Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

He’d bought the motorcycle when we started our final year at high-school. It was black all over save for strips of devil red circling the seat as if flames sparked from him just sitting down. Girls liked to say he was just-that-hot; he could literally create fire from whatever he touched. Girls liked to say a lot of things about Vaughn Hart.

The motorcycle summed up how much of an impact Vaughn held over our rather small and sadly lacking any real drama high-school. He’d gotten it over the summer thanks to Daddy and rolled up in the parking lot with a thunderous roll of the engine as if thousands of people were applauding him simultaneously. Everyone forgot how Amanda Shellby had gotten ‘hot’ over the summer and how we all really had to start stressing about finals to just stare at Vaughn swiftly take off that black helmet.

I remember being the only girl to roll my eyes whenever he’d do this, and the only girl who seemed to have a hold of her brain around his cigarette filled presence. The boy threw himself into deadly habits like they were hobbies. Smoking. Driving a motorcycle. Drinking way too much. But it was a rare occasion when he turned up to school for more than one period. School was much too restrictive for Vaughn.

To say Vaughn was intimidating would be an understatement. Only the most respected boys dared approach him and that was simply to shower him with male praise. There’d been a particularly nasty fight two years ago which stuck predominantly in peoples’ minds. Nobody wanted to end up in hospital like poor Richard Dole with broken ribs and a dislocated jaw.

Not that he was just threatening because of his obviously good fighting skills. He was devastatingly attractive. Girls were drawn to him, addicted to his bad-boy vibe and dark looks. Their legs trembled when just passing him in the hallway and to actually speak to him (mainly in the occasional “yeah, whatever”) was a feat worth boasting about.

But Vaughn had never hooked up with anyone. There were plenty of rumours about how he thought high-school girls were simply not mature enough for him (bringing on a fresh wave of low cut tops and short short skirts) because everybody knew that ‘a guy in his position could have anyone he wanted’. Not that he could. I liked to think that I had more than enough power to resist his cliché charm.

From the familiar safety of my own car’s windscreen I watched him pull up on a cold bright Monday morning. Sun slanted down onto the motorbike through tree branches, bouncing off of the red streaks so they danced with undeniable flames. The bike stood alone amongst an ocean of plain cars – proud and dangerous, as far away from the school building as was physically possible. I always felt this made his getaway clearer even though the roar of Vaughn’s engine killed any real subtlety in his skipping. Not that anybody ever stopped him. He was untouchable to both students and teachers.

I was having a particularly bad morning. My car had taken its sweet time in starting, adding an additional thing on my long list of worries. My parents had participated in yet another loud and animated argument over breakfast so my blood pressure was far too high for its own good. The weekend had been uneventful yet somehow I still hadn’t received the level of rest that my body was craving. It was a struggle to leave my bed and simply the thought of its inviting covers had my eyes closing.

I pulled my long navy jumper over my pale hands to stop them from turning purple – a habit that I was painfully conscious about. It was much too cold for even the most hardened of people to shun a coat yet Vaughn strode uncaringly around in that tatty leather jacket which just completed that too-bad-for-school-and-rides-a-motorcycle look. It would be his own fault if he caught a cold or simply died of hypothermia if the cigarettes didn’t get him first.

Idly, I wondered how long he’d remain today in such a confined space without having to run free for a smoke. Not that I ever saw him – along with a skipper Vaughn was a slacker who barely scraped a C. I was excelled in every subject except maths, not that you would have thought it from all the praise I received at home. It was like living in a vacuum of emotions – just stepping in the door and everything was blank. I could hold an A+ in my hand but its worth would just cease to exist. I could have brought a D back and it would be met with the same unenthused response.

“English awaits Alice,” a voice pierced through the car door while breath misted up the glass. I finally tore my eyes away from Vaughn Hart. There stood my best friend who was now tracing images in the condensation. Even if she was the smartest girl in school Delia could also be the most absentminded and impulsive.

