Songs for a Long Drive in the Dark

The new house was small, but warm and cozy and bright inside. There were lots of windows that let in plenty of sunshine. There were a lot of windows in the old house, too, but they only seemed to let in a draft. Lightfoot’s new room had a window with a huge tree right outside of it, and by the third day she had figured out how to climb out of the window, up the tree, and onto the roof. When she wanted to be alone, she would climb up there and stare up at the sky.

She spent a lot of time alone. She hadn’t had many friends at her old school, and now she had none at all at her new school. Because of the move, Lightfoot had shifted school districts: all at once, she went from her mother driving her to the county school every day to taking the bus to the city school instead. Her mother spent all her time working on her new business--a flower shop downtown--so she didn’t have time to drive Lightfoot to school anymore. “Besides,” her mother would say, “you can make friends on the bus!”

Clearly her mother didn’t know what the bus was like.

The bus ride to school and back was the worst part of her day--even worse than lunchtime, when she never had anyone to sit with in the cafeteria. On the bus, all the obnoxious kids were ten times louder and more annoying than she thought was humanly possible: they would throw things, chase each other up and down the aisle, scream dirty jokes they barely understood, and burp the ABC song. All the kids who weren’t obnoxious would hide from the others and make themselves as small and silent as possible. Lightfoot couldn’t blame the rest of the population for hating middle schoolers. Most of her fellow 7th graders were just plain awful.

She was having a hard time making friends, to say the least. Her mother worried about her and probed her about her daily school experiences so often that she finally made up a friend to calm her down. Sure, it got lonely, but Lightfoot didn’t really mind being alone. She had a lot to think about.

Usually she would lay on her bed and write down her thoughts in a journal while MTV played in the background on her television. When she really needed to think, she would go up on the roof and just stare out at the world below. But one day about a month after moving into the new house, she had so much to think about that even the roof wasn’t solitary enough.

Her mother was out grocery shopping, so she left a note on the counter: Going on an adventure. Be back for dinner. Love you, Lightfoot. She didn’t say where she was going because she wasn’t exactly sure yet.

Her father used to lecture her about “wandering off,” which Lightfoot found ironic, because she was pretty sure that if she got kidnapped or died in some bizarre forest accident, it would take him at least a week to notice she was missing. Whenever her father would go on one of those rants, her mother would just smile and say, “A little exploration never hurt anyone.” Then her father would grunt, “You would say something like that, wouldn’t you?” and stalk off to his office.

Thank God they weren’t married anymore. Or they wouldn’t be soon enough, anyway.

Lightfoot crossed their backyard to the thick wooded area behind their house, thinking of her father as she swatted branches and vines out of her way. She hadn’t spoken to him since she and her mother had moved out. He had called the house asking for her a few times, but she refused to talk to him. Her mother said she was old enough to decide whose phone calls she would accept. In times like those, Lightfoot was reminded of why she was living with her mother and not her father.

Although it also had something to do with the fact that her father “wasn’t interested” in custody. Lightfoot figured he was too busy being a rich lawyer and boning his secretary to be “interested” in much of anything else.

Lightfoot was so caught up in angry thoughts of her father and his new girlfriend that she was shocked to stumble out of the wooded area and onto a flat, rocky space of ground looking out over a small body of water. It was the manmade lake behind her house; she knew it was there, but hadn’t expected to run across it so quickly. For one long moment, she stood there staring out over the water, awestruck.

All of a sudden, a stranger’s voice jerked her out of her thoughts.

“What are you doing here?”

She whirled around to see a boy standing about ten feet behind her, hidden in the shade of a tree. He was glaring at her in accusation as he stepped out from the shadows, and she automatically took a step back.

“I’m sorry--I just--I was just exploring...”

The hardness in his face seemed to melt at the fear in her voice. “Sorry--” he said, shrugging. “I just--I’ve never seen you before. And no one ever comes here but me.”

He turned away from her then, folding his arms across his chest and staring out over the water instead. He was about her age, maybe a little older: tall and lanky with mousy brown hair that stuck up in all directions. His clothes seemed to hang off of his body, and he had that too-pale, too-skinny look of someone who was going through something. Someone who just wanted to be alone.

As if he read her thoughts, the boy glanced over at her with a hint of resentment. “I come here when I want to be alone,” he said coldly.

