Laura Miller - By Way of Accident

“Amy.” I stop at her locker. I’m nervous. I’ve learned that nerves are little things that just kind of creep up on ya — mostly when you’re not really expectin’ them.

Her eyes land square on me, and it’s as if my darn words just float away. And for a second, I just stare at her, prayin’ they come back. And thankfully, they do, just before it starts to get too awkward.

“You wanna go fishin’ with me Saturday?” I ask.

“Fishing?”

“Yeah,” I say. “We’ve got a little pond behind our house.”

She smiles and squeezes the text book she’s holding to her chest. I try not to look at her chest. “Okay.”

“Okay, you will?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’d like that.”

“Good.” My smile grows into a big, goofy grin before I can stop it. “Good,” I say again for no particular reason.

It’s Saturday mornin’. I get Grant’s older brother to drive to Amy’s house. It sucks not havin’ a license yet. Who the hell made sixteen the magic age? Hell, I’ve been drivin’ things since I was eight, and it wasn’t until I was eleven that I learned I wasn’t supposed to be. The day I learned that, my dad and I were pickin’ up a tractor part for Grandpa. And while Dad threw the part onto the back of the truck, I got behind the wheel. A few seconds later, Dad got into the passenger’s seat. And we got damn near all the way to the edge of that parkin’ lot before he told me to stop the truck. He was all in a panic. I thought he was havin’ some kind of attack or somethin’.

“We’re in town,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You can’t drive in town.”

“I can too. Town’s highway is just like any other highway.”

“No, I mean you’ve gotta be sixteen to drive in town,” he said.

“Sixteen? But I’m just as tall as some sixteen-year-olds; that shouldn’t matter.”

Dad got out and walked to the driver’s side. So, I reluctantly scooted over to shotgun.

“It doesn’t matter if you can reach the pedals, son. It only matters that you’re sixteen. It’s the law.”

I remember bein’ quiet for a little bit, chewin’ on the idea. Then I eventually came to the conclusion that town laws were way stranger than country laws.

But anyway, the law says I can’t even pick up a girl to go fishin’, so now I gotta pay Big Justin over here ten of my hard-earned dollars to go a couple miles.

We pull up to Amy’s house, and she comes out wearin’ jeans and a sweatshirt that says somethin’ about pink on it. Her hair is down and in waves hangin’ over her shoulders. She smiles at me when she catches me lookin’.

I get out of the truck, and she jumps into my arms and gives me a hug. I wasn’t quite expectin’ that, but I’ll take it. She feels good in my arms. And she smells good too.

“Hi,” she says. She pulls away from me, and I watch her make her way over to the passenger’s side of the truck.

“Hi,” I say, standin’ there like a damn opossum in a flashlight beam before I decide I should follow her.

She climbs into the truck and scoots to the middle.

“Hi, I’m Amy,” I hear her say to Big Justin.

Big Justin smiles shyly and mumbles his name — minus the Big part. He’s two years older than us. You’d think he wouldn’t be so damn nervous around her.

I climb into the truck next to Amy. And then she scoots closer to me and doesn’t stop until we’re touchin’. It’s funny, and I don’t think I can really explain it, but I feel safe around Amy. Maybe that’s what fallin’ slowly for someone feels like. I wouldn’t know. I’ve only ever fallen fast.

The trip to my house is pretty short. We don’t live too far away from each other. She lives on one side of the city limits; I live on the other. On the way, we mostly talk about how our days went. Big Justin doesn’t say a word. I can’t tell if he’s still nervous or just disinterested in our conversation. And I’m still just gettin’ used to this whole datin’ thing. With Brooke, I didn’t give too much thought to anything; I just did what I felt like doin’. Now, though, I feel as if it’s a whole different ballgame — as if all of a sudden, there are rules. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid to say the wrong thing. I’m afraid to scare her away. I’m afraid of Rick Calloway. So, after I pay Big Justin his ten dollars and he drives away, I breathe a sigh of relief just starin’ at the pond. I can’t help but feel within my element here. There’s somethin’ about being this close to water and about fishin’ that calms me.

I spread out a blanket; I figured she might like it better than the grass. Then we both sit down on it, and I help her bate her hook. The pole is really my sister’s, but she won’t notice it’s gone tonight. Amy squeals a little bit when I put the worm on the hook, but she calms down when I put my arms around her to help her cast out her line.

“And that’s it,” I say, releasing the pole to her keeping.

“I just hold onto it?” she asks.

I nod my head and point to the little red and white bobber in the water. “Until that bobber out there starts movin’ or you feel a tug.”

“Then what do I do?”

“You wait a second. Then you give it a good tug, to make sure the fish has got the hook.”

She looks so serious all of a sudden — as if she’s really memorizing every step. And for the first time, I realize serious looks pretty darn cute on her. I smile under my breath and stretch out my legs in front of me. Amy’s quiet again, and my eyes are stuck on my bobber restin’ on the water.

“You ever think about what you’d miss?” I don’t even know why I ask it. Maybe I’m just curious. Maybe fishin’ makes me think back every now and then.

I feel her hot gaze on me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you die. What do you think you’d miss about life?”

She doesn’t say anything, so I take my eyes off the bobber to look her way. She’s wearin’ a funny face now — as if she’s suspicious of my question or me or somethin’.

“River, I don’t think you’re supposed to think about things like that.”

I keep my eyes on her for another second before droppin’ my gaze completely. “Yeah,” I agree, noddin’ slowly. “Probably not.”

We’re both quiet again, and my attention gradually returns to that bobber floatin’ out there on the water. “But all the same, I think I’d miss fishin’.” Grandpa was right when he said it calms the nerves.

I don’t look at her, but I can tell she’s lookin’ at me.

“River, let’s talk about something happy.”

At last, I allow my eyes to shift from the bobber back to her. “Okay,” I simply say. She looks confused and almost sad. I don’t tell her that thinkin’ about what I’d miss actually does make me happy or that it makes me want to live. And I sure as hell don’t tell her I learned that lesson from a girl — I used to know.

“So, you and Amy are a thing now, huh?”

“Where’d you here that?”

“Grant,” Tim says.

I twist the cap off the bottle in my hand. “Uh…yeah, I guess,” I say, even though playin’ it back, it kind of sounds as if it’s a question.

“Well, are you or aren’t you?” he asks.

I nod my head. “Yeah, we are.”

“She’s hot,” he says, fiddlin’ with the bill of his cap.

I give him a serious look. “Watch it.”

“What? I’m just sayin’ what we’re all thinkin’.”