The Tracks by Sally Royer-Derr (little readers TXT) 📕

“I guess so.” I knew Mom asked Aunt Holly to check up on me. She worried about me being home alone so much. But I didn’t mind. I liked Aunt Holly. She was fun and smart, too. She always said she was too smart to be caught by any man. But I knew she’d had her heart broken many years ago by a man she loved. They’d met in college, and one fateful night her boyfriend promised to pick her up at the department store where she worked. He never showed up. The icy roads that night resulted in a deadly crash with a semi-truck. He was killed on impact.

Aunt Holly never talked about it, but Mom had shared the story with me. I guessed she just never found another person who spoke to her heart the way he had. I wondered if Mom would find someone she loved as much as Dad. I knew it was selfish, but I hoped she didn’t.

Chapter Three

Clutching my sketchbook, I trailed through the woods the next day. I’d sketched a lot more after Dad had died. The family therapist recommended it to work through my grief. I didn’t think I’d worked through it. Not yet. I still had an aching hole inside me. Never closing, never healing. But I enjoyed sketching. It made me feel happy when I did it.

The remnants of yesterday’s rain dried up and left the ground firm under my sneakers. No need for boots today. I found a smooth rock to sit on while I spied on the tracks for Tommy. My view was clear, but the hanging branches of the trees would conceal my hiding place. I flipped open my sketchbook to a fresh, blank page. Sometimes I drew things from my mind, other times I drew what I saw. Today was one of those days. I spotted a bunch of bright-yellow daffodils growing at the edge of the woods. I would draw them.

I slowly created the outline of the flower, keeping my eye on the tracks. Forming the daffodil head and stem was easy. The intricate details, which brought the picture to life, were the more difficult parts of sketching from real life. I was sort of a perfectionist when it came to my drawings.

He showed up about twenty minutes later. I know because I checked my watch. I stopped drawing and studied him. The same clothes from yesterday hung on his lanky frame, a pair of jeans, slightly frayed at the bottom, and a plain gray T-shirt. He walked at a slow pace, from the west, balancing himself on the right track, steadily getting closer to me. A soft spring breeze rippled through his unkempt hair. I watched and he stopped, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He stood completely still, and I found myself unconsciously holding my breath, fixated on him. Then he opened his eyes and continued to walk. He didn’t look like a pervert. But they never did. He didn’t appear dangerous at all. In fact, he intrigued me.

He was nearing me now. I settled back on the rock and continued to examine him. He stopped again but this time turned his gaze to the woods. Exactly where I was sitting.

“Hey, Emily,” Tommy called. “Are you coming out or just hiding in the woods and watching me all day?”

Heat flushed my face. I thought I was being smart by hiding, but he’d known I was there the whole time. I grabbed my sketchbook and stomped out in a huff. “I wasn’t hiding,” I shot back. “Just drawing. I like to be alone while I draw.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “You any good at drawing?”

I shrugged. “Some people think so.”

“Can I see?” He motioned toward the sketchbook.

“If you want.”

He took the book from me and paged through its contents. Stopping at one drawing, he looked up at me. “What’s this one?”

I viewed the page. It was a rough sketch of Mom watching TV. Her long dark hair tumbled down her shoulders. She was clothed in her favorite pink bathrobe, the one with yellow daisies on it, and her gaze was intent on the TV screen. What I liked most about the picture was her expression. She appeared relaxed and happy. I hadn’t seen her look like that in a long time. I wish she did more often.

“My mom.”

“I like it,” Tommy said.

“Thanks.” I closed the sketchbook. “Just a hobby of mine.”

“You’re good at it. Thanks for showing them to me.”

“Sure. What are you doing today?”

“This is it,” he said.

“Standing around doing nothing?”

“Right.”

“Great.” I stuffed my book in my backpack. Black with hot-pink lightning bolts. No Hello Kitty backpack. I’m not that pathetic. “Count me in.”

We walked on opposite sides of the train track. Me on the left, him on the right. Warm sun beat on the tops of our heads as we trailed along, a welcome warmth in the slightly chilly April afternoon. New buds of grass, or maybe weeds, poked their heads out along the tracks. The last couple of weeks or so had seen a lot of new growth around the woods and beside the tracks. Bright-green blades of grass shot up here and there. One spot, where the tracks veered to the right, a patch of wild violets grew. I liked to look at those especially because the color and design of the flower fascinated me. Dark-purple violets with an insert of white, or white flowers with a splash of purple. The dark ones were my favorite. I’d take them in my hand and softly rub their silky texture between my fingers.

“I’ll race you to the fence,” Tommy said. He pointed to where the Millers’ white-painted fence started, a short distance ahead of us.

“You’re on.”

We moved as fast as we could on the steely metal below our sneakers. I knew