Hope & a Canoe Read online

  Hope

  &

  a Canoe

  Michele M. Reynolds

  © 2014 Michele M. Reynolds

  Hope & a Canoe

  Copyright © 2014 by Michele M. Reynolds

  Amazon Edition

  Edited by Jennifer Moorman

  Cover done by Pixelstudio through Fiverr.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about the author or her books please visit:

  http://mmreynolds.blogspot.com/

  [1. Fiction 2. Romance 3. Lesbian]

  First Ebook Edition, 2014

  “Well as I see it...all I need in life is a canoe,” Gracie said. “It’s my happy place. Whenever I’m upset, I picture myself in a canoe. What’s something you couldn’t do without?”

  Tember answered honestly before she could stop herself. “Hope.”

  - Hope & a Canoe

  1

  Tember stood next to a brown sign that read Moose River Campground, RV, Tent, and Cabins. The sign included a bipedal moose wearing a yellow baseball cap and green backpack. Its antlers poked through the cap and its long, brown dreadlock hair fell to its shoulders. Tember wondered what about this sign attracted families to spend their summer vacations here.

  Tember’s black hair hung down from her baseball cap and stuck to the nape of her neck. Her light brown eyes squinted in the bright, Maine sun. She leaned against a wooden fencepost, and a dragonfly landed on her arm. She stared down at the insect. When she was little, Tember believed that dragonflies were magical. She had drawn pictures of them and had her parents paint them all over her walls. No matter how many dragonflies they painted on the walls, Tember always wanted more. They even painted dragonflies on the ceiling. Her parents were now gone and so was her love of dragonflies. Now, dragonflies didn’t cause her to smile.

  Her life had come to this, hitchhiking her way into a small town in Maine. Her chest tightened, and she remembered that she was leaving this life behind soon. She was not sure where she was going, but anywhere was better than a life as her grandparents’ servant.

  To some extent, Tember was banking that this next destination would be the one that made all the other hardships worth the endurance. She was hoping it would be worth what her miserable, lonely life had been leading up to. She didn’t know where the journey would take her, but she would find somewhere that fit her. And then, maybe she could try looking for this elusive thing called happiness. Leaving was her only hope.

  Tember checked her shorts’ pocket one more time and found the prescription and ten dollars firmly in place. The paper money was now sweaty from just the few minutes it had taken her to walk to the campground’s main entrance.

  The sun beat down relentlessly. There was a pebble in her sneaker, but she was too hot and sticky to bother with it; plus, it gave her something to focus on. She stuck out her thumb as a minivan, driven by a mother with what sounded like six hundred kids inside, drove by. The mother gave an apologetic smile, stopped at the stop sign, and pulled onto the steaming blacktop of the road.

  Another car pulled up, and Tember turned her head at the sound of crunching rocks. A middle-age man with big round glasses pulled up to the stop sign. Tember refrained from sticking out her thumb. This guy fit too many of the specifications of a serial killer’s profile. He was white, middle age, and average looking.

  Sweat dripped down her forehead and into her eyes. The humidity was too much to stand, even in the shade of the Maine pines. Another car approached, and Tember stepped out of the shade and stuck out her thumb. A guy with graying hair and blue eyes stopped his big, black pickup truck beside her. He smiled. Wide gaps between his teeth were clues that braces had not been in his dental-care history.

  “Running away from home?” he asked.

  “Nope, just need a ride to South Paris,” Tember answered.

  “I guess if you were running away, you’d have a stick with a handkerchief at the end. Hop in,” he said.

  Tember walked around the back of the Ford F-250. She glanced down at the New York license plate and committed it to memory. She realized it was useless to memorize the plate because if he kidnapped and killed her, it wouldn’t matter, but it gave her a false sense of security.

  She climbed into the truck’s passenger seat, sliding into the cool air of the cab.

  “Thanks, sir,” Tember said.

  “Jeremy,” he replied. “That sir crap makes me feel old.” He said old as if it was a banned or gross word. He laughed, which sounded more like a giggle and did not fit a man of his appearance. It put Tember instantly at ease.

  She still had a knife in her right hand cargo pocket just in case. She knew it was just another false sense of security since she wouldn’t be able to stab anyone because she couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

  “And you?” he asked as he pulled from the gravel drive and onto the smooth, yet hot pavement.

  “Tember,” she answered.

  “Tember, Tember, I like it. That’s what I’ll call you,” he said and giggled again as he hit the steering wheel.

  “You on something?” Tember asked.

  “What drugs? No, I wish. No, I don’t start drinking until noon,” Jeremy said. “You look hot. There’s a cooler in the back behind my seat. Grab a drink.”

  “No, I...”

  “Go on!” he insisted. Tember reached back to a small cooler and pulled out a soda. She opened it and took a long swig. It was so cold she felt it slide down her throat and into her stomach.

  “See, you were thirsty,” Jeremy said. “So what you hitching for? I have a girl about your age. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen turning eighteen tomorrow,” Tember said.

  “Well, happy birthday. You’re the same age. If Gracie hitched, I would kill her,” he said.

