Pulse of Heroes (18 page)

Tim and his friend Marcus joined the two
girls on the bleachers. Tim sat next to Michelle while Marcus sat
on Anna’s side; they were dating and everyone knew it, but it
wasn’t official yet. Michelle felt coddled by all the attention Tim
was bestowing on her. He was definitely making an effort to show
his intent to win her over. What bad timing, Michelle thought, and
felt sad for him even though she pretended to be engaged in his
conversation. Tim invited her to join him and his friends to go
abalone diving, and as expected he was disappointed that she had
already made plans to go with another group. But since both parties
were headed to the coves of Fort Bragg, there was a pretty good
chance that they would meet up anyway. The bigger the party the
better, he told Michelle, and she couldn’t help but agree. Of
course wiz-kid surfer-boy was going diving; it would counteract the
forces of nature if he didn’t, Michelle thought as she headed to
her next class. And although Tim was on her mind at that particular
moment, he was gone and replaced by Elliot in the next.

By the time 2:00 PM rolled around, Michelle
was very nervous. So much so that she was shaking her right leg up
and down without noticing it. She didn’t even hear her name being
called by the teacher in order to answer a question. Everyone
laughed when she sat there quietly without even looking up to
acknowledge him. It was the laughter that woke her up from her
dream state. She looked around the classroom confused, then looked
to Samantha for help, not that Sam could really do much except look
back at her from her seat with a worried expression.

“Uhmm…” Michelle cleared her voice, “I’m
sorry Mr. Hewson. I didn’t hear the question.”

The teacher was not amused. “Yes, that is an
understatement. Maybe next time?” he asked in a sarcastic
voice.

“Mmm… yeah,” Michelle answered, hoping that
would be sufficient to remove her from the spotlight. Luckily, the
teacher turned to prey upon another victim. Michelle looked down at
her homework to see that she actually did have the right answer to
the equation written on her sheet. But numbers were not important;
they weren’t real, not like Elliot. They were just some evil mind
exercise. After class, Samantha asked Michelle what was up with her
being so inattentive, and Michelle managed to convince her that she
was tired because she couldn’t sleep after they got off the phone
the night before; she was too excited about the camping trip.

It was 3:35 PM when Michelle walked in
through the front door of her home. She barely punched the alarm
code into the number pad before it went off. She only had 3 seconds
left. The last thing she needed was to have fire trucks and police
cars showing up when she was trying to get ready for her special
meeting. Her anxiousness was no longer about what to wear; she had
that all figured out. Her true concern was whether Elliot would
show up at all. She had never told him what time she got off
school, so how would he know when to meet her. Don’t get your hopes
up, she kept telling herself. She didn’t want the disappointment to
completely crush her; she had to be ready for whatever came her
way.

Michelle slipped out of her sweats, which
were her ‘wearing out’ pajamas, and got into her best pair of
casual jeans, that happened to be a designer brand and made her
butt look the best, even Sam agreed. She pulled a soft dusty purple
angora crewneck sweater over her head. It wasn’t too tight, but she
didn’t swim in it either; it sat just perfectly on her small waist.
Yes, she was still tired she thought, noticing the purple half
moons that had developed under her eyes. Well, at least they
matched her top. In her mother’s bathroom, Michelle rifled through
the makeup drawers. She found the concealer and dabbed some under
her eyes. She put on some of her mom’s lipstick, and lined the top
of her eyes with kohl. But after giving herself a second look in
the mirror, she wiped most of the makeup off. She didn’t want to
seem too made up, just casually aesthetic and not-dead. It’s not
like he’s going to see you anyway, she kept telling herself.

Once in the woods, Michelle wasn’t sure how
far she should walk towards Elliot’s school? She didn’t want to be
too close to home, just in case her parents ended up in the
backyard and either heard or saw her. On the other hand, she didn’t
want to seem too desperate and be waiting just outside the cement
wall. She stopped walking once she thought she was about halfway
between the two. For a while she stood there, then she paced for a
few minutes, then eventually settled down and leaned back against a
tree. Relax, breathe, she kept telling herself. Michelle sat there
for a bit before reaching for her cell phone to check the time,
only to remember that she couldn’t see the display anyway. She must
replace her phone she thought, looking at the ruined screen.

