The Shepherd

  Chapter 13

  Monday, October 25th

  I stewed over the weekend, angry at myself, Anita, Rachelle, and even Tommy (for leaving Rachelle behind, therefore helping to create the problem). I didn’t call or text Anita once, and neither did she. Total digital silence.

  I figured that if she wanted to be a witch over something so meaningless, then I’d let her. I had nothing to apologize for. And I’d already apologized, more than once. Now it was her turn.

  A large part of my anger was nothing more than sexual frustration. Anita had worked me up good, but there was no happy ending, no release for this pressure. Nadia didn’t exactly help the situation; she was always touching me, her arms around me in the night. Then the dreams made it worse. Nadia’s lithe body snaking here and there, rubbing all over me. It’s a wonder I wasn’t walking around 24/7 with a permanent hard-on.

  By Monday morning I had a real attitude going. I spotted Anita sitting in the library just before school started. She was talking low and hushed with a group of kids. She glanced at me, then looked away and kept on whispering. That didn’t help my mood at all. I stomped out of the library, pissed off at being ignored. A few minutes later I broke the digital silence, cursing at myself for being so weak-willed. I sent a text while sitting at my desk waiting for first period to start.

  Mike: WTF? (What The fuck)

  Anita: R U mad?

  Mike: What should I be mad about? Friday night? The weekend? Today? My entire life?

  Anita: We need 2 talk F2F (Face to Face)

  The Teacher arrived and started taking roll call. I sent one last text and then shut my phone off.

  Mike: TTYL. (Talk To You Later) TAW (Teachers Are Watching)

  We found each other in the cafeteria, where we usually met to decide what to do for lunch. The choices were to stay and eat the delectable MLHS lunch fare (pizza, burgers, etc.) or go out to a nearby eatery, which had to be accomplished within the forty-five minutes given for lunch break. Without saying a word, Anita grabbed my hand and dragged me to the parking lot.

  Guess we were going out for lunch.

  She seemed to be in a hurry, nervous, her eyes darting back and forth as we weaved through the parking lot to my car.

  “So what the hell?”

  “In the car!” She snapped.

  Driving down the road towards Dairy Queen, she twisted around to sit sideways, her back to the car door, facing me. She watched me for a moment, trying to determine something. I knew she was gonna dump something on me. I could feel it. I wondered if maybe her father was angry with me, or she was still torqued about giving Rachelle a ride home.

  She finally came out with it, “So, is it true?”

  I waited for her to elaborate, when she didn’t I snapped, “What?”

  She just stared at me expectantly. I couldn’t get a read on her. “What the hell are you talking about? Obama was really born in Kenya? There really were aliens at Area 51? What’s the big fucking deal?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Is what Tommy said true?”

  “I have no idea what Tommy said and I don’t give a shit. Care to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I can’t believe you don’t know. He’s been telling everyone that you jumped him in the parking lot during homecoming and locked him in the trunk of his parent’s Lexus!” She had her arms crossed surveying me with a dirty look.

  “You can’t be serious. Please tell me you’re not serious.”

  “Way serious. He said you did it so you could get Rachelle alone, that’s why you gave her a ride home.”

  “And how exactly could I do anything to Tommy when I was with you all night long? You know I never left the dance. We left together. Cleo and Taylor were there with us. Tommy’s lost his mind. He was so drunk, he probably doesn’t even know what happened to him. Or he’s just making up lies because he’s pissed we gave Rachelle a ride home.”

  Anita couldn’t look me in the eyes. “I don’t remember everything from homecoming … I was a little too drunk. I’m not sure what you did. You were out there dancing without me.”

  “I danced with Cleo. One time. You sat there and watched! How could you believe this shit? You know I’d never do something so stupid. I was having fun, we were both having fun. And as far as Rachelle goes, I don’t want anything to do with her, she’s a bitch. I was planning to rent a hotel room for us after the dance. For you and me, alone, no one else. Everything was perfect before you threw your fit!”

  Anita didn’t care for that last comment, she blew up. “Then why did you ask Rachelle to homecoming first? Tommy turned his back for five minutes and you were all over her like a dog in heat!”

