Hello! This is the ninth installment of the twenty-one chapter novel In the Pines by Wells Thompson (that’s me). I’ll be publishing one chapter a week on Substack until it’s all up, so if this is the first one you’re seeing, you can find the previous chapters in the Newsletter backlog. I hope you enjoy the ride!
“Come on,” the old man said, standing up from the creaking wooden chair, “let’s take a walk.”
“I’m not finished.”
“We can walk and talk, but an old man needs to stretch his legs every now and then.” Kayla lifted an eyebrow and pointed to the half completed puzzle lying on the table. “Oh,” he laughed and offered his hand, “it’ll hold until we get back.” Kayla stood up without taking it and the two left the soft billowing of classic rock behind them for the more subdued sounds of men and women walking along the roads, ignoring the cars and laughing about their day.
“This wouldn’t fly back home,” Kayla said, almost to herself.
“No?”
“In Chicago they’d all be flattened. The drivers are aggressive.” Kayla chuckled as she crossed the road without looking in either direction, the old man close behind, and neither of them worried.
“Enlighten me, if you can,” the man called out behind her, but she walked deeper into the plaza and took in the marble and cobblestone. When she’d suggested travel to Sarah she didn’t think anything would come of it, but now that they were here, she couldn’t help but be overcome by the new world she’d stepped into. Even under the circumstances.
“What do you need to know?” She finally spoke back to him once he’d caught up, his shadow casting out in front of him like a giant on a mountain top.
“Why Chicago?”
“It was far. And it had a bad reputation, so I figured it was an ideal place for us.”
“That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Where I come from, if important people are telling you one thing it’s safe to say the opposite is true.”
He smiled. “Perhaps. But out of nowhere? You went to Park Hills to seek out your father, yes? That was resolved rather quickly, why wait for three years before moving on?”
“Lethargy? Anxiety? Who knows. Just needed a good enough reason to move along.” Kayla walked with the old man for a minute before adding, “You know I can’t keep going on like this forever. I have a train to catch and at the rate we’re going, I’ll have to cut this short.”
They turned into an alleyway where vendors were calling out prices for knock off products in rapid Italian. “Then let’s not waste time. What was the reason?”
“A misunderstanding.”
***
Kayla could already feel her body ache as she circled around the mat. No matter what she did next, she would be sore and barely able to move tomorrow, so she didn’t see any point in tapping out now. She watched Sarah as she bounced from one foot to the other, face smushed in her rubber headgear and hands just below eye level. She looked like she’d just put on the gloves, fresh and ready to go despite the two hours they’d spent sparing. Kayla could barely keep her hands up anymore and knew she wasn’t going to win this round, but kept moving even as she struggled to catch her breath. In the mirror behind them, she could see her face flush and crimson and her shoulders slouching as she walked around Sarah, trying to catch her off guard.
When she lurched forward to try and get a hit in, Sarah used Kayla’s body weight to toss her over her hip and Kayla saw blue spikes shoot across the red mat as she slammed onto the floor. Okay, enough, I give, Kayla tried to say, but couldn’t make the words come out. She felt a tightness in her sternum and realized that she didn’t have any air in her lungs, nor could she force any inside. She couldn’t hear anything except a high pitch ringing and dark circles formed in her peripheral vision. She struggled to remember that this is what happens when the air gets knocked out of you, that this would pass, and almost started to panic. As she began to reclaim oxygen, gasp by gasp, everything flipped upside down and she realized she’d been moved. Suddenly she was staring directly into Sarah’s worried face. Now that her headgear had been removed, the fluorescent light created a halo around her head and Kayla wondered peacefully if she was dead.
Then pain shot down into her gut as she reclaimed control of her diaphragm and sucked in her first deep breath. “I’m so sorry,” she heard Sarah say, and reality came crashing back into her. “I’m so, so sorry, I’m never doing that again, I promise! Are you okay?” Kayla couldn’t help herself and started chuckling, at first quietly and then in all out hysteria.
