Wildefire Series: Wildefire Part 15

"Come on." He made a "come hither" motion with his hand. "You have to finish what we started the other night. Channel all your rage into that little clock and hit me with it. After some of the s.h.i.+t that I did and said, I'm sure I deserve it."

"Maybe," Ash replied, tossing the alarm clock from hand to hand. "But the alarm clock doesn't."

"I'm not leaving until you do it." He glanced at the indentation in the door frame and grimaced, but before he could change his mind, he closed his eyes tightly and set his feet. "Avoid my face if you can. But don't hold back." He gritted his teeth.

In that minute, while he awaited his punishment with his face all scrunched up as if he were constipated, Ash recognized what she'd been seeing these last two months whenever she looked at Bobby Jones, when she kissed him, when he slipped his arm around her waist as they walked across the quad. She'd been with Rich Lesley all this time, again, replacing him with somebody who had all the same qualities that had made Rich so exciting and infuriating and irresistible and vile. Only, Bobby, for all his flaws, had at least some glimmer of a soul beneath the camouflage of immaturity.

183.

As the image of Rich's face melted away, revealing Bobby's underneath, she walked over to her bed and set the alarm clock gently down onto her mattress. "You ready, Bobby?"

He clenched his fists. The muscles in his forearms tensed. "Do it."

Ashline grabbed one of the two decorative pillows she kept on her otherwise minimalist bed. And then, with a windup that would have made a professional softball player envious, she lobbed the pillow right at Bobby.

Direct hit. It struck his eager face. Ash tried not to enjoy it too much as he released a girlish shriek and staggered back into the doorway. His arms thrashed in front of his face at first, clawing at the pillow as if it were a rabid bat. But his nerve receptors soon reminded him that he had not in fact been hit by a four-pound alarm clock, and his spastic floundering ceased. He held out the pillow at arm's length.

Ash couldn't help it. She started to laugh.

As the color slowly trickled back into Bobby's ashen face, he joined her with relieved laughter. "We cool?" he asked. Then he added with some hesitation, "Can we . .

. fix this?"

"Yeah, Bobby, we're cool." She paused. "But there's nothing left to fix."

"Come on," he pleaded. "What if we gave it time?

What if we went back to being just friends?"

"That would require that we were 'just friends' in 184 the first place-and I'm pretty sure we hopscotched right over that step," she reminded him.

"You must still feel something here." He thumped his hand over his heart with pa.s.sion, but his voice was growing quieter and more defeated by the second. "You don't date someone for two months if there's nothing there."

Ash took a moment to gather her thoughts so that what she said next wouldn't come out sounding like an it's-not-you-it's-me speech. "Bobby, believe me when I say that, even after dating you for two months, it didn't occur to me until now that you might actually be one of the most romantic guys I've ever met, in your own special way. If we gave it time to work out all the kinks, I'm sure you'd make a great boyfriend." Ashline smiled gently at him. "But I think maybe I needed to date you to realize that I don't need to date anyone."

"Just to be clear," Bobby said, "that was you referring to me as just anyone?"

"You're going to make a great somebody for somebody else," she said, then bit her lip. "s.h.i.+t, that sounded like it came from a really bad greeting card."

His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile back, but it was clear she'd just taken a dinner fork to his ballooned ego. "Well, at least I took a shot at the goal," he said. "I better head back to practice. I imagine I'll be doing laps for my little stunt."

"At least it's still raining?" she said unhelpfully.

He walked out the door but stopped before he'd made 185 it too far down the hallway. "I hope you'll take this as a compliment. . . . You seem different today."

"Probably my hair," Ashline replied. "It's a few mil-limeters longer than the last time you saw it."

He leaned in and hugged her, lingering and gentle, with a wistful longing she'd never sensed from him when they were actually together.

"Good-bye, Ash," he said.

Ash sighed after he left, feeling somehow even more exhausted than she had when she'd crawled into bed the night before. She climbed back under the covers and closed her eyes.

Just in time for more knocking on the door.

"I hate everybody," Ash mumbled into her pillow and hauled herself back out of bed. She opened the door.

The laughter explosively vomited out of her.

There, in jumpsuits so orange that they could probably be seen from s.p.a.ce, stood Ade, Lily, Rolfe, and Raja.

"I'm sorry," Ashline said. "Did you just walk off the set of some twisted eighties music video, or was there a Blackwood fas.h.i.+on show earlier this morning?"

