The City of Rossford

Sheridan sat in the lobby with his hands across his lap, his legs splayed. It was only when he yawned that he realized how late it must have been. He looked through the doors and saw Chay pacing up and down outside in the concrete plaza of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. Sheridan got up to go to him.

As the doors slid open, Chay turned around and motioned to Sheridan with an unlit cigarette. He pulled a lighter from his pocket, lit the cigarette and as a puff of smoke went up and a lone car rolled up Edison Street, Sheridan said, “Chay, you know that’ll kill you.”

“This,” Chay said, displaying the cigarette, “is not what will kill me.”

Sheridan shook his head and stood beside his friend, watching the almost empty street. Downtown Rossford was fairly empty at this time of night.

“Meredith said you got worried about me.”

“She worried about you too,” Chay said.

Sheridan nodded.

“You just go off and do your own thing,” Chay said. “I don’t guess that’s bad. But Robin ran off to do her own thing, and look what happened.”

“Robin told me to look out for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Cause you really do go out and do stupid stuff.”

“Says the guy who got the clap last year?”

Sheridan looked at him.

“Sorry,” Chay said. “But… you can’t just… you’re calling the kettle black.”

“I’m just saying you do risky stuff. Yeah, maybe I do too. And Robin… Well, that made me think about you. And…”

“I’m sorry about that crack I made.”

“I’m sorry it happened.”

“Did your parents find out?”

“God, no. They still think I’m a virgin.”

A truck headed for Route Two roared past them, and when it was gone, Sheridan said, “You know if anything happened to you that would just… That would fuck me up.”

“Why would anything happen?”

“You work for that dirty guy.”

Chay shrugged.

“Who your dad hates,” Sheridan elaborated. “And Meredith said you stole a fucking car?”

“To get to everyone after she texted me.”

“God, Chay!”

“Sheridan, please don’t preach.”

“It’s just…”

“I know,” Chay said.

Sheridan yawned, and hugging himself marveled at the beauty of the cold night.

“It’s time for bed. Time to go home.”

“I was about to head out.”

“How?” Sheridan said.

“I was going to walk.”

“Fuck that,” Sheridan said.

“You can’t drive… That girl…”

“Shelley.”

“Yeah… she drove you.”

“Meredith will take us. Or Mate. We’ll just have to go back in. But you’re not walking.”

“Alright, Big Brother.”

Sheridan wrapped an arm around him quickly, the way he used to when they were still very young and they would just walk around arm and arm, hanging off of each other lazily.

Chay inhaled, and white smoke went out across the cobalt blue air.

“God, look at that moon,” Chay Lewis said.

“I know,” Sheridan said.

“Sometimes the world is so beautiful I could shit.”

“Was I hard on him?” Meredith asked after they had left the hospital room and they were on their way back to the lobby.

“Ask him yourself, we’ve gotta give them a ride home,” Mathan said, adding, “unless you think they just walked home.”

“Don’t even joke. It’s too cold and… Well…”

“And Rossford seems dangerous tonight.”

“Yes,” Meredith said. Then, “Sheridan just makes me so mad sometimes.”

“Some might say that you had a crush on him.”

Meredith looked up at Mathan sharply.

“You know that’s not true. You know who the one I have a crush on is.”

Mathan grinned broadly down at her.

“You’re kind of pretty tonight, you know that, Miss?”

Meredith thumped him in the chest with the back of her hand.

“You’ll be lovely at my cousin’s wedding on Saturday.”

Meredith only smiled.

“Might even outshine the bride,” he added.

“Don’t you dare tell her that.”

Mathan grinned and shook his head. “No, not if I want to live.”

“Not if you want me to live!”

“And yes,” Mathan said, “you were a little hard on him.”

“He’s gonna get some girl knocked up one day,” Meredith said. “Why does he do that?”

“Some guys like to play around.”

“You don’t,” Meredith said.

Mathan went poker faced, and she said, “You don’t?” Then, “You better not, Mathan Alexander.”

Mathan started laughing and the hospital was filled with his laughter. Since they’d been children, Mathan’s laughter was infectious. In the lobby, Chay and Sheridan looked up.

“You’re an evil black bastard,” she told Mathan, tartly.

“And you’re a blue eyed devil.”

“Don’t you fucking forget it.”

Mathan caught her hand before they rejoined their friends.

“And Sheridan’s… got stuff. You know that. That’s why he’s the way he is.”

“I know he’s got stuff,” she said, looking back at their friends. “They’ve both got stuff. We’ve all got stuff. But I know my stuff, and we know Chay’s stuff. But Sheridan’s?”

“It’s that he closes up,” Mathan said. “It’s not that he sleeps around. It’s that he closes up about everything. Including why he does anything he does.”

“Yes!” Meredith hissed.

“Are they talking about us?” Chay said to Sheridan.

Sheridan looked back at their friends and said, “I’m pretty sure they are.”

