CHRISTINE part 2

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

CHRISTINE

Part 2

By R. Peterson

The loneliest and most miserable girl in the city felt the wind in her hair and the elation of being a child again as she closed her eyes and stepped off the railing that ran around the city water tower. The rush of wind stopped almost as soon as it started but the exhilaration increased tenfold. She wasn’t falling. It was as if she’d been touched by the hand of God. Christine opened her eyes. She was dangling about ninety feet above ground. “Wow! For a second there I thought I wasn’t going to catch you!” The voice sounded rich, deep and slightly amused, and could only belong to an angel. Christine looked up. The new take-your-breath-away student, Johnny Lang, had a firm grip on her coat.

“Let me go!” she moaned. Why did it have to be the most popular boy at Cloverdale High School who caught her trying to end everything? An ominous rip sounded.

‘I can’t do that,’ he gasped. The tendons along his arms stood out and his eyes bulged slightly as he pulled her up and over the railing.

 “Why not?” Tears scalded her eyes as he set her down gently on the narrow walkway. The humiliation of being a failed suicide had replaced the rush of euphoria she’d felt only seconds before.

“My fingerprints are all over you,” Johnny said. He took off her coat and was trying to wipe off yellow paint smeared on the back with his shirt. “The cops would say I pushed you!”

“Are you afraid they might give you a reward for doing the world a favor?” Christine wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Johnny Lang was smiling and although he looked stunning … what he’d done was making her angry.

“No, I was thinking two weeks in the crowbar hotel for defacing public property!” Johnny pointed to the red Class of 70 painted on the huge metal globe.

“You’re the one who did that?”

“Nobody else dared climb up here,” Johnny said. “Now I’ve done it twice!”

“It looks fabulous!” Christine said glancing at the graffiti. “Why come up here again?”

“I saw you climbing the ladder,” Johnny said. “I thought you we’re coming up here to paint over my work.”

“I’m sorry if I spoiled your art,” Christine told him.

“If I’d known you were only going to add something … I wouldn’t have climbed.”

The yellow paint had come off the back of her coat like magic. Except for a small tear it looked as good as new. Johnny handed the coat back to her.

            “Looks like your worries are over …” Christine put the coat on and walked toward the railing. “Now they will never know you were here.” She put one foot on the railing and was just about to step up. Johnny was suddenly behind her. “Don’t try to stop me!”

            “I won’t,” Johnny said. “But I just saved your life and it’s going to cost you something.”

Christine remembered the quarter she couldn’t find when she stopped in the drugstore for a fountain drink. It looked like her humiliation was never going to end. “Sorry, but I don’t have any money.”

            “It’s not money I want.” Johnny smiled as he put his arms around her.

Christine felt the same rush of jubilation she’d felt when he’d grabbed her and pulled her over the rail. Johnny Lang’s touch held some kind of magic and it made her head spin in a good way. Did he want to have sex with her almost ninety feet in the air? This was crazy! He could have any girl he wanted … why go ugly?

            “I’ve never …” she stammered. And he kissed her.

A thousand Fourth of July firework displays burst in her head at the same time. She was on an Apollo booster-rocket blasting off from the Earth to the moon. Her heart was a jet-engine pushed to red-line and ready to explode. The G-forces were threatening to make her fall into an ever longed for unconscious bliss as Johnny Lang pressed his muscular body against her. Then just as suddenly she was floating. Moon and Starlight reflected off gently rippling, deep-blue water as his wonderful lips slowly left hers. Christine was so happy she was crying.

            Johnny walked to the ladder and started to climb down. She followed him as if in a dream.

            “Is that all?” Christine stammered, trying to think of what to say. “I mean …. Will this …,” she didn’t know quite how to describe what had just happened it was beyond anything she’d ever felt before, “…ever happen again?”

            “If you jump,” Johnny said looking up at her. “You’ll never find out.”

-------2-------

 Johnny was waiting by the side of the garbage truck when Christine climbed down. He helped her jump off the hood of the city vehicle. “Where do you live?” he asked.

            “At the end of south Wallace Avenue,” she told him. Christine had to pause for a moment. His touch left her breathless.

            “Did you sneak out?”

            “Not exactly,” Christine looked at her watch it was almost four AM. “My parents weren’t home when I left.”

