The return...

After I get off the phone with Renae I try to sleep, It is 10:30. The Sunday papers will continue to get larger and larger until thanksgiving when they are the size of a Nativity scene manger. I am trying to sleep. Tomorrow I will be the crucifier for the 8 o’clock service at church. Tomorrow I will rise when my mom calls my name by switching my light on and going outside, counting the papers to make sure we are not short walking up and down the cement arteries of Sherman and Moss avenue. I have not run on my leg since Regionals. Coach has told me just to lay off it for a month. He says around the first week of December I can begin taking it easy, maybe jogging over to the cross-country course at Madison park and doing the course once or twice a week. I am thinking about how, no matter how many hours I invest studying at home on the two classes that I have no interest towards I just can’t sate the teachers’ demand. I am sick of working three hours a night when I want to be studying French so I can learn how to master it and go to Paris someday.

I am thinking about the minty field of clover that is Renae’s lips. I am thinking how I couldn’t ask for a cooler a girlfriend.  

The voice of my sister Beth carols down stairs. She is telling me that I have a phone  call.

 

“Tell your girlfriend not to call you so late. You don’t want to wake mom or dad up. We have church tomorrow.”

 

I have already kissed Renae Holiday tonight. Apparently she wants me to tuck her in.

 

“Hey angel. Do you want me to kiss your halo, again?”

 

There is a pause. Then someone says my name. A familiar feminine alto. She refers to me as Dave.

 

“Dawn?”

 

“Hey!!!”

 

The last time I heard from Dawn Michelle was appx a month ago when she told me she was getting drunk going out and giving head to high school drop outs. A week later, the night after I returned from Mattoon I tried calling her house only to have who I can presume is her mom inform me that Dawn doesn’t live here anymore/

 

“Dawn. Are you okay? I’ve been worried about you.”

 

There is a silence. For a second I think that maybe it is not Dawn Michelle but maybe Tina somehow gleaned my number.

 

“Yeah, My mom told me a couple of weeks ago some kid called who sounded really young. I figured it had to be you.”

 

I take offence that Dawn Michelle’s mom thinks I am really really young. I want to tell her that I am not that young. I want to tell her that I hav a cute girlfriend who I spent last night making out with all throughout Westlake center an environs. I want to tell her that I am maturing from last summer. That I am growing sideburns. I want to tell her how I failed this season all summer but not to worry because my body is healing and, as Coach says, I should be thankful that this injury riddled me my FROSH year and not my senior year when I am state bound and battling with some of the fastest athletes in Illinois.

I want to tell her all this. Instead I am worried about her.

“I’ve been worried about you. I tried calling your house a couple of weeks ago and your mom said that you no longer lived there. Are you okay?”

 

Dawn says yeah. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. My parents kicked me out.

 

“!!!!!”

“It’s okay. I’m back home. We worked things out. I stayed at Dawns house.”

 

At first I am addled then I realize like all my best friends are named Dave all of dawn's best friends are named dawn.. She then says perhaps that’s why I thought abbot you. Betsy still thinks about you.”

“She actually has a recording of the Music Man and she keeps watching the parts from when you are on stage. She says you are her favorite. She says when she grows up she wants to marry Charlie and take traveling salesman railroad trains across the country and sell anvils.”

I am smiling.

 

“Please tell Betsy hi for me. I think the world of that kid.”

 

“That’ll be a little hard. Dawn and I got into another fight and then she threw me out of her place. We got into an argument last summer when I was hanging out with Quinn and didn’t talk for about a month. When I got kicked out she took my side but then got pissed because she said that AJ is a bad influence. So she kicked me out.”

 

Shit.

 

I picture Dawn calling me from the payphone outside the Southside Mission. I picture her with a green thermos living in the streets.

 

“Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?”

 

“yeah, I'm fine. I actually went back home and worked things out with my folks. We actually had a really cool heart-to-heart, It’s all good now. I think my folks were just really nervous about losing their little girl.”

 

I don’t know what to say. I say yeah.

 

“I’m not a little girl anymore Dave.”

I tell Dawn Michelle that I don’t think she ever was one.

I tell her that it is really good to hear from her again. I tell her that I miss her.

She says the same.