  “Oh, see, I have to go get my grandmother’s blood pressure and pain meds,” Tember said. “She only has today’s pills left.”

  “She couldn’t drive you? Or your parents?” Jeremy asked.

  “No,” Tember curtly answered.

  They drove with the sound of the air conditioner and Jeremy’s fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Tember was okay with the silence. She didn’t have to fill it with trivial conversations. She didn’t want to talk about her boring life or hear about the boring lives of others. Even worse, she didn’t want to hear how great their lives were or how fortunate they were to have great luck and people in their lives.

  “Who am I kidding? Gracie wouldn’t listen to me if I told her not to hitch. Heck, she probably has hitched a thousand times already. You met Gracie yet?” Jeremy asked.

  Tember shook her head.

  “No? She’s hard to miss,” Jeremy said.

  “I’ve only been here a few days and keep to myself,” Tember answered. She wondered what Jeremy meant when he said that his daughter was difficult to miss. Her first guess was a punked-out or Goth chick. She wondered if Gracie was covered in piercings or tattoos.

  “We’ve been here about the same. First time up this way. We haven’t planned how long we’ll stay, but at least a week or so.”

  “Yeah,” Tember said.

  “You going to be a senior?” Jeremy asked.

  “Umm no, I’m homeschooled,” Tember said. “I completed all requirements for high school.”

  “Nice. Now what? College?”

  “No,” Tember answered.

  Silence engulfed
them again. Tember wished the town would get here soon. Jeremy was nice enough, but she was not a people person. A sign read: South Paris 5 Miles.

  “Look, Tember,” Jeremy looked over at her, “I’m a nice, talkative guy. I get the feeling that your family and your future are off limits. Maybe for the ride back to campground you can think of some other topics to talk about.”

  “Okay,” Tember reluctantly agreed. Jeremy was a straight-forward, transparent person, and she liked that about him.

  He dropped her at an ABC drugstore and left to go grocery shopping. Tember stepped into the cold pharmacy and wished she could set up camp there for the night. She had to wait a while for the prescription to be filled. She sat at a display table with chairs and tried to think of subjects to talk about with Jeremy.

  Jeremy picked her up thirty minutes later, and Tember quickly climbed into the cool cab of the truck.

  “Thanks for the ride, Jeremy,” she said. “I only have two dollars, but can get you more to help with gas.”

  “No way. I was going this way. Besides, that would only pay for a mile in this gas guzzler. As a dad, I’m just glad no weirdo picked you up,” he said.

  “Jury’s still out on that one,” Tember said.

  Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “Oh a sense of humor. Did you buy that in there?”

  Tember chuckled and said, “So, I was thinking either books or baseball for subjects to talk about.”

  “Well, since I can count the number of books I’ve read in my lifetime on one hand, I choose baseball. Who’s your team?” Jeremy asked.

  “Well two–Red Sox and Yankees.”

  “What? Rivals are your favorite teams?”

  Tember inhaled a deep breath because she felt her head start to ache. Despite trying to pick a subject that did not lead to her parents, it always led back to them.

  “Yes, my mom loved Boston, and my dad loved the Yankees. Being an only child, I could never choose. Who’s your team?” Tember asked.

  “Yankees,” he answered.

  “Nice,” Tember said. “Do you know the nickname for the Yankees?”

  Jeremy smiled. “Bronx Bombers.”

  “Yes, and they were originally called the Highlanders. Why was Babe Ruth number three?” Tember shot out another question.

  “Because he weighed three hundred pounds?”

  Tember glanced over at him while he drove. “He batted in that order. Do you know who designed the NY logo?”

  “No idea.”

  “Tiffany’s. Crazy, huh? Did you know that a couple of bartenders bought the team and brought them from Baltimore to New York?” Tember asked. “Do you know Jeter’s the only Yankee to be part of the 3,000 Hit Club?”

  Tember recited several other facts, stats, and awards for several minutes. Even though Jeremy got the first few questions wrong, she just kept throwing facts at him.

  “Wow, I’m a fan, but you know a lot more than anyone I’ve ever met,” he said. “How many times you been to Yankee Stadium?”

  “Never been. I read a lot,” Tember answered.

  Jeremy giggled and said, “Your parents must have done a good job homeschooling you. Gracie wouldn’t read a winning scratch-off ticket to see how much she has won.” He giggled again.

  He insisted on dropping Tember off at her site and invited her to a barbeque at his site—campsite 21—that night. She said she would think about it, but knew she would never be able to get away from her own site and chores. As she watched him drive away, she had a feeling she wanted to go see him tonight. She had just spent an hour with another human being and did not want to kill him.

  She sluggishly climbed the three stairs that led into her grandparents’ Cougar 300 recreational vehicle. She opened the door, and cool, but stale, air wafted to her. She left the two bottles of medication on the counter with a note beside it that read: Went to the pool. Be back to make lunch.

  2

  Tember found the one small patch of shade to sit in at poolside. A table tennis area, flanking the west side of the pool fence, afforded her enough shade for a lounge chair. She threw down her towel and eReader and walked down the four plastic stairs into the shallow end of the pool, which was full of kids and adults. Dads stood in the pool, waiting for their toddlers to jump in. Moms lounged in the long white chairs, sunbathing or reading.

