A sliver of doubt slowed his pace somewhat.
Don’t! a stern voice in his head admonished him.
This was the voice of independence, he realized. The voice he’d been listening to as he stormed out of the woods with Dream’s words echoing in his head. He didn’t like to make major life decisions based on emotional impulse, but he felt now was the time for a bold, unusual move. So he reached inside the unlocked Accord, popped the trunk open, retrieved his bag, and started moving.
And those first steps down the path toward a new life had been so intoxicating. So much so he resented this new infusion of doubt. He wanted to believe himself righteous, but his conscience betrayed him, reminding him of his shameful series of trysts with Karen Hidecki. The guilt he’d been holding at bay for months threatened to emerge from a locked door of his subconscious. His pace slowed, and he realized he was contemplating a return to the Accord.
No! railed the admonishing voice.
It was almost a scream now.
Chad suspected it might not really be the voice of independence. That instead it was a manifestation of intense emotional pain. Of deep hurt. A memory of Dream in high school entered his mind like a taunt from the nether regions of his psyche.
One day after school he’d made the mistake of wandering too near the football team’s practice field. He was new to the school, but he’d already been marked as a loner and a geek. Nobody liked him. Nobody talked to him. This kind of exclusion from the social hierarchy of high school-he wasn’t even a Loser, a status that would have at least afforded him membership in a recognized clique-might have bothered him more if not for the transitory nature of his childhood.
His father was a military man and they moved around a lot.
But he was oblivious to all that now as he walked in the late-summer sunlight, reading from an open paperback as he walked. A group of the football players saw him as he strayed from the path that led from the rear of the school to the nearby public library. He was drawn by the sight of a picnic table. The Gatorade dispensers and stacks of plastic cups should have served as warning, but he was blissfully ignorant of the lurking danger. All he knew was that he was a little tired from the heat and needed a place to rest for a few moments. The picnic table had seemed like a good solution.
Until three very large football players were looming over him.
He remembered looking at their hostile faces and naively asking, “There a problem, guys?”
One of the players repeated his question with an exaggerated lisp.” ‘There a problem, guys?’”
He started to get up, but a big hand clamped around his wrist, wrenched his arm behind his back, and pushed him to his knees. Another player stood in front of him, flexing the fingers of a hand wrapped in tape. “I bet you wanted to watch us run around in our tight uniforms, didn’t you? You fucking butt pirates make me sick.”
Chad started to cry. “Please don’t hurt me.”
The tears and the plea elicited only more of that ugly laughter. Chad wanted to scream for help, but who would help him? Some of the other football players? That didn’t seem likely. A sense of hopelessness began to suffocate him. He wasn’t gay. Not that it mattered. The fucking jocks assumed anyone the slightest bit fey was homosexual. The word “tolerance” wasn’t in the jock dictionary. Their social order was simple, guided by one unyielding principle-the strong of the world exist to subjugate the weak.
They were the strong.
And he was definitely the weak.
Hence, he was fucked.
But then he became aware of another presence. There was a subtle shift in the stance of his tormentors, though they weren’t yet backing off. He heard female voices. A group of girlfriends, maybe, or cheerleaders. Great, they could do a sis-boom-bah routine while the athletes took turns using his head as a punching bag.
“What’s going on here?” he heard one of them say.
A leggy blonde pushed through the circle of players, saw Chad pinned to the ground, and unleashed an impressive display of verbal indignation. “What the fuck are you primates doing to this kid!?” She stepped right up to the player holding him down. “Let him go, Moose, or I’ll make sure Mr. Chandler hears all about this.”
Chad recognized the name of the school’s principal, and he was instantly filled with a new source of dread-the prospect of his father hearing about the incident. Chad liked to believe his father had no idea what a reject he was, and he desperately wanted to maintain the facade of a normal kid. A beating at the hands of strangers was infinitely more acceptable than that awful possibility.
But he didn’t yet know that Dream Weaver was one of the most popular girls at his new school. Or that her father was a close friend of Principal Chandler. So he was amazed when the football player who’d been holding him released him and began apologizing profusely to Dream.
“Hey, Dream,” he said, his voice full of patently false good humor. “We didn’t mean any harm, really. We were just messing around, giving the new kid a hard time. So chill, okay? It’s no biggie.”
Dream stepped right up to him. “Yeah, no biggie. Like your dick, Moose.”
Some of Dream’s girlfriends laughed.
The football player’s face went a bright shade of scarlet. “Come on, Dream. Lighten up. You know how it is. He’s a geek.”
“No, Moose, I don’t know how it is.” Chad listened to her in awe, unable to believe this girl was showing no fear as she assailed a boy more than twice her size. “But I know that beating up people smaller than you is a real limp-dick thing to do.”
They were gone moments later, thoroughly cowed by this amazing girl.
She helped him to his feet and brushed a fleck of dirt from his face. She smiled, an expression so radiantly beau-beautiful it stirred his heart in a way he could only compare to the way watching a sunset at the beach made him feel. Something about looking at Dream made him feel good, like he was gazing into some marvel of nature when he looked into her eyes. He would soon realize this was part of Dream’s gift. Kindness was her life’s guiding principle. She’d been raised to treat people-all people-with decency and respect, and it was this inward beauty people responded to when they fell under her spell. Her outward beauty only enhanced her admirable personality traits, making her a kind of goddess figure to nearly everyone who met her.
Chad knew this was the real reason her love life was such a shambles. Everything about her intimidated the men who might have been a good match for her. So she screwed a lot of unworthy people.
Like Dan Bishop.
All the while believing he was the only right one for her.
The memory of that afternoon on the practice field stung him now as he thought about his indiscretion with Karen Hidecki. The enormity of the betrayal finally hit him, and he recognized the way the revelation pushed every one of Dream’s emotional hot buttons. To think he’d described her as the “passive-aggressive” side of their relationship.
So here it was, the self-confrontation he could no longer avoid.
He came to a stop, set the bag down on the road, and sighed. “Fuck me.”
Everything was his fault.
Well, what now?
Part of him wanted to run back to the Accord and pour his heart out to Dream. To let her know how much she’d really meant to him over the years. To apologize until his voice was hoarse. To cry on her shoulder while she held him. He could do that. She would forgive him. He knew her too well. But he wasn’t about to forgive himself. There was only one right thing to do, and that was to let Dream get on with her own life. His initial reasoning had been all wrong, but leaving was still the right thing to do.