Read Online Someone I Wanted to Be by Aurelia Wills - Free Book Online

“You just go out walking late at night, huh?”
    The engine hummed; the radio played low. He sat in his car and tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel in time to the music. He was wearing a black Metallica T-shirt, no jacket. A dragon with fangs, bat wings, and a snake tail wrapped around the curve of his muscle. I stood on the sidewalk and looked into his dark window. No rush, no hurry. Me and Kurt King.
    “Come on. Let me give you a lift. It’s no good for a girl to be out walking alone this time of night.” He leaned across the seat and pushed open the door.
    And there he was, waiting with his car door open for me. I got in and pulled the door closed. It wasn’t real. I was dreaming. I hadn’t even said a word. Had I said a word? Had I even spoken? I said, “OK.”
    Kurt King shifted into gear, and the car pulled away from the curb. The car’s black interior was lit up in the green glow from the dash.
    “So, how you been?” He turned the music up, then down again. He rolled the steering wheel under the palm of his hand. “Let’s just drive around for a while. It’s a beautiful night.”
    The beautiful cool night blew in. I tipped my face into it. A song I loved came on the radio. Kid Cudi. This would end any minute. That’s what my heart told me as it knocked in my chest: this wasn’t real; it wouldn’t last. Warm air from the vents blew against my knees.
    He turned into Woodland Way, the neighborhood above the junior high. Spruce Street, Aspen Avenue, Scrub Oak Boulevard, Yucca Street. Kids lived either here or at Mountain View Estates or, if they were poor, down off of Tenth like me. I knew where almost everyone lived — people I hated, people I’d never spoken to. I wanted someone from school to see me pass by in the black car. They would think,
Was that Leah Lobermeir?
    Kurt King drove straight up Pine Avenue toward the mountain. He pulled to a stop in front of a ranch house. He turned off the engine and then the headlights.
    The house was small, brick, with a big picture window. It was the ranch house where the junior high gym teacher Mr. Zimmerman used to live. Even though I wasn’t on a team, Mr. Zimmerman would talk to me. He’d say, “Leah Lobermeir, you get prettier by the day and brainier by the hour. I can spot a smart girl a mile away.” His house had been egged dozens of times, and kids threw baloney on his truck so that baloney-sized circles of paint peeled off. Halfway through eighth grade, Mr. Zimmerman quit and moved to Arizona.
    We sat in the dark car in front of Mr. Zimmerman’s old house. No lights were on. The big window looked gray and sad and empty. A loud commercial for a car dealership came on the radio. Kurt King turned it off.
    He lit a cigarette in his cupped hand. The end of the cigarette sizzled. He shook the match, threw it out the window, and stretched his arm across the back of my seat. His hand dropped onto my shoulder and then began to work its way through the thick hair at the nape of my neck. I’d never had someone else’s hand in my hair, ever. The roots of my hair felt electrified. I was rigid. “Jesus, girl, you got a lot of hair. Honey, where’s Ashley tonight?”
    His hand in my hair and the name Ashley tangled together. He twisted my hair around his fingers. I couldn’t speak.
    A police cruiser slowed as it passed. Kurt King watched it. He pulled his hand out of my hair and lifted his arm off me. He reached down and started the engine. “Let’s head out.” He moved slowly, delicately, as if trying not to wake someone. He held his cigarette between his teeth and steered with both hands. “We’ll just go on a little drive. Shit. Cop’s still watching. . . .” He slowed at a stop sign.
    Beyond the stop sign, the houses ended and the hills were covered with scrub oak. Pine Avenue turned into a dirt road that wound up into the mountains. The summer before, I’d gone to a keg party up there with Kristy. She went off with a guy and ditched me,