A Few Heartbeats Away From Disaster

Her name was Lucy and I bought her when I was sixteen.

I worked the entire summer so I could afford her. My neighbors (who learned my cause and thankfully took pity upon me) paid me one-hundred bucks a week to mow their lawn and clean their pool. Most of the time I didn’t mind doing these things, but everything changed once I met their daughter. Well, I didn’t exactly meet her, per se, it was more like I went to clean the pool at the worst possible moment because she had snuck a boy over and was making out with him in the shallow end. Even though I apologized profusely and left immediately, I never found the courage to talk to her after that. I don’t think I would’ve minded if this hadn’t occurred during the first week of summer.

All because I wanted that stupid car.

The first time I laid eyes on Lucy was the Sunday morning after I had gotten out of school for summer vacation. I was up early and was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad before he left for work. With a spoonful of cereal in one hand, I flipped through the newspaper with the other. I was ready to toss it in the garbage when her picture caught my eye. Honestly, she wasn’t anything special. She was far from brand new and the ad said she needed a few minor repairs but it was love at first sight. It honestly was, because I didn’t know anything about her yet I knew she had to be mine. The only problem was coming up with two-thousand dollars.

I’d never met the Cires family before that summer. They’d been our neighbors for as long as we’d lived in San Diego but I’d never had a reason to communicate with them. Still, once they caught wind of my two-thousand-dollar goal, they must’ve decided they needed someone to mow the lawn and scoop the leaves out of the pool because they offered the job to me. Of course I accepted. One-hundred dollars a week was more money than I’d ever seen in my life. On top of that, my dad had talked to Lucy’s owner and got him to lower the price to $1,200. She’d be mine by the end of the summer.

But Lucy wasn’t the only girl I had my eye on. Even though I’d seen Natalie Cires with her tongue down Mason Callahan’s throat, rendering me too embarrassed to talk to her, I wanted her. After telling myself every day that I was going to enter my junior year of high school with the car and the girl, I started believing it. My brother thought I was crazy, but what did he know? He was only fourteen and still thought the girls in the sleazy magazines he hid under his mattress were the kind we could bring home to our mother. Yet, even though he didn’t understand, I found myself telling him every detail about Natalie every afternoon once I was finished with the lawn. Not once did he listen (but who would when they have a Gameboy in their hands that doesn’t talk about girls?) but it made me feel better. It made me feel like I had something--someone--of my own.

Week eight rolled around and I knew that if I was going to do something about my seemingly hopeless crush I’d have to do it fast. I only had a month left before school started back up. I’d be too distracted. Not many kids in my grade had a car, especially not one like Lucy. Like I said, she wasn’t anything fancy but in exchange for the repairs I’d have to pay for the owners got her painted. Apparently she had a few rust stains but I overlooked those. She was going to be mine, and a little bit of rust wasn’t going to scare me away.

Regardless, the more I fell in love with Lucy, the more I found myself longing for actual love. My friends laughed at me; at sixteen you’re supposed to be more worried about skateboarding and video games, but I couldn’t be bothered. Natalie began infecting every thought that ran through my head. Every day that I saw her only made it worse. It was like she was a seed that had been planted in my brain; when I saw her, a little bit of water got sprinkled, making the seed grow before it eventually bloomed into some sort of weed that was impossible to get rid of. But I liked her there. I liked the way her laugh echoed throughout my bedroom when I couldn’t sleep and found myself thinking about how perfect it sounded; I liked the way every blade of grass I cut reminded me of the green hue of her eyes; I liked the way my skin tanned to the exact shade of her hair after being in the sun for so long. Most of all, I liked the way she made me feel without ever speaking one word to me.

The twenty-seventh of July was the day everything changed. As I was growing frustrated with scooping dead flies out of the pool, I heard the sliding glass door open. Natalie stepped out onto the patio and just stared at me. Even though it was already blistering hot outside, I felt my cheeks grow warm. The more I thought about how embarrassing it was to be blushing in front of her, the warmer they grew. It eventually got to the point where I wanted to run home and never step foot on the Cires’ property again.

“Do you want something to drink?”

