Page 33 of The Marigold Trail
I leave through the sliding glass door in the backyard the next morning walking through thick grass, hoping Diana remembered to pick me up at the back. I assumed she would, but what if she was out front, vulnerable to Officer Berrett’s questioning.
I hear wet grass crunching behind me. Expecting to hear one of the siblings ask me why I’m going out the back I turn and see a very disheveled Ben, looking as if he’d collected all the dirt from the treehouse floor with his sweats and shirt in his sleep. Was he unable to get a hold of Diana last night? I guess I didn’t really offer him a phone, did I? And it’s not like he had a cell phone—a detail of the eighties I may have overlooked last night.
“How’d you sleep?” I say, embarrassed that I let him stay there. That I assumed he’d work it out rather than sleep in my grandparents’ treehouse.
“Not half-bad, I grabbed the wool blanket from the piano room. I figured your parents wouldn’t approve if I snuck into your bed with you,” he says with a smile.
“I thought you went home,” I say in disbelief. I smirk thinking about how he survived an, albeit unseasonably warm, winter night in that tiny treehouse.
Ben dusts the dirt off his clothes like he’s Indiana Jones recovering from having found more than a few dead bones in a cave as we wait for Diana to pick us up. I run back into the house and peek through the living room blinds to see if she’s parked out front. She isn’t but Officer Berrett’s motorcycle stands next to his wife’s car in their driveway. I run back to Ben in the backyard without delay.
“What are we going to do if she doesn’t show up?”
“Make out all day,” is Ben’s response. I snort just as the sound of Diana’s engine rumbles as she peels around the corner and slows to a stop in front of us.
“There you are.” She looks at Ben, taking in his disheveled state. “I’ve been looking for you for an hour. I’m not even going to ask why you didn’t show up at the house last night and why you look like that,” Diana says so sweetly it’s scary. “You two made up I assume?” she asks.
I’m a bit scared to answer. I know she’s had a rough morning wondering where her brother spent the night when she forces a blanket of sweetness over what should be audible aggression.
A few people confront Diana and me about the fight in the first few hours of school before lunch. I’m too focused on figuring out crossword line #50 across to care much about the drama. I simply laugh their questions off and answer with a simple “It’s all a big misunderstanding.”
The crossword clue reads Hero Worshipper which has seven open spaces and starts with an “L.” I’m going to need a dictionary at this point to complete the crossword, so I decide to make my way to the library, knowing at some point today the one to confront me is going to be Bennette, and it’s not going to go well for me, especially after the theatrical fight display of Evan and Ben fighting over me. I’d pour all my focus into completing as many crossword puzzles as possible until the rumors dissipate and then somehow try to survive cheerleading practice.
In history class I notice Tyler’s up to no good again, running his own classroom sweatshop in the form of student mail carriers with the amount of folded notes he’s sending across the room.
Tyler fist bumps my shoulder, then opens his fist to show me there’s folded paper inside his palm. Today’s my lucky day to receive correspondence from Tyler. I quickly snatch it from his fingers.
Whoever it’s from has attempted to fold the paper into an unsuccessful heart but it is a very convincing check mark. Despite Tyler’s chaotic behavior with everything else in life, his last letter had been immaculately folded and creased. I know this note isn’t from him.
I open the letter on the desk this time. The history teacher has gone lax. He’s aware of the carrier system that’s infiltrated his third period, but since it’s run by Tyler he doesn’t have the energy to care or do anything about it. Fighting Tyler was like fighting a cactus. If you touch it, it pokes you back.
I know this handwriting instantly. It’s Ben’s.
Tyler says you can come over to his house after school so you can avoid the creepy neighbor. Meet me at the gym after cheer.
The heart he drew at the end instead of his name makes me smile.
Bennette is silent all throughout practice. I’m glad she hasn’t tried to approach me, but I’m also worried for her. She hasn’t spoken a word to Corky since the cassette tape exposé. I follow her lead and treat chitchat like it’s landmines on the floor. I stay in my place and give people the do-not-approach-me look while I cheer. I still need time to work through how I want to respond to all of this drama, so I remain silent and to myself the rest of practice.
