That Pond Behind the Trees
His name was Tommy. He was fifteen and had a quick, nervous, smiling habit of looking away whenever someone would ask him a personal question, or any question at all really. His mother, who knew everybody and everything, somehow never heard his responses to her questions often scolded Tommy about that habit, “HAH? Speak up honey. Nobody will ever hear you if you keep mumbling like that.” Tommy would look at his shoes or at the cracks in the sidewalk, nodding while subtly toggling the volume controls for his headphones in his pocket through faded denim. He knew she wished he was a businessman like his older brother because businessmen didn’t live at home and always answered questions with lots of eye contact.
“You haven’t been practicing piano this week. And you haven’t been finishing your dinner. I work so hard to cook dinner for you after work. What’s wrong with you? You sick?”
This was the way with his mother. She talked about things he should do better everyday, sometimes directly to him but often to herself or to her friends on the other line, but he noticed she hardly ever left the house to visit those friends. His father was away at work most of the time and when he was home he wanted his supper made and his newspaper on his chair and he went up to bed early most nights.
School and sports came easy to Tommy and he had made a few friends that way, but he suspected they wouldn’t actually be his friends if they weren’t in the same classes or didn’t run together everyday. He had joined the track team in middle school to avoid P.E. class because he suspected P.E. would put him on the wrong path with the wrong kids and support his mother’s worry that he wasn’t serious enough about his life.
But it was finally summer, so Tommy could go running outside everyday and, as long as he stayed on the same route, his mother would never complain about him leaving the house. So on one sunny Tuesday, he laced up his shoes, followed his usual route, and ran down the block, around the bend, across the street, up the hill, then cut left into the grassy park behind the high school with the soccer fields and horse trails and playgrounds and older men who sold icees from their carts on hot days like today.
Tommy had thick, straight, shoulder-length black hair and fuzz on his chin and upper lip, and on runs like today he would take off his shirt, stuff it loosely into the back of his shorts, and dash across the grass. The dry summer wind crusted his thin lips so he would often lick them to keep them from splitting open. His headband held his hair back in thick tufts that bounced against the back of his head as he thud, thud, thudded around the park, and he felt like he always felt — like a rabbit bounding across a grassy meadow where the mice and the squirrels and the foxes all knew each other but nobody said much about it. His gait, long and bobbing, covered the loop around the park in no more than fifteen minutes, so he would often turn the corner and circle it again and again until sunset.
Some days he would turn into the trails near the loop around the park, and he felt strong today, so on his third lap he dashed through the bushes and found himself on a familiar dirt trail. The light shone through the overhanging trees back here, drawing Tommy up and down and up again through the hillside, through forks in the road and around bends that led towards the pond with the chainlink gate surrounding its backside. There were always gnats swarming the trail here so he inhaled deeply and held it in as he dashed through a herd of anxious geese eyeing his approach. He always ran on the side of the trail closest to the trees because he’d ran too close to the water once before and fallen in and he didn’t care much for the smell of pond water or for getting wet.
A girl named Rachel was stretching by the edge of the pond. She was wearing a faded blue cap and grey trail running shoes, so he could tell she was a runner right away. She was bent over trying to touch her toes, but she kept her eyes and neck craned up so her body looked like an “L” turned towards the ground. She smiled and waved at him and Tommy looked towards the bushes on his left and waved back. She suddenly stood upright and called out something to him which he didn’t hear but his pace had slowed so he shouted back to her and he learned that she had asked for his name and whether he ran around here often. He slowed to a walk, drew his shoulders up, breathed in, and told her that he did, everyday in fact. Her dark blonde hair was tied up in a pony tail that was pulled through the back of her cap. She wore a baggy, heather grey t-shirt and black leggings and he noticed her makeup was streaked like she’d been crying but he didn’t say anything about that. Her hands were on her hips and she leaned forward like a school teacher when she called out to him, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here. You run these trails much?” He told her he ran back here when he didn’t have school and that he had just started summer vacation and she laughed and smiled and told him that she had too.
The girl named Rachel said she went to a private school a few cities over. Her parents thought the schools around here were so-so and never asked much about what she thought of them, so she didn’t spend much time in sleepy Camarillo. After Tommy had waved goodbye and ran off into the trails, she had shouted something about seeing each other again but he had been too far away to hear her and too nervous to turn back and ask what she had said. She seemed kind and fast and talkative and he didn’t know much about girls like that.