I stopped my assault on the flies and turned my attention to Natalie. Holding my hand over my eyes to block the sun, I nodded. She offered me a small smile before ushering me inside. Now, I always new the Cires had money, but I didn’t know how much until that day. Not only did I feel incredibly out of place when I stood in the middle of her marble kitchen, I felt even worse about my crush. There I was, slaving away in the heat of summer to afford a twelve-hundred dollar car while Natalie poured me a glass of lemonade out of a crystal pitcher.

“Thanks,” I said quietly once she sat the glass down in front of me.

“No problem,” she laughed lightly, “you looked like you were about to die of heat stroke. Besides, it’s the least I could do seeing as how you get all the dead bugs out of my pool.”

I wanted to say something to make her laugh. More importantly, I wanted to impress her. I scoured my brain for the perfect sentence to sweep her off her feet but I couldn’t find it. “Yeah,” I replied awkwardly. “I guess they weren’t such great swimmers, huh?”

Once the words left my lips, I squeezed my eyes together as tightly as I could. Out of everything I could’ve possibly said, I chose the dumbest of them all. However, she burst into a fit of giggles that absolutely stunned me. My eyes regained normalcy slowly because I wasn’t fully convinced I wasn’t dreaming.

“You’re funny,” she stated once her giggling subsided. “I’m Natalie.”

“Vic.”

“Well, it’s awfully nice to meet you, Vic. I hope my parents aren’t working you to death.”

“Anything but,” I smiled. It was the first time I smiled over a girl during my sixteen years of existence. All the times before had been due to some childish prank, like the time I stuck a wad of Bubblicious in Ashleigh Tyler’s hair. “I’m saving up to buy a car.”

That was all I needed to say to rope her in. I thought it was because I was going to be the only kid in school with a car and she was using me but I soon realized how wrong I was. Apparently her grandfather had owned a car dealership back in the day so she knew her way around a garage better than most grown men. When I mentioned buying a car, it was like I said the few magic words that swept her off her feet.

The second-to-last night of summer was the night I picked up Lucy. Once she was safe and sound in my driveway, I walked over to Natalie’s and waited for her to let me in through the garage. Since I was the pool boy her parents weren’t keen on us being together. I wasn’t the type of boy they’d envisioned their precious daughter getting involved with. I didn’t have money, I drove a car with too many miles on it, and my kitchen counters were made out of cheap tile -- lightyears away from the marble they had. But none of that bothered us. We were too young to care about bank accounts and status. All we knew was how we felt about one another and that was enough to make everything else seem irrelevant.

Once we reached her bedroom, she locked the door behind us and shut off all the lights. It was never anything sexual between us; I was much too nervous to even suggest our relationship move in that direction and Natalie must’ve felt the same because she never brought it up. Instead, we just enjoyed one another’s presence. Every morning I woke up beside her was like waking up next to everything I’d ever love combined into one person.

“I don’t know what to name her,” I said, making sure I kept my voice so quiet her parents wouldn’t hear me.

“Name who?”

“My car.”

She laughed. “It’s a girl?” I nodded. “And how do you know that?”

“Because,” I started, “not only did I get the most beautiful car in all of San Diego, I also got the most beautiful girlfriend.”

Natalie rolled her eyes sarcastically. “You must’ve been born in Wisconsin because I swear you’re the cheesiest person I know.”

“Well, you just disqualified yourself from getting the car named after you with a comment like that.”

“Name her Lucy!”

“Lucy? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “My parents were going to name me that because of that Beatles song but they changed their minds at the last minute.”

I beamed. “I love it.”

I’d like to say that was the end of our story and that we lived happily ever after. I’d like to say that our lives led us down the path to complete happiness. But life isn’t always a fairytale. Actually, I don’t believe in them at all, and maybe that’s why things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. I’ll always be thankful for what it did give me, though, and that was two years with the most perfect girl I’d ever meet in my life.

The day after graduation found me sitting in Natalie’s driveway, waiting for her like I always was. She wasn’t the easiest girl to put up with, especially with her constant need to “impress” me, but after being with her for two years, I couldn’t see myself with anyone else. I was madly in love with her and all of San Diego knew it.

“Sorry I took so long,” she said as soon as she shut the door. “My hair just wasn’t cooperating.”