Staying silent gives me a lot of time to anticipate the reunion at Tyler’s house. I snuck it into my conversation with Ben the night before, hoping I’d get a chance to return the newspaper clippings before the Jacobsons noticed their missing files—and just as Ben had said, it was an excuse to hide out from the neighbor cop. Ben already spent most of his afternoons working and studying over there. It would take some harder digging for Officer Berrett to find me at the foot of the mountains.
Although I’ve avoided the underground floor mines of chitchat for an entire practice, that all feels completely ruined when Ben shows up and sits on the whiskey-orange-stained bleacher steps. I feel even more exposed to the issue everyone seems to have with us.
Ben smiles as if I’m the only one he can see in the gym radius.
“You finished?” He invites me to sit next to him with the pat of his hand against the bleacher step. I feel the other’s eyes on me, and I become shy as soon as I sit down next to him. If sitting down next to him with a bunch of knowing cheerleaders watching wasn’t fear-inducing enough, he begins weaving his hands through my hair with gentle, slow movements as if he’d been fantasizing about it all day. I shove a choke back down my throat at our public display of affection.
He’s oblivious and happy. It’s cute and I can’t help but feel special. From the side, he wraps his arms around me, dangling a small chain of keys in front of me.
“You fixed your bike?” I say in an embarrassingly high-pitched voice.
“You ready to ride?” He confirms his bike’s revival with the dangerous glint in his eye. “I promise you my ride will be better than any ride from a cop.”
My mouth hangs open wide at his playful jab. He knows what he’s doing. He’s getting back at me for leading the cop on and asking for a ride in the first place. He wants to be the one to give me the thrilling experience on the back of his bike. I can’t wait.
Ben’s primary vehicle as an agent was his motorcycle. I would be lying if I hadn’t thought he looked so effortlessly cool on it, that I felt the need to wave off the heat escaping from my body, seeing him off every day after work. In that world, as his colleague, I made sure my hands stayed at my side though, holding the excitement in, and instead waved him off nonchalantly with a supportive, partnerly wave.
Here in the gym, this audience means nothing to me versus the thought of me and him on his bike together. He’s proud that the two of us are together, so I relax as they watch me sling my drawstring bag full of shoes, newspaper clippings, and a handful of crossword puzzles over my jacket so that it stays secure during the ride. None of these people except for Ben really mean anything to me in the future anyway.
Outside, my left leg lifts to straddle the bike in my heather-gray practice sweats. I slide into the snug space tucked behind Ben’s thick leather jacket and admire his Converse and my red cheer socks bunched over my Keds paired at the footrest together.
The charge of the wind firing against my arms as I squeeze Ben’s midsection is worlds away from the feelings I got on my last motorbike ride. That last ride with Officer Berrett was akin to unstable teenage curiosity—the kind that takes over and leaves you unsure of yourself and everything around you. A direct result of feeling lost from the time hop and desperate for answers.
This ride with Ben is peaceful and scenic and I feel at home for the first time in 80s-Landia. Trees become blurry cones and car tires spin circles racing in competition with the others on the highway, and the smell of gravel hits me as rocks spit from the tire turning into the mountainside.
This radiant feeling that’s overtaking me is like the sun within our solar system next to a tiny pea. I know the pea’s there, but it’s absolutely insignificant in comparison, just like my concern for my situation here in the eighties is becoming insignificant.
I should be concerned about the fact that I haven’t trained in weeks; I can feel the firm federal agent version of me slipping away to a softer version of myself. A version that would shrug my shoulders if you told me I should go back to Non-80s-Land and fix the mess that was created there.
But I wasn’t.
Not concerned at all about that little pea.
I had the whole sun in my hands and nothing could bring me down, not even the sharp snake lines Ben carves in the gravel, mucking around with unnecessary turns to make the ride more fun. I’d normally feel a little uneasy, but because he was finally mine, apathy for anything other than him takes over.
“So you're basically family to the Jacobsons now. This is where you spend all your afternoons after school right? Tyler’s house?” I say as he hands me a glass of juice and a hostess cupcake from the Jacobsons’ kitchen, making me feel like a kid again. “I assume the brotherly beef between you comes from living like brothers.”
“Something like that,” he says. “Though there’s actually not that much beef between us. We’re closer than you think.”
“Really? That’s kind of a surprise considering you don’t want Diana to date him. What if they try to go on a date all by themselves?” I playfully mock his concern.
