Page 4 of Chase
I manage to stop my laughter, my breath hitching slightly when I notice just how close he is now.
“I’m Yasmin. But I need to go. My dad messaged to tell me that he wouldn’t be home to take my sister to her first day at school, so I need to go home and break the news to her and make sure she gets ready. It’s our first day today and I know she’ll be nervous.”
“Which school are you attending?”
I don’t know if it’s safe to give out more personal details, but I guess if he goes to school he’s bound to find out. “Canary Bay High. I also need to figure out where I am.” I say pulling up the map on my phone.
“You don’t know where you are?” Chase asks curiously.
“Nope, not a clue. We got here late Friday night and I have a terrible sense of direction. So I dropped a pin.” I zoom in and find my location on the map.
Turns out I’m only a few houses away from home.
“You dropped a pin?”
“Yep.” I’m don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing that Chase lives within walking distance to my house. I bend over to pick up Daisy’s lead and inhale deeply as I do, making the most of what his smell does to me. Letting it blanket me in the eerie calm I’m not use to.
Quietly wishing I could bottle it up and take it with me today to help with the nerves of starting a new school.
I step back and for a moment, I don’t think he’s going to let me leave. It’s as if he wants to say something else. But he lets me walk away. As I turn the corner I hear him say, “I guess I’ll be seeing you, Yasmin.”
God, I hope so. I know I said I didn’t need to make friends. But when friends look like that and make me feel like he just did, it might make the next few months bearable. It might give me a chance to start to figure out who I am again.
Chapter Two
Yasmin
I walk Daisy across the street and up our driveway, remembering that I had a second message on my phone.
Once we enter the house, Daisy takes off through the kitchen and out the back. I pull my phone back out to check the time before I call up the stairs. “Millie, are you awake?” Not expecting a response, I check the text just as she calls out something about getting in the shower.
Smalls:Yo Shorty, good luck today! You’ve got this. Hug Mildred for me.
I smile at my phone. Smalls was an unlikely friend. I hated him at first because Dad showed more interest in him than he did with Millie or I.
Smalls was busted boosting cars on more than one occasion. Dad felt sorry for him. He used to get called to Smalls’ house all the time. His parents weren’t nice people and he had a rough start in life. But when he was put into foster care, he got lucky. He’s been with his foster mum since.
They moved in with her boyfriend and his kids. I feel for Smalls though because he has a complicated relationship with the daughter, and she’s just been shipped off to a boarding school in England.
I first met Smalls when Dad brought him around one day when I was twelve to help restore my first car a ’68 Volkswagen Beetle. I hated him then. I hoped to restore that car with my dad, not him to do it with Smalls.
I hated that Dad showed him more interest than he did to Millie or me. I think I was jealous of his relationship with my dad, but as I got to know him, I realized Smalls had a rough start in life and that was why Dad cared about him that much. When Smalls convinced my dad to let me help them restore the Beetle, it sealed our friendship. After a while though, Dad stopped helping and it was just Smalls and I that worked on Wander.
By that time, it didn’t bother me anymore. Dad wasn’t in the picture, but at least he gave me an older brother in a way.
Smalls didn’t take the news of us moving away well. He knew it was the right thing for us though. Especially me. There was no way I could stay in that town after what happened.
Smalls was my only friend even though he’s three years older than I am.
I want to tell him what happened this morning and a text just won’t cut it. I miss him already. I tell him everything, and I feel like he’ll be able to shed some light on why I’m feeling the way I am. I hit call and wait for the phone to connect.
“Awww Shorty I’m flattered, miss me already?”
I scoff at him while rolling my eyes. Typical Smalls. “Of course, I do, but that’s not why I’m calling. Something happened this morning. Well, more than one thing happened actually.”
“How? You’ve been there for like 2 minutes? Who do I need to kill?” Smalls had a hard time holding back his anger when he found out what happened. I’m pretty sure he would kill someone for me if I needed him too. Or at least help me hide the body.
“Ha ha. No need to kill anyone. First up, I had a night terror again, so I took Daisy for a walk. But I dropped the lead and she took off up someone’s driveway. When I went to get her, she was wagging her tail, getting pats off a stranger.”
