The Promise

The Promise - Chapter 7

 

Shattered

Nervously flashing my jazz hands before I slap them against my jean covered thighs I cheered, “Well hello there?” The two dear in the headlight faces offered absolutely no comfort what so ever at all. I hesitantly took a few steps closer to them, incidentally dragging my feet in the wet sand of the playground.

“So, what you guys up to tonight?” Ginger quickly placed herself in front of Brigitte as a wild animal would place herself in the path of her enemy and her young.  Brigitte grabbed at her sister’s jacket peering over her shoulder and informed her, “That’s the kid I was telling you about.”

Ginger nurturing placed her hand on Brigitte’s and it seemed to calm her instantly. “I’ve got this B.” She whispered.  I held up my hands in surrender mode. “Hey, I don’t want any trouble here.” 

Ginger glanced at me unnervingly up and down rather quickly as she retaliated, “That’s not the way I heard it.”

 

My eyes meet with frail figure that stood behind her sister and pleaded for help; pleaded to be permitted to explain.  Visibly taken back by my unauthorized attempt to communicate with her sister Ginger yelled at me, “Hey, leave her alone! I don’t want you talking to her, you hear me?” I stopped in my forward progress. “Hey, look I just wanted to say I was sorry for the other day. I know I was acting a little strange.”  Ginger sarcastically implied, “A little?”

Trying to explain and failing miserably I continued, “Look I’m new here and I.. um,  I’m just sorry ok?” Taking another absent minded step forward, Ginger flipped open a switchblade of some sort that I didn’t even know she had on her. She strongly warned, “Don’t come any close to her!” I thought, ‘Interesting that she’s more concerned with B than herself.’ I stupidly kept walking impulsively towards them. Ginger flashed that blade at me one more time. All I could see was a flash of silver.

I just wanted to talk. I just wanted to say I was sorry. It happened all so fast I can’t even recall exactly what happened, I was looking at Brigitte trying to get her to understand I wasn’t there to hurt her when suddenly, I felt it. “Fuck! What the hell did you do that for?”

 

I looked down and my forearm now had warm blood trickling down it. I instinctually leaped at her, instantly grabbing the blade and sending it flying in the other direction over a tall wooden fence.  In the scuffle the glass bottle fell and shattered on the ground with a loud crash. It made all three of us freeze in our tracks.

 

More concerned about the bottle than the wound on my arm, which I guess wasn’t really even a wound, it was more like a nasty paper cut, I bent over and started picking up the glass shards.  I could feel their bewildered stares as I gently placed the glass in my hands rather being pissed about the scuffle. I stood up and emptied my hand into a near by trash can.

Brigitte asked, “You’re not mad as hell?” I answered her, “No.” Amazed she retorted, “But she cut you.” I vaguely looked at my arm. “Yeah, well, I’ve had worse. It’s not going to kill me.” I bent back down to pick up a piece of glass that was over by Ginger when all hell broke loose.

 

From the altercation my adrenaline had already started pumping wildly throughout my body.  I was using the picking up of the broken bottle as a breathing exercise to calm myself. The slice of the blade did piss me off a lot, but not because Ginger had done it, but because I hadn’t seen it coming and moved out of the way. ‘How could I have been so careless?’ The fact that my inner thoughts had abandoned me as well was another sign of how pissed I actually was.  They seem to know when to clear the space.

 

In a squatting position I touched the cold wet ground with my fingertips just below Ginger’s feet. I closed my eyes and like a mac truck it slammed into me. It was her scent. It was her all along. My eyes shot open as the look on my face sent both girls staggering in the opposite direction. I could feel myself heaving with each labored breath. I felt my hands open and close rapidly.

 

The look on my face, I can only imagine how terrifying that looked to two Washington State school kids.  Pounding inside my head and body was my accelerated heartbeat. My chest was rising and falling like a thoroughbred that had just finished a race. I couldn’t control anything. I barely remember thinking, ‘This isn’t like you, Champ.’