  Tember submerged her body, turned, and exited the pool. She toweled off and picked up her eReader, her portal to another world. An adventure book kept her adrenaline pumping, a suspense rescued her from boredom, and a romance gave her hope. She read a new book every two days, and today she had to choose from the couple hundred books she had downloaded for free.

  As she was trying to choose, several rambunctious boys entered the pool area. Tember guessed they were her age, although being homeschooled put her at a disadvantage when it came to guessing ages. They traded turns doing illegal flips into the six-foot-deep water, while ignoring the cute girl behind the slushy counter urging them to stop. Tember pulled her eyes back to her book and tuned them out.

  “Hi,” a voice called from the water, four feet from where her feet poked out from beneath her towel.

  “Hello,” she said as she kept reading.

  “I’m Donnie,” he said as his smile of perfectly white teeth gleamed back at her.

  Tember sighed and then said, “Hi, Donnie, I’m not interested.”

  “Not interested,” Donnie answered. “Unique name.” He swam away and called to his friends, “She’s not interested.”

  Tember continued reading and blocked out Donnie’s clan of immature cat calls.

  “Hey, Not Interested, check out this flip.”

  “Rate this cannonball,” came another voice.

  “Not Interested, whose swimsuit do you like better?” another young male voice called out.

  Tember was sure she was only a few minutes away from one of them mooning her.

  Then one of them yelled, “Hey, Gracie!”

  Tember’s pulled her attention from her eReader and looked up. A tall redhead in Donnie’s clan was yelling with his hand up, “Gracie, come swimming!” The redhead’s gaze was focused outside the pool area toward the dirt road running along the north side of the pool.

  Tember craned her neck and then sat up to look for Gracie. Through the trees and bushes, she managed to catch a glimpse of bike tires and bare feet on the pedals.

  “Maybe later!” a girl’s voice called back, and the redhead slapped the water and smiled at Donnie and his crew.

  “I told you she liked me,” the redhead said. The other boys laughed. “She’s so hot! Hottest chick in this place.” The redhead stared at the trail where Gracie’s bike had been.

  Donnie looked over at Tember, causing their eyes to meet, and Tember quickly retrained her eyes on her reading.

  Donnie swam back over to Tember and asked, “Still not interested?”

  Tember looked up from her book and answered, “Yes, sorry. Thanks for trying to talk to me. I know I can be a real hard-ass.”

  “Hey, I get it,” Donnie said as he pushed himself out of the pool, spilling water onto the concrete deck. He stood and grabbed a towel off the fence. He rubbed it against his chest and perfectly chiseled abs.

  Tember wondered how he got his abs so ripped, if he was a wrestler or a gymnast. She knew each sport created a certain body type. He noticed Tember watching him.

  Donnie said, “I have three older sisters. They tell me about the creeps who they have to deal with all the time. You can’t be too careful.”

  “Umm, I can take care of myself. Thanks, but…”

  “Not interested. Can’t blame a guy for trying to get some time with a gorgeous girl,” Donnie said.

  Tember brought her eyes back to her book, but despite her body language, Donnie pulled a lounge chair close to her. Tember furrowed her brow and cocked her head to one side.

  “Platonic conversation?” Donnie asked.

  Tember inhaled a deep breath, powered off her eReader, and look
ed at Donnie. She was giving him some points for knowing such a big word as platonic.

  “What you reading?” Donnie asked.

  Tember grinned and challenged him by asking, “You want to talk about books?”

  “I read. I can read. I’m good-looking and smart,” he answered.

  “Yes, but you probably haven’t read a book that was assigned to you since…?”

  “First grade,” Donnie laughed. “You got me. Damn, college going to be this hard?”

  “Who knows?”

  “You’re not in college?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Donnie’s eyebrows rose. “You look like it. You’ve got that confidence going on. Well, I’m going to U of Maine, in the fall. I didn’t have much luck with girls in high school. I’m hoping that changes in college.”

  Tember laughed. “Really, Mr. Good-Looking and Smart?”

  “Not to mention funny.” Donnie flashed a smile.

  Tember laughed again.

  “Oh, two laughs out of Miss Not Interested.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just be yourself in college and drop the loser crew,” she said as she pointed to his friends.

  “Okay, I’ll be myself, but what about tonight? Will I be okay tonight?” Donnie asked.

  “Tonight?”

  “I can be myself with you at the campground movie tonight. Or beers at my parents’ campground tonight. They’re cool with me drinking.”

  “Both sound enticing, but–”

  “Not interested,” Donnie finished her sentence.

  She answered, “Yes, this conversation is quickly becoming non-platonic, so I’m going to rudely return to my reading.”

  Donnie stood and threw his towel on the fence. He walked to the pool edge, held his heart, and fainted backward into the water. He narrowly missed falling on a kid wearing swimmies. Tember waited until he resurfaced, and then she smiled and gave him a thumbs up.

  Then she shook her head and went back to reading.

  3