. He’s only forty, but that’s considered ancient in the world of professional sports. At the end of every season analysts predict that the slugger’s going to retire. Her dad says he’ll know it’s time when he can’t put it out of the park anymore. Yesterday, in a home game, he let one rip that cleared the coliseum and landed in the Bay. She thinks he has another year, maybe two.

              “Honey, is that you?” her mom calls from somewhere upstairs. Probably the theater. It’s her only form of relaxation, old black and white movies. She’s pretty open to genre. One night she could be watching
Dracula
, the next night
Meet Me in St. Louis
.

              Genny starts up the stairs. “It’s me,” she calls. She follows the curving staircase and meets her mom on the balcony above. “You’re working out?”

              Her mother is dressed in bright pink lycra, boy-shorts that reveal mile-long legs and a tummy shirt. She hasn’t broken a sweat yet.

              “I’m thinking about it,” she says and plants a kiss on Genny’s cheek. “Your skin is cold,” her mother accuses and steps back so she can prop her hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you take a cab home?”

              “I wanted to walk,” she answers honestly. “And it’s a clear night. No rain. No mist.”

              Her mother purses her lips. Her thin, penciled eyebrows scrunch up over her blue eyes. “It’s not safe, walking home from
there
,” her mother stresses the word unkindly. She likes Hunter, but not his economic status. She looks beyond Genny, and comes up empty. “Didn’t Hunter come inside?”

              Hunter doesn’t walk her home. Genny suggested it once and he looked at her like she was crazy, but they just started dating then, and making the transition from friends to more than that was hard.

It’s still hard. In fact, at this moment, she’s thinking it’s impossible.

But Genny’s not about to tell her mom that her walks home are solo. Her opinion of Hunter would take a severe nose dive.

              “No.”

              “Well, it’s getting late, and it is a school night,” her mom says agreeably. “Did you do your homework?”

              Genny nods. “All of it.”

              Her mom runs her manicured hand through Genny’s hair. “You’re a good kid,” she says.

              She feels guilt stir in her gut. Her mom always
cares
and keeping secrets from her is never easy.

              Genny goes for humor and says, “You’re really lucky to have me, you know.”

              “I am. I really scored with you.” Her mom’s voice is warm and genuine, so Genny’s guilt sharpens.

              “Think of all the problems I could have,” she encourages and begins a list, “drugs, high school drop-out, teen pregnancy—“

              Her mom places her hands over her ears and says, “Stop. Stop. You win. Not a better child exists anywhere in the world.”

              Genny smiles. “It’s great being numero uno,” she says and then she slips around her mother and heads to her bedroom. She almost makes it through the door before her mother’s voice stops her.

              “You’ll always be number one,” she promises. “But I haven’t forgotten that you walked home tonight. Through the
Tenderloin
.” Her mom shudders. “You’re not invincible, Genny, and neither is Hunter,” she says, and her voice is serious now, heavy with worry. “Not again.”

Chapter Two

              Her mom’s words are still floating around in her brain when she arrives at school the next morning. No, she’s not invincible, but she wishes she was, and sometimes she almost feels that way.  Like when she’s free running. She can almost believe she’s flying. Looking down into the alleys, at the little cars and even smaller people, with the wind rippling through her clothes and making her eyes tear, has to be something like flying. Bungee jumping and sky diving will be the closest she’ll ever get to the real thing, and she can’t do either of those until she’s ‘old enough.’

The thought is a little depressing and Genny completely understands when her father talks about the frustrations of the human body, how limiting it can be. Shouldn’t they, now in the twenty-first century of intelligent life, be able to fly? Most other creatures evolve at a greater rate.

              She’s so wrapped up in her thoughts, she doesn’t look before she steps into the crosswalk.
Again.
She doesn’t hear the spin of tires on the wet pavement, coming fast, until it’s too late. She turns her head: blue car; Mercedes; man behind the wheel; skidding—the rear of the car fish-tails. Then she’s airborne, but tangled, like a kite in the branches of a tree, and too soon back to earth. The breath leaves her lungs in a gasp. Someone is under her: a hard body, muscles shifting under her hands. She pushes to her knees, breathless. Wonders what happened to the sound because the world is suddenly mute. Then she pushes back on her heels and looks up. Into his golden face. His brown eyes are wide and angry. And familiar.

