~~~~~
“Dad, do you know anything about Lamborghinis?” Aimee asked later at dinner.
“Aim, it’s a General Motors plant.” Jennifer Patterson injected before her husband could swallow his chicken and speak. “You’re talking some fancy piece of Italian metal that gets over 600 horsepower and almost 8000 RPMs.”
Aimee smiled. Her Mom seemed to know more about cars than her father with his fancy job ever would.
Thomas Patterson set his fork down. “No, Aim, I don’t know anything about Lamborghinis other than they are extravagant, unnecessary and cost more than this house.” He sliced a look at his wife and she just dumped more potatoes on his plate. “So I hope you’re not asking because you want one.”
“No.” Aimee set her fork down as well, shocked that he would think she was that materialistic. She wasn’t hungry anymore. She wasn’t even sure why she’d brought it up, but now that she had, she’d had to explain. “Corey Burnfield’s Dad got him one for his birthday and he wanted to know if you knew how to fix it.”
Jennifer Patterson choked on her chicken as she reached for a glass of water. Thomas spoke before she could, cutting his wife an odd look.
“Oh really?” he asked with a sniff, his eyebrows going up. “Sure wish I could help out there, but the Burnfields have a little more money than us. I’m sure they can afford to find a foreign specialist.”
“Corey Burnfield, the quarterback?” Jennifer coughed on the last word. “You were talking to the quarterback? Are you guys friends?” Her mom leaned forward and grinned eagerly. Aimee was glad she didn’t have food in her mouth or she might have gagged on it. “Or more?”
Aimee shoved back from the table. This was not a conversation that she wanted to have with her mother. She picked up her plate and took it to the sink. If her mother was waiting for her to suddenly grow popular and bring home a gaggle of friends, she was dreaming. Aimee could just see her mother salivating at the dream of having Aimee hook up with the quarterback and skyrocket into a social life. Her mom watched too many movies.
“No, Mom,” Aimee answered as he mother followed her into the kitchen.
Jennifer continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Well, I think you should invite Corey and his Lamborghini over here. If your Dad won’t look at it, I will.”
“Jen, you wouldn’t know what to do with a car like that.” Thomas crumpled his napkin onto his plate. He leaned into Jennifer, but Aimee could hear his sardonic whisper, “And Aimee can’t handle a boy like that.”
Aimee shook her head and sighed. Jen’s eyes were heating and Aimee just wanted to duck the heated discussion to come. Her parents didn’t fight. They had intense discussions.
“I’m taking Zig out.” Aimee didn’t think they even heard her. “I’ll be back.”
“I bet I could take that car up to 100 in five seconds.” Jennifer continued until Aimee closed the back screen door and could no longer hear them.
Dusk in North Carolina was laced with the sweet scent of Honeysuckle. Aimee passed through poplars so dense and tall they created a stockade that severed any connection to her family’s property. Down the bottom of a hill sat a pond, and to the unknowing it might look like a romantic mist hugging the stagnant water, but Aimee knew it was a swarm of gnats. She let her Cocker Spaniel, Ziggy distract the mob of insects as she tip-toed to its edge, careful not to slide in the mud. Had the surface not been so murky with the olive tint of algae, she might have been able to see her reflection. It would have revealed an ordinary seventeen year old with brown hair and blue eyes that sometimes had trouble focusing.
Aimee loved this pond. It was her sanctuary, and the gnats were her royal corps of knights. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, trying to imagine the roar of horses approaching with a lone battle horn sounding their imminent plans to storm the castle. A lone knight would break away and steal her from the castle courtyard, tearing off into the woods and into adventure.
Aimee’s head dropped back down. It wasn’t the sound of majestic knights approaching that she heard, it was Ziggy’s incessant barking and a symphony of Carolina locusts announcing the onset of night. The dog really knew how to kill a fantasy.
“Zig, shut it,” she yelled through the fog of gnats.
Ziggy ignored her and took off, charging around the pond and howling his threat at whatever dog demon lurked on the other side.
“Ziggy, get over here,” Aimee tried again.
He was out of sight. Aimee groaned. He’d gone into the trees.
With a huff and a sigh, she started off after him. One thing they never did was to venture into the woods on the far side of the pond. She honestly had no idea how deep the forest penetrated. She’d once estimated that it spanned several miles, but she wasn’t about to do a physical calculation on foot.
The forest on the far side of the pond looked like any childhood lair of terror spun by the brothers Grimm. Sunlight never pierced the trees, and in that cocoon, nocturnal damnation prevailed. She had once walked along its shadowed edges and felt the silence reach for her with long black fingers. She imagined black squirrels, huge spiders and talking trees lurking just past the treeline a la Tolkien. No birds chirped in there. No creatures scurried in the underbrush. A vacuum existed in that dark warren—a vacuum that sucked the life from the forest on the far side of the pond.
And that is where Ziggy had disappeared.
Great, Aimee thought. Just great.