Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle
And no one is around
It took an entire week of cigarette smoke, fiddling pencils and teasing remarks to realise that Vaughn Hart was going nowhere. Not even after I’d tried pleading with him. Not even after I’d begged the teacher. Not even after I’d offered to give him my remaining $5 which would cost me my lunch. He remained resilient. He remained in the chair beside my own.
“He’s driving me insane,” I moaned to Delia as we both sat in my car, waiting for the school bell to mark out the time. I’d just watched him pull up obnoxiously into ‘his’ space to the far right of where we waited. Girls’ heads turned as if this were an unexpected occurrence and their beady eyes lit up as Vaughn slowly took off his helmet. “I swear he does that deliberately.”
“Does what?” Delia looked up from the magazine she was currently buried in (almost literally).
“That,” I brandished at the way Vaughn had tucked his steeled black helmet under his arm. “All movie-star wannabe like.”
“I think you watch him far too much Alice,” she sniggered. Who still sniggered in this day and age? Trust Delia to be childish when it came to boys – even one as painfully insufferable as Vaughn.
“He walks around like he owns the school; it’s kind of hard to just ignore him point blank.”
The bell rang before Delia had a chance to make a sarcastic comment. I smiled at her triumphantly and whipped out of my car before she made up for lost time.
Every Friday I gave Delia a lift to school. It was a ritual dating back to when her eldest sister would ‘borrow’ her car to secretly drive half-way up state and visit some boyfriend. Delia’s parents were especially overbearing with Amy – possibly because they sensed she was rapidly becoming derailed – and regularly checked her car mileage. So every Friday Amy would take Delia’s car and leave her younger sister to walk the three and a half miles to school. Being the amazing best friend I was, I offered to pick her up and it had just stuck. Even though Amy had long moved out and gotten married to some ‘rock star’, I still stopped by the Martins' house at 8:20 and waited for Delia.
“So are you going to apply to Brown’s early acceptance program or stick with the rest of the herd?” she mused from behind me as I parted the crowd of students first. It helped to be 5,10 ft sometimes, especially when your best friend barely got to 5,0 ft.
“Oh yes because the herd apply to Brown anyway,” I snorted.
“I’ve already applied to Harvard and Yale so that’s out the way. Now I just have to focus on acing as many SATs as I can.” The jumble of other students finally spat us out relatively near our English classroom. “Main priority is English,” she sighed “I can just never quite get the hang of those poems.” I wasn’t really surprised – reading into the poems required a deeper sense of sentiments that Delia had yet to acquire in her relatively sheltered life.
We moved forward into our classroom where Jake Longhorn was talking to Miss Rigeti, probably about how the coursework was delayed again. One day I’d show that stupid boy just where he could shove his crappy handwriting excuse. I nudged Delia and she snorted in disgust. It was nice to have her; she always knew just what I was thinking and just what I was insinuating.
I was almost surprised to not find Vaughn in his usual place. I was also completely overjoyed. I let out a long sigh of pleasure which had been subconsciously building. It was a short lived relief but one that alleviated stress beyond just Vaughn Hart.
“Looking for me?” a voice whispered into my ear as I stood wedged between two other desks. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Just from the overpowering au de cigarettes and his husky voice was it obvious that Vaughn was standing directly behind me.
“Obviously,” I stalked forward and placed myself warily on my chair. I didn’t look up as he followed suit, scraping the chair far too close to mine.
“I like your boots today,” he remarked smoothly “very army chic.”
“I can’t believe you just said chic,” I smirked.
“I know. I amaze myself sometimes with what a wide vocabulary I have.”
Rolling my eyes, I pulled out ‘Dracula’ from my bag and set to reading where I’d left off at page 49. For a few minutes we got along just fine in silence – the only time we ever got along – and I’d even made it up to page 67 before Vaughn broke my concentration.
Peering up from the yellowed pages, I saw Vaughn resting his head comfortably on his arm and unashamedly staring at me. “Can I help you with anything?” I asked my voice tight. A smirk twisted his lips upwards and I just rolled my eyes.