  “That was weeks ago. That was before. Before I knew you wanted to go with me. It’s all different now, everything has changed. I’m not interested in her anymore. You don’t believe me, or what?”

  I waited for something, an indication, but all I got was her fierce stare of accusation. I continued in a calmer tone. “I’m telling you the truth Anita, I never went anywhere near Tommy. And I do not like Rachelle. I’m with you. I’m happy to be with you. When have I ever lied to you?”

  I saw it in her face. Her insecurities warred with her common sense. She wanted to trust me, needed to trust me, but didn’t.

  “I don’t know what to think. I mean …. you gave her a ride home. You’ve always had a thing for her. You’ve told me about it, a lot.”

  I shook my head. “I told you that was BEFORE! Before you and I.”

  It was like a lifetime ago to me. Everything had changed in these past weeks. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, her distrust had rendered me speechless. A stabbing pain dug in my chest, that Anita would ever think me capable of doing something so foul.

  We ordered food at the Dairy Queen drive through, pulled off into the parking lot, and ate in silence. The longer I thought about it, the angrier I got. My best friend, my girlfriend would accuse me of these ridiculous things. She was supposed to be with me, standing behind me, supporting me.

  I decided I’d had just about enough of Anita’s childish crap. If she wasn’t gonna trust me now, then she never would. I threw it in her face with a mouthful of spite. “You must think I’m a real piece of shit if you believe I’d do that. Why would you want to date me? Why would you want to be friends with a piece of shit like that?”

  “No, that’s not it! It’s just that I know how much you like Rachelle, you always have!”

  “Liked. Past tense. As in over, finished, done, NOT ANY MORE. You get it yet?”

  She wasn’t willing to concede, and it hurt. It hurt a lot. I had hoped she would see reason, but that wasn’t happening right now. We drove back to school in silence.

  Walking from the parking lot onto the campus, we ran straight into Tommy and Rachelle surrounded by wrestlers, and of course Justin. I veered off to the side, walking around the crowd. I had no intention of getting into it with anyone right now, definitely not in the mood. Tommy refused to be avoided, he moved fast to head me off, the whole gang a step behind him.

  “Mikey! Wait a minute Mikey!” Tommy grabbed my arm to hold me in place. “I warned you what would happen if you messed with Rachelle!”

  I jerked my arm out of his grip with a downward tug and spat back in his face, “What! You spread a bunch of lies? Don’t talk to me you lying piece of shit!” I turned to go, but Tommy grabbed me and spun me back around.

  “You gonna pretend you didn’t jump me the other night? I know it was you who came up from behind, you’re too much of a bitch to face me!”

  “You were so drunk you probably puked all over yourself and passed out. Get off me, I’m done talking!”

  “So am I, bitch!” Tommy swung a right-handed wild haymaker. I had been watching, expecting him to make a move. I leaned back out of the way, as it passed an inch from my nose.

  The crowd was into it, yelling encouragements to their star wrestler, “Kick his ass!”, “Beat his face in!” and, “Take him do
wn, Tommy! Choke him off!” Though it was against the rules to use wrestling moves anywhere outside of the sanctioned practices and tournaments, that never stopped anyone from doing it.

  If he got his hands on me, I was toast. My only chance was to stay on my feet, keep some distance. I kept backpedaling out of his reach. Tommy swung twice more, missing each time. He was a damn good wrestler, but not much of a boxer. With his fourth attempt I made my move. I stepped into his swing, ducking under to come back up with a right fist across his face. I connected with a glancing blow.

  His eyes flashed with surprise and he backed away as I kept moving forward. The crowd grew larger, collecting passing students faster than scavengers to a rotting corpse. Tommy stopped retreating and came at me swinging. I backed up, but someone pushed me from behind, right into Tommy’s wild swing. He cracked me in the side of the head with a solid left hook. The hit jarred, but it wasn’t all that.

  What took me down to the ground was the vertigo of the vivid vision I experienced.

