distance. Ambient sounds from the park filled the silence between them, and Mallory brushed her hair back with one hand as an excuse to look at Tim out of the corner of her eye.
He cleared his throat. “So, you like to go jogging, huh?”
“Three times a week at least.”
“Cool, me too.”
“We should go together sometime.”
“I’d like that. There’s a ton of great trails around your house.”
Mallory chewed her lower lip before replying. “Yeah, I explored some before you came over the other day. Did you know there’s an old barn in the woods?”
Tim grinned. “Pretty neat place, isn’t it? My friends and I used to play there all the time.”
She waited, letting her words sink in. After a second his expression shifted to a look of understanding.
“Oh, I take it you saw the hillbilly Internet?”
Mallory laughed. “Who wrote all that garbage about you?”
Tim shrugged. “Probably Brad Hill or one of his cronies. He’s kind of the local thug. I’ve been meaning to warn you about him. He lives on the other end of your neighborhood, so you’ll probably run into him sooner or later.”
“What’s his problem with you?”
Tim picked at the grass. “He’s pissed because he blames me for getting him expelled from school last year.”
Mallory gaped. “What did you do?”
Tim waved the conversation away.
“Come on! Tell me what happened?”
“No. It’s embarrassing.”
“So? You’ve seen me in just a towel! You owe me an embarrassing story.”
Tim laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got me there.”
Mallory nodded. “Damn right. Now talk.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Tim admitted. “I was helping the coach set up for track practice one day and Brad’s class was playing dodge ball in the gym. I had to get in the equipment room, but when Brad saw me, he decided to include me in the game. He called my name, and when I looked, he nailed me with a headshot.”
Mallory scoffed. “What a jerk.”
Tim plucked more grass. “That wasn’t the end of it. His buddies joined in. I managed to avoid the next few shots, but that just made them try harder. Eventually they started working together, throwing from different directions at once. Pretty soon I was blocking shots instead of dodging them. And they kept closing in, picking up the balls that bounced off me to throw them again.”
“Oh, my God,” Mallory said.
“Makes me seem like a wimp, huh?”
“No. It makes them seem like assholes.”
Tim’s eyes remained directed at the grass, but he smiled at the remark. “They backed me into the equipment room, where I had nowhere else to go. That’s when I saw Brad closing in for the kill. I’ll never forget the look on his face. I don’t know what he gets from picking on people, but at that moment I swear he wanted to see blood.”
“What happened?”
Tim looked up, feeling a guilty expression on his face. “In the heat of the moment I blindly grabbed the closest thing to me and threw it at him as hard as I could.”
Mallory gazed at him in suspense. “What did you grab?”
Tim cringed. “A lawn dart.”
Her eyebrows arched in shock. “And what did you hit?”
The cringe deepened. “His crotch.”
Mallory’s mouth dropped open.
“It didn’t stab into him or anything,” Tim quickly explained. “But, needless to say, the impact left him dazed long enough for the gym teacher to come back from wherever she’d gone off to and see what was happening. He’s hated my guts ever since.”
“That’s insane,” Mallory replied. “The idiot deserved to be expelled.”
Tim shook his head. “No, that wasn’t it. The fight would’ve gotten him a three day suspension. It was the bag of pot that fell out of his pocket when his ass hit the floor that got him expelled.”
Mallory laughed a little too loud and quickly covered her mouth. They both peeked around the corners of the shed to make sure no one had heard.
Tim grinned, continuing at a lower volume. “Besides getting kicked out of school, Brad got a summer’s worth of community service, so you can understand why he wants me dead. The sad part is he and I used to be friends when we were kids. He’s only two years older than me, but after he went to junior high he just changed. It’s like I never knew him.”
Mallory nodded in agreement. “I’ve had friends like that.”
She trailed off without elaborating, thinking of Derrick for the first time that night. Contrasting emotions dueled inside her, sobering her mood. Guilt tugged at her heart when she realized she probably would have declined Tim’s invitation to the fair had they met under normal circumstances. At her last school everything was a competition, a never-ending battle for status. Since her parents’ divorce, her popularity with her classmates seemed to be the one thing she could control. But rising in the ranks meant others had to fall, and it was usually the meeker kids like Tim that her and her friends stepped on to reach the top.
Yet here she sat, wondering if the shy boy who could barely look at her the other day would make a move on her, somewhat hoping that he would.
Perhaps sensing her shift in emotion, Tim picked a wildflower growing in the grass between them. “My dad used to tell me ‘you never know who your friends are’… but he always meant it in a sarcastic sort of way… like you can never trust the people you already know. I tend to think of it the other way around, like you
He looked into her eyes and handed her the flower.
Mallory studied him in silence, the clatter of gears and the hum of machinery filling the gap in their conversation. High Roller shot past overhead with the sound of a rushing river. It climbed skyward and made its turn, then dove downhill across from where they sat. Light from the tracks flashed between the cars, blinking in yellow bursts. She held Tim’s gaze the entire time, watching him across her shoulder and smiling at the bashful glances he gave her as his true nervousness began to show. On impulse, she leaned over and kissed him on the corner of the mouth, smiling at the look of shock that solidified his features.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“For being my friend.”
He opened his mouth to say something when Mallory spotted a pair of headlights approaching on the far side of the coaster’s skeletal framework.
“Shh!” she said and pointed.
The vehicle grew closer—a golf cart judging by the size of it—and Tim nodded toward the thoroughfare, mouthing “Let’s go.”
Together, they hurried around the shed, following the low fence that surrounded
Mallory inhaled deeply, catching the sweet sent of fried food and powder sugar. “Hey, are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Let’s get funnel-cake!”
Tim eyed her. “You know there’s like a billion calories in those things, right?”
Mallory shrugged. “We’ll just have to run it off next week.”
Tim nodded his consent. “I’ll get two.”
She giggled as he escorted her to one of the benches along the thoroughfare, indicating for her to sit while he went to buy the food.
A smile lingered on her lips as she watched him go.
She’d been seated less than five minutes when Becky jumped in front of her.
