Chapter 7

Note: About 3/4 of this is the very first time that Hazel and Ellis first came alive on paper. I didn't know their names, or where they lived, or even who they were. I just knew that this was going to be part of a new story that I was going to write. This part is very dear to me because of that. But be warned, this is the beginning of the ultimate cheese. (If you didn't understand that, it means it gets a little romantic from here on out.)

“So how does it work again?” He sighed in frustration. He’d already explained it twice now, but I liked how he told it. I liked to hear his voice when he explained it, though I pretty much understood it all now.
“Explain it just one more time.”
I could tell he was more intrigued by my curiosity than he was angry. His eyes always gave him away. I remembered how his eyes looked when he was mad. They became a cloudy blue, instead of his usual electric blue. And his face became so twisted with the passion of his temper that it made me want to grasp his clenched fists with my small hands and unravel his fingers from their tension. I would smooth the deep creases engraved on his forehead with my fingertips, hoping he would smile at me and…
I shook the stupid romantic thoughts out of my head and looked up at him again.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked.
I smiled slowly. When he looked at me it was simply impossible to lie. I would’ve if his gaze allowed me to, but I involuntarily answered with the truth.
“I was thinking about how you look when you’re angry.”
“Oh. I’m sorry you had to see me like that. Quite a sight, huh?”
I nodded.
“Anyway, shouldn’t you know by now how it works?” “Yes, but what if someone says something and they’re joking? You don’t get a scar then, do you?” The question sounded stupid to my own ears.
“If it doesn’t hurt my feelings, no. There are other exceptions, too. Like if you said you hated me, I’d know you were lying.”
“How?”
He smiled. “Say it.”
“What?”
“Say you hate me.”
“Um…okay?” I paused. “I hate you?” It came out as a question.
He laughed until he was bent over, and when he straightened up he was still chuckling.
“That was pathetic.”
“Thanks.”
“Any more questions?”
I really wanted to ask about his massive scar that started at the hairline of his neck and trailed down into his collar. I wanted to know what words had cut him so deeply that made the scar appear. And, though it was kind of an odd urge, I really wanted to touch it.
“Well, could I ask you something a little personal?” I was surprised at my forwardness. And in response, I could feel heat starting to creep up my neck and settle into my cheeks.
“Of course. What is it?”
“I, uh, kind of was wondering about the scar on the back of your neck.” His face tightened, but his eye color remained the same, so I went on. “I was just curious about who gave it to you. If it’s too painful for you, you don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I should talk about it, really. It’s just…I haven’t told anyone about it for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” I said very quietly. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I’m going to tell you,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just let me think where to start.”
He paused briefly.
“Okay, well, you remember Katie Anderson?”
I did. She was a gorgeous girl with beautiful wavy brown hair and emerald eyes, but she had left in the middle of sophomore year to move to another state. She was always very reserved, never found without her sketch book.
I remembered watching her sketch in class before. She put so much detail and beauty into her drawings that it made me want to give up art forever.
I specifically remembered one day in an exceptionally monotonous class when she was just finishing a drawing of a boy lying in grass, suggesting he was watching the clouds pass by on a sunny day. Half of his face was almost hidden in the grass and dark, and the other half was facing outwards. He had his hands propped behind his head in a carefree way, and somehow the picture managed to come alive. You wished you could be right there beside him feeling the warmth of the radiant sun on your face and hearing the birds call to one another while gazing up at the flawless sky.
“Yes, I remember her. She was the best artist I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, she had quite a bit of talent. We were very close last year. Sometimes she’d draw me.”
“What happened?”
His eyebrows knit together. “We started getting close in the summer. It was my Mom’s birthday, and she used to draw a lot, like Katie, but she gave it up so she could make more money and support the family. So I wanted to give her a sketch of me because she used to draw me all the time when I was little. I knew Katie could draw well, so I asked her to do it for me. It took hours, but we’d pass the time by talking and getting to know each other better. And when it was done, we went together to get it framed. It got a little late, so I took her out to dinner that night. After that we got together a lot, and all the while she never knew about my…condition. We spent a great summer together, and remained good friends until school started.
