The August sunshine warmed the top of my head. I sat on the end of the rickety wooden dock at Palmer’s Pond with the bare tips of my toes trailing back and forth in the cool green water. I’d been sitting there next to a can of nightcrawlers since early that morning, drowning worms but not really catching any fish.
My mind really wasn’t on fishing anyway. Holding a cane pole was just an excuse for hanging out in the sunshine and not doing anything particularly useful. Sometimes it’s nice to sit next to the water, gaze into the reflection of the clouds and just daydream for a while.
I was daydreaming about Shelly Wilson, the girl next door.
We’ve been next-door neighbors since my parents and I moved to Bridgeton when I was in the fourth grade. We made friends the first day as the moving truck was still in front of my house. We’d been best friends ever since.
She’s so pretty with her wild, curly blond hair and long, tan legs. She has grass-green eyes that are always sparkling and happy, and a laugh that no one can resist
This year we were going to be seniors at Neuse River High School. School starts tomorrow, and who knows how fast some other dude might snap up a pretty girl like Shelly. My plan was to finally speak up today and tell her I like her. I’ll ask her to be my date for our senior prom.
That’s all I could think about that morning at the pond. I was imagining what I would say when I asked her, and how she would react. I knew she might be surprised, but I was really hoping she’d get over that quick and look at me as something a different than just her buddy.
She hadn’t shown up yet, which was strange since Shelly was always good for her word. We’d decided to meet at the pond in the morning but it was almost lunch time.
I was about to a walk down the path to her house when I caught sight of her bouncy blond ponytail moving through the trees. She jogged out of the woods toward the dock e. A huge grin lit up her cute, freckled face.
“Hey, Tristan! Sorry I’m late.”
“Hey,” I said with a smile. “I was wondering if you were going to show up.”
Shelly plopped down next to me on the dock. “You won’t believe who I just ran into at Mr. Harvey’s store! Remember Cecil Evans? Well, he’s moved back to Bridgeton. He’ll be a senior with us.”
Cecil had moved away in seventh grade, but we hadn’t really known each other much before then.
Then Shelly said, “Oh my god, Tristan, he is so cute! His braces are gone and he plays football now. We talked for hours.”
“Oh yeah? Cool.” I forced my smile not to waver as my heart sank.
Shelly bumped her shoulder into mine and winked. “He even asked me to go to the movies this weekend.”
Inside the privacy of my own head, a long, agonized wail rippled through me: The girl of my dreams had no idea I liked her!
She was treating me like I was her brother or something. It felt like the skies should be dark and cloudy, but the beautiful day just went on like no tragedy had ever happened. The sun was just as bright as ever while Shelly waxed poetic about Cecil, dashing my dreams to pieces.
When senior year started, Shelly was completely wrapped up in Cecil Evans. They were together all the time, holding hands when they walked down the hall at school. It got so I hardly ever saw her anymore without the big jock wrapped around her like a friggin’ blanket. She never came down to the pond with me anymore, and if she did talk to me on the phone, it was always about Cecil.
I missed her, but she seemed really happy and I just had to accept that I’d missed my chance.
Winter break came up, and Shelly got invited to go skiing with Cecil’s parents. When we got back to school after New Year’s, Shelly was different.
She still had Cecil attached at the hip everywhere she went, but she wasn’t laughing and smiling all the time anymore. I started worrying that something was wrong. She looked like a different girl to me. The sparkle had gone out of her eyes and she always looked wary.
I tried to call and text a couple of times. When she did answer, she acted nervous and was short with me.
One day I saw her coming out of the girls’ bathroom. She was by herself for a change, so I stopped her in the hallway.
“Hey, Shells, how’s it going? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Oh. Hi, Tristan. What’s up?” She didn’t even look at me. She glanced up and down the hallway.
“Lookin’ for Cecil?”
When Shelly finally looked at me, I could see she had on thick makeup around one eye. I knew what she was doing. My head started spinning, and my whole body seemed to swell up with a fast-growing rage.
Why the hell did she have a black eye?
I reached out with both hands and gently grabbed her shoulders. “Shelly,” I said very slowly, calmly, and seriously, “what happened to your eye?”
She stood with no expression on her face. Then she turned and walked away. I don’t think I have ever felt so helpless and furious at the same time.
