“Mmm.”
“Now look to the south. Over here.” He moved, rotating her body. “The town.”
The first lights were beginning to twinkle from the valley, shimmering up against the darkening sky.
“If you look hard enough, or with binoculars, you can see the railroad trestle bridge, city hall and the sawmill.”
She followed his gaze and noticed the railroad tracks cutting through the valley. The trestle bridge spanned Gold Creek just on the outskirts of town.
“I didn’t think you’d been up here before,” she said, once her heart had stopped drumming and she could trust her voice again.
“I’m just telling you what I heard from some of the guys who come into the store. Come on. We’d better get back.” He rummaged in his backpack, drew out a flashlight and started leading her down the trail.
Night settled over the forest and by the time they returned to Ben’s truck, they were following the steady beam of his flashlight. Carlie heard bats stir in the trees, felt the breeze as they flew low, but she wasn’t afraid. Probably because she was with Ben.
Silly, she told herself, but she trusted Ben. It came as a shock to realize that if she didn’t stop her runaway emotions, she might just end up falling in love with him.
Chapter Three
“COME ON. IT’S not every day I get the afternoon off!” Carlie said, insisting that Rachelle drop the magazine she was reading as she sat on an old patio chair on the back porch of her mother’s house. “I’ll buy you French fries and a Coke.”
“What if I want lemonade?”
“Whatever!” Carlie blew her bangs out of her eyes and waited as Rachelle told her mother what the girls had planned. Rachelle found a way to avoid dragging her little sister, Heather, with them and they drove into town with the windows down. Carlie’s T-shirt clung to her back as she parked her car near the Rexall Drugstore.
Kids on skateboards zoomed along the sidewalk, while mothers pushed strollers and adjusted sunbonnets. Heat waved up from the sidewalk and street.
Inside the store, ceiling fans whirred, but did little to lower the temperature. Carlie fanned herself with her hand as they looked into a glass case filled with costume jewelry.
“You’re seeing Ben Powell?” Rachelle repeated, lifting her eyebrows as if she hadn’t heard her friend correctly. “But I thought—”
“I know. You thought I was dating Kevin. I did for a few weeks. We went out a couple of times and it didn’t work out. I thought I told you.”
“You didn’t say anything about Ben.”
“I didn’t know Ben.” Carlie paused at a rack of sunglasses and tried on a pair with yellow lenses.
“Not you,” Rachelle advised.
“I know.” She replaced the glasses and turned her attention back to the jewelry case. She fingered a set of turquoise-and-silver earrings, held one of the big hoops up to her ear and frowned at her reflection. “I just met him the other night, at a party. Then...well, we took a drive into the mountains.”
“Are you going out with him?”
In the mirror, Carlie saw her own eyes cloud. “He hasn’t called. It’s been nearly a week.”
Rachelle tossed a shank of auburn hair over her shoulder as she eyed the pieces of bargain jewelry on the sale rack. “So you haven’t actually dated him.”
“Not really,” Carlie said. Her time with Ben in the mountains hadn’t been much of a date, and yet she’d remembered each second so vividly that even now she tingled a little. She was determined to see Ben again. She’d always been a little boy crazy, or so her mother had claimed, but she’d never been quite so bold. Usually boys had sought her out, as in the case of Ben’s older brother, but this time, it looked as if she would have to take the bull by the horns and do a little pursuing. The thought settled like lead in her stomach and she wasn’t particularly comfortable with the role. But it was long past the days when girls sat by the phone praying it would ring. Women’s lib wasn’t a new concept. So it was time to push aside the traditional roles and go for it. Right?
They walked through a section of paperback books and magazines and ended up sitting on the stools at the back counter. The menu was a big marquee positioned over the soda machines with interchangeable letters and numbers that were backlit by flickering fluorescent bulbs.
Carlie waved to her mom, glanced at the menu, but ordered her usual, a chocolate Coke and large order of fries.
“I’ll have the same,” Rachelle said, “except I’d like a cherry Coke.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Carlie teased and she noticed Rachelle shudder as if the thought of mixing chocolate and cola in a drink concoction was disgusting.
“I thought you had to work today,” Thelma said to her daughter as she scribbled their orders onto a pad, ripped off the page and clipped it to a spinning wheel for the fry cook.