4
The next morning I
was in the cafetorium early, sitting by myself, scratching out some notes,
trying to outline where The Sands of Loren would go next. I had concluded an important plotline,
embedding something important to me (whether others understood it or not), and
now I needed to take it in a different direction. I wasn't sure what that was going to be. Maybe somebody would try to wrest control of
the hospital from Andrea Goldman. Maybe
bring in a new love interest for Dr. Brenda.
Maybe have the hospital invaded by blue aliens. I just didn't know yet.
As I was musing
over these momentous decisions, Ginny Estill came by and sat next to me. I had not seen or talked to her much without
Artie by her side. She was still
beautiful to me, her Diane Keatonesque looks, and her imaginative, flighty personality
just made her more attractive. But I had
long since reconciled that she was my best friend Artie's girl. I would not interfere with that. And falling as hard as I did for Lisa made me
realize that I could move beyond my obsession with Ginny.
Even though Lisa
was gone, the memory was still too strong for me to move on to anyone else, and
if I did, it wouldn't be Ginny. Whatever
my attraction to Ginny was, her attachment to Artie was something I would not
interfere with, under any conditions.
You set up these barriers, and you try to stay strong, and then the Trap
just goes on and on, and you realize....well, that's for later, Doctor Duncan.
Ginny punched my
arm playfully. "How are you doing,
Lance? I haven't had much chance lately
to talk to you one on one."
Yeah, in maybe
like half a year. "I'm okay,
Ginny. Like everybody else, just trying
to find a way to cope with things each and every day."
Ginny looked at
me, empathy dripping from her wide, expressive hazel green eyes. "I know it's hard. I miss her, too. I miss so many of them. So many from our group. Tom, Sue, Jim, Lisa; it's just too much
sometimes."
"It is a hard
thing. It's made even harder when your
girlfriend's killer walks free," I answered, swallowing the pain, trying
not to break into tears.
"You have to
let that go, Lance. At least stop
blaming your father. He did the best he
could."
I looked at her coldly. "Well, his best wasn't good enough, was
it?"
Ginny was
miffed. "I am so sorry that you are
so wrapped up in this that you can't see his side. If you want to blame someone, why don't you
blame Mr. Tate for not building a more solid case? He was completely blindsided by the witnesses
Mr. Branch presented, completely unprepared for what they were going to
say."
I had enough. "I don't know. I don't want to talk about it."
"Don't you
understand? You have a father here, and
he loves you. You know how many of us
don't?"
Many people had
reminded me of that. I knew it was true,
but I got tired of hearing it. But
something in the way Ginny said it struck a nerve. And I didn't know, in her case, if she was
bemoaning the fact that her father wasn't here, or that he didn't love
her. My impression of her pharmacist
father was not good, that he dipped into his own pharmacy supplies and was
neglectful if not outright abusive. "I
know. I'm sorry, Ginny. I just can't think about that right
now."
Ginny nodded her
head that she understood. We were quiet
for a moment.
I broke the
silence with a new topic. "I see
they have posted a list of the first couples applying for a marriage
contract."
"Yes! Did you see that Carol Dietrich was on the
list?" Carol was the first girl who
let me date her more than once, and Ginny was aware of that (we used to talk to
each other about all kinds of things).
My serious, romantic nature at the time led me to tell her on the third
date that I loved her. She laughed and
told me she was no where near ready to be that committed to someone, and never
dated me again.
"Yeah, I saw
that. She certainly changed her mind
from when I dated her."
"Women do
that sometimes," Ginny said, laughing.
"Bob Short and Pam Kordowski were on the list."
"Yeah, I
think everybody saw that coming. But you
know what names were not on that list?"
Ginny looked
excited, like I was going to tell her some really juicy gossip. "No!
Who?"
"You and
Artie."
Ginny
laughed. "What? Are you kidding? You didn't seriously expect me to be on that
list, did you?"
"Well, you
two seem to really like each other."
"Of course we
do! Artie is pretty cool. I like spending time with him, for sure. But marriage?
Ha! I mean, I know we may be
trapped here for the rest of our lives, I'm not naive, but I always felt like
if I got married, and that is a big if, it would be well past when I got out of
college, much less high school."
"Does Artie
feel that way too?"
She paused for a
minute, as if it was something she hadn't thought about before. "I'm not sure. He really hasn't said. But it only matters if both of us agree to
it, and I don't, so his opinion only matters when it matches mine."
"Okay. If you say so."
She huffed up a
bit. "What do you mean, if I say
so?"
"Well, you
said it yourself. Women do that sometimes."
"Do
what?"
"Change their
minds, like Carol did," I said, smiling slyly.
"Well, not
this woman!"
Somebody came up
to us and stared at me. It was Davis
Deen, someone from our class who lived in my neighborhood but had little to do
with me since being part of the boys who came over to my house to humiliate me
at basketball. He was taller than me,
and had brown hair, slightly longer than normal, covering most of his neck. Most of the time I had seen him he was
sneering and snotty, but he just looked businesslike as he stared at me. "Come with me," Davis said.
It was not a request. It was a
command.
Ginny didn't like
that. "What's your problem? You can't just come up to somebody and just
say that? Who are you? What do you want?"
Clearly, Ginny
didn't recognize him. But I did. And I knew who he was an associate of. It had been awhile, but I was not afraid to
go see him.
"It's okay,
Ginny," I reassured her. "I'll
go with you, Davis."
At least this time
I didn't have a bag over my head.
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