I told Deborah that I loved her again the next day at school. At first, it seemed like she didn’t believe me. She just stood there and looked at me. For a split second, I thought I made a mistake. Then she hugged me really close and I felt her warmth and realized she did love me, too. Frank looked at me funny from his locker and walked away to class. I didn’t really mind, though. With him gone, it felt like just the two of us in the hallway, even though there were probably about a million other people there.

We went out to eat that night at some fancy Italian place that wasn’t really that fancy, but it seemed fancy for our area. It wasn’t even in Watersdale. Dad let me borrow the truck and drive her up to Cainsmouth, which never happens. I think when I asked him, he could tell that I was feeling special. And since we already had “the talk” ages ago, he didn’t even say anything when he handed me the keys.

We listened to the radio the whole way and just talked. It was so nice. I started realizing how much I loved about her. Her laugh went low and then got really high at the end. She ran her fingers through her bangs a lot, which I found sexy, you know? Even when she wasn’t trying to be. And it’s kind of weird, but I love it when girls wear hoodies and blue jeans, which, of course, she was wearing. I won’t be vulgar or anything, but it fit nice and I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach that wasn’t just wanting to make out or that kind of stuff. I wanted to sit closer to her. Lean against her. Smell her skin and her hair and maybe, if I got the nerve, hold her hand. Which was ridiculous, because we were past that point by then. But it made me giddy to think about.

We got to the restaurant and had our seat back in the corner by the fireplace that was built to look like stone, but was probably some kind of fake plaster stuff. I don’t know, whatever they make fake fireplaces out of that wouldn’t burn down. We ate our breadsticks and drank our water. And then the waitress came over, some middle-aged woman with black, curly hair. And everything got pretty messed up for a couple minutes.

First, it was the sound. I heard it when the waitress opened her mouth. Not in the background, either. It came from her mouth. Whatever she said, it was drowned out by the sharp note. I closed my eyes tight for a second. Deborah looked at me sideways and I asked the waitress to repeat herself.

She asked if we were girlfriend and boyfriend. I said we were. And then she asked me my “lovely lady’s name.” I looked at Deborah. Right at her. I opened my mouth to answer. And no name came to my brain.

It wasn’t just her name that I forgot. Somebody hit the reboot button in my mind and for a brief second, I lost everything. Where I was. What I was doing. She could’ve even asked me my own name and I would’ve had no idea what the answer was. But it just happened to be that question and that moment and I sat there, staring at a stranger sitting across from me with a face tilting to the side in confusion.

“Deborah,” she answered. And then it all came flooding back, along with a healthy dose of embarrassment. I was Sammy. She was Deborah. We were on a date and I loved her and now she was mad at me.

“What was that?” she asked after the waitress said we looked like we needed a minute. And what could I say? I could never say it in the way that I just said it to you. She’d never buy that. So I tried to laugh it off, which seemed to make things worse. I apologized and kept my head down for the rest of the meal. She tried to keep the conversation up, since she’s not the kind of girl who holds grudges or tries to make scenes. I probably apologized under my breath about a thousand times. By the time we were done eating, she seemed to be mostly over it. The food was really good and the bill was really expensive, but I didn’t mind too much.

We went for a walk in this park next to the restaurant. I can’t think of the name of the park right now, but a lot of couples walk around out there after their meals. Families, too. My family wasn’t ever that kind of family, though. You know, the kind that spontaneously goes out for ice cream and the dad carries the little girl around on his shoulders and the mom tries to talk to the son about his girlfriend, even though it embarrasses him? Sometimes I wonder if those families actually do exist, or if it’s something that was invented to sell sappy movies. I look at my family and Frank’s family and think, there’s no way they exist. Deborah’s family seemed pretty happy, though. Her mom and dad were together and she never saw them fight, which was a good thing. I wouldn’t want her to go through that.

The park is lit up at night with these bright, white lights that shine up into the trees on either side of the path. Most of the trees are young and skinny. It’s all pretty romantic. It was just before the part of the year where you can start to see your breath. We held hands the whole time, which felt weird because my right hand was warm and my left hand was freezing. I told her about Grandma Maisie’s criminal record and she started to laugh. She tried really hard not to, but I guess she couldn’t help it. In her family, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen. Especially not to grandmas. Both her grandmas are still alive, but one’s in a nursing home. Not one of those nursing homes that smells like dying flowers, either. A nice one where she has a roommate and they bake cookies together and stuff. The other grandma lives in Florida. Both of those things are pretty cliché now that I actually think about it. But neither one of them has ever gotten a DUI, so maybe cliché is good sometimes?

We walked by the fountain at the center of the park and kissed a little bit, which I’m not going to tell you about, and then headed back for the parking lot. As soon as I turned my back to the fountain, I felt it. It was like static electricity all over me. Deborah asked me if I was okay. She felt my hand tense up. I nodded and smiled and said yeah. Still, I couldn’t help but look back behind us. I’m sure it was just a trick of the lights in those trees. They cast really strange shadows and when a little bit of wind picks up, your eyes can play tricks. But it looked like one of them was standing next to a tree behind the fountain. Not moving or anything, a cloud of flies billowing right under the lowest branch. In horror movies, there would probably be a loud trumpet or something and then it would step back behind the tree. But this one didn’t care if I saw him. It just stood there, looking back at me.

My life isn’t a horror movie. I want you to know that. I get scared. Really scared sometimes. It’s not the same as reading a scary book or seeing a scary movie and not being able to sleep. Sometimes my heart would beat so fast and I couldn’t hear anything else. Or my skin would get hot and I would start to feel like maybe I was going to pass out. There’s only one reason I’m telling you all this, and it has nothing to do with you. I want her to know why I did it. I don’t want her to think I’m evil. Frank said he’s going to come see me, so I can tell him myself. And he knows a lot of the story already. Maybe he’ll believe me and maybe he won’t. But she won’t talk to me. And I want her to know.

