Color My Catcher: Newcomer Trilogy Short Story

Color My Catcher

  The Newcomer Trilogy (short story)

  Shayn Bloom

  Copyright 2015 Shayn Bloom.

  For more information about the author and trilogy:

  https://shaynbloom.blogspot.com

  Cover design, editing, and formatting by Kye Fehrenbach.

  Color My Catcher

  Tinted glasses shielded her from the sun as she traipsed the hot cement of summer. She had eyes for no one, and ears only for the friend that filed in her wake, the clop of her follower’s Doc Martins timid on the ground.

  “This is a terrible idea!” Sarah hissed from behind.

  Mary’s smile was unseen. “Of course it’s a terrible idea,” she said. “That’s why we’re doing it.”

  “That defies reason,” said Sarah.

  Mary played with her hair as she walked. “And that escapes doubt.”

  “I know why you’re making me do this,” Sarah said. “My whole life is just entertainment for you, isn’t it? Success or failure on my part, you don’t care. You just want something to watch.”

  Mary stopped short, turning as she did. The unbalanced inflection in her irises remained unseen behind her Ray-Ban Wayfarers. “That’s totally not what this is about,” Mary said, a lone hand clawing at her hair uncomfortably. “This is about justice. This is about revenge. This is about you taking yourself back.” And stopping only to hitch up her spandex mini skirt, Mary continued down the street without a backward glance.

  Sighing heavily, Sarah followed.

  “The past is the past,” Mary was saying aloud to the open sidewalk before her, her jelly shoes eating up the cement. “You and Ray were peas in a pod for the longest time. It’s really sad to think about sometimes. Most of us, well – the Kappa Alpha Theta girls, anyway – thought you guys had the best chance. It was Susan and Marshall like forever, but then Brent came into the picture. The world changes and friends become enemies. Take me and Chandler. We were going strong. Then he runs off to the enlistment office without so much as an opinion from my lips. ‘Oh no Chandler Clifford Johnson!’ I says to him, I’m not moving off to some base in Missouri to be an army wife at twenty years old. And then he has the nerve to go around telling everybody I slept with Harvey to get back at him.”

  “But you did sleep with Harvey,” said Sarah.

  “Of course I did!” Mary responded. “But not to get back at him. I just needed to cool off after my fight with Chandler. It didn’t mean anything. And we were practically broken up then – would be soon, anyway.”

  “You had sex to cool off,” Sarah repeated. “Sure, that makes sense.”

  Turning mid step, Mary glanced over the top of her sunglasses. “Relax your inner virgin,” she said. “We’re going to have fun. Anyway, you’ve been a good girl. You’ve been loyal through every season. I’d say that amounts to justification on our part. He’s earned this in my opinion.”

  Sarah’s dark hair framed her face, the odd swath of wind pulling strands forward so that they momentarily hid the ripples in her cheek as her muscles tightened and relaxed before tightening again. Sarah said, “Easier said than done.”

  “What isn’t easier said than done?” Mary asked.

  “Fine,” Sarah replied. “But I still can’t believe you talked me into this.”

  Mary’s eyes widened from behind her Wayfarers. “It was your idea!”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Sarah said. “It was idiotic.”

  “It was inspired!” Mary countered.

  Sarah snorted. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Yup,” Mary replied. “You know what your problem is?”

  Tightening, Sarah glanced at her friend. “What’s that?”

  “You’ve never really learned to dry your tears,” Mary commented. “You just go on crying. Not literally, of course, but figuratively. You can hang out and laugh and have a good time, but all the while you’re still just crying over everything. I’m not the only one who’s noticed anything. Beth was going on about how it’s been two months already and you just need to buck up and move on. He’s not worth it.”

  Sarah’s throat was dry. “You don’t understand.”