“You really knocked the Hell out of me, girlie.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t be,” Kayla said smiling, “I finally feel like I can leave you alone for two seconds and you won’t shatter into a million pieces.” Kayla grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled against her as she got back on her feet. When she was upright, she found she had to bend over and cough, but corrected herself after only a few moments of hacking and heaving.
“I’m dropping out of these classes Kayla, that was way too scary.”
“Oh, you didn’t even hurt me that bad you little wimp.” Sarah crossed her arms and skewed her jaw to the side. “Regular sized wimp, God you’re sensitive.”
“Well, now I don’t feel so bad for hitting you, so thanks for that.”
“It’s what I’m here for. Come on, let’s go grab some coffee, my treat.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I mean, after that performance I have to get you something, otherwise I’d be living in fear that you’d beat me up again.” Sarah rolled her eyes as Kayla dumped her sparring gear into her duffle bag and threw on her jacket to cover her quickly bruising arms.
At the coffee shop, Kayla picked up one of the many newspapers and started thumbing through it. She didn’t touch her latte for a while even as Sarah gulped hers down and ordered another. After a few minutes of picking through the headlines, Sarah finally asked, “When did you start reading the paper?”
“Trying to set some better habits.”
“I honestly wasn’t sure you knew how to read.”
“We text constantly, of course I can read.” Kayla didn’t look up from the story, reading on about how the accused pedophile was expected to go free due to lack of evidence.
“Yeah, but like, proper English. Books and such.”
“I resent that.”
“What was the last book you read?”
Kayla was silent for a moment. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go?”
“The Dr. Seuss book?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, honey.”
“Well, I don’t see you bringing any books into the house.” Sarah pulled out her phone and showed it to Kayla over the newspaper. In a library app there were dozens of e-books marked as completed or bookmarked.
“Never was one to waste paper.”
“Okay, you’ve proven your point, you’re better than me in every which way. Doesn’t mean I can’t try.” Sarah withdrew her phone and stayed quiet as Kayla read through the rest of the story. Kayla suspected Sarah was making faces at her from behind the wall of comics and classified ads separating them, but kept it up anyway. Sarah broke the silence after a few minutes.
“So what story are you reading?”
“It’s… not a good one.”
“Oh really?” She could hear Sarah tapping her fingers on the wooden table between them.
“Yep.”
“What’s it about?”
Kayla swallowed air and folded the newspaper in half before setting it aside and grabbing hold of her coffee cup, which was beginning to grow cold. “Hey, you weren’t serious earlier when you said you were quitting, were you?”
“I was being serious. I’m going to quit.”
“Don’t. That’s stupid.”
“I don’t want to hurt people, you especially. Why would I keep up in an environment where that’s all I’m doing.”
“Because you’re good at it. Besides, you weren’t hurting me, you didn’t stab me for my purse, we were sparring. The whole point is to get stronger and quicker and stay healthy and all that junk. You don’t quit when you’re starting to see results.” Sarah leaned back in her chair.
“I don’t like the idea of hurting people.”
“And I don’t like the idea of people hurting you. I’d much rather you’d be able to knock their ass to the ground, and if I need to be the guinea pig every now and then, so be it.” Kayla finally lifted her cup and guzzled the entire drink in one motion. “Promise me you’re going to keep with it.”
“Why would I promise you anything?” Sarah’s eyebrow furrowed and Kayla regretted having phrased it in such a way. “It’s not like you’ve ever kept a promise to me.”
Kayla paused to gather the right words or maybe come up with a defense, though she quickly realized there was none. “I may—possibly—have been dishonest. In the past. But that’s totally irrelevant, kickboxing has been good for you and you shouldn’t abandon it.”
“There are other ways to get a workout, I don’t see why you’re hung up on this.”