She’s so beautiful. I didn’t ever want to scare her.

The reason I wanted to tell you about our date was because of what happened when we got back to my house. It’s kind of embarrassing and personal, so when you talk to her about everything, just leave this part out, okay? She already knows this part anyway.

We got back to her house almost twenty minutes before her curfew. And I’m not trying to be inappropriate, but when you’re seventeen and you’re alone with a girl in a car and you have twenty minutes to kill, the windows get a little foggy. We kissed a lot and things got intimate and you can use your imagination from there. But it wasn’t like when you’re fourteen and you make out with a girl and you’re just nervous and have no idea what to do. We were both there in that moment with each other in the same space and doing the same things and I don’t know, it felt like I never wanted anything to get between us ever again.

She had her hand on the back of my head, just behind my ear. She went to pull me in closer to her and her fingers moved to the back of my neck. And all of a sudden, this pain shot through me. Right from where she was touching and then down my back. I pulled away really quick and yelled. She asked me what was wrong. Without thinking, I touched my neck. There was no pain this time, but it felt like I was touching a scar. Maybe the width of two of my fingers, straight across the back of my neck.

It put me out of the mood, to be honest. We kissed a bit more and told each other goodnight. I watched her walk to the door and for a second, while she was under her porch light, I didn’t want to drive away. And then she was gone. And the porch light was out. And it was just me and my headlights against the garage door. Somewhere down the road, a streetlight was on. But Deborah’s front lawn was dark. And it went on forever under the shadow of the house and the trees along the sidewalk.

The feeling came back to me and I knew I couldn’t look in the rearview mirror, I just couldn’t do it, so I backed up into the street without looking. Luckily, in a town like ours, that’s something you can do at midnight. I forced my eyes to focus on the road, to keep staring straight ahead. Don’t look at the yards all around. Don’t peek down the side roads or the dead ends. Drive, and that’s it.

There was a crackle and the truck radio came on. It does that sometimes; Dad says it’s a battery thing, even though he doesn’t really know anything about cars, he just acts like he does. But it is true: if you hit a bump hard enough, sometimes the radio goes on or off. Only I didn’t hit a bump, did I? No, I was just driving, not even braking for stop signs. And no matter how fast I went, I stared straight ahead.

Don’t look in the mirrors, I kept thinking, that would be the worst thing!

The only thing that made me look away was when a song broke through the static on the radio. It was distant, like maybe a radio station from Chicago or Indianapolis or something. But I knew what it was. Bob Marley & the Wailers. The one I sing to Tabitha sometimes. I could hear the beat behind the static. The same line over and over again, promising me that every little thing would be alright. And I was just driving like hell out of town and into the country. I didn’t even have my brights on, so my headlight beams just died past the road, I mean, they were useless. And I knew what to expect. I knew one of them would run out of the cornfields and dart over the ditch and right out into the road.

For some reason, I noticed the sky. There wasn’t a cloud up there. Everything was stars and moon and blue and black.

And then it ran out. A fawn. How many people do you think are killed by deer every year? I was almost one of them. I was probably going eighty miles an hour. The tires screeched when I hit the brakes and of course, the deer stopped moving right in the middle of the road. The radio cut out. I couldn’t stop. It was young. There were a few spots above its hind legs. I remember thinking just before I hit it that its legs were so skinny. So frail, you know? Like they could snap under the smallest pressure.

It was afraid. I knew it was afraid. Outside. Alone. In the dark. And a beam of light appears out of nowhere and the whole world is blank. There’s a scream from the tires, only this little deer doesn’t know what the sound is. It’s nothing but a loud, horrifying screech.

I closed my eyes. You’re not supposed to do that, but I did. And the back tires swung out and I tried to correct it without looking. I waited for the hit. The smack or the crunch or whatever sound it makes when you demolish a deer with a truck. Everything came to a standstill. Nothing in the universe moved except the rumbling of the engine.

You’re gonna think I’m crazy. After all that, after trying to race home, I actually got out of the car. I had to see what I did. And it was still standing there. The fawn. Its spindly little legs were shaking and it was facing the truck now. We just stood there like that for a quiet moment. I took a step toward it. It took off running into the corn. And I suddenly felt alone again. Vulnerable. The sky was too wide open. There was no noise but the slightest hum of the wind in the corn. The tall silhouettes of the stalks bent forward and back in unison, worshipping an invisible god. There was no life in front of me; it was all hiding in the corn, watching me with a million glowing eyes, waiting to see my next move. Raccoons and lightning bugs and banana spiders. I jumped back into the truck and pressed my foot down on the gas pedal.

Nothing.

I stomped on it again. This time, I did look into the rearview mirror. I knew better. Really. There was a single red light far off behind me. A perfect circle. And it was growing. Coming closer. I pressed down hard on the gas. The engine made this awful sound. I started to scream. “Please!” I yelled, “Please!” I wrapped my fingers around the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles turned white. The red light was larger, filling up the middle of the rearview mirror. I took my foot off the pedal, took a few deep breaths, and then dropped my foot right on top of it.

There was a long squeal and then I was moving again. The red light stopped moving as I started to speed away. It stopped right where the fawn had been standing.

I pulled into the garage at home and ran inside. Mom was up, drinking her coffee again. She asked me if I had a good night. I asked her if I could sit up with her for a while. She said I could.

We didn’t speak.

Next Chapter: Chapter 9