The next morning Tommy got up at ten — it was Sunday but his family didn’t bother with church — laced up his shoes and dashed out his front door for a morning run. He wore his white racing shorts and matching tank top today because he felt faster and bit more noticeable when he wore them together. He ran down the hill and cut across the park and stopped to stretch a little by the wooden fence surrounding the nursery. He thought a lot during his runs and this time he thought about his mother who hadn’t been speaking much to him lately and the humid weather that was making his body sweat and the smile of that girl by the pond then shook his head and closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun hugging his body and how sweet that always felt and how he didn’t know a feeling quite like it; when he opened his eyes he hardly knew where he was and the grass ran of into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still. He dashed off in a daze into those trails behind the park without running his customary laps around the grassy loop.
The sun was hot today and bright little circles appeared in his eyes when he stared upwards at it for too long through the branches and leaves overhead. The gnats were buzzing around his head and landing to rest on his bare chest and arms, sticking to his damp body so he wiped them off with his tank top in-hand before pushing it into the back of his shorts. He wondered why they followed him and clung to his body the way they did but he waved that off with the thought, “well maybe that can’t see very well, like me.”
Rachel was looking at her watch very intently and tapping her foot when he arrived at the pond that day. She looked up at him and smiled and shook her legs out as if expecting him and preparing to disappear onto the trails beside her right then and there. Her skin was glowing with what must have been a mixture of sunscreen and humidity and sweat and he noticed that she was wearing loose basketball shorts today that were blue and cut just below her knees.
“Tommy! You’re back, buddy! Wanna run with me today? I wanna see if I can make it up the hill towards that old electrical tower.”
His eyes glanced towards the worn down New Balances on his feet that he’d been given when his older brother grew out of them and he grabbed the back of his shorts with his hands because he didn’t know what to do with them and wondered why she had called him “buddy” and whether she was faster than him and if she was still standing there waiting for his reply. He noticed that her shoes hadn’t moved out of the corner of his eye so he lifted his chin and said he would run with her. She smiled a wide, toothy grin and threw both thumbs in the air before turning and dashing down the trail beside her. His legs sputtered into life and he chased her down the path in stride.
Tommy and Rachel stumbled across each other most days that summer by the pond. She always stood by the water, stretching and smiling and calling out to him when he broke through the tree line. When they ran together, she didn’t say much and neither did he. She would run in front of him and he would match her stride and watch the way her ponytail bounced behind her as they bounded across those dusty trails. He learned that she used to run for a track team in the past too and that she was faster than most girls and that she ran to this pond everyday from the next town over because it was her favorite spot to run alone and be alone, til she met Tommy that is — who she said was special, but she wouldn’t say why. “You’re a special kid, Tommy.” He has asked her about herself and her family and her life outside of these trails but when he had her lips would press together and she would seem sad so she had only told him that she was 18 and didn’t want to talk about her life very much.
He started to notice small things about her that made her even more mysterious and confusing to him. Rachel was always standing in the same place by the pond, checking her watch and stretching her legs, no matter when Tommy arrived on his runs. She never let him run ahead of her and when he would pass her she would stop running and wait for him to stop before passing him to take the lead again. He noticed that she had wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and wore a layer of makeup which none of the girls on his track team seemed to do. She was easy to talk to and listened to all of his stories about his siblings, his teammates, his classmates, his favorite video games, his piano practice, and his mother, who hadn’t been home much lately because she’d been traveling with his father on business trips to Florida where they owned some land, which Tommy hadn’t visited before.
One day after a dozen or so runs together, Rachel asked him if he wanted to try running on some new trails with her. She said that she had a car and that they could drive up the coast and train on some new terrain and that getting a change of scenery would be good for him and make him faster than his teammates who ran around town all the time. “They’ll be wonderin’ how you got so fast and whether you could teach them a thing or two.” But he had never left town before — not without his parents at least — and he told her so but she insisted, “You’re gonna be a man soon, Tommy. A man!! You have to experience the world without your mom. Don’t ya trust me?” And he thought about how his mother was in Florida with his father and about how his siblings weren’t home and about the frozen pizza in his freezer that he didn’t want to heat up so he agreed with a nod and a smile and as much eye contact as he could muster.
After a while walking through the trees and back across the grass, they reached the edge of the park where her car was parked near the soccer fields. She walked past the sedans and SUVs and approached a rounded, forest green Volkswagon van. It reminded Tommy of a gigantic beetle with wooden panels across the side and a surf rack that held a big black duffel bag tied down with mismatching elastic straps that were yellow and blue and pink on top. The wheels looked like they were rusted and different sizes so the van’s body tilted slightly to the left. There weren’t any stickers or antennae or a license plate but the windows were dark and shiny and gave the van a cool, hippie feel. He thought about the photos he’d found of his grandmother in the garage from the seventies and pictured her standing beside it, with flowers in her hair.