“I don’t know why you think I care what your hair looks like. You’re beautiful, babe.”

She smiled. “Just drive, Vic.”

I had no real destination in mind. Just being with Natalie was enough to keep me satisfied in more ways than one. But I drove to the beach anyway, because I’d been planning that night since the night I met her. Nothing was going to ruin it.

“The beach, Vic? Really?” she laughed as she unbuckled her seatbelt. She never gave me time to open the door for her. I think she only did it because she knew it drove me crazy.

Once our feet sunk a few inches into the sand, I sat down and pulled her down with me. She situated herself between my knees and rested her back against my chest. “I love you,” I mumbled into her hair.

“I love you too.”

“I have to ask you something.” She nodded, signaling for me to continue. “I mean it when I tell you I love you, Natalie. I’ve loved you since that day in your kitchen and I can’t picture my life without you in it-”

She turned around to face me and scrunched her forehead together in confusion. “Vic, where are you going with this?”

“I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

“You -- what? Vic, what are you saying-”

“I want to marry you, Natalie. It doesn’t have to be soon, or even in the next twenty years, but I want to be with you forever.”

As soon as she gave the words enough time to sink in, she was up and running to the car before I had a chance to say anything else. My head knew I should’ve been running after her but my feet weren’t working. Out of all the reactions I’d thought up in my head, what had just happened wasn’t one of them.

Once I reached the car, I got in the driver’s side and just stared at her for a few minutes. “Why did you run away?”

“We’re eighteen, Vic! How do you even know what you want to do with the rest of your life right now?”

“How can you even say that?” I shouted, startling us both. “There are two things I’m certain about, Natalie: you and music. Never in my fucking life have I loved anything more than I love those two things and it only makes sense that I’d want to keep them around forever-”

“Do you even hear yourself right now? God, you sound like you’re thirty! Vic, we’re too young to be talking about this shit!”

“There’s no such thing as too young! We’re in-” I stopped myself as I came to a sick realization. “You’re not in love with me, are you?”

“What? Of course I’m in love with you, Vic. It’s not that-”

“Then what is it, Natalie? Because a few hours ago you were willing to love me forever and now everything’s different.”

She fell silent and I knew things were going to end badly. The only question left was exactly how bad. Was I going to walk away from our relationship with some kind of hope that things would get better with time or was I going to miss her for the rest of my life? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. Walking away from her--the thought alone made me nauseous.

“I just can’t.”

“It’s your family, isn’t it? You care so much about what they think about me that you’re willing to throw everything away just to make them happy-”

“Just take me home, please.”

At that point I was so angry that I obliged. I should’ve fought for her. I should’ve said something to make her change her mind. Somewhere deep down I knew nothing would. She’d made up her mind long before I made a fool out of myself. She’d always known that we’d never last. We’d spend a few quality years together but eventually it would all come crashing down because we were just two different people. We were neighbors but we weren’t anything alike. We were so close to each other yet on opposite sides of the world.

Once I returned to her driveway, I put the car in park and waited for her to get out. I knew that’d be the last time I’d ever see her. Her frayed denim shorts, navy blue sweatshirt and matching flip-flops would be burned into my memory forever because that’s the way it was always meant to be. I’d always remember the way her hair was thrown into that messy ponytail because it wasn’t cooperating.

“You should have faith in me,” I said sharply. The quieter my voice grew, the harsher the tone it took on.

“I’m sorry-”

“You should have faith in us -- in love.”

She took one last glance at me before leaning over and placing a soft kiss on my lips. Electricity didn’t run through me like it normally did whenever we kissed. This time, the lights merely flickered. Without another word, she let herself out of the car, out of Lucy, and disappeared into her house: the cause of my sudden heartbreak.

It took a few months for me to find myself again but I did it. Once July twenty-seventh rolled around, I knew what I had to do. It nearly killed me but maybe that was the point.

“What the hell are you doing, bro?” Mike asked me when he appeared in our kitchen. Our kitchen, with its mundane tile counters.

“Putting an ad in the newspaper.”

He stared at me with a blank expression on his face. “For?”

“I’m selling the car.”

“Lucy? Why the fuck would you do that?”

I shrugged. “I think it’s time for her to ruin someone else’s life.”