“In September we started dating. We went out for at least four months before problems arose. I hated lying to her about part of myself that was so important. And she had never given me a scar before. We disagreed, but we’d never fight. It hurt me too much to hurt her, and I think that feeling was mutual, for a while at least. So one day, the guilt became too much to take, and I told her. Showed her, really. First I rolled up my sleeves, like I did with you, and showed her those scars, but she didn’t believe me. She thought I’d gotten really hurt as a kid or something. So I showed her my chest and back and even named who had given me some of the scars. That was when everything started to fall apart.
“I thought she accepted it, but she hadn’t. She was absolutely horrified and disgusted at my scars. She told her friends how appalling I was and talked about me behind my back for at least two months before I knew. I don’t even know why she didn’t end the relationship sooner. She never said anything about it until…” He trailed off for a second. I noticed his eyes had become cloudy again over his story.
“Until one night, I was sure my feelings for her had to be love. There was nothing else to describe what I felt. I took her out that afternoon on a picnic in this gorgeous meadow and told her. It was too much for her. Obviously, she hadn’t been in love with me and was planning to end the relationship soon anyway. She shouted at me for at least half an hour straight about how disgusting I was and everything wrong I was doing. She said I didn’t know how to go about a relationship at all and a bunch of other nasty things. Then she stormed off, leaving me to cope with my emotions and the bleeding wound on the back of my neck.
“When I went back to school, I tried to brush it off, but you can’t just do that. I didn’t want it to ruin my life, but I couldn’t get away from it. I was reminded of it every time I had to bandage my cut, and it seemed like everywhere I turned someone was talking about it or looking at me funny, especially her friends. They’d always make jokes and gossip about me whenever I was around, just loud enough for me to hear them. And Katie laughed right along with them and even made some of her own comments about how idiotic and repulsive I was on a daily basis. I think that’s what hurt the most, knowing that she had hidden her real feelings from me for months when I was so oblivious to it.
“Did she ever stop?”
“Not really. She would get her friends to leave me immature notes in my locker saying her new boyfriend wanted to meet me and make me feel sorry about what a jerk I had been to her. They left these about every week or so, until the time came when she moved. My wound finally scabbed after months of torture, and eventually became the massive scar it is now.”
Now my eyebrows were mashed together. I was so angry and frustrated with Katie! My throat burned and a tear threatened to slip over onto my cheek. I felt stupid being so emotionally tied to the story.
“I am so sorry. I had no idea.” I swallowed hard to avoid shedding a tear in front of him. “Hey,” he said softly, “don’t cry over me. I’m not worth that much.”
“You didn’t actually believe her, did you?”
“Hazel, I’m a freak. A freak with a lot of scars. Why shouldn’t she have been appalled? I’m disgusting.”
That was the moment I really started to think through how Ellis’s scars would affect my relationship with him. I tried to imagine him without them. He would obviously be different, maybe not even the same humble personality anymore. When he first showed them to me, I hadn’t wanted to leave like Katie. I didn’t even think about Ellis being disgusting, but my human nature to react to what I saw couldn’t be helped. He was still Ellis to me. In a strange sense, the blemishes made Ellis more of himself.
But I didn’t want to tell him what I thought. It was much too embarrassing. Sure, his scars were shocking, but I’d never have the same reaction Katie did. Frankly, I was sure I could push the fact to the side. So what if he had a strange condition that tied his emotional feelings with his physical body? I could still love him.
Inside myself my mind reeled. Had I really just used that word so quickly? I looked at Ellis, sitting there with a little bit of horror in his eyes, a horror that reflected his own grief and misery. His obvious low self esteem made me even more furious, but I tried not to let it show.
“Don’t say that.” That was all I could come up with in response. Another awkward silence followed.
“You must have lost a lot of blood.” I spoke up first.
“Not too much. It bled for a few days, but then it was just raw.”
Then it was all just a story. There had been no car accident. That was just a cover for the scar that Katie had given him. All of the blood, raw skin, and pain had been inflicted by Katie. This realization hit me square in the face.
“Does she know that she gave it to you?”
“Maybe. I tried to wear high collared shirts at first, but I got tired of hiding it. I told people I’d been in an accident, but I guess she knew better,” he said, reaffirming my previous insight. He shrugged. “I’m okay now.”