“Don’tcha like my van? New paint job,” she said, “Hey.”
“What?”
“I’m glad I met a kid like you.”
He blushed and looked away this time, embarrassed by her eyes and her mouth and the reminder that she saw him as a child or something smaller than a guy or a man. She pulled open the passenger door and he stepped inside, breathing in the strong pine air freshener and a faint scent of the leftover Arby’s bag sitting on the floor and something that made his nose crinkle up like smoke or those casinos his father used to take him to as a kid. She pulled her door open with a rusty lurch and bounced into the drivers seat, pushing in and turning the key and flipping the radio to 106.7 K-Rock before slapping the steering wheel and laughing to herself, staring out at the field that stretched out in front of them. She looked him in the eyes and the corners of her lips pulled up and she wrapped her arm around his headrest and looked back over her shoulder as she pulled out of the gravel lot. He wondered why she drove an old surfer van like this and why her car smelled like smoke and how she ran so well if she actually smoked but mostly he looked down at his lap or out his window at the town he knew receding into the distance.
They drove along the coast for hours not doing much or saying anything at all before she pushed a cassette into the dash and started playing what she called “the classics.” She told him if he didn’t know the classics then he wouldn’t ever really be a grown up so he closed his eyes and listened close as she drummed on the steering wheel and hummed along to what she called the Rolling Stones and Tom Petty and Journey. He wondered where the trail was that they were driving to and he asked her during a pause in the music but she kept drumming away and smiled and told him they were close and he should get some rest since this trail was way harder than anything they’d ran back home so he stopped asking and leaned his head on the window and felt his eyes get heavy til the rumble of the motor lulled him to sleep.
Tommy woke up to the metallic sounds of the engine sputtering and crackling and moaning. Black smoke poured out of the hood and through the air conditioning vents in the car and he coughed dry air from deep within his chest as the car pulled over. He pushed the door open and stumbled out onto the grassy hillside beside the highway. Rachel was stumbling out too and he saw her lean against the body of the car, coughing and yanking trying to pry the hood open til it did and a plume of black smoke drifted up towards what Tommy realized was the night sky. Tommy stood against the hillside, watching Rachel wave away the smoke with her hands and looking into the engine as if she could do anything to stop the damage. She muttered something hushed to herself and stood looking at Tommy with shocked wide eyes before turning her back to him and stepping away and putting her phone up to her ear. That was the first time he had seen her angry, her smiling demeanor giving way to a hunched back and screaming voice and arms flailing the way his mother’s did when he didn’t finish his chores or came home too late. He felt very far from home and wanted to go back there now but didn’t know how he could with a broken down car or even how to tell her that he wanted to leave.
She lowered her phone and pushed it back into her pocket and stood there staring out at the sea, her back turned towards him so he couldn’t make out her expression. When she finally spun around towards him, she looked right at him with eyes that were wide open and a closed-lipped smile which had returned to her lips. They were maybe ten feet apart. She stood there so stiffly relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one hand idly on the car door as if she were keeping herself up that way and had no intention of ever moving again. He had started to recognize most things about her, the loose running shorts that just covered the veins on her thighs, that sleepy dreamy smile that girls use when they don’t want boys to know what they’re thinking, the singsong way she talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy. But all these things did not come together.
He said suddenly, “Hey, who were you talking to?”
Her smile faded. He could see then that she wasn’t very happy about him asking that. At this knowledge his heart began to pound faster.
“Oh — don’t worry about them. Just some buddies who lent me the van, that’s all. They weren’t too happy bout us breaking down. It’s their van. That’s all.”
She grinned to reassure him and lines appeared at the corners of her mouth. Her teeth were so big and a little crooked and she grinned so broadly her eyes became slits and he saw how her lipstick filled the upper part of her lips and made them look bigger than they were. Then, abruptly, she seemed to become embarrassed and looked over her shoulder at the car. “Got anywhere you need to be?” she wondered, “Looks like we’re stuck in the sticks til we can get the van fixed. Doubt we’ll find a repair shop open this late in the small towns ‘round here.” Her smile told nothing about what she was thinking.
“Can’t we go back home tonight?” Tommy said faintly.
“With what car, buddy?” she wondered, “I don’t know about you, but I’m not trying to pay $300 for an Uber back home. We’re far away from there. Plus, leave the van out here to rot? No way.” Tommy felt a wave of dizziness rise in him at the thought of being stranded out here and he stared at her as if waiting for something to change the shock of the moment.