A cool, gentle wind rushed through the tree
branches. How long had she been there, she thought? Michelle knew
these woods well enough to know that nothing in them could hurt
her, not really. But suddenly she started thinking about every
menacing wild animal that took refuge in the Northern California
hills. There were bobcats, foxes, wolves, even brown bears. A
raccoon could do a lot of damage if she was protecting her young.
Michelle stood up immediately after that thought. She looked
towards her house and then towards the school. She saw nothing,
heard nothing but the rustling wind and the occasional pinecone
dropping to the ground. She should go home. He wasn’t going to show
up, and she was stupid to even hope that he might. Was she going to
cry? No, she wasn’t. Michelle looked upwards and noticed that the
sun was traveling west and the woods were rapidly being converted
into shadowy images of arms reaching up towards the sky, towards
her. Michelle got spooked, and once the feeling of apprehension got
a hold of her she became angry, angry with Elliot but mostly at
herself.

Michelle stomped and even kicked the dirt as
she dragged her feet towards home. She did her best to control her
emotions. She was definitely too angry to cry. Not hurt, angry.
Michelle could see her backyard fence, which to her turned into a
symbol that the ‘Elliot’ chapter of her life was going to be over
as soon as she crossed that line. She lazily raised her arm to
unlock the gate when she felt a gush of warm wind at her back. Just
as she turned around, Elliot was reaching out to grab at her
shoulder in order to prevent her from opening the latch. He was
half smiling and half panting.

Michelle was flabbergasted by the sudden
change of events, and by the emotional rise that put her right back
on the roller coaster she thought she was stepping off from. “I’m
sorry. We were in a meeting and I couldn’t just run off,” Elliot
said, steadying his breath. God he was beautiful, Michelle thought
while looking at his face, the blush of his warm blood under his
cheeks, and the intensity in his eyes. She had always read those
magazine articles about how men cared more about physical
attractiveness in a potential partner than women did, but that
generalization did not seem to apply to her, she was sure of that.
She could have just stood there staring at him all day. “What is
it?” he asked, confused as to why she hadn’t said anything back to
him.

“You startled me,” was all Michelle could
think of to say. From beyond the fence they heard Michelle’s mother
calling for Crumb. “It must be close to six o’ clock,” Michelle
whispered, “We can’t stay here. Crumb climbs this fence all the
time, and if he sees me he’ll start meowing and then my mom will
see us.”

“Lets walk,” Elliot said, turning around and
heading into the woods. Michelle followed him.

Inside, Michelle was lively with gratitude
that Elliot had actually showed up. She was also cursing herself
for not trusting him. Did she have such low self-esteem, she
wondered while shadowing his every step? It was getting darker and
Michelle was still spooked about going deeper into the woods, so
she stopped walking, waiting to see how long it would take him to
notice that she was no longer behind him. It didn’t take more than
a second; Elliot turned around almost immediately. Michelle took
her stance and let him know that if he hadn’t shown up when he did
that she was never going to speak to him again. But Elliot just
shrugged and answered that he was there now, so there was no use in
talking about if’s or maybes. Michelle could sense that he was a
bit short with her, and she feared that she had insulted him.

“So?” Michelle asked.

“So?” he answered back. Michelle thought that
Elliot looked tense.

“Are we arguing?” she asked.

“I’m not. Are you?” he asked her in
return.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked him point
blank, but he told her he was not. “Then why do you look like
that?” she asked, confused. The warm sensitive guy that she
remembered from the night before was nowhere to be found.

“Because I’m thinking that maybe this is not
such a good idea for us to be meeting here like this,” he answered.
Michelle reminded him that it was he who showed up in her bedroom,
not the other way around. Elliot relaxed and exhaled. He repeated
to her that he felt really bad about her losing her job, and
admitted that he had over-reacted at the school. “I explained to
Xander that I was in the wrong, and if you want he said that he’d
talk to Mr. Meyers for you.”