Rolfe snorted. "Not quite as funny when you're actually wearing one."

"Speaking of which . . ." Raja thrust a jumpsuit on a coat-hanger into Ashline's hands. "Here you go. It's a medium. Hopefully it's not too small." She turned and marched off down the hall. Ade and Rolfe giggled and followed her out.

186.

"Well, I hope you got your jumpsuit in stretch-fit,"

Ash yelled down the hall too late, knowing full well they'd already made it to the stairwell. She added, "To cover your huge a.s.s."

"Cla.s.sy," said Lily, but she was laughing too.

"Cla.s.sy? I'm about to dress up like a tangerine and pick up garbage." Ash shrugged and unzipped the jumpsuit. "But screw it. Gotta be better than homework, right?"

It was only once they were outside waiting for their park ranger escort to arrive that Ashline began to appreciate the full sinister brilliance of the job the headmistress had sentenced them to. The real punishment wasn't cleaning the forest floor for a few hours on a clammy, overcast Sunday. No, their true punishment began as soon as they set foot onto the Blackwood quad wearing bright orange jumpsuits. The headmistress had planned for their escort to pick them up at twelve thirty, exactly the time when most students, foggy from a late Sat.u.r.day night, stumbled out of bed and headed to Sunday "morning" brunch.

What the students got instead when they exited the dormitories was a far better start to their Sunday than syrup and French toast: a five-student chain gang, waiting for a ride into the forest.

Everyone had something to say as they walked past.

"Did you guys get cast in a Tropicana commercial?"

187.

"What's the matter, the other crayons wouldn't let you play?"

"Yo, it's the Fruit of the Loom!"

"That," Ade said when he heard the last one, "made absolutely no sense."

"Fruit of the Loom!" the kid shouted back, and pumped his fist triumphantly into the air.

Raja shook her head and pulled at her jumpsuit as if it were made of dog s.h.i.+t. "I'd almost rather wear a scarlet letter than this."

Rolfe elbowed her playfully in the ribs and winked.

"There's a second time for everything, I guess."

She shoved him away, but Ashline noticed the smile Raja failed to hide as it slithered across her lips. Well, that's new, Ashline thought. Perhaps there was some sugar buried beneath her outer coating of Tabasco.

Any further comments from the pa.s.sing students were ever so gratefully preempted by the arrival of the park ranger. The truck, a big green monstrosity with a fat, round hood, looked like it had rolled right out of the fifties. It moved unhurriedly up the access road.

And leaning out the truck window wearing a brown collared s.h.i.+rt, a pair of shades, and a Ches.h.i.+re smile was Colt Halliday. "You Girl Scouts ready for some hiking?"

He lowered his shades and winked.

Raja whistled. "Thank G.o.d it's you and not some mountain man." She darted forward with a big grin and pecked Colt on the cheek. Ashline watched as Rolfe's 188 perpetually chipper expression liquefied right off his face and splattered to the ground, along with the memory of the moment he'd shared with her earlier.

Ash realized she had unconsciously drawn her own arms snug across her chest. Relax, she told herself. Just a boy.

"Shotgun!" Raja's voice rang out from the other side of the car, at which point Ash finally noticed the accommodations for the rest of them-the truck bed in back.

"Sweet," Ash said, and glowered at Colt, who was still leaning out the window and watching her curiously even as Raja climbed into the pa.s.senger seat. Ash nodded to the truck bed. "We'll just hang out back here in the chicken coop and wait for it to start pouring."

Colt shrugged. "Weather station says there's only an eighty percent chance of rain."

Ash tugged on her jumpsuit. "If I find out that these chain gang jumpers were your idea, there's a one hundred percent chance I'm going to kick your a.s.s."

"Good thing I like it rough," he replied, and withdrew back into the cab. Music exploded out of the radio, drowning out Ashline's groan of disgust.

The remaining four of them vaulted up and over the side of the truck into the bed, with Ashline leaping in last. The bed had a faint odor of decay, and the rubber lining was coated with traces of sawdust.

Lily rapped on the back window. The panel slid open, and the sounds of cla.s.sic rock piping out of the truck's 189 old speakers washed over them. Lily held up some of the sawdust for him and let it sprinkle to the ground. "Would it have been too much to ask you to sweep back here?"

