Free BEAST by Pepper Pace Page B

Debbie was certainly built nice, even for a fourteen year old.
     
    She didn’t talk much either and kept to herself. There was no such thing as poor white trash when you lived on the mountain—everybody was poor. It wasn’t a word he learned until they moved to Covington. But Debbie’s family was poorer than poor.
     
    One day they were walking up the hill and Debbie just sat down. They weren’t walking together, just at the same time. But when he looked back and Debbie was still sitting on the ground he went back.
     
    “You alright?”
     
    She didn’t move for a long time, then she squinted up at him and he remembered that she had dark brown eyes and blond eye brows and the fine blonde hairs around her face was damp with sweat. “Why should I get up? Why should I walk up the mountain, take care of my mama’s kids, do my homework, walk down this hill the next day, sit in school where people talk down on me? Why should I do that?” There wasn’t a tear in her eye and she was asking him an honest question and waiting for an honest answer.
     
    He swallowed. “Because you ain’t never going to get off this mountain if you don’t.”
     
    Debbie had pulled herself up and walked up that hill…with him. And every day after she waited for him at her gatepost or he waited for her and they walked down it and then later in the afternoon they walked up it once again.
     
    Then at school she started sitting next to him during open assembly. There wasn’t much need to talk but it was nice that she sat near him. And when he thought that he was satisfied with her silent company, she changed it by asking him about his scars and she reached out and traced a finger down the long one that ran down from his forehead. He’d given her a surprised look. No one but family and doctors had ever touched his scars.
     
    He’d explained about the cleft palate and though she didn’t seem to completely understand she was satisfied with his answer. Later that day she came knocking on his door and asked if he wanted to walk with her to the store. He did.
     
    And the next day when she knocked on the door carrying her school books they sat on the sun porch and did their homework together. And that is how he and Debbie Roberts became friends. They didn’t talk a whole lot, it was mostly comfortable quiet.
     
    “She likes you.” His brother Walt had said. Walt was a year older and had a girlfriend that he had been seeing since summer. “Why are you being a baby about it? She likes you, Chris! You’re like her only friend. Just ask her to be your girlfriend.”
     
    He’d blushed beet red. He thought about her all the time, he thought about her sad eyes and her long blond hair. He thought about her skinny elbows and her beautiful legs in cut off jeans.
     
    But did she think about him?
     
    “Just do it.” Walt said. He gathered up his nerves and on Saturday when they walked down to the spring to bring back fresh water he’d reached out for her hand.
     
    Debbie looked at him but didn’t pull her hand out of his. “Debbie. Do you want to be my girlfriend?”
     
    She had given him a confused look. “I am your friend Chris.”
     
    “No like…” He leaned in and kissed her and she’d touched her lips in surprise. Then he knew…Debbie didn’t like him like that. Debbie had never even thought of him in those terms. She made up some excuse to go back to her house. Afterwards she slowly stopped coming around after school and he stopped seeking her out.
     
    Not long after, they had moved up to Covington Kentucky where his Dad had gotten a job at the VA hospital. Debbie didn’t even say goodbye to him. For years he wished that he had just kept his mouth shut and then he would have never lost her friendship. Even if he couldn’t have her as his girl, he at least could have had her as his friend.
     
    Ashleigh’s friendship was about the most important thing to him right now , even though it had only been a month. S he gave him