  I jump-flashed to another time and place at a most inopportune moment. It was nighttime, almost pitch black, very little moonlight by which to see. It was totally disorienting to be in the middle of a noisy adrenaline spiked confrontation and then find myself dumped in the silent, dark, rolling hills of the sand dunes out at the south end of Moses Lake. Directly to my right the ground dropped away into a deep pit. It was one of those large pits that were used as a playground for quads and dirt bikes. Some of the pits actually had miniature race tracks, complete with berms and jumps, where people would challenge each other to see who could run the track and scale the walls fastest. Across the pit, about a mile away there was a single headlamp accompanied by the whining noise of an accelerating motorbike. The bike headed straight for the edge of the pit, way too fast to properly negotiate the steep drop. I thought I saw someone in the path of the oncoming light, a brief silhouette, and then it happened.

  The bike went flying over the edge.

  The sound of its motor charged up to a high pitch wine, the rpm’s revved as the wheels spun free of the ground. The bike sailed through the air, drifting ever so slowly towards the floor of the pit, closer and closer to me.

  It was hard to see in the dark, but my vision honed into the figure on the bike like the zoom effect of a camera. It was a teenage boy. Something about him looked familiar.

  As my perspective zoomed in, the rider and bike flew apart, separated in the air. Then they both hit the pit floor, the bike a few feet away from him. I zoomed in as he tumbled across the ground to land on his back, his face frozen in a grimace of pain. He didn’t move at all, not a twitch, no rise and fall of his chest, not a breath.

  He had died in agony.

  Then I recognized him, Thomas Schroeder. It wasn’t the Tommy I knew and loved to hate, this Tommy was caked in dirt and oozing blackish blood, a broken, dead Tommy. I tried to reconcile this filthy blood-crusted kid with the Tommy that I knew. Before I could come to grips with the idea that Tommy was dead on the pit floor, that it had really happened, I jump-flashed back to the here and now with another dose of stomach churning vertigo.

  I was on the ground on my back, and my elbow hurt. I must have landed on it. The noise of the crowd came on loud and hard, shocking after the silence of the desert sand.

  Tommy stood over me gloating, a wicked sneer on his face, the crowd cheering him on. He was very much alive, and about to wail on my face. Anita and Rachelle stood there in the mix, a few feet away from each other.

  I took deep breaths as I tried to get past the dizziness and nausea. Tommy reared back to deliver a kick while I was down, but the crowd shoved into him as a teacher interrupted, “Break it up. Break it up. Get to class now!”

  Tommy was pushed along with the surrounding teenagers as they made their escape, robbed of his chance to get in another lick at me.

  I laid there dazed, in shock. Anita locked eyes with me for a few seconds, then she glanced to the Teacher, Mr. Lambden. Instead of being my girlfriend, being there for me, she took off to class with the rest of the kids. Mr. Lambden was the only one who offered to help me to my feet.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah I’m okay.” I dusted off my pants.

  “I didn’t see what happened. Who hit you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.” I couldn’t care less about the fight. I had other things on my mind just then.

  “I need to file an incident report. We don’t condone fighting here at MLHS. If you ever feel intimidated or coerced in any way we have to know about it before it becomes a larger problem.”

  “It’s no big deal. I’m fine!” I growled in his face. The fight didn’t matter. I had to figure out what to do about this vision and I needed the teacher out of my face. “I gotta get to class.” He let me go and I left him standing there.

  I couldn’t focus on either of my last two classes, Algebra and American History. Those images of my vision replayed over and over. And what I should do about it, if anything could be done? Talking to Tommy was a no go. He’d never listen and it would just end up in another fight. I had really relished the idea of beating Tommy’s smug face for all his lies, but this vision robbed me of all my piss and vinegar. A post-adrenaline funk.

  Bobby Krager hadn’t listened when I warned him directly. Bobby died exactly as I had seen it. Rachelle didn’t listen either, but my actions made just enough difference, plus maybe a little dumb luck. Three of my latest visions had already come true, Nadia outside my trailer, that guy with the tractor over at RSC, and the one of homecoming. This vision was bound to come true, very soon, probably within days, even hours.