Colt grimaced. "Ooh, sorry. Had to pick up a dead deer off the road last week. The sawdust was to help soak up the blood."

Ash, who had been trying to pluck the sawdust off the bottom of her shoe, gagged and dropped her foot.

"There are sandwiches in the picnic basket back there if you get hungry," Colt said, and snapped the window panel shut again.

Rolfe opened the picnic basket and began to rifle through the contents inside. The plastic sandwich wrap crinkled under his fingers.

"You seriously can eat with that smell?" Ade asked him.

He pulled out a sandwich and held it up, trying to figure out what meat was inside. "As long as it's not venison."

The truck rocketed forward.

The weather graciously remained rain-free on their trip up the 101 and then down the long stretch of Davison Road. Despite the fact that she was wearing what looked like a bright orange garbage bag and they were spending what was supposed to be a day of rest picking up litter, Ash began to appreciate the wind ruffling her hair as the truck rattled along the path. Strange how their punishment for breaking curfew was another trip off campus.

190.

Still, Ash couldn't help but try to listen in on the m.u.f.fled dialogue going on within the cab, which was impossible to hear over the rumble of the old truck engine and the tinny clamor of cla.s.sic rock. From the sound of it, though, Raja was doing most of the talking. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

Rolfe, too, was quieter than usual, and after the first ten minutes or so of glancing up at the window, he turned his pensive attention out to the forest.

Fern Canyon was absolutely one of the most beautiful things Ashline had ever seen.

Growing up in Westchester County, she'd been to her share of arboretums, and there had even been one disastrous weekend way back in third grade when her father had decided that they should be a family that camps, and he took them up to the Catskills. Forty-eight hours and many, many bug bites later they checked into a hotel.

Ash had fancied herself more of a city gal ever since.

But this . . .

As they walked along the mile-long path, Ash felt like she'd tripped over a log and stumbled into some prehis-toric era. Bushy ferns covered the rocks from the riverbed all the way up to the forest floor high above. It was impossible to believe that the far-from-mighty stream that trickled beside them on the canyon floor had somehow, over the millennia, carved such a magnificent wound into the earth.

191.

Ashline knelt and dipped her hand into the water.

Her fingers raked the pebbles of the streambed.

Colt came up next to her and placed a palm on her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

She stared at his hand. Colt instantly retracted it and winced; maybe he's mistaken the look she'd given him for unreadiness on her part to indulge in that sort of body-to-body contact.

Just the opposite, fool, Ash wanted to tell him. To feel the warmth of his hand through the jumpsuit, and to wonder what it would be like if that hand just . . .

"I just wanted to feel what it was like to have time run through my fingers," she said at last, hoping it was a solid enough cover, but her hot, rose-tinged ears betrayed her.

Out of all her transparent moods, embarra.s.sment always shone out like a spotlight in a dark theater.

Colt nodded knowingly. "I come here whenever I get the chance. When I'm here, it's like for one hour I can forget about college, and computers, and MP3 players, and keg parties, and traffic. And I can just breathe."

A hundred feet ahead, Rolfe had mounted a toppled log. "Welcome," his voice boomed to Lily, Ade, and Raja, who stood below him. He threw his arms out in a grand flourish. "Welcome to Jura.s.sic Park!"

"The surfer is funny," Colt said.

Ashline wiped her wet fingers against her orange jumper. "He might seem like just a 'bro' at first, but I think Rolfe has more complexity going for him than 192 choosing which wax to rub on his long-board." The image surfaced of him as a boy holding the bully by the neck.

Quick, Ashline, change of subject, before your G.o.dd.a.m.n face gives it all away. "I take it your from SoCal too, then? Given the perfect tan you've got going for you." She declined the sudden impulse to reach out and touch his face.

For some reason Colt laughed. "I'm from Arizona, and it's not really a tan. . . . I'm part Hopi." Ash must have looked totally baffled, because he added, "That's Native American."

Ash tried to suppress her I-feel-like-an-idiot face, and covered with another question. "So you grew up on a reservation?" The idea of it sounded romantic.

"Downtown Phoenix, actually."

Ash shook her head. "I'm two for two on playing the ignorance card today."

"It's okay. I'm sure you've collected a few of those cards yourself during your life," he said.

As they caught up with the other four, Ashline said, "This place is definitely beautiful, but something's been nagging me, and I just realized what it is."

"Oh?" Colt raised his eyebrows.