“She can’t. I won’t let it happen,” he pauses. “He’s all mine.” Ben starts with a weighty tone but ends with sarcasm.
Following behind Ben up the narrow stairwell, I open the plastic cupcake wrapper on the way. The cake looks squishy and juvenile but tasty. We find ourselves back at the top of the stairs in the nook of the sun window atrium combo, in the very place he’d recommended Joe Walsh’s “Inner Tube” song the night of Tyler’s party. I had since then found the tape and listened to it. If galactic surfing was a thing, I might find that an occasion to listen to it again.
I land on the swivel chair next to Ben who’s laying his study material out on the wooden desk by the atrium window. Early evening stars fall into our laps through the glass sky ahead. He organizes his things, but I can tell my presence makes him want to sort through the never-ending collection of cassette tapes within the wall instead.
My swivel chair takes a one-eighty turn with the push of my foot and I end up facing the apothecary wall filled with small drawers, reminding me of the newspaper articles stuffed in my drawstring bag that need to be back in those shelves ASAP.
“Have you gone through all these shelves yet?” I ask, referring to the beloved cassette tapes.
“Tyler’s parents consider it their junk drawer. I think Tyler has a baseball card collection in there somewhere.” Now’s my chance to return the folder to its drawer.
“Can I take another look?”
“Only if we listen to the tapes while doing it,” he says nodding toward the boom box at the corner of the desk where the telescope also sits. “Find some good stuff.”
I leap out of the chair and walk over to the apothecary wall just as a crisp, cool breeze of fresh air flies in through the loose window vent. I grab the drawer, believed to be the one that previously held the folder of stolen newspaper clippings, and open it, then neatly place the papers back. As I’m doing so, a newspaper headline at the top of the open drawer catches my eye. I hover over the drawer to read the headline: “Robert Schills Golf Pro Projects His Future.” The article was written by Sandra Osmeyer, July 10th, 1983.
Schills’ long-time assistant and golf Caddy sat down for an interview about Schills’ golf tips and plans for the future. Located in downtown Denver, Schills & Sons has declared investment the next big thing. Though Robert Schills still enjoys the beauty and wonder of the golf course, he’s stepping into the coffee-in-hand world of stocks, trades, and multi-million dollar business ventures to expand his horizons. His assistant Deanna Hurley says his excitement for the future exceeds his last year’s PGA tour trophy win. She sips her coffee and gives me a sharp wink.
I feel my hands shake as I fight the thought to pull the full article out of the drawer and slip it into my drawstring bag like I have some sick addiction to pilfering newspapers. I decide against it since Tyler’s parents are back from their trip and might check on the clump of papers someone in this household discovered and pieced together.
Schills and Sons. I recognize that name from the business card Officer Berrett handed me at our second encounter. The name Deanna too. He had asked me if I knew Deanna that day.
His connection with Marigold has come full circle now. He mentioned these people and must have been trying to gauge if I knew them as well.
“Tyler’s dad should be here this time tomorrow. We sometimes watch football while I study,” Ben says as if he’s wanting to let me in on his life routine.
“What time does Tyler usually join you?” I ask.
“Just depends on who’s here. Both Ty and his dad have schedules all over the place. Sometimes it’s me just wandering around. A few months ago I accidentally spotted his badge in his office one day. Can you believe Tyler’s dad is an FBI agent?”
I pause to process what he’s just said.
“Really?” I reply. What an odd coincidence. Was Tyler’s dad—grandpa in Non-80s-Land—a retired FBI agent this whole time and we never knew?
“Yeah. Of course he hasn’t actually told me he’s an agent, but the moment I saw his badge something sparked inside of me. At that moment I knew what I wanted my future to look like. So I came to him and told him what I wanted to do with my life. He’s helping me study for college and tests with the goal of joining the Bureau—it’s kind of an unspoken understanding we have with each other. He’s offered to help me.” He sighs a happy sigh.
This was all too weird and reversed. Although I’d known him for so many years, I hadn’t known his reasons for joining the FBI in Non-80s-Land. I assumed he was qualified and went for it, the way most college students do when they like one subject more than the others.
“You’ll be a great agent,” I say sweetly, knowingly.