  “Oh yeah?” Mary asked, stopping again. This time she snatched off her sunglasses to dangle them at her hip with her hand. “What don’t I understand? That you loved him? I know – I get that. As messed up as it is, I get that. Or are you happy moping around the house all day and getting attention like a ward patient?”

  “I was so happy,” Sarah said. “We had everything.”

  “Well honest to God that’s not true,” Mary remarked. “And if it was, he had no way of showing it. Perfect relationships don’t fall to pieces, Sarah – it’s a fact of life. No breakup is intuitively a bad thing. If it happened then it happened for a reason. All forces are separating all the time. Don’t you know anything about physics?”

  “No,” Sarah replied. “But I may have to next semester.”

  “Take Walton,” Mary said. “You don’t have to study.”

  “We weren’t always having problems, though,” defended Sarah. “We were magnets for like ever. We had something real! I’m so embarrassed to admit this, but I was trying to figure out when he’d propose. At exactly a year? Two, maybe? I used to spend serious time debating when he would do it. I’m so ashamed by everything that’s happened. We were so close to having it all.”

  “It all,” Mary repeated darkly. “That’s the problem with everybody these days. High hopes lead to high disappointment. If you go into life and relationships without expecting much you can only be pleased when anything happens.”

  Sarah said, “Maybe that’s good enough for you, but I want more.”

  “You don’t even know what you did wrong,” Mary added.

  “No,” Sarah agreed. “I don’t.”

  “Well ask the loser,” Mary suggested. “Ask him to his face. See what he says.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sarah.

  Mary coughed so as to hide her smile. “You know you want to.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “I kind of do I guess.”

  Mary flicked a fly from her Wayfarers. “Be ready for the worst. Raymond has never had any trouble getting girls interested. You know – you had to fight them off him tooth and nail. How you got favored I’ll never know.”

  “Hey!” Sarah said. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing!” Mary said quickly. “It’s just that you and Ray are very different people and always have been. He’s a tattooist and you’re a, a –”

  “A lame psychology student,” Sarah finished for her. “You didn’t have to put it like that.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Mary defended. “I was going to say booky, which sounds right. You two are from opposite spectrums. Maybe that’s what got him interested in the first place. You were different, not like the other girls. They’re all waitresses and wannabes. You’ll be off to graduate school soon and then to Ph.D.”

  “I’ve waited tables,” Sarah muttered.

  Mary sighed audibly. “You’re missing the point. You were different and Ray liked that, and more likely than not it’s that same difference that’s now making him uncomfortable. He wants to be the big shot, and since you guys started going out it’s probably become a little too clear that you’re going to upstage him.”

  They turned onto Roland Avenue. Here streetlamps sprouted from the pavement like trees and eyes were besieged by shop windows, their interior menageries aflutter with still objects. The chairs and stilt-legged menus of outdoor cafés created the necessity for detours here and there. Mail boxes and tied up bikes cluttered the sidewalk still f
urther, inspiring the two girls to cross the street.

  “We’re getting close, aren’t we?” Mary asked.

  Sarah nodded.

  “I love Hampden in the summer,” Mary remarked. “It’s so distracting.”

  Sarah didn’t respond. Nerves were beginning to eat away at her resolve, casting her decisiveness into the wind. She swallowed loudly and then slowed her pace beside her friend, her thoughts clawing at excuses. Mary, however, was walking downwind of her and knew exactly what was happening.

  “Relax,” Mary instructed. “This will go fine.”

  “What if it doesn’t, though?” Sarah asked. “Huh? What then?”

  Mary shrugged. “Tomorrow is another day, and rumor has it another one will follow after that. For once just let it go. Just let him go. I can’t even begin to imagine how exhausted you must be all the time. It has got to be tiring to be bound to your emotions 24/7. You seriously need to have a laugh, and that’s why we’re here.”

  “If you say so,” said Sarah.

  “I say so,” Mary replied.

  A block later Mary stopped to buy a newspaper from a street vendor, and a block after that they slowed their pace and surveyed