“Maybe we should find somewhere to crash,” she said confidently, “it’ll be fun, like a sleepover.” She turned and nodded her head incredulously towards the highway offramp in the distance. “We’ll get this baby fixed up tomorrow and be on our way back home before anyone realizes we were gone.” Tommy stared at her, another wave of dizziness rising in him so that for a moment she wasn’t even in focus and she was just a blur standing there against her green van, and he had the thought that he had been sleeping in the car and he didn’t really know where they were and he felt like she and this moment were only half real.
“If my mother comes home and sees that I’m not there — “
“She’s not coming home tonight. She’s in Florida with your dad.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me on a run, remember? That — that plot of land that they’ve never let you visit. You’re home all alone this week. Must be lonely, huh?”
Rachel smiled and grabbed her forearm with her other hand and rocked back and forth on her heels and he thought she suddenly looked nervous to look him in the eyes. “Wouldn’t it be better for us to spend the night here,” she said faintly, “I don’t like being out in the dark very much.” Then she looked up at Tommy and pushed her hands through her hair so it fell down onto her back and she wrapped her arms behind her back and took a step closer to him. He felt his head spinning and thought about her nose and her lips and about sleeping in the same room and the color of his briefs and how he’d never changed in front of anyone before besides at track meets where everyone changed in front of anyone and realized he hadn’t showered since his run earlier that day on those dusty dirt trails which he suddenly missed a lot.
“We — we can go back home in the morning?” he whispered between heavy breaths.
“You know it,” she said, the cheeriness returning to her voice. “First thing in the morning, after the van’s fixed up.”
He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at his feet. He took a step towards her, then another slowly, and another. He watched himself as she took his hand and interlaced her fingers with his, and she guided him along the highway towards a town that Tommy had never seen before and did not recognize but he knew he would follow her there.
The motel room was shades of grey everywhere — grey walls, grey curtains, grey sofa, grey nightstands, grey pillows, grey blankets. Rachel was in the bathroom “freshening up” with the door open, so the sounds of water and scrubbing permeated every inch of the room. Tommy sat on a chair, staring at her with his fists balled up in his lap. He noticed how much older she looked when she removed her makeup and realized he’d never seen her without it, the lines around her mouth and eyes multiplying, her eyes sinking deeper into their sockets, her neck becoming rougher and looser. She looked at her phone every few minutes, as if hoping for an important text that she’d been waiting for her whole life. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and tossing the pack over to him along with a lighter which bounced across the carpet towards his bare feet. He picked it up and set it on the table beside him, unsure of what to do or how to do it and whether he should.
Rachel stepped out of the bathroom and looked past him towards the window then drifted her somber eyes towards him. Her face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw and cheeks slightly sunken in, the nose bubbled and lined, the eyes surrounded by dark circles like she hadn’t gotten enough sleep in weeks. She leaned against the doorway with her shoulder and tossed her cigarette in the sink beside her, but her eyes never left his and he realized that he hadn’t been looking down at his feet so much.
“I’m gonna step out and make a call. Now you stay right here, okay?” she said, back to her usual sing-song voice. It sounded strange coming from this person standing in front of him who looked far less like Rachel and more like someone his mother might introduce him to at the supermarket.
“You’re coming right back?”
“You know it buddy,” she said with a half grin, “I’ll be right back.”
Tommy sat on the floor after she left and wondered if he should text his mother or a teammate and tell them where he was so he wouldn’t get in trouble somehow but he wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t tell them that he was at a motel or up the coast or with an older girl or that they were going to have a sleepover. And he definitely didn’t want his father to find out because his father got angry easily and he didn’t really want him to get angry while he was staying with his mother. So he sat on the floor and looked at the wall and didn’t do much of anything.
After a while he heard a car pull up outside and the motel room door rapped with four short knocks, as if this were a signal Tommy knew. He stood up and approached the door slowly, opened it, then hung out the doorframe, his bare toes curling down off the step. There were two men in a black car, its engine rumbling but its headlights dimmed to a glow, and he noticed they were looking right at Rachel who was standing a few feet outside of the doorway in front of him.
“Repair shops weren’t open, so looks like we’re really stuck here. But my friends drove out to help us out from a few towns over. They say they’ll drive us to get a bite. Cool, right?”
“You — you have friends out here?”
“Come on, buddy. They drove out here soon as they heard the old van broke down. They’re friends and they’re gonna help us.”
“Where’re we going?”