The bell rang and the hall filled with teenagers.
I stood rooted to the spot watching Shelly disappear into the crowd, until someone bumped into me. I snapped out of my daze. My first thought was to go looking for Cecil with a baseball bat. I wondered if that was the first time he’d hit her; and if she would even let me do anything to help; and if Shelly would make excuses for Cecil, forgive him, and just let him keep abusing her.
The worst part of it all was how guilty I felt. If I had spoken up that day on the dock, Shelly never would have ended up with a guy who hit her.
When I got home I did, I went straight to my mom. First, I told her about Shelly’s black eye but then the whole story came rushing out… even the part where I’d planned to ask Shelly to the prom the day she ran into Cecil.
She let me rant and rave about what I wanted to do to Cecil and all my ideas about what I should do.
My mom said, “Tristan, the best thing you can do for Shelly right now is to be there for her, even if she tries to push you away.”
After dinner, I walked next door and took up a position sitting on the stone wall beside Shelly’s driveway. I figured she’d eventually come home from her Friday night date with Cecil and I would be there waiting for her. I didn’t know if I would be able to restrain my rage when I saw the jerk, but talking to Shelly was my first priority.
I waited until it was an hour past Shelly’s curfew. I paced in the driveway and sat on the stone wall throwing pebbles at a sign post. I saw headlights a few times, but none turned down the lane.
Finally, a truck stopped out on the highway briefly. A door slammed. The truck’s tires squalled as they slung gravel. I could see Shelly walking down the lane towards me.
She was crying.
I stood still and waited for her to come closer. I spoke her name quietly.
Shelly gave a little gasp and stopped walking. She stood still in a brilliant patch of moonlight that reflected on her pretty, blond curls like diamonds. There were crystal teardrops streaming down her face. A red handprint stood out on her left cheek.
I stepped closer so she could see it was me. I held out my arms.
She took a hesitant step forward, then ran the last few steps. Shelly flung herself into my outstretched arms, crying like her heart was completely broken.
My heart broke with hers. I couldn’t even think of what to say to take away her pain. All I could do was hold on to her, and be there for her.
A little later, when Shelly had caught her breath some and calmed down, we went for a walk down to Palmer’s Pond. We sat on the end of the dock where last summer I had been ready to ask her to prom
We didn’t talk about prom now though. Shelly finally told to me about what was going on with her and Cecil. It was an ugly story, and a hard one for her to tell.
She said that before the skiing trip over winter break, she thought she was in the perfect relationship. That when Cecil acted a little jealous sometimes when she spoke to any other guy, it just meant he really liked her. But then, on the trip, Cecil accused her of flirting with the lift operator. When she argued, he had smacked her.
Shelly said she knew she needed to get away from him, but he was so sorry and promised so adamantly that he’d never do anything like that again.
So, she forgave him and gave him another chance.
Since then it had happened twice more. Tonight, it was for changing the radio station in his truck.
I listened to her talk; I held her when she cried again. I didn’t tell her then that I felt responsible for letting her get mixed up with Cecil. I’d have had to tell her how I really felt. And it wasn’t the time.
Shelly realized that there was no hiding this from her parents anymore. It was nearly dawn when I walked her home, gave her a hug, and trudged home myself.
Shelly is going to counseling now. Her mom got her into the therapist just a couple of days she showed her parents her poor bruised face. Shelly’s dad flipped out and went looking for Cecil, but the worm hid inside his parents’ house until Mr. Wilson left.
Cecil’s buddies from the football team, however, had different plans for their teammate. The big jerk who thought he could get away with smacking around Shelly Wilson didn’t take into account one thing: every guy on the football team had had a crush on her at one point or another since kindergarten. When the Neuse River High football team found out their new teammate had given Shelly a black eye, they got together to give him a taste of his own medicine and then some.
Shelly and I are close again, like we used to be. She seems to be getting her sparkle back, but sometimes she gets really quiet and doesn’t feel like talking. Prom is coming up in just a couple of months, and so is graduation. Tomorrow, we have plans to hang out down at Palmer’s Pond and do a little fishing.
This time, I won’t let my moment pass me by. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask Shelly Wilson to be my date to the senior prom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cathy Jones lives on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina. She loves the beach, reading every type of book ever written, inventing delicious recipes, and making up tall tales.