“Why were you so honest with me? I mean, you didn’t hesitate to show me.”
“Do you want a blunt answer to that?”
“Yes.”
He chuckled. “I promised myself if I had interest in a girl, and she proved to be trustworthy, I’d tell her all this before I started to get to know her well, so that she could run away if she had to without hurting me too much. I guess I expected any girl would be revolted, so I planned on her rejecting me right away.” He smiled lightly. “But you stayed.”
All his words sunk in. He was the least bit interested? This thought alone made me smile. And it sounded like he was grateful that I hadn’t left. That was a good feeling to know.
I pasted the last bit of paper onto the backboard, and together we stared at the finished product. Inwardly I sighed. It was over now.
“I can take you home now, unless you want to stay for dinner and meet my family.” He smiled again, enchanting me. “You’d rather go home, right?”
I wanted to stay so badly. I just needed the right excuse, but all the ones I had made up quickly sounded idiotic. I had to answer on the spot, though, so I just used a stupid one.
“Well, actually, I don’t even know if you have any siblings.” I wasn’t surprised that was the best I could come up with. I’d never been good with excuses.
“I have one. He’s out of high school, though. And if you stay, he might be a little hostile towards you, only because of Katie and everything. He’s afraid another girl might hurt me again.”
“Oh.”
“Still want to stay?”
“I think I’ll take my chances with it.”
“Okay, but I warned you,” he said lightheartedly.
“What’s his name?”
“Aaron. Come on, I’ll let you meet my parents awhile.”
He led me through his house, and I tried to take in every detail I could. I noticed some old pictures set up on the fireplace mantel, particularly one of Ellis as a chubby toddler. His dark hair was in a bowl cut and he wore a blue striped jumper. There was another of Ellis and another boy, only a few years older. That must have been Aaron.
I didn’t know what to expect of Ellis’s other brother, and more importantly, I didn’t know how to deal with him if he acted intimidating. The only thing I knew to do was try to act nice and good-hearted, especially towards Ellis.
“Hey, Mom,” Ellis called as we entered the kitchen. It smelled strongly of garlic bread and butter.
“Oh, hi El.” She turned and was taken aback when she saw me. “Who is this?” she said, smiling.
She was like the perfect picture of a homey mother. She was short and small in stature. Her brown hair reached a little past her shoulders. Laugh lines were imprinted in her slightly aged face as she smiled. She wore a floral dress with a pink apron neatly tied around her waist, accentuating her figure. A glass dish overflowing with homemade lasagna lay at her oven-mitted fingertips. Even her voice was inviting.
“This is my friend Hazel.”
“Oh!” She turned to Ellis, and whispered, “Is this the one you told?”
Ellis nodded swiftly. I could feel myself start to blush.
She shifted over to me again. “Welcome, dear! I was just getting dinner on the table. Ellis, would you mind setting the table please?”
He smiled at me and rolled his eyes. “Okay.”
Meanwhile a tall dark man with gray hair and a receding hairline came into the room. I assumed this was Ellis’s father. He was dressed in standard business attire, a collared white shirt and beige dress pants with brown shoes poking out from underneath. I noticed he had Ellis’s exact smile, perfect teeth and all.
“And who is this charming young lady?” he addressed me with a booming voice.
“Uh, I’m Hazel, a friend of Ellis.”
“Are you from school?”
I nodded.
“Well, nice to have you. Dinner looks delicious, dear.” He seated himself at the table.
“Ellis, would you call Aaron please?” Mrs. Lennon asked as she whisked the lasagna from the oven top to the table, which Ellis had just finished setting.
I laughed to myself about how cliché his family was. It was like the picture perfect, Leave It To Beaver family. The only abnormal thing about them was Ellis’s cuts.
“Aaron! Dinner!” Ellis shouted.
“Okay!” A voice I’d never heard before bellowed back. Immediately I heard footsteps on the stairs. Just as I seated myself, he walked in. He looked more like his father than Ellis did. Though he shared the same dark straight hair, he wore it short like Mr. Lennon. He looked big boned, with arm muscles big enough to stretch the sleeves of his plain white t-shirt. I approximated his height at about six feet, easily towering over me by at least five inches.
