Sweet Sixteen, Chapter 1 ~ Sien, part 2

When lunch hour came, she walked out front, standing on the steps, searching for him.  At first she couldn’t find him, and wondered if it was all a joke, the attention he’d given her and the invitation to lunch.  He was eighteen, and she only sixteen, after all.  Sixteen years and four months, only, not even “almost seventeen.”  So young.  Too young.  Why would—

“I’m starving, what about you?”  He was at her side, hands in the pockets of a leather jacket, smiling wide.

“I could eat.”  She looked up at him, chiding herself for her nervousness.

“Great.  Where do you want to go?”

“I usually walk down to Flora’s Café.”  Elly pointed in the general direction, south.  “It’s closest.”

“We don’t have to walk.”  Sien’s grin widened.  “We could ride.”

“Ride?”

“Yeah.  I have a bike.”  He pointed down toward a motorcycle parked alongside the road.

“Oh.”

Elly had never been on a motorcycle before.  She didn’t even drive yet, though she was old enough.  Her mother insisted that she get straight As before she could get her driver’s license (and before her father was allowed to buy her a car) but even that didn’t motivate her enough to study harder.  She had friends who drove, and if that failed, she could always find some guy willing to give her a ride in hopes of a reward.

Not that they ever got one.

“Okay,” she agreed to Sien’s offer, returning his smile.  “Let’s go.”

They rode without helmets, an exhilarating experience.  Sien didn’t offer an apology for not having one, as if the thought of wearing one never crossed his mind, and Elly wasn’t about to bring it up.  A big, heavy motorcycle helmet would just smash down her hair and leave it frizzy.  The speed limit between the school and Flora’s was only 25 MPH, so she didn’t much worry about her hair being whipped around in a wind.  It had a tendency to poof out and curl in unmanageable ways if anything was done to disturb it.  Very annoying.  Her mother would kill her if she knew she’d been on a motorcycle without a helmet.  The thought made her smile.

Elly ordered a hot ham and cheese sandwich with potato chips and a soda, after briefly considering a salad, because that was more healthy and ladylike.  But Sien had ordered a big cheeseburger with chili fries on the side, so she decided not to worry about it.

After the waitress left, Sien just stared across the table at Elly, smiling.  She liked his smile, but the silence made her uncomfortable.  She had never really liked being stared at, either, even if it seemed people liked what they saw.  Sien seemed to be liking what he saw, but it only made her jittery.  “So,” she said, “are you new at Ridgewalter this year?  I don’t remember seeing you last year.  I think I would have.”  She wondered if she should have included that last part.

“Yeah.”  He sat with his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands like a kid staring into a shop window.  “We just moved here this summer.  My dad and I.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a nice place.”

“It is.”

They stared at each other for a few more moments.  Elly thought there was something she had wanted to ask him, but she couldn’t remember.  He seemed completely at ease with the silence, studying her with that beatific grin, as if he were planning to frame her and hang her on a wall.  Elly finally looked down.  She felt she could get lost in his gaze, a scary feeling when she allowed herself to think about it.

“Where are you from?” she asked the table top.

“Nowhere really.  We’ve move around a lot, I mean.”

“What kinds of places?”

“Um . . . .”

She looked up, catching his eye again.  He looked almost uncomfortable, lowering his hands below the table and shrugging.  But he still smiled cheerily and said, “Lots of boring little places.  You know, around the country.  My dad . . . is . . . with the government.”

“Oh.”

“What about you?  Have you always lived here?”

“I was born in Wisconsin.  But I didn’t live there long.  We moved out here when I was five.”

“Cool.”

Elly wondered if he’d caught her last name and made the connection with her semi-famous father.  She wasn’t going to mention it, not unless he asked point blank about what her parents did.  She liked the rock star prestige sometimes, other times she just didn’t want boys asking for her dad’s autograph.

Suddenly, as the waitress put their food down in front of them, Elly remembered what she’d wanted to ask.  “Why did you sign that note the way you did?”

“Mm?”  Sien glanced up from his plate.

“You signed it, ‘Luv, your Queen of Seven.’  What does that mean?”

“Oh that,” he said dismissively, picking up his cheeseburger.  “Just a little joke in my family.”

“What?”

He shrugged, taking a bite.  Elly picked up her ham and cheese on a bagel and tried not to seem overinterested.  She chewed thoughtfully, wiping a glob of hot cheese from the corner of her mouth, and looked at the other people in the café.  Finally Sien said, “It’d take a lot of explaining.  I’ll tell you later.”

She glanced at him, avoiding those golden brown eyes.  “Are you sure there’ll be a later?”

He seemed surprised, halting with his cheeseburger halfway to his mouth, and blinked at her.  Elly couldn’t help but smile.  She wasn’t very good at playing hard to get, she thought ruefully.  His look was just so comically rewarding that her coolness couldn’t last long.  He caught the smile and regained his ease.  “Well, you’ll just think I’m weird if I try to explain it all right away.”

“I already think you’re weird.”

“And I think you’re beautiful, Eleanor.”

She blushed, ducking her head to drink her soda.  He was grinning.  He had figured out quickly how easy it was to make her blush.  Elly wondered if he would keep grinning if she gave in to her desire to disappear, hide herself, to be able to sit and stare at him without him staring at her.  She’d often imagined how people might react if she went invisible right before their eyes.

“So,” he said more loudly, “what kind of music do you like?”

She looked back up, and answered, relieved to be moving on to more casual subjects.  They ate and talked for the next forty minutes, chatting about general things; teachers, classmates, places around the area.  Sien was an only child, his mother had “passed away.”  Elly told him a little about her two brothers and sister.  Sien asked her if she wanted to go see a movie next Friday night, and she said yes.

They got on the motorcycle and rolled back in front of the school.  Elly liked sitting behind Sien, holding him around the waist, leaning into his back.  She was reluctant to let go when they came to a stop.

She heard a surprised voice as she dismounted.  “Elly?”

Marcus.  She turned around and saw her younger brother standing on the steps.  Marcus was 15, a sophomore at Ridgewalter.  He looked just like their dad, tall with wild black hair, and for the briefest moment she felt a zing as if her father himself had just caught her.

“Yeah?” she responded, her forced tone of nonchalance defeated by the red of her face.

“Yeah,” he echoed, in an entirely different tone, and jogged up the stairs without another word.

“Who was that?” Sien asked, suspiciously.  Elly turned back around to see him regarding Marcus as if sizing him up.

“My brother.  The older one, Marcus.  Marc,” Elly said, smiling.  She was already wondering what she’d have to do, or promise, to stop him from telling their parents about Sien.  Liseli wouldn’t like his motorcycle, and Russ wouldn’t like him.  She just knew it.

“Oh,” Sien looked relieved.  “So, um, Eleanor.  You need a ride home after school?”

“No,” Elly said as they went up the stairs.  “My mom is going to be picking us up.  Me and Marc and Eric.  My dad just got home and we’re going to have a big family togetherness dinner.  It’s kind of a tradition.  When he gets home we all go out, somewhere.”  She quieted, knowing she was rambling.  She didn’t like having to turn Sien down.

“Sure, okay.”  He sounded disappointed.  “Where’s he been?”

“What?”

“Your dad.”

“Oh.  Right.  On tour.”  She smiled, going through the doors.  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, Sien.  Bye.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

She walked away, liking being the one to walk away and be watched, this time.  She knew when she disappeared among the other kids and he couldn’t see her anymore.  And she wondered what he was wondering about her.