             
Last night, take two,
she thinks and cringes. She has never been so helpless.

Then he’s talking and his lips are peeled back. She thinks it’s possible he’s canine. She peers closer at his teeth, but they’re perfectly reasonable incisors.

              Genny can’t hear him. She tries to tell him that.

              The world around them is still a blur, too. All but his face, which is too hard, too pissed-off for it also to be beautiful, but it is.

              “What?”

His voice breaks through the haze. It’s as harsh as a trumpet blast in her ears, but at least his face softens. He goes from ready to strangle her to concern in less than a second.

“Did you hit your head?” He pushes to his knees and leans forward, staring into her eyes. “You don’t look concussed.”

“I’m not concussed,” she snaps, feeling light headed. The air is thicker, harder to breathe when he’s so close. She presses her hands against her legs to stop their trembling. “I’m shocked. What did you do, tackle me?”

              His face morphs back into his mad mask. His lips thin into a firm frown.

“Yeah, I tackled you. That’s one way to put it. Another would be that I saved your life. Twice.”

And he mutters something under his breath, something she almost doesn’t hear:

“I didn’t see this one coming. At all.”

Genny wonders about that. His voice seems to free float, buoyed by surprise.

Maybe because most people would have learned from last night’s near-miss.

That, or the guy thinks he’s a gypsy-mind-reader
.

There’s a kid at Fraser who believes, absolutely, in x-ray vision.

Of course, that kid is on his way to MIT early admittance, she reminds herself.

Impossible. No one can actually read another person’s mind, can they?

              Genny shakes her head, trying to loosen herself from her jumbled thoughts. She grabs at a chance to regain some composure.

“I think I would have survived last night,” she grumbles. “The car swerved.”

              The comment doesn’t make him look any happier or less handsome. He stands up and offers slowly, each word clipped painfully short, “Can I help you up?” He extends his hand but the air around it is charged. She can feel it, warm and sharp, like the nipping of a dog on her fingertips, and pulls her hand back.

Her breath builds up in her throat. She stands up using her own steam and tries to look at anything but him. Something about this guy screws with her balance. Really. It’s like some kind of scientific anomaly. And probably why she’s making so many mistakes, she thinks.

Then she’s at the center of a crowd of screaming teenagers. They’re like a wave washing up on shore. Everyone is asking her if she’s all right. A few kids reach out and touch her tentatively, like she might howl in pain if they’re too rough. She hears a whistle blow. Supervision. Mrs. Stanley. She saw what happened and is pushing through the kids. And behind her, a man.
The
man. The one who nearly plowed Genny down.

              But he’s gone. Her
savior
. She rolls to her tiptoes and looks beyond the crowd; she catches a glimpse of his dark head as he climbs the stairs and then slips into the school.

              “Are you OK, Genny?” Mrs. Stanley is asking. She’s shaking her head and tskks a few times. “Good thing Truman was close by. He just about flew across the street to get to you.”

              Genny nods. “Yes. Good thing.”

              The man, the driver, is apologizing profusely, but Genny ignores him, especially when he starts questioning her eye sight.

She tries to free herself from Mrs. Stanley’s arms, but the woman moves with her.

“You need to watch what you’re doing,” Mrs. Stanley advises and urges her toward the building. “That’s not like you, Genny, stepping out into a busy street like that.”

              No, it’s not. Her mind was too wrapped up with dreams of immortality. The irony makes her lips twist, which must pass for a grimace because Mrs. Stanley is back to clucking at her.

              “We’ll get you right to the nurse. She’ll need to clean up those hands.”

              Genny turns her palms up and looks at them. Scraped, with small pieces of gravel embedded in the skin. She’s bleeding, too. Not a whole lot, but enough she’s going to need a few Band-Aids. No avoiding the nurse. Great. Now she’ll be late to class, which will make her U.S. history teacher thrilled—she bombed yesterday’s surprise quiz because she stayed late at Hunter’s the night before, listening to him write a new song which was definitely for her—he called Genny his
Eve
—and she didn’t study.

     “Maybe have your knee looked at, too,” Mrs. Stanley is saying as she maneuvers Genny into the building and past the front office. “You really gave that man a fright. He thought for sure he got a piece of you. ‘
No one moves that fast,
’ he said. I hope that new boy tries out for the track team. . .”