Ellis took a seat beside me, and Aaron beside him. Mrs. Lennon sat to the right of me, and Mr. Lennon was across from me, filling the small circular table completely.
“Aaron, this is Hazel. Hazel, Aaron,” Ellis introduced us.
He didn’t look up or smile, though I suspected he had inherited Mr. Lennon’s great white teeth and grin also. He merely mumbled, “Hey.” The word hung there in the air with silence surrounding it until Mrs. Lennon offered to scoop my lasagna for me. I refused, of course, but she said the very least she could do was pour my water, so I allowed her to do that.
The homey atmosphere made me comfortable, except for the awkwardness between Aaron and me. It seemed like he already knew that I knew about Ellis’s scars. Maybe he was just being careful, but I felt like I was being judged too quickly.
The food was every bit as good as it looked, even though lasagna was never my favorite meal. Mrs. Lennon had added something extra that my mother had never thought of, and it changed the taste considerably.
“So, Hazel, I hear you know about Ellis’s little situation.” Mrs. Lennon said this casually, as though she talked to all her guests about the quirk.
Aaron’s head snapped up immediately. His expression was of worry and a little bit of anger. I knew I had to be careful of what I said about the controversial subject, or else I would experience Aaron at an extreme.
“Yeah, he told me,” I said slowly.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Mr. Lennon bellowed, echoing Mrs. Lennon’s laid-back tone in a slightly humorous way.
I nodded as I took a bite of garlic bread.
“Did you tell her about Katie?” Aaron asked in a low voice.
“Aaron!” Mrs. Lennon scolded.
“Yes,” Ellis snapped back, “I told her.”
“Just checking.” He went back to eating quietly, though I was well aware of his listening ear evaluating everything I said.
Mrs. Lennon put a rich chocolate cake on the table for dessert, obviously homemade. It was almost unreal how good it tasted. It basically melted in your mouth. Her family was very lucky to have her as their chef.
After the meal ended, I didn’t want to leave the comfortable ambiance. Though I was looking forward to the twenty minute ride home utterly alone with Ellis, I felt a tenderness here that couldn’t very well be described, at least in everyone but Aaron. It was a very welcoming feeling, something you didn’t want to walk away from soon. Inspired by these warm thoughts, I thanked them for having me and the wonderful meal.
“Well, thank you for coming. It was nice to meet you,” Mrs. Lennon said kindly.
“Here’s your coat.” Ellis stood behind me with my winter coat.
“Oh, thanks.” I gently took the coat from him and shrugged into it.
“I’ll be back soon, Mom,” Ellis called as he bounced his keys in his palm.
“Oh dear, could you pick up some milk on the way back? We’re almost out.”
I grinned.
“Yeah.” He turned to me. “My car is out front.”
I followed him out the front door and gingerly stepped into his old green-blue Ford. It felt strange sitting next to him here, almost like a date. As silence crept over us like a cloud, it felt even more peculiar. Our personal discussion in his basement seemed a world away when we were submersed in the quietness.
“How’d you like them?” Ellis lifted the silence.
“Your Mom is really sweet, and her food was amazing. Your Dad is nice, too.”
“And Aaron?”
“Um, he seems okay. He seems protective, like you said.”
“I think he’ll lighten up eventually. He’s just worried about me. He seems like a mother, don’t you think?”
“A little.”
“So, what do you think about coming to our demo release party?”
“It’d be fun.” I tried not to let him know how much I wanted to go.
“It’s next Friday at a little restaurant we rented for the night.”
“Is it just going to be family and friends?”
“Anyone, really. We probably won’t play too much, maybe a song or two, but it’ll be a lot of fun. There’ll be some free food and stuff.”
I laughed. “Oh, that’s just what I wanted to hear. Now I have to come.”
His mouth twitched upwards as we rounded a corner onto a quiet street, lit with street lights. “I’m almost afraid Jade might pull something.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything she could think of. She’s weird like that.”
“How did Steve meet her?”
“I don’t even know. I don’t talk to him about her much. It gets a little awkward. Sometimes she comes to our practices and acts fake nice. Or sometimes she mentions my scars and how I should do something about them.”
“Didn’t you hide them from her?”