“Great,” I chimed sarcastically while slipping out and slamming the car door shut behind me. Thanks to my poor car’s heating system the transaction from cold to colder wasn’t too extreme. I smiled briefly down at Delia – a tiny girl who had to wear heels everywhere just to make it past 5,0 ft – as we made our way into school with the mass of other students.

“I can’t believe Miss Rigeti had us do that entire piece of coursework over the weekend. I mean I’m all for acing this course but it would be nice to be able to have a social life as well. How do they expect us to grow as individuals if we’re home slaving away doing work instead of building up our characters?”

I smiled in amusement, glad that my own coursework lay dormant in my bag. It had only taken up my entire Sunday but I was proud enough of the piece to feel that the time had been worth it. It wasn't like I had friends tripping over themselves to take up my weekend anyway.

We were both seated quickly in what was a relatively small classroom of other excelled English pupils. Miss Rigeti usually took her time strolling from the teacher’s lounge so I perched on Delia’s desk - a sin I’d usually not risk – to chat away about the new John Mayer CD recently out.

“Class,” Miss Rigeti greeted us all collectively, masking her shameful ability to forget our individual names even after a previous year of being our teacher.

“Bet you $5 she’ll call me Diana at least twice this period,” Delia whispered as I slid into my seat two rows in front of her.

“No chance, I’d like to keep my money thanks.”

“Or that she’ll call you Amie or Hannah. I don’t get it – you don’t look anything like Hannah,” we both discreetly turned to eye Hannah Richards with her bright blonde hair and ruddy cheeks. I then felt Delia analyse my own brown hair and pale skin to pinpoint where exactly our teacher found the resemblance. I tucked my long legs further under my two-seater table so the slight gap between my jeans and shoes would go unnoticed.

Miss Sparks rounded on us quickly with her dark brown eyes and pouting lips to demand the coursework that, of course, Jake Longhorn had ‘forgotten’. I rolled my eyes at the wall as the teacher gave him yet another extension after he’d pleaded that his dog had eaten it. In fact, according to Jake his dog had pretty much feasted upon every piece of work requiring a deadline over the past year.

“As long as it’s done by sometime next week Jake,” Miss Sparks was all smiles. Turning slightly in my seat, I caught Delia’s eye and had to restrain the giggle at the face she pulled. Jake Longhorn was definitely not Delia’s favourite person, closely followed by Vanessa Simpson who she saw as a ruthless competitor. That and she was three inches taller than Delia.

I brought my own work out in front of me and scanned the first page with critical eyes. No spelling mistakes. All facts accounted for with a webliography. And the layout resembled a newspaper article as well as it could for something churned out by my ancient computer. It would get me a good pass but one which would pale in comparison to Delia’s and fail to impress my parents. My academic successes never impressed them.

There were four sharp uncoordinated knocks at the door that interrupted our stream of sorting through notes.

“Sorry to interrupt Mary but I have a student here who we feel would benefit more from being in this classroom,” another teacher’s head twisted round the door. “If it’s okay with you Mary, he would just sit in here quietly and finish off some work?” There was desperation evident in his blue eyes as they silently pleaded with Miss Rigeti.

“Of course, I’m sure my class will appreciate a new face around the room.” Poor naïve Miss Rigeti.

“Good,” the teacher’s eyes clearly said oh-thank-God-for-that. He stepped aside to let this student who was obviously too disruptive in his own class to pass by him and stumble nonchalantly into our place of learning. Almost instantly, I felt the girls press themselves closer to him as if their desks weren’t now making marks into their thighs. I almost couldn’t suppress a scoff.

“This is Vaughn Hart, just pretend that he isn’t here,” and then the teacher was gone. 'Yeah, just pretend he isn’t here' I thought dully 'that’s going to happen.'

Beautifully unaware Miss Rigeti positively beamed at Vaughn and gestured over to the left side of the room. “Just take a seat down next to Hannah there,” I kept my eyes on my notes to stop them from rolling. Hannah Richards now wouldn’t be able to stop gushing about how close she got to actually touching Vaughn Hart. She was unbearable at the best of times but would now just be plain ghastly.