Michelle didn’t answer because she wasn’t
sure how involved in her life she wanted Elliot, or Xander to be.
“I don’t understand what happened that day. I really just wanted to
take a picture of that bottle. I wasn’t going to show it to anyone.
I just wanted to compare it…”

The small bottle was very dear to Elliot, and
he tried to explain that when he saw her trying to photograph it he
thought that she was going to show the picture to everyone.

“It’s an antique from Rome, and very
expensive. I got that piece of glass you sent. Kahl gave it to me
when he went through the mail.”

“He must think I’m crazy,” Michelle said,
embarrassed. But Elliot told her that Kahl thought nothing of the
sort, and neither did he. Of course, that didn’t make Michelle feel
much better, considering who the statement was coming from. When
Elliot asked her where she had found the glass, Michelle repeated
the story her mom had told her, and asked if he thought that it
really was antique glass like the bottle. Elliot replied that he
definitely thought it was.

“But how would my mom find something like
that out here in the woods? It makes no sense,” Michelle
argued.

“It could have belonged to someone from that
olive oil factory that used to be here. Weren’t the owners
immigrants from somewhere else?” he asked Michelle innocently.

“Yes,” Michelle answered, “they were
Portuguese, but they left before I was born.” Michelle looked at
Elliot’s intense features and wondered if she should ask him what
he was doing at that school to begin with, but she didn’t want to
put him on the spot. When Elliot sensed Michelle’s apprehension he
took a step closer to see if she was afraid of him, and to his
disappointment she took several steps backwards. Michelle saw a
hint of sadness on his face and swallowed hard.

“The
Learning Center
is not what you
think. We’re not on medication, although maybe some of us should
be,” he smiled and Michelle smiled back. “I can promise you that
we’re not dangerous, not the way you think we are. I don’t want you
to feel scared or worried because we’re so close to your house, and
you shouldn’t judge everyone there by the way I acted.” Elliot told
her that
Hekademos
was a sort of continuation / college prep
school, and that the students were there because they had problems
concentrating on their education due to various things that were
happening in their lives. It was his own choice to be there; he
needed to put distance between his regular life and his academic
pursuits. “I can leave if I want to. So could everyone else.”

Michelle’s uncertainty turned to sympathy.
She felt bad, and apologized for thinking that he was insane. “How
old are you?” she asked him out of the blue, still avoiding eye
contact.

“I thought this was going to be about things
that you didn’t understand, not a third-degree interrogation about
my personal life,” he answered, annoyed.

“I’m sorry, I was just curious,” Michelle
answered back, hurt by his callous reply. But Elliot sensed her
injury and gave her a small smile of assurance, telling her that he
would never ask someone their age unless they volunteered it, and
besides he was older than her by more than a few years. Michelle
wondered by how many years, and Elliot must have read her mind
because he gave her a look that implied ‘don’t go there’. Michelle
didn’t really care how old Elliot was. He was perfect in her eyes
just as he was. But what about her? If Elliot was normal, than she
must be the one that needed real help.

“Then I guess I’m seeing things,” Michelle
said in a crushed voice. “I still don’t understand how you came
into my room and left without setting off the alarm, or how it is
that you appear out of thin air, and your eyes… I guess I’m the one
who needs to see a doctor.” Michelle looked away. There she was in
front of the most beautiful guy known to mankind and she was
confessing to him that she was losing her mind, that she was seeing
things that weren’t there. Elliot walked over to where Michelle
stood and this time she didn’t step back. He bent down so he could
look at her face but Michelle turned away. She didn’t want him to
pity her. He told her not to feel so bad because he was going to
show her something, so she raised her eyes to look at his, feeling
more confused than before. Elliot laughed and began walking around
the area while scanning the ground below his feet. He picked up
three small green pinecones and began juggling them in the air.
Michelle just looked at him, trying to figure out if he was trying
to make her feel better when he suddenly stopped and hid the cones
in his fists.