He laughed. “I wish. You see, it was the first time we were gonna meet her, at a practice. I feel so comfortable rolling my sleeves up around my band mates that none of us thought about my arms showing, so we forgot. She came in with Steve, and within the first few minutes she said something about them. We told her that I’d been in a car wreck, but there was a raw cut and a healing scab also on my arm, so she asked about those. I forget what we told her about them, but she knew it wasn’t the truth. After a few times of whining to Steve about him lying to her, he broke down and told her.”
“What did you do?”
“Let’s just say I wasn’t the happiest guy then.”
I was beginning to get a new perspective about the drummer who looked a little intimidating. He sounded like he was a pretty big wimp.
“Oh.” I said. The response sounded weak to my own ears, but I virtually had no idea what else to say.
“Back then I wanted to kick him out of the band, but Dave and Damon helped me see that if I did that, there would just be loose information about me floating around. Plus, when we hired a new drummer, we’d eventually be forced to explain about me. So from then on, we’ve all been hoping that someway Steve would see the light and break up with her, or vice versa.
“Aren’t you ever scared that if they break up, she’ll tell someone about you?”
He nodded, and said in a quiet, scared voice, “All the time. But I know it’d be better for everyone if she were gone. I’ve thought, maybe, if we could get her far enough away from Steve, and she told somebody, they’d think she was completely crazy.”
“That’s more than likely what would happen.”
“I’m glad you think so. The band thought so, too. Well, at least Dave and Damon. I haven’t discussed this with Steve. He’d probably get pretty mad.”
Ellis turned his head slightly and a ray of moonlight his face just perfectly. I could see his eyes looking sadly to the road, and the small dots of stubble beginning to build a five o’ clock shadow. He always looked very sullen when he talked about his scars, which made sense. The only thing that was associated with them was pain.
I turned away. Thoughts about Ellis’s looks and actions were beginning to resemble what Cassie gushed about when she liked a guy. I’d already established the fact that a crush was there, but these thoughts always caught me off guard, especially when he was sitting right beside me. Sometimes I’d force my own mind to shy away from them because I felt like somehow he could hear them echo through my head.
“Do you ever want to be normal?” I realized a second too late what this question actually sounded like in open air.
His shoulders shook with quiet laughter, no sound escaping his closed lips. “No, Hazel, I’ve ever wanted to enjoy the freedom of wearing shorter sleeves in public,” he said, obviously sarcastic.
“Yeah, I guess that was a stupid question.”
“It’s okay. I could probably ask a lot of dumb questions about being normal.”
We were stopped at a red light now, about five minutes away from my home. As Ellis gazed at the light anticipating a color change, I stole a glance at him again. I noticed the way his fingers curled loosely around the fabric steering wheel. His index finger tapped the wheel once, then suddenly his knuckles tightened around it and we were moving once again.
I straightened my gaze ahead, but the rushing palm trees and pavement bored me. I was so used to the view that when I saw the frequent tourists snap photos of nature, I silently wondered what it looked like to them. It was hard to imagine living in a place where no palm trees grew, and where you had to travel a few hours to get the smell of the ocean. I’d been to places where sun tan lotion and swim suits were tucked away for months on end, but I’d always been back to my Florida soon after. I imagined I’d live here the rest of my life, if I could help it.
As was getting more frequent now, my thoughts turned to Ellis. What if someday we got married and he wanted to live in a place where it snowed in the winter months? It was a stupid thought, because I knew if we were married I’d go anywhere where he was, but stupid thoughts were becoming much more common.
Much too soon we were turning into my driveway pavement, and it was time for me to get out of the car. I pushed against the door unwillingly, and with my hand on the interior of it I said, “Thanks for the ride.”
Ellis turned to face me. “No problem. Let me know about the party.”
“Okay, I will.” I slammed the door, now that I was standing on the outside of it, thankful I could manage to do that on time instead of linger there staring at his face.
I opened the door with a key I kept in my purse, and found Chris in the kitchen. The scene was oddly familiar, me coming home with thoughts of Ellis in my head, and Chris snacking on something.
We talked shortly about both of our nights, and I mentioned the party. He seemed enthused that we were invited, and reminded me again of my good deed of letting him borrow my car.
I escaped to bed soon afterwards, but didn’t go to sleep without thinking of Ellis first.