Sally Jane Driscoll... "Trudy Ziller"

Sometimes a dream won’t let go

“The center of gravity should reside in two:

he and she.”

Anton Chekhov

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THE PERFECT MATCH

2008 San Diego RWA Spring into Romance Long Contemporary Finalist

2008 Coeur de Louisiane Romancing the Tome Contest Honorable Mention

TRUDY ZILLER

I was jingling quarters in my hand in the lunch line when all of a sudden I wasn't jingling them any more. Ivy Nachman sauntered past from behind me and glanced back, making sure she caught my eye.

"Damn!" I muttered, and launched myself at her like a Cruse rocket at a camel.

"Girl fight! Girl fight!" The kids closed around us, not leaving us much room. Ivy tried to squash me down with her weight, but I was all over her. She got in a right to my eye and I squirmed away and clawed her face. She squealed like the coward she was. I grabbed the vee of her shirt and yanked, popping her bra on the way down.

The kids cheered. My quarters bounced out and hit the floor and I grabbed them up. Ivy scrambled to pull her torn shirt together as Mr. Petrokian, the vice-principal, pushed through the cafeteria doors, scattering kids like Raid on ants.

I aimed a last kick at Ivy's butt, but somebody grabbed my elbow and yanked me into the stream of kids running out of the cafeteria to the playing fields. I took a swing at him, but he stopped my fist with his palm. It was Jason Ramirez.

"Watch it, Trudy, will ya?" he said.

He ran me around the corner of the building and swung me behind the bushes against the chain link fence. I slid down until I was sitting in the dirt. He dropped his backpack on the ground, squatted beside me and lit a cigarette.

I pulled my camo tank top up from my belly and rubbed the Ivy off my quarters with it, then dropped them into the pocket of my jeans. I stood up.

"Where you going?" Jason asked.

"I'm gonna get some lunch. I'm hungry."

"You want detention?" I shook my head. "Wait a minute." He rummaged around in his pack and came out with a bag of jerky. He pulled me down and shoved the bag at me. "Go ahead. Take it."

I took out a piece of jerky and began to chew.

Jason's about a foot taller than me with a face like you think Zorro has behind the mask, but doesn't. He's muy guapo. If you like that sort of thing.

I guess I do.

"You got a ride home?" Jason asked.

"Taking the bus."

"You should cut and go home."

"Can't. I have a chem test and then lacrosse."

"You could call your dad."

"Like he'd really leave the office in the middle of the day."

"They're planning to get you. Ivy and Danny. I heard some guys talking."

I saw red. "What am I supposed to do? They got everybody in school terrorized. And Petrokian makes believe nothing's happening. They're not gonna start on me."

"Everybody?"

"Almost."

He drew on the cigarette and laughed at me from behind the smoke. "Live to fight another day."

"Ooo, I'm so scared."

He reached out to touch the place I could feel swelling over my eye. I swatted his hand away. "That's gonna be purple. Purple bump, blue eyes, orange hair. You're gonna look like a rainbow in an oil puddle."

"Thanks a lot!"

"Come on." He stubbed the butt into the dirt. "I'll take you home."

"What do you care?"

"Shut up."

I leaned sideways and kissed him on the corner of his jaw, just below his earring. It was scratchy, but he smelled great.

Jason took my head in his big hands and put his mouth on mine. His mouth wasn't scratchy. His tongue was hot and trembling.

It was too intense. I twisted my head and wiggled away.

He got up and slung his pack over his shoulder. I let him get halfway across the field before I ran to catch up.

I was trailing him through the parking lot to his old Camaro when a hard arm grabbed me around the throat and yanked me up. I hung onto the arm to keep from choking and my heels drummed against the tailgate of somebody's SUV. Jason heard it and turned. He dropped his pack and ran toward me around the cars.

Ivy came out of nowhere and punched me in the stomach. My knees came up and I kicked her on the chin. The arm around my neck shifted and a hand took me by the hair. As he pulled me around I saw the hand belonged to Ivy's zit-faced boyfriend, Danny Tretola.

"Danny, don't," Ivy said. "I wanna cut her."

She had a shiny little knife in her hand.

Jason hit her from behind and she went down, squealing again. He wrenched her knife away, but Danny had one of his own. He pushed me to the ground and fell on Jason and Ivy in a tangle of arms and legs. His knife ran down Jason's chest.

Jason opened up like the knife was a zipper and his blood fell out. He dropped Ivy's knife. Danny stepped back. Ivy screamed. She scrambled up from beneath Jason and pulled Danny away.

People were finally looking out the school windows. Mr. Olsen, the gym teacher, was running toward us across the playing field.

Jason pushed himself to his knees, leaning against the SUV. I caught him around the waist and he looked into my eyes.

"A rainbow," he whispered. His eyes rolled up and he went limp.

I tried to hold him, but he weighed too much. He slid down until he lay with his Zorro face in his own blood. I thought he was dead.

Ivy's knife was lying next to him. I picked it up and looked around.

Someone close by was trying to start a car. It sounded like the engine had flooded.

I left Jason there and slipped around the SUV. Danny and Ivy were in Danny's open Jeep. He was turning the key and she was in hysterics, smeared with tears and snot and Jason's blood.

Mr. Olsen had gotten to Jason. He was yelling for someone to call 911.

I crept up to the side of Danny's Jeep and stuck Ivy's knife in his ugly belly.

Danny lived. Unfortunately. He went down for assault. Ivy got time in juvenile hall.

My dad wouldn't pay for a lawyer, so I pled. The judge looked over my school records and said I wasn't a bad girl. He said he got in trouble when he was a juvenile and a wise judge gave him the choice of going to jail or into the service. The service straightened him out,

he said. He was glad times had changed so he could offer me the same opportunity to get straight.

They didn't let me see Jason. He lost a lot of blood and needed twenty stitches and would have some nerve damage. But he would ride again.

I took that thought with me on the bus to Parris Island like a Christmas present wrapped in June.

On the trip the other recruits were sleepy and scared. A few of them talked about stories their brothers and fathers had told, about the heat and the mosquitoes. Then they dozed. I stayed awake, looking out at the dark.

The sun was making an orange stripe on the horizon when the bus stopped. I got off first and hesitated for just a second. A bellow came at me like a tidal wave at a sand castle.

It was the drill sergeant.

"Hey, you Ronald McDonald girl! Yeah, I mean you! You see anybody else here with clown hair? You're standing there like a cat in a bathtub! Toes on the line! Now!"

I put my toes on the line quick.

The sergeant strutted past, yelling at the other kids as they stumbled off the bus. I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

I think I'm gonna like it here.

“Trudy Ziller” first appeared in Judas E-Zine, Volume 2, Issue 4