“What do you actually do with yourself after school Caroline?” I almost laughed out loud at the use of that name which was most certainly not mine. So caught up in the hope that Vaughn would be leaving, I’d deliberately refrained from telling him my real name. Not that I would tell him now – he didn’t deserve to know.
“None of your business.”
“I’m curious though. Do you study all weekend? Or secretly go out and get drunk every night?”
“Neither. As hard as it may be for you to understand someone can be both intelligent and have a social life,” I snapped.
“Yeah,” he scoffed “a social life with your homework.”
“Ugh you’re such an idiot.”
“Yep,” he popped the ‘p’ “but at least I have fun with my life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I earmarked page 67 and carelessly shoved the book down onto my desk. He shrugged and turned to look out the window. “Even you’re not stupid enough to just say something and not know what you mean so explain.”
“You’ve got to live life, you know?”
“Oh yeah smoking, drinking and slacking are ways to ‘live life’?” He shrugged again. “Just because I try hard at things doesn’t mean I don’t live,” I pointed out grumpily. He was testing my already thin patience.
“I’m only saying that maybe you don’t get the most out of life. Every day is precious and all that crap.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed “and all that crap.”
“You don’t know a lot about me, do you girly?” he tilted his head to the side and examined me as if I were an exhibition at the zoo.
“-Girly?-,” I overlapped indignantly but was cut off.
“I’m not as stupid as you think. I know for a fact your name is not Caroline or Hannah or whatever else this woman fancies calling you. I know you always write your real name at the top of every piece of work. Fancy handwriting. Star above the ‘i’. Isn’t that right Alice?”
I gaped at him. Not the attractive mouth-hanging-only-slightly-ajar gaping but the kind that any normal person would have found caused serious injury. He’d known all along. And here I was thinking that I had been the one fooling him. “Yeah well so what,” I managed after my mouth had fully retracted “you know my name. I know yours too. I guess we’re even in that sense.”
“I’m just curious as to why you didn’t correct me all those times I was testing you.”
“What am I? Some kind of experiment?”
“You don’t like me very much, do you Alice?”
“Go figure,” I muttered darkly.
And that was exactly when I realised Vaughn Hart was going nowhere. At the moment when normal people backed off and left me well alone, he smirked at me and brought our chairs even closer together.
“He’s driving me insane,” I moaned to Delia as we both sat in my car, waiting for the school bell to mark out the time. I’d just watched him pull up obnoxiously into ‘his’ space to the far right of where we waited. Girls’ heads turned as if this were an unexpected occurrence and their beady eyes lit up as Vaughn slowly took off his helmet. “I swear he does that deliberately.”
“Does what?” Delia looked up from the magazine she was currently buried in (almost literally).
“That,” I brandished at the way Vaughn had tucked his steeled black helmet under his arm. “All movie-star wannabe like.”
“I think you watch him far too much Alice,” she sniggered. Who still sniggered in this day and age? Trust Delia to be childish when it came to boys – even one as painfully insufferable as Vaughn.
“He walks around like he owns the school; it’s kind of hard to just ignore him point blank.”
The bell rang before Delia had a chance to make a sarcastic comment. I smiled at her triumphantly and whipped out of my car before she made up for lost time.
Every Friday I gave Delia a lift to school. It was a ritual dating back to when her eldest sister would ‘borrow’ her car to secretly drive half-way up state and visit some boyfriend. Delia’s parents were especially overbearing with Amy – possibly because they sensed she was rapidly becoming derailed – and regularly checked her car mileage. So every Friday Amy would take Delia’s car and leave her younger sister to walk the three and a half miles to school. Being the amazing best friend I was, I offered to pick her up and it had just stuck. Even though Amy had long moved out and gotten married to some ‘rock star’, I still stopped by the Martins' house at 8:20 and waited for Delia.
“So are you going to apply to Brown’s early acceptance program or stick with the rest of the herd?” she mused from behind me as I parted the crowd of students first. It helped to be 5,10 ft sometimes, especially when your best friend barely got to 5,0 ft.
“Oh yes because the herd apply to Brown anyway,” I snorted.