Kayla pushed the handle on her empty coffee mug with one finger so it rotated and made a grinding sound against the saucer. “You didn’t used to call me on my bullshit, so something’s working.” Kayla stood up with her empty mug in hand. “Just think about it, alright.” She walked over to the counter to order another drink and left Sarah to stew on what she’d said. As she waited for the barista to make her standard drink, a cinnamon latte so full of milk and sugar you feel the diabetes setting in as you drink it, she took a look around the cafe and scanned over the faces around her. Most were young people with laptops and tablets, their headphones deadening them to the world around them. In the corner, Kayla spotted a man with his foot resting against a black leather suitcase. His white hair melded into his thick beard which nearly reached his belt buckle. It was a scraggly look that distracted from how well dressed he was, black suit and pressed white shirt barely visible from under his scruff.
When Kayla returned to the table with her drink, Sarah was biting her lip, eyes wide and glued to her phone. “Hey Sarah, have you—?”
“Watch this immediately!” She interrupted, shoving the phone in her face and forcing Kayla to watch a video of a baby monkey chasing a pig, then riding it like a horse. Kayla couldn’t help but crack a smile, not because of the senseless video, but Sarah’s slobbering excitement for it. “Is that not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” She was lightly bouncing in her chair and her eyes were getting glassy as she suppressed light squeals.
“It’s adorable, ya dork,” Kayla conceded. “Listen, do you see that guy in the corner?” Sarah looked over her shoulder and examined the stranger for a moment. “Have we seen him before?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Why?” Kayla watched him for a long while, trying to place where she’d seen him. She knew she had and wasn’t willing to let it go until she figured it out. When it hit her, the hair on her neck stood up and her heart squeezed around her stomach. They needed to leave. Not right now, not so suddenly, but soon, and permanently.
“No reason,” Kayla said. “Have you seen the light yet, or do you need more convincing?”
Sarah took a small drink. “Fine. I get what you’re saying and I think I’m willing to keep at it a little while longer.”
“Good. I knew you’d—”
“However,” Sarah put her elbow on the table and pointed at Kayla’s bewildered face, “I want something from you to sweeten the deal.”
“So it’s extortion, huh?” Kayla smiled and crossed her arms, “I’ve honestly never been more proud of you.”
Sarah hesitated for a moment and dropped her eye contact for a moment before continuing, “A couple of weeks ago, I was working a string of doubles. I didn’t notice for the first two, but after you weren’t home the third morning I started getting worried. You didn’t show back up at the house until sometime during the fifth day and when I got home, you pretended like nothing happened.” Kayla remembered, she’d hoped it would blow over without incident. “Where were you?”
Kayla felt her fingernails raking across her forearm, she focused on the tension of each individual finger moving across her scar. It had been there for three years now, but still felt jagged and fresh. “Just went out on a bender. I was back during the day, but I’d gone out and couldn’t drive home, so I ended up on someone’s couch for a couple of nights.” She felt her throat get dry as she spoke, her back and shoulders tensing up and her hands starting to freeze.
“Liar,” Sarah said immediately. It wasn’t angry, in fact it sounded completely routine.
“That’s rude.”
“Well then don’t lie.”
Kayla pushed her mouth to the side and nearly grunted. “We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
“We’ll talk about it now, and you’ll tell me the truth or you’ll never get me back in that gym.” Sarah looked uncomfortable with her own confidence, but was unrelenting as she straightened her back and made herself look bigger than Kayla.
“I take back what I said, you should quit. I don’t like tough Sarah.” Kayla smiled as she looked toward the folded up newspaper, fixating on the name Clement and trying to buy some time to think.
“Deal with it.”
“I don’t always mean to. It’s just a reaction, like flinching. When I care about someone, I lie to them.”
Sarah tapped the surface of the table with her nails and looked at Kayla with exhaustion. “That must be so hard for you.” Her eyes were hard and Kayla felt the same shame she did when her mother told her she wasn’t angry, just disappointed. Anger would be cleaner, she could deal with Sarah being visibly upset with her, but Sarah’s dry, expecting disappointment was unnerving. “So, where were you?” Sarah said, cutting through Kayla’s nervous silence.