            “Good,” Johnny said. “I’ll walk you home.”

            “You don’t have to …”

            “But I want to.”

            “Where are you from?” Christine thought it was odd that the coolest guy in school was somehow easy for her to talk to. There was a cold breeze blowing but she felt warm inside like a summer’s day.

            “I’m from here …. Cloverdale actually,” Johnny told her.

            “But you’re the new student! You had to have moved from somewhere.”

            “I was gone for a while … but now I’ve returned.”

They were walking past Mrs. Dern’s house and Johnny reached down and picked something off the cement walk. “Yours?” Moonlight glinted off a coin in his fingers.

Christine gasped. “How did you know I lost a quarter yesterday?”

            “I didn’t,” Johnny told her. “But I know I didn’t lose it.”

Christine took the twenty-five cents and looked at it thoughtfully. “I was going to the drug store to buy a fountain drink and when I got there I had no money.”

            “Is that why you decided to do a swan-dive off the highest point in Cloverdale?”

Christine shook her head. “It’s just that nothing has gone right for me for years. It’s like that final piece of straw that breaks the camel’s back. Such a small thing but when it’s added to the rest …”

            “You reached your breaking point.” He stated, so matter of factly, as though he’d looked inside her mind. Christine stared at him.

            “You have no idea what it’s like to be unpopular … to have no friends.” She felt her anger rising again, but giving voice to her emotions made it somehow better. “The loneliest place in the world is in a room full of people having fun. They can walk right past you and not see you. You’re invisible and so afraid to say anything for fear that you will be noticed and then treated badly.”

            “High School is a tough time for everyone,” Johnny told her. He reached out and took her by the hand. “Everybody has problems. Some people are just better at hiding it than others.”

Moonlight glowed off from his light brown hair and his eyes were so blue they seemed to glow in the dark. Christine felt like she was in a dream and any moment she was going to wake-up … she didn’t want that to happen. “What problems have you ever had?” She was sure that if he told her anything about his problems they would be minor.

            “Well ….,” Johnny said dragging out the word as if thinking. “Yesterday in the cafeteria, I couldn’t find any catsup. I looked everywhere … on the floor … behind the door … under the chair-cushion where Patsy Mulligan was sitting … she wouldn’t get up … and it was like lifting a refrigerator.”

Christine laughed thinking about the fattest girl in school being hoisted out of her seat by Johnny Lang. “I’m serious … and you’re making fun of me!” She tried to make her bottom lip into a pout but the corners kept turning up.

Johnny stopped and looked her in the eyes. He took both of his hands in hers. Christine felt the truth coming and it scared her a little. “How about being trapped in a submerged car where the water is only about eight degrees above freezing and it’s so dark you can’t see anything? How about believing that there is a child trapped inside the wrecked car and you can’t find her? How about finding out it’s a trap when it’s too late to escape?”

Christine gasped. She was expecting something … but not this. “Did that … did that really happen to you?”

Johnny was suddenly smiling again. “Everyone has troubles,” he said. “It’s a strange world.”

They were turning the corner onto Wallace Street and Christine noticed the flashing red and blue lights. There was a crowd of people milling around and at least three police cars. They looked like they were parked right in front of her house. She began to run.

Several officers noticed her and one walked toward her when she crossed the street. “Are you Christine Brown?” a sheriff’s deputy asked her after glancing at a photograph on a clipboard.

            “Yes,” Christine said. “Where are my mother and David?”

            “Your stepfather is in the back of that police car,” the deputy pointed. Christine could see a silhouette of someone in the back seat but there was so many people milling around she couldn’t tell who it was. “We don’t know exactly where your mother is right now!”

A heavy-set woman with a worried face came rushing over. Christine recognized her as one of the workers from State Hospital North who sometime acted as grief counselors for students when someone close to them died. “Christine dear, I’m Mrs. Stone. Please come with me,” she said taking Christine by the arm. “We need to talk.”

Christine was suddenly afraid. She looked around for Johnny but he was gone. He probably thinks the cops are after him she thought as Mrs. Stone led her toward a white-van with Comanche County Social Services painted on the side.  But he didn’t do anything wrong … he saved my life!