The chair beside my own was scraped back before my heart had a chance to skip an extra beat. The smell of cigarettes was suddenly overpoweringly thick as it clung to the boy who slumped down at my desk. This had been my own personal space to spread various sheets of work across, taking advantage of the lack of people in my class to be as greedy with worktop space as was possible. I could stick out my right elbow as I wrote without having to take into consideration the poor dear who I was jabbing.

But Vaughn Hart sat himself down and put a stop to all that carefree way of thinking which lasted only an hour per day. And this time I couldn’t repress my eyes from rolling and a long sigh from escaping. He acted like he didn’t notice – or he was probably high – and just slumped further into the chair as if to mould his body to its awkward wooden shape. I subconsciously flexed my shoulders back as if to show the rest of the world that I wasn’t anything like him no matter how close his chair was to my own.

“So anyway class back to how you should be organising your folders…” Miss Rigeti carried on, blissfully unaware of how every set of eyes, except my own, were bearing into a certain Vaughn Hart. I was concentrating solely on the board with a firm determination and unseeing eyes.

Minutes passed but I couldn’t lose myself in the work. Rifling notes into certain order was dull anyway and my mind seemed drawn to the person fiddling with a blunt pencil close to my left. Almost straight away, I wanted to reach over and snap that stupid pencil in half. Didn’t this boy realise that maybe everyone else’s mornings weren’t as perfect as his? Where he could eat endless supplies of pancakes in that big white house of his and stare at his perfect family whose only words were ‘would you like some more?’

It was getting harder to breath with his smoky stench, not easier like I’d hoped, until my lungs couldn’t take it any longer. I turned uncomfortably before quickly leaning across him to grab the window handle. It was humiliating to think of how intimidating simply trying to open a window was before Vaughn’s dark eyes, and I was practically stuck just as steadfast as the window was. I gave it a good tug, unwilling to retreat without my mission completed, and then another as his even breath washed over my hand. It was half purple – I could see it just inches in front of his face.

After a few more disgruntled embarrassing seconds Vaughn turned to look at me. Instantly, I was struck by how handsome he was – his features seemingly accidentally beautiful as if they didn’t know how they’d arranged themselves to such perfection. We’d never been so close or so direct before and it sent horrified shivers rocketing across my skin.

“Do you want some help with that or are you just going to drape yourself over me all morning?” My expression morphed from shock to disgust in a record of two seconds flat. Drape myself over him? Was he crazy? Didn’t he realise how horrible he smelt? The most appalling thought was that this probably happened to him quite often – a girl found any excuse getting just that inch closer to him. But I most certainly was not one of them.

“No,” I hissed “don’t flatter yourself. I’m just choking on second hand smoke here and want some air to breath.”

“Caroline? Is there a problem?” I didn’t look up immediately seen as Caroline wasn’t my name but Miss Rigeti was obviously addressing me. My hand shot away from the still closed window handle to sit almost quivering in my lap.

“No Miss.”

“Well then would you please not disturb Vaughn here.” How was it that she remembered this boys’ name after just five minutes but couldn’t remember mine after a whole year? I supposed Vaughn just had that affect on people while I didn’t. You’d remember his name, face, presence long after he’d left in only a cloud of motorcycle exhausts.

I remained silent, face burning. That stupid, egoistical, ignorant boy!

“Someone got in trouble,” a deep voice whispered. I cast him a disgruntled glance only to find he was grinning directly at me.

“Leave me alone.”

“I wasn’t the one desperately trying to grope me a minute ago.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” I seethed.

“Doesn’t have to. You want me Caroline.”

I clenched my hands into tight little fists under the table. I was about to tell Mr I-know-everything-and-think-everybody-wants-me that Caroline most certainly was not my name but caught myself. It didn’t matter if Vaughn Hart thought that was my name, after today I’d never have to speak to him again.

I managed a painful smirk of my own. “Whatever you say.”