Stranger Things, Part 2

CHAPTER FOUR

Stranger Things, Part 2

Two days after my night in the woods, dad surprised me with a car. I know! A freaking car! And it had been such a struggle just getting him to pay for driving lessons last year.

“Driving before you’re eighteen and responsible just leads to accidents, Jess, and I’m not comfortable with you driving in the city with all the other drunk drivers who populate California’s teenage driving population,” he’d once lectured.

But now, mere days after we’d left Orange County behind, he actually got me a car... a car! Yeah, I still can’t believe it.

“Okay, who are you and what did you do with my dad?” I joked, although I was grinning from ear to ear. Seriously... a freaking car!

The beetle parked in one of the house’s two parking spaces wasn’t brand new. It was secondhand, early two-thousands, according to dad. Its yellow paint job might have once been canary yellow, but it had faded over the years. Still, it was obviously well-maintained as a quick inspection around the body revealed no scratches on my brand new baby. Yep, I was definitely naming my beetle ‘baby’.

“I love it,” I said, breathless.

“I thought you might,” he chuckled.

Of course, owning a car had a lot of strings attached to it. Most of them had to do with driving June to and from school and her other extracurricular activities, but I didn’t mind those. I just got a car!

We went out to celebrate our move — which I was actually starting to enjoy thanks to my new ride. Dad even let me drive the ten blocks it took to get us to midtown.

Forest Hills was kind of big for a town in the boonies of Oregon, and midtown made that clear enough. A wide street cut into the heart of town with storefronts ranging from a retro arcade and cinema house to quaint little book stores and diners to either side of it. There was even a Wiccan store called Raven’s Banquet on the opposite side of Fiddles, the diner dad took us to.

Fiddles’ owner was called Big Bear. He was a bald-headed Native American man with a scruffy beard who was just about the right size to make his nickname appropriate.

He was also one of dad’s old friends, which is why they’d shared their super lame handshake when they met inside the diner. It was a little embarrassing — and June said that out loud — but I was actually glad to see dad smile the way he did when he saw Big Bear. For just a moment, he wasn’t the weary contractor he’d been back in Orange County, single father to two very willful redheaded daughters. He was just Jono — short for Jonathan — former star running-back for the Forest Hills Ravens, which I gathered from their conversation was the name for the high school football team.

Big Bear gave me and June what I’d call the definitive definition of a bear hug where June and I were squished together and unable to breathe for those few seconds. Afterward, he sat us down on what he called, “The VIP table,” at the far end of the diner, and then joined us for brunch.

On the way to the table, I noticed three girls around my age sitting two booths down from us give dad sideward glances in that way girls do when they think someone’s hot. Eugh... it made me want to barf.

Sure, my dad took great care to keep himself fit, and he might be good-looking to people who weren’t his daughters, but, ugh, just ugh. He was ancient, and dad.

One of those girls — the skinny, tan-skinned, raven-haired one with the dark eyeliner — caught me staring, but she didn’t give me the stink eye which was the usual reaction most pretty girls gave me. She gave me a wink, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

The food was great, and Big Bear and dad goofing around like they were kids again was pretty fun to watch, too.

Midway through her stack of bacon-flaked pancakes, June was already chatting with our chef like they were old friends. She was such a social butterfly, and that made me wonder why I wasn’t.

“Why’s it called Fiddles?” June asked in her perky, future cheerleader voice.

“I used to be a fiddler before I was a chef,” Big Bear explained.

“Fiddler of a violin or are we talking the other kind,” she teased.

“Why not both?” Big Bear winked. “Want me to teach you?”

“Sure, but I want to learn the other kind first,” June said, grinning.

“Hey, don’t give my thirteen-year-old any weird ideas, man,” dad sighed, prompting Big Bear and June to laugh out loud at his expense.

Eventually, their conversation turned to a woman named Ellen, which I secretly knew was dad’s dead ex-girlfriend, and it was like watching a scene turn from full color into one that was suddenly black and white.

They didn’t say anything that might have alarmed me or June, but they did talk about the funeral, and how Ellen and her daughters, all three of whom were dead now, were all buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery by the north end of town.

“I might make a visit soon,” Big Bear glanced over to me and June to make sure we weren’t paying too much attention to them before continuing, “and pay my respects to her.”

“I, um,” Dad cleared his throat, “think I’ll go with you.”

A shadow passed over dad’s face. It was a kind of remorseful look I hadn’t seen since mom passed. 

“Don’t go alone, alright, Bear?” Dad pressed. “We’ll go together.”

“I wouldn’t dream of going into that place alone, Jono,” Big Bear chuckled nervously.

There were all sorts of red flags in that brief conversation, but I didn’t know how to ask about them without revealing that I’d been snooping through dad’s mail.

Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw someone pass by the window to my left. It was pretty brief, but I could almost swear it had been a tan-skinned boy with wavy, dark hair.

“Um, I’ll be right back...” I said as I stood up. “There’s a store I’ve been dying to check out.”

And then I was moving swiftly through the diner and out its front door with dad, June, and Big Bear giving me that confused stare people give when they don’t know what just happened.

I found him standing on the curb of the intersection that cut into midtown’s main lane about four stores away from Fiddles. He was waiting for the red light to turn green so he could walk across it to reach the other side of midtown’s lane of shops.

“Ollie!” I called, but he didn’t respond.

I wasn’t sure if he heard me and was just ignoring me or if he was too preoccupied to notice me. I hoped it was the latter. The alternative, him trying to forget I existed, would sting pretty badly.

The light in front of Ollie just turned green, and he was already stepping off the curb by the time I noticed something strange. The light on the other lane, the one that cut across midtown, was also green.

Ollie’s head was turned downward, though, and I didn’t think he noticed that the other traffic light hadn’t turned red yet.

“Wait—”

From the corner of my left eye, I watched as a truck appeared on the road. It was speeding toward the intersection, and it was pretty crazy that Ollie didn’t notice it.

Then I felt this prickling feeling at the top of my spine, the kind that sent shivers running along my skin. And I found myself rushing forward and chasing after Ollie just like I had two nights ago when I rushed to save him.