“Yes!” Meredith said, leaning up and clutching Mathan’s face. “And that’s why I love you.”

Mathan laughed. “You said you love me, lady. I heard you fair and square, and you can’t take it back.”

This was not how Shelley Latham expected the night to turn out. Most of her days were spent working very hard and, admittedly, having the shallowest of friendships. Her dating life was lacking too, and over time she’d decided that waiting for Mr. Right was out of the question seeing as there just weren’t a lot of guys around smart enough or interesting enough for her. When she looked at a boy, weighing him as a potential partner, most fell woefully short. When she looked at him as a potential fun sex partner, suddenly her options blossomed. But she couldn’t run around fucking the guys on campus. Girls who did that were girls whose business went all over this incestuous little school. That left the guys at the Indiana University campus or the many tech colleges and pseudo schools that dotted the area from here to South Bend. There were always the clubs. Cornfed boys, red faced, kind of hot in a farm town way with their hair gelled, their slightly strong cologne and Abercrombie and Fitch, came up from the towns and that was always a good time to bring back to the dorm. She had a few of their numbers. Jeff and Matty she kept on speed dial. They were smart guys, guys who did a semester or so of college and always planned to better themselves, but weren’t quite sure what that meant. They hated Rummelsville or East Carmel or Peru or LaPaz where nothing ever happened, but where they weren’t discontented enough to leave. And she liked that about them too.

And then had come Sheridan. He had been walking across campus with a friend of his and he had stopped and asked her for directions. She had fallen in love with his eyes. Everything about him was pale. She wanted to say pale and soft, but he wasn’t soft. He reminded her of a cat, and she didn’t know what to do with that description. He was pale like Christmas morning was pale, that same pale color in his eyes as the sky, the same paleness to his brown hair as the too bright winter sun on the stark branches of trees. Shelley couldn’t remember where he had asked to be directed, but she knew her directions were good. He nodded. She could not help but speak to the boy whose face was half hidden by the broad brim of his cap.

“You don’t go here, do you?”

“No,” Sheridan had said. “I don’t.”

Score for her.

He was walking away with his friend. His jeans were pale too, and she could see his ass, small and cute to her. She’d wanted to stop him, to find some way to make him stay. If only she could think a little longer, she would have come up with a way.

But she kept thinking and he kept walking, and even when Sheridan—whose name she didn’t know then—had disappeared, she still hadn’t thought of a way to waylay him.

Shelley was surprised that the doors to Saint Agatha’s were open. Low golden light shown through the stainglass windows. It reminded her of Christmas, the only time that churches were open in the middle of the night. And it was cold and everything. People were coming in and out, and Shelley parked. She was too wound up right now. Wound up with the panic on Sheridan’s face, with the news of the girl who was his friend. Besides, maybe Uncle Frank would still be up. She didn’t count on it. All she knew was that she was up, and she drove to the parking lot and climbed out of the car.

If churches were open in the middle of the night all the time I’d be a much better Christian.

Saint Agatha’s was a large old church, high pillared and hung with low burning brass lanterns that gave the place a dim light from their high perches. Inside the church, the stain glass windows were only night darkened strips, and in evenly spaced grottoes saints sat, stood, stretched out compassionate hands while the votive lights flickered under them.

“Shelley?” she heard.

“Sean?” she looked down at him.

“Well,” the old priest who sat beside Sean murmured, “this is a night of miracles.”

“I was just driving… a friend,” Shelley said.

“A friend, indeed,” Sean said, making a rude noise.

Shelley Latham frowned at him.

“I was driving him to the hospital. We saw on the news that one of his friends had been attacked.”

Shelley sat down beside them.

“The Robin girl?”

“Yes, Uncle Frank.”

“That’s why everyone’s here,” Sean said. “They’re all praying for her.”

“I think,” Father Frank said, “they are all praying for themselves. Because they’re afraid.”

“Things like this just don’t happen in Rossford,” Shelley said.

Father Frank opened his mouth, but Sean said, “Our uncle has already pontificated on that.”

Shelley said, “I don’t want to pontificate if it’s alright with you. I want to go up and… light a candle. And be with my family.”

Shelley got up and disappeared into the shadows while Frank said, “Well, my nephew and my niece—”

“Great-niece.”

“Don’t correct me, boy.”

“I just think Shelley likes to forget I’m her uncle,” Sean said.

“Well, I’m both of your uncles, and it’s good to have my family here.”

“I almost think we should wake up BJ—”

“No,” Frank said. “Better let him sleep. I’ll never hear the end of it if I wake your brother up at one in the morning.”

NOW THAT WE'VE PROPERLY GOT OUR STORY ROLLING, WE'RE GOING TO GO BACK TO THE USUAL FORMAT OF POSTING A SEGMENT EVERY FEW DAYS, SO I'LL SEE YOU ALL IN A BIT.