“I’ve already applied to Harvard and Yale so that’s out the way. Now I just have to focus on acing as many SATs as I can.” The jumble of other students finally spat us out relatively near our English classroom. “Main priority is English,” she sighed “I can just never quite get the hang of those poems.” I wasn’t really surprised – reading into the poems required a deeper sense of sentiments that Delia had yet to acquire in her relatively sheltered life.
We moved forward into our classroom where Jake Longhorn was talking to Miss Rigeti, probably about how the coursework was delayed again. One day I’d show that stupid boy just where he could shove his crappy handwriting excuse. I nudged Delia and she snorted in disgust. It was nice to have her; she always knew just what I was thinking and just what I was insinuating.
I was almost surprised to not find Vaughn in his usual place. I was also completely overjoyed. I let out a long sigh of pleasure which had been subconsciously building. It was a short lived relief but one that alleviated stress beyond just Vaughn Hart.
“Looking for me?” a voice whispered into my ear as I stood wedged between two other desks. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Just from the overpowering au de cigarettes and his husky voice was it obvious that Vaughn was standing directly behind me.
“Obviously,” I stalked forward and placed myself warily on my chair. I didn’t look up as he followed suit, scraping the chair far too close to mine.
“I like your boots today,” he remarked smoothly “very army chic.”
“I can’t believe you just said chic,” I smirked.
“I know. I amaze myself sometimes with what a wide vocabulary I have.”
Rolling my eyes, I pulled out ‘Dracula’ from my bag and set to reading where I’d left off at page 49. For a few minutes we got along just fine in silence – the only time we ever got along – and I’d even made it up to page 67 before Vaughn broke my concentration.
Peering up from the yellowed pages, I saw Vaughn resting his head comfortably on his arm and unashamedly staring at me. “Can I help you with anything?” I asked my voice tight. A smirk twisted his lips upwards and I just rolled my eyes.
“What do you actually do with yourself after school Caroline?” I almost laughed out loud at the use of that name which was most certainly not mine. So caught up in the hope that Vaughn would be leaving, I’d deliberately refrained from telling him my real name. Not that I would tell him now – he didn’t deserve to know.
“None of your business.”
“I’m curious though. Do you study all weekend? Or secretly go out and get drunk every night?”
“Neither. As hard as it may be for you to understand someone can be both intelligent and have a social life,” I snapped.
“Yeah,” he scoffed “a social life with your homework.”
“Ugh you’re such an idiot.”
“Yep,” he popped the ‘p’ “but at least I have fun with my life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I earmarked page 67 and carelessly shoved the book down onto my desk. He shrugged and turned to look out the window. “Even you’re not stupid enough to just say something and not know what you mean so explain.”
“You’ve got to live life, you know?”
“Oh yeah smoking, drinking and slacking are ways to ‘live life’?” He shrugged again. “Just because I try hard at things doesn’t mean I don’t live,” I pointed out grumpily. He was testing my already thin patience.
“I’m only saying that maybe you don’t get the most out of life. Every day is precious and all that crap.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed “and all that crap.”
“You don’t know a lot about me, do you girly?” he tilted his head to the side and examined me as if I were an exhibition at the zoo.
“-Girly?-,” I overlapped indignantly but was cut off.
“I’m not as stupid as you think. I know for a fact your name is not Caroline or Hannah or whatever else this woman fancies calling you. I know you always write your real name at the top of every piece of work. Fancy handwriting. Star above the ‘i’. Isn’t that right Alice?”
I gaped at him. Not the attractive mouth-hanging-only-slightly-ajar gaping but the kind that any normal person would have found caused serious injury. He’d known all along. And here I was thinking that I had been the one fooling him. “Yeah well so what,” I managed after my mouth had fully retracted “you know my name. I know yours too. I guess we’re even in that sense.”
“I’m just curious as to why you didn’t correct me all those times I was testing you.”
“What am I? Some kind of experiment?”
“You don’t like me very much, do you Alice?”
“Go figure,” I muttered darkly.
And that was exactly when I realised Vaughn Hart was going nowhere. At the moment when normal people backed off and left me well alone, he smirked at me and brought our chairs even closer together.