              She keeps on like that until she has Genny sitting on the cot in the nurse’s office, and then she reiterates half of what she’s already said to Miss Prudy. The nurse ignores her but does a good enough job with “Hmms” and “Oh, mercies” that Mrs. Stanley feels validated. 

              “Do you want a pair of loaner pants?” Miss Prudy asks and Genny looks down at her knee.

              She has a high threshold for pain, so she didn’t know she shaved a layer of skin off the knobby joint the nurse is gently flexing with her hands. Genny’s jeans are stylishly torn now, but also blood-stained.

“No,” she decides. Even in a school as elite as Fraser, the loaner clothes carry a smell. She pushes her pant leg down and thank the nurse for the attention. She’s almost out the door before Miss Prudy asks whether they should call her mother.

              “No,” Genny says. “She’ll worry, and it’s really just a few scrapes.”

              “Well, take this home with you.” She hands her a piece of paper that lists her injury and the treatment she received. “We want your mom to know we took good care of you.”

              Genny smiles and stuffs the paper in her back pocket. She takes the stairs to the second floor two at a time and sprints to her classroom.

              Mr. Cooke is already at his podium. A map of the thirteen colonies is projected onto the white board and he’s using a marker to trace boundaries on the transparency. He doesn’t even look up when Genny slips through the door.

              “Glad you could make it, Ms. Vout,” he says, still tracing. “I wasn’t sure, after yesterday’s performance, if you were still interested in our founding fathers.”

A few of her classmates giggle. Genny ignores them and walks to the back of the room. She stops, though, when she realizes that her desk is taken.

              “We’re short on desks,” Mr. Cooke explains, “and not knowing if you were coming or not . . .” He looks up, his eyes, behind his thick glasses, magnified to a freakish size. “You wouldn’t mind sitting at the table, would you?”

              She does and she doesn’t mind letting it show as she swings her backpack from her shoulder and walks several feet past her desk, and the new kid—Truman Whatever—to the table occupied already by globes and rolled canvas maps. She’ll have to spend the hour with her notebook on her knees, scribbling notes she doesn’t want to take and probably won’t be able to read.

              She’s seated and groping at the bottom of her bag for a pencil when she realizes two things at once: the cool air in the room is reaching under the torn flap of her jeans and stinging her raw flesh; and someone is standing over her, his shadow long and deep.

              She doesn’t want to look up. The only thing she hates more than electrocution is standing in the limelight of unwanted attention. She’s sure the whole class is looking at her now, if they weren’t already while Cooke was roasting her.

              So far, this morning has been one embarrassment after another and it doesn’t look like it’s going to improve.

              “Take my seat, er, your seat,” he invites. His accent makes his voice musical. British or Australian, maybe. South African. Right now, Genny wishes he never reached their shores.

              “No, thanks,” she mumbles.

If she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t get caught up in all that perfect anger he has every right to feel, then she has a chance, she decides. Her mind won’t freeze, like it did earlier.

              “I insist,” he presses. “I didn’t realize it was taken.”

              “It’s OK,” she whispers. “I owe you one.”

              He bends toward her and whispers back, “You owe me a lot more than a splintered piece of wood to chafe my backside on.”

              She can hear the smile in his voice and hates it. That’s what she tells myself, anyway. She doesn’t like charm. She likes real happiness. The sun-rising kind of happiness that is Hunter.

              “Fine,” Genny says. “Just sit down. People are going to stare.”

              “They’re already staring,” he informs her, his voice still warm with laughter. “They’ve been staring since you walked into the room. And I’ll sit down as soon as you get out of my seat.”

              Genny gathers her things and pushes past him, bumping his shoulder with her own. He staggers backwards a foot and she pauses. She didn’t think she put a lot into the movement, but maybe. . . she glances up at him, and he’s waiting for her. This close, she can see the shards of jade in his brown eyes. Hot and cold.

              He smiles and says, “Made you look.” His chest shakes with quiet laughter. “Juvenile, I know,” he admits. “But so was your behavior this morning.”

He takes the seat at the table and Genny’s still standing, her bag clutched to her chest, trying to defrost her brain so it will listen to her, when Mr. Cooke spots her.

              “Miss Vout, are you staying?”

              She slides into her desk and all the way down in her seat. She would put her coat over her head, but that, too, would be childish.