Lightfoot nodded. “I know what you mean.”

He looked at her again, this time with a detached sort of interest. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lightfoot.”

“That’s a silly name.”

She turned away, suddenly hurt by this stupid boy’s stupid comment. What did he know about names, anyway? Tears pricked her eyes and she just wanted to be alone.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. She heard him moving closer, shuffling his feet over the loose rocks on the lakeshore. “I like your name. It’s different.” When she didn’t say anything, he offered, “Mine’s silly too, if it makes you feel any better.”

She wiped her eyes on her shoulder as inconspicuously as possible and turned around to face him. He was standing a lot closer than she had expected--only a foot or two away--and she had to stop herself from jumping in surprise.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jude.” He held out a pale, slender hand. “Jude Cooper.”

“Like the Beatles song?”

“Gee whiz, I’ve never heard that one before.”

Anyone else might have been affronted, but his sarcasm just made her feel more at home. “I’m Lightfoot Anderson,” she said, shaking his hand. His hand felt strong and warm against hers.

He raised his eyebrows. “Anderson? You’re Sam Anderson’s kid.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus.” He started to say something else, but stopped himself at the last second, raising a hand to scratch at his hair uncomfortably instead. But she saw the words forming there on his lips: I’m sorry.

“It’s okay,” she said, shrugging. “I’m new here. My mom and I just moved in.”

“Cool.” Jude nodded and looked away, out over the lake again. “So...this is my secret spot, but I guess since you found it too, we can share. But since I want to be alone...and you want to be alone...how about I go be alone over here, and you go be alone over there?”

“Alright. Fair enough.”

So Jude went and sat on the left side of the bank and Lightfoot took the right. The little clearing on the bank was pretty small--maybe twenty feet long and ten feet wide--and even from the other side of the grove, Lightfoot could still see Jude out of the corner of her eye.

She tried to ignore him anyway, tried to pretend like she was alone, but she just couldn’t focus on her thoughts knowing that he was there. All of her anger and confusion and loneliness diffused and all she could think about was the way that boy’s hand felt in hers, the look of understanding and sympathy in his eyes when he found out about her father. Most people--well, everyone except for her mother--just looked right through her. No one had ever looked at her like that before.

She decided to try to skip some rocks to help her concentrate; after all, that’s what everyone did in the movies when they had a lot on their mind. She had never skipped rocks before, but she figured it couldn’t be too hard.

She bent down and picked up the first rock she saw. It was round and dense, a little bigger than a marble. She threw it out across the water. It made contact with the water’s surface with a loud splash and immediately sank.

Dammit.

She picked up another rock and threw it, this time with less force. It sank the same way. She tried another. And another. All with the same results.

Apparently skipping rocks was harder than it looked.

Not one to be defeated by some silly inanimate objects, Lightfoot tore another rock from the bank and straightened up, pulling her arm back as she readied for a good throw. She was about to hurl the rock out across the lake like she was pitching it to a batter at the home plate when a hand steadied her arm from behind.

“Woah, woah, woah. That’s not how you skip a rock.”

She glanced over her shoulder and Jude was right there behind her, holding her by the wrist. “How do you skip a rock then, Mr. Know-It-All?” she asked indignantly.

“Well, first of all,” he said, taking the rock from her hand and lowering her arm, “this rock is way too round. You need something flatter...like this.” He tossed her rock aside in favor of a flat, round, smooth rock he found lying on the blank. “Second, you don’t throw it overhand, you toss it underhand--like a frisbee.” He demonstrated with the flat rock; it skipped across the water four times and then disappeared. “See?”

Lightfoot watched him skeptically. “So what happened to you being alone over there and me being alone over here?”

He frowned, and she scolded herself as she realized he would probably walk back over to his side and never speak to her again now. How could she be so stupid?

But that didn’t happen. He just said, “You haven’t spent much time around water, have you?”--as if she had never said anything at all.

“No, not really.”

“That’s okay. We can change that.” Jude grinned crookedly and turned on his heel, walking to the far side of the bank. “C’mon,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ll show you my favorite cave.”

Lightfoot stumbled after him, though she had no idea where they were going. She had only met this boy not even an hour ago, but she already knew she would follow him anywhere.