A Long Way Back to Troy

Chapter Two

I hadn't been to any of our high school reunions, which, so far, had been seven, one every five years. Trish begged with every invitation, but always I told her the same thing. No. Not this time. And when she asked, "why not," I reminded her that I had barely left high school with my reputation intact. In fact, my entire senior year had been spent watching everyone else in my class walk around with a giant question mark over their heads.

Why in the world is a girl like Jeannie Travis dating a hood like Truck Hardy? they all wanted to know.

Then, shortly after graduation—that night when I gave the commencement speech shortly before walking across the stage to get my diploma but Truck did not—we went out for a final date. The one where he broke up with me. He. Broke up. With me.

On the flip slide, he let me down gently, but I spent the rest of the summer wondering if he would call or come by. Wondering if he was still racing Tortoise down at Broom Creek, the local drag spot. Wondering, too, if he had joined the Marines like he said he'd do on our last night together. Wondering to the point that I begged my brother, Ben, to drive me to the Texaco station where Truck worked. We were taking a chance, I knew. Running into my former boyfriend would awaken every broken emotion I'd managed to keep below the surface the past two months, but I had to do it. I had to know.

Sure enough, he wasn't there, but some pimple-faced kid I'd never met informed Ben and me that "no, he didn't join the Marines. He's working at some garage up in Frederick County somewhere."

That answered that. From that day on, I never heard a word about Truck Hardy. Not a single word. He could be dead for all I knew—although a search on the internet had not turned up an obit. But one thing I knew for sure, I never wanted to return to the scene of the crime. I barely came home for the holidays much less class reunions. The first because coming back to my hometown brought back the memories tied to the emotions, and the second because I feared a new question: Hey, Jeannie ... do you know whatever happened to Truck Hardy?

Or worse: Hey, Jeannie. Did you hear about what happened to Truck Hardy?

If he was dead, which wouldn't surprise me with or without the obit, or in prison, which also wouldn't surprise me, I simply couldn't handle it. I needed to remember Truck the way he was that last night—young and full of promises. Sweet and tender. And, in a final act of love and devotion, he had given me the guardian angel that hung from Tortoise's rearview mirror saying that it had stopped working for him but had started working for me and I could "take that any way you want."

I knew what he meant. He meant the baby we thought we were going to have, the one that turned out not to be at all. I guess my nerves and living the stressed-out life of a high school senior who couldn't get into Mount Holyoke had finally gotten to me and my periods thought they'd skip a few months. You know, just to throw me off. To add to my angst. Or maybe it was God saying, "Keep your knees together, Travis. It's the only surefire way to keep from getting pregnant."

So, when it was all over, I didn't have Truck's baby, but I did have his guardian angel. I hung it from my rearview mirror, and it stayed with me throughout the summer, and during my four years at Mount Holyoke (yes, I got in), and then my two at Ashland U where I completed my master's studies. AU is also where I met Jason who would one day question why I hung the angel from the rearview mirror of every car I ever owned.

I never answered him with the truth. I simply said, "It was a gift from a school friend."

I guess, for Jason, it was enough.