-------3-------

            It was five weeks later and Christine hadn’t been back to school since the night her step-father, David, had been arrested for the murder of her mother. The first three weeks under Social Services care had been torture. She’d cried oceans in the shelters and temporary homes until finally there were just no tears left. There had been only one thing that kept her from running away and climbing the water tower again. And then suddenly out of the blue another miracle happened.

Mrs. O’Brian poured skimmed milk on her cereal. “I can’t believe David would kill her,” Christine shook her head. “They fought all the time … but it was never that bad.”

Two slices of wheat bread popped up from the toaster and Mrs. O’Brian buttered, then cut them into diagonal slices and brought them to the table on a small saucer.

            “At least three eyewitnesses saw him throwing what looked like a body wrapped in a sheet into the river just below the Townsend Street Bridge,” Mrs. O’Brian said. “A sheet was missing from your parent’s bed and the telephone cable had been cut,” she said. “And then there was the blood on the floor in the kitchen …”

            “I know,” Christine sighed. “The forensic lab in Butte said … it was from my mother …”

Christine had known her parents were missing when she came home from the drug store, but she hadn’t bothered going into the kitchen then or before she walked to the water tower. If she had, maybe her mother would still be alive.

            “But there is always hope,” Mrs. O’Brian said kindly. “After all, they haven’t yet found her body and in Cloverdale … anything can happen.” Christine made up her mind as she carried her bowl and spoon to the sink. Her mother was alive and she would see her again.

The O’Brian’s only daughter, Chloe, came bounding down the stairs. She was the most popular girl at Cloverdale High School and Christine found it hard not to like her. The mansion Christine was living in now was the largest in the city and her bedroom alone was bigger than her entire old house. Chloe’s father, Sean O’Brian, was almost always away on business trips and rumor said he was the top-man in charge of not one, but several organized crime-syndicate families in Chicago. Sean had always been kind and thoughtful to her the few times they had met.

Christine had her own bathroom, dressing-room and closet that contained hundreds of different dress and pant outfits many of them designer originals from Paris and London. She and her new best-friend both had their hair and nails touched-up weekly at high-priced salons and Chloe taught her the magic of applying makeup. It was hard for her to adjust to an entirely new life but for the first time she had a good reason. She listened to every bit of advice Chloe gave her and tried her best to make it work. She tried on dozens of different outfits and changed the tint in her hair almost as many times. The whole glamour thing was exhausting but when she found the right look she knew it. Christine had to admit she appeared to be an entirely different person when she looked in a mirror … even to herself.

            “You ready to be herded back into the corral?” Chloe grabbed a slice of toast but pushed away the plate of scrambled eggs her mother shoved toward her.

Christine had to smile at Chloe’s choice of words. The Jr. Varsity head-cheerleader always called school the corral because of the stallions being the team mascot.”

            “Mrs. O’Brian I really do want to thank you for letting me stay here,” Christine was nearly in tears as her new mother hugged her. “Even if it’s only until social services can place me in a foster home.”

            “Don’t you worry! You can stay with us forever if you want,” Mrs. O’Brian said. “Sean has that entire drowning-in-paperwork agency under his pudgy thumb.”

            “Too bad he can’t put pressure on the school board to lift my grades,” Chloe quipped as she whisked Christine out the door.

            “That would be the day,” Mrs. O’Brian laughed and called after them. She broke into an exaggerated imitation of her husband’s Irish accent. “He’ll have his sassy wee colleen staying late, five nights a week and doing summer school if da lass don’t start opening some books!”

            “Are you nervous?” Chloe asked as they crossed Townsend Avenue and walked toward the High School.

Christine took a deep breath and decided not to lie. “Not as much as I should be,” she said. She was afraid Chloe would hear her heart thumping in her chest. Her life had changed so fast. It was as if she really had jumped off from the city water-tower and was born a different person.

-------

“Look straight ahead, give these animals a huge smile, and think about the best time of your life,” Chloe advised as she flung open the main doors. Christine didn’t have to think. The best time of her life was when a certain boy pulled her back from the edge of death and then held her hand as he walked her home afterwards.  It was ten minutes until first-bell rang and the halls were crowded with gawking teens. Both girls’ smiles were the biggest, baddist and flashiest in the school.

All Christine could think about as a sea of students parted in awe before them … was seeing Johnny again.

TO BE CONTINUED …