“Little Rock,” she admitted, “I went back home.”
The answer caught Sarah off guard and her tone softened as she shrunk with curiosity. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah. That’s where I was.”
“What were you doing back there? Did you… see your parents or…?”
“No. I just wanted to look around, see what home felt like, how it had changed.”
“Is it still green this time of year?”
“Yeah.”
“You should have told me. I would love to have gone.”
Kayla could still feel what it was like in the stuffy bedroom, standing over the wheezing man’s bed, watching him sweat in his sleep, feeling her grip tightening around the steel pipe, waiting for her to gather her nerve or for him to wake up, then walking out before the sun came up, arm stiff from inaction. “I didn’t think you’d be interested in what I was doing.”
“Well, you can’t know if you don’t ask. I miss Little Rock.” Sarah rubbed her shoulder. “To be honest, I still have a hard time thinking of this place as home.”
Kayla looked back over toward the old man and felt a chill in her spine. She felt the familiar sting of paranoia, that underneath those sunglasses he was looking in her direction as plainly as she was watching him. Then she forced her gaze on Sarah and took her hands from across the table. “Okay, look. I’m not proud of myself. Not for much of anything, but especially not the way I treat you.”
Sarah lifted an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Just…I know I lie a lot and I wish I could do it less. So I’m going to work on it because I see how much it stresses you out.”
“Are you trying to apologize right now?” Sarah almost started laughing in her confusion.
“No, I just—Ugh, this is frustrating.”
“C’mon, I’ll help you, just say ‘I’m sorry,’ and try not to roll your eyes when you do it.”
Kayla let go of Sarah’s hands and leaned back in her chair. “I’m not apologizing. I just want you to feel better… about where we are and about me and about yourself. And so I’m going to make an effort to stop lying about petty stuff and going behind your back and generally being a bitch.”
Sarah gave a small smile, Kayla wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her so disarmed as in this moment. “I want to believe you. I really do.”
“You don’t have to. Just throw me the next time you catch me in a lie, yeah?” Both girls laughed and Kayla looked into Sarah’s gold rimmed eyes and felt a shudder in her aching legs. “You don’t want to go back to Little Rock. It feels dead back there.”
“It can’t be all bad.”
“It is. Let’s go somewhere else. Somewhere real.”
“Where would we even go?”
“I don’t know, man. Buenos Aires? Stockholm? Portland?” Kayla cleared her throat and gulped down the rest of her drink. “Rome, maybe?”
“The way we burn money, we’ll never be able to travel like that. Besides, we’d need passports, and I know you’re allergic to legitimate ID. It’s a cute thought, but we’d never be able to do it.”
“Says who? I’m already turning over a new leaf, anything is possible, right?” Kayla stood up and led Sarah to the door.
Sarah was already lost in the possibilities of travel as she distantly spoke, “I’ll give it some thought…” As they were leaving, Kayla looked back to get another glance at the old man. He didn’t seem to be looking in their direction, but Kayla’s hand began to tremble regardless. It was time for a change of scenery, she thought as she braved the chill with Sarah to get back to their car and resisted the urge to run.
***
The old man looked into Kayla from beyond his shades and from the wrinkles in his forehead she could tell he was confused. “When we got home, I spent the next two weeks convincing her we needed to move. To make a fresh start. To find a place we could really call home.”
“But that wasn’t why you left.”
“No.” She took in the smell of fresh baked bread and heard the spill of water in the fountain down the road. The day was getting hot and she longed to splash some on her forehead and get back to the coffee shop. Then she looked back at the old man, his beard hiding anything that made him look like a person and his long brimmed hat concealing whatever imperfection may have convinced Kayla that he wasn’t a statue.
“So then why?”
“Because of you. Because everywhere we went, I kept seeing you.”
This story is considered a work in progress for legal reasons.
© 2024 Wells Thompson
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.