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Mama always told me to stay away from Hayden. She said there was something wrong with him, and that that motorcycle of his was just too damn loud. I can just about hear her now, “Persephone, don’t you go near that boy. He looks like death itself.”
That’s the problem. In a town as small as Olympus, you can’t help but be interested in things that are different. You get curious. Maybe more than you should.
I see him sometimes, driving off somewhere on the back of that bike. Mama’s flower patch is right where I can watch the road, and I can see where Mama’s warnings come from. He’s a dark spot, the kind your eyes are drawn to when you know you shouldn’t be looking.
Darkness seems to pool around Hayden like a stain. Whenever I see him, he’s standing up a little too straight. It looks like he’s got an iron rod for a spine, all unyielding.
When he speaks in class, the lilt in his voice makes you think he’s seen things nobody ever wants to see, things that make his eyes blacken.
He’s got a point of view. His morals are set in stone, and nobody’s gonna move him from his decisions.
The earth seems to shake beneath my feet when I’m near him.
I pick my flowers and listen to my Mama, but I can’t lie and say I don’t watch him more than I should. It’s just that once you’ve lived a few days in Olympus, you’ve lived all the days you’ll ever have here. Something forbidden, something you’re not supposed to touch, it turns into a temptation. That temptation turns into a need. That need turns into an ache that gnaws at your heart. That gnawing turns me from my contented life of sun-kissed afternoons, and makes me do something I never thought I’d do in all the days in Olympus. Until I do.
I see Hayden’s bike unattended and can’t help but take a closer look. I find myself sitting on it, waiting for him to return.
“Take me with you.” I say, when he walks up with a questioning look in his eye.
He quirks an eyebrow, as if asking why.
“Because I want to live something different, and you’re as different as they come in this town. I want to see something besides flowers and gardens and farms. Your voice says you know things you shouldn’t, and I only know things I should. I feel almost coddled by the very air we breath, as if there’s no escape from the cycle of days that I live. I’ve chosen you as my way out.”
He stares long and hard at me with stormy river eyes, thinking, appraising. After a lifetime of deliberation he shrugs off his jacket and hands it to me. “In case you get cold.”
I put the jacket on and let him set his helmet on my head. I hold still while he adjusts the straps, and feel as if I’ve become invisible to Olympus. I’ve broken out of the repetition of the town; it’s as if it can no longer find me and bring me back.
When we begin to ride away, my arms are wrapped tightly around him. The wind whips around me, and I feel as if I’ve never breathed before this moment. Like my lungs have only been half open. Hayden is strong and immovable beneath my arms. He smells tart like pomegranates.
I still remember Mama’s warnings, as I sit on the back of the motorcycle owned by the boy who “looks like death itself”, but I can’t bring myself to care.