“There aren’t any knights anymore,” I said. “Well, except certain guys in England, like Paul McCartney; I think he’s a knight. But that’s more an honorary title.”
Suddenly, the left side of my face felt warm while the right side, the side unlooked at by Ashley, felt cool—cold even. It was weird.
I told her where the Tuttles lived, and she pulled next to the curb to let me out. We sat there a minute, looking at the house slouched there behind the weed-choked lawn and overgrown shrubbery.
“This is where you live?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Just where I exist.”
I got out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. See you around.”
“Sure. See you.”
I watched her little yellow Miada rip down Broadway.
Then I went inside and found some ice for my head.
6
Over the next couple of weeks, I saw Ashley, the tall, tan, blue-eyed senior, all over campus. One day I looked up and there she was, sitting across from me at lunch. She smiled and I smiled back, but I was a little disturbed, for some reason.
“Hey, Alfred,” she said. “How’s it goin’?”
I glanced around. “You sure you want to be seen with me?”
“Why not?”
“It could have an adverse effect on your social life.”
She laughed and flipped her hair. Maybe I’m wrong, but blond girls seem to flip their hair more than brunettes or redheads. “I’ll risk it.”
“I know what it’s like,” I said, “being the new kid. Only when I came last year I wasn’t a senior, I didn’t drive a hot car, and obviously, I wasn’t much to look at.”
“Why do you put yourself down all the time?”
“I don’t put myself there. I just recognize that I am there.”
I noticed she was hardly touching her lunch. When she did take a bite, she balanced the food on the very end of her fork.
“I guess you’ve heard the rumors by now,” I said. “That I’m a terrorist or CIA agent, or the one about me being crazy.”
She shook her head. “The only thing I heard was that your uncle was murdered last spring.”
“He was.”
“I’m so sorry, Alfred,” she said, and sounded like she meant it too. Then she changed the subject.
It wasn’t until sixth period, right before the final bell rang, that something odd about that whole encounter struck me: the lunch period for seniors was thirty minutes after mine.
That afternoon I saw Ashley on the way to my bus.
“Hey, Alfred,” she said.
“Hi, Ashley,” I said.
“Where you goin’?”
I pointed at the bus. She said, “You want a ride?”
“Really?” I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had asked if I wanted another head.
“Really,” she said. So I followed her into the senior parking lot and climbed into the Miata. Ashley tended to drive too fast and tailgate, but the top was down, the afternoon was sunny, and she was tan, so I could live with it.
“We had this neighbor in Ohio where I grew up,” I said, raising my voice to overcome the rush of wind. “This old lady who took in every stray dog in the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
“She felt sorry for them.”
“You think I feel sorry for you?”
I shrugged.
“Don’t you think you’re a little young to be so cynical, Alfred?”
“Girls like you don’t usually notice guys like me,” I answered. “Much less eat lunch with them and give them a ride home.”
“Maybe I think you’re interesting. Hey, I’m starving,” she said. “You want to swing through Steak-N-Shake?”
She didn’t wait for an answer but pulled into the drive-through lane and ordered two large chocolate shakes, two double burgers, and two large fries.
After our order arrived, she pulled into a parking place beneath the explosion of red leaves of a Bradford pear tree. The milk shake made me shiver and gave me one of those stabbing pains behind the eyeball. Ashley ate that burger and those fries like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She wasn’t the first thin girl I’d known who could do that.
“You’re really tan,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid of getting skin cancer?”
“I live for the sun,” she said, which I took to mean she didn’t give a flip about skin cancer.
“My mom died of skin cancer,” I said.
“Your mom is dead too?”
I nodded. “My mom. My dad. My uncle.”
“I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life,” Ashley said. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me. I mean, your mom and dad and your uncle.”
“Oh, it was more than just them. I’ve lost count now. No, that’s a lie; I count ’em up all the time. I’ve never told anybody this except my therapist, who doesn’t count, but I died too.”
“You died?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I came back—only sometimes I feel like a zombie, but I don’t have any interest in eating people and I dress better. I guess that’s the price I have to pay for sticking around. You know how spiders eat by sucking the juices out of their prey? The body or husk or whatever stays, but all the life’s been sucked out. That’s how I feel. Husk-o’-Kropp.”
She took a long pull from her shake, studying me over the straw.
“Alfred,” she said softly, “nothing ever stays the same. It’ll get better.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re a knight. One of the good guys.”
I wanted to believe her. There were no knights left, but plenty of good guys.
Thinking of knights reminded me of Bennacio, the Last Knight, and his daughter, Natalia, who was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had kissed me the last time I saw her. I thought about Natalia a lot, wondering where she was and if she was okay, because she was an orphan now like me—but mostly because she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
We drove back to the Tuttle house. Ashley put her hand on my arm before I stepped out of the car.
“Here,” she said, digging into her purse. “I want to give you my phone number.”
“Why?”
“So you can call me, silly.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you.”
“You like me like me or just like me?”