Tommy spoke quietly and fidgeted his hands into his pockets, feeling the eyes from the dark tinted car watching their conversation. He suddenly looked past her and noticed both men had short, military-tight brown hair. One wore a bandana around his neck and the other was leaning on his arm out the window, acting like he wasn’t listening to their conversation. Both men were wearing sunglasses. The driver’s glasses were metallic and mirrored everything in miniature.
“We gotta eat ya know,” she said flippantly, “before we get the van fixed. These guys are gonna help me, and help you. They’re cool guys, trust me.”
Rachel was rocking back and forth on her heels and fidgeting with her shirt and he noticed sweat beading on her forehead and how she wouldn’t look him in the eyes for the first time since they’d met. “We gotta eat and we don’t have no car. So maybe you better step out here,” she repeated, and this last part was in a different voice; it was a little flatter, as if the fatigue was finally getting to her.
“Maybe we should stay here.”
“What? Come on, buddy. Just a quick ride with my friends and we’ll be back quick. Don’tcha wanna come with me?”
“I’m not so hungry. You can go without — “
“You’re a diabetic, aren’t ya? You gotta get food in you soon.”
“Did I tell you that?”
“I know a lot of things about you. We’re friends, remember?”
“I don’t know — “
“Like how your mom and dad are away til next Thursday and your brother’s back east… Chicago, right?”
“I mean, yeah, but — “
“And you wouldn’t want your dad to know you’re staying at a motel with me — an older girl, would ya? Why bring your folks into this?”
“You wouldn’t tell them. What? You’re crazy. You — you don’t even have their phone numbers.”
“Oh yes I do. So I want you to come outside and take a ride with my friends. That’s all, buddy. They just wanna get some food in ya, and in me. Can’t bring you home on an empty stomach now, can I?” Tommy felt the world spinning and his hands were tingling like needles and he thought that he might fall over so he leaned his weight through his shoulder leaning on the door frame. “You’re crazy. You — “ he whispered, “I don’t like this. I don’t like those guys. I want to stay here.”
She wobbled a bit and out of the side of her mouth came a fast spat curse, an aside not meant for him to hear. But even this “Damnit!” sounded forced. Then she began to smile again he watched this smile come, awkward as if she were smiling from inside a mask. Her whole face was a mask, he thought wildly, tanned down to her throat but then running out as if she had removed the make-up from her face but had forgotten about her throat.
“Tommy,” she said softly, looking right at him, “Get in the car. These guys — my friends. You don’t want them to come in here to get you. And they will. They’ll get me too. They’ve been waiting for you — for us, for weeks.”
Rachel sucked in a quick, ragged, forced breath. She looked like someone he had never seen before, and he noticed the wetness of her eyes looking right into his. Her fingers were shaking and clenched into little balls by her hips and he thought then that she looked so scared and that he would do anything for her and he didn’t really need to know why. She needed him — she had said so and she must have really meant it since her friends were watching.
“They’re not so bad,” she continued, reciting it to herself, “They just need more kids like you and me. I didn’t want to do it. They said if I brought them a friend, they might let me go. They’re not so bad if you go without a fuss.”
“There some problem, Rachel?” The man with the reflective sunglasses shouted from the car. He laid some dark object on the dashboard that Tommy couldn’t see, but her whole body seemed to shudder when she saw him do it.
“No problem — no problem at all!” she sang back, and she grabbed his hands and squeezed them so hard that his knuckles turned white. “Please,” she whispered, turning to Tommy, “I didn’t have a choice. We don’t have a choice. It won’t be so bad for us.”
Her whole frame was shaking and he could see now in her eyes a sadness he had never seen before and didn’t understand yet. But he knew then that she needed him and that he would do anything for her at that moment.
“Just dinner… then we can come back, right?”
“Sure, buddy,” she breathed quietly, “Just dinner.”
“And then you’ll take me back home tomorrow?”
“You know it,” she lied, “Soon as the car’s all fixed. Just a quick ride tonight and you’ll have me by your side and I’ll have you.”
Tommy felt dizzy so he put his hand against the door frame. He watched himself push the door slowly open as if he was leaving something important behind, watching her body and her head of dark blonde hair moving out into the moonlight where those men waited in the car. They were staring right at him and tapping their fingers on the dashboard and steering wheel to no music at all.
“That’s it, buddy. Just a ride with my friends and everything’ll be alright,” she said without looking at him. Her words were quiet and read like part of an incantation; the incantation was soft and practiced and she took his hand and led him towards the car door. Tommy felt the asphalt underneath his feet, it was cool and rough. He looked out at the sky behind the car that stretched out to the periphery of his vision — so much sky that Tommy didn’t recognize but understood that he would walk towards it, as he had the thought that he wouldn’t be seeing his home again for a very long time.