  How do you change the inevitable? The act of trying to change it could actually cause it to happen.

  If I couldn’t talk to Tommy, then who else? No one would believe me. Probably end up sounding like some sort of death threat anyways. No one would understand. Well, no one but Rachelle Werner. Rachelle knew about my visions. She had stood in freezing water up to her neck with the truth of my visions.

  As much as I wanted absolutely nothing to do with Rachelle – who had stood by watching as her boyfriend picked a fight with me twice – I had to talk to her, like now. Right now. I could hardly wait for the end of school, I barely heard what my teachers were saying as they lectured and handed out assignments. My sole purpose for existence was to get to Rachelle Werner and somehow convince her that Tommy was about to die.

  I rushed out the door of American History right as the bell rang, raced down the hallway to Rachelle’s locker. I shoved through the milling crowds as the afterschool hallways filled with the chaos of students going every which way. Some of them cursed at me, but I just kept going.

  She wasn’t there.

  I waited five minutes, anxiety driving me mad. I lost patience and jetted out to the parking lot to try to catch her leaving campus. No such luck. Tommy’s Jeep Wrangler was already gone, they had probably left together.

  That’s when I recalled I had Rachelle’s cell number saved in my contacts on my cell. Although I hadn’t tried to call her in forever, the number was there at my fingertips, beckoning. I dialed her, instead of a ring tone she had a song by Ke$ha that played for several seconds while I waited for an answer. The call forwarded to voicemail when she didn’t answer.

  “Hey Rach, it’s me Mike, I need to talk to you right away. It’s really super important. It’s serious. And I don’t care about the fight. I need to talk to you. I mean it. Call me back right now.”

  I waited a couple minutes for her to call back then decided to send her a text message when she didn’t respond.

  Mike: Need 2 talk 2 U right now!

  About ten minutes passed, and she finally replied.

  Rachelle: Leave me alone!

  Mike: Need 2 talk F2F. Its a life or death situation.

  Rachelle: RBTL (Read Between The Lines) leave me the fuck alone!

  Mike: Remember when we fell through the Ice? ILT

  Rachelle: WC? (Who Ca
res)

  Mike: Something really bad is going 2 happen. Need 2 talk F2F now!

  She didn’t reply immediately. It was no use. She wouldn’t listen. “Fuck, nobody ever listens!”

  Then about five minutes later she came back.

  Rachelle: 8:00 skatepark

  Mike: No! That’s 2 late! Now! Where R U?

  Rachelle: RUNTS? (Are You Nuts)

  Mike: No! Totally serious! Right now!

  Rachelle: Not now. Cant. 8:00 skatepark.

  Mike: OK.

  That was probably as good as it gets. At least she agreed to meet.

  I burned up the hours waiting for Rachelle, skating back and forth across the halfpipe, practicing grinds and tricks. For whatever reason, I hadn’t seen or heard from Anita since school let out, and she didn’t show up at the skatepark as usual. I didn’t bother to call or text. I wasn’t very happy with her at the moment, and didn’t really want to talk about relationship crap. In light of Tommy’s busted up corpse at the bottom of a pit in the sand dunes, everything else had become trivial.

  The guys at the skatepark seemed withdrawn. I might as well have been a leper the way they treated me. I didn’t care. My focus was narrowed down to a single objective: find a way to explain the situation to Rachelle so that she would somehow convince Tommy. Locked away in my own internal world, maybe I was avoiding everyone as I skated, mumbling to myself.

  Rachelle finally arrived late, 8:30 p.m., on foot. I had a hard time picturing her walking all the way to the skatepark from her house, just to meet me. As she approached, I put all other concerns out of mind. This was my one shot at making a difference. If I blew it with Rachelle, Tommy was dead meat.

  She fidgeted nervously, looking around. Rafe stood there watching me out the corner of his eye.

  Great, more shit to deal with when I see Anita. He’d be sure to tell his sister I met Rachelle. No time to worry about that right now.

  I started in on her immediately, opting for the direct approach. “I had a vision about Tommy.” Rachelle kept glancing around like she was looking for someone else, not really focused on me or what I had to say.