Chapter 2
Stanley ‘Fries’ Lewis got his nickname from two sources: one, his nearly insatiable appetite for French fries; and two, his thick eyeglasses, which led to the normal ‘four eyes’ moniker being compressed into the phonetic ‘freyes.’ He was blonde haired and a smart kid with a handsome, almost pretty face who happened to also be overweight, so because of his eyeglasses, his weight, his effeminate appearance, and his high IQ, he was a natural for kids to pick on. They often did.
Unsurprisingly, Lewis didn’t make friends easily as a child and lived a mostly solitary life. His parents brought him to a therapist at the age of seven to help him with the low esteem he had from all the teasing but therapy takes time to work and he suffered mental anguish for most of his childhood.
Lewis was a recent transfer to the high school in Bedrock, Massachusetts, outside of Springfield. He joined the robotics team, his one accomplishment as a teen at working, albeit on a small scale, with others. His try-out for the male lead in the school play ended in failure. Even Richard Burton could not play the part of John Kennedy if he didn’t have the talent, and once his turn for the audition came the director had no choice but to give the role to someone else.
One good thing, however, came from trying out. He met the bespectacled, high-cheeked, green-eyed, petite, Toni Chapin, a very pretty young woman who was trying out for the female lead.
Toni was the antithesis of Lewis. She had a strong self-image, and was gregarious, socially active, well liked, lean, and athletic. She also had the ability to get you to like her, even if you were jealous of her. There were only a few kids in school that professed to dislike her, and that was probably because they had never talked to her. The year before, Toni was the star of the school play, and she was asked by the director to try out again.
Bedrock High School was small enough that even if you didn’t know a kid personally, you knew him by reputation. It didn’t take long for Fries to become known to everyone, and for Toni to learn whom the new guy was. Although not in any of each other’s classes, the two needed no introductions when they met at the audition for the play.
“You are pretty,” Lewis said when he sat down next to Toni after he was told that he wasn’t chosen.
“And you’re Fries,” she answered with a smile that Lewis was unable to determine the meaning of. “You’re not as big as they say, but just as pretty,” she declared, now laughing.
He couldn’t figure out what the laugh meant either.
“Plus, you don’t move like a robot.”
Lewis was in love. No girl this good looking had ever spoken to him this long before, nor had one ever expressed herself in such a way. His hormones were raging. He pictured them in bed, he with his thick eyeglasses on, she wearing a two-piece swimsuit, she oblivious to his body, he on fire because of hers. Of course, he’d have to dump her afterwards.
“Will you marry me?” he yelled towards the ceiling in mock seriousness.
The rest of the thespian wannabes waiting with them gasped at the thought of her saying yes, getting married and having kids. Some of them thought they’d be pretty, others thought they’d be pretty fat.
“Of course I won’t. I don’t know anything about you, except that you are a geek,” Toni answered as loud as he.
Under her breath she asked him if he would take her for pizza after her audition.
He smiled and nodded.
She stood and walked to the stage as her name was called.
“Wish me luck.”
“Please don’t break anything, except a leg,” he replied.
The director wanted Toni to play the leading role, but she preferred to take on the part of the star’s best friend, a wisecracking older woman who drank a little too much. Toni thought it would be a more challenging and fun part.
At first, the director didn’t want to listen to what Toni was saying, but once she told him how much she wanted the part, he agreed.
Lewis saw how Toni got her way and when the two of them made eye contact, he nodded his head acknowledging how her looks and personality got people to do things her way without them realizing it. He wondered how one human mind was able to control another one so easily. She looked at him with a smile that said that she was sorry that he didn’t get a part in the play, and an expression that asked him to please come watch me. He was fairly certain that she meant those things and felt for a moment that he was in a dream. When she looked away, he asked himself ‘what are you thinking?’ He was so starved for a woman’s attention that the first time one gave him any, he was all over the place emotionally.
Why does she want me to take her for pizza? Is she playing with me, does she really like me, even a little, why do her lips and eyes smile at me? God, if she really likes me then I must be pretty cool. I’ve never been cool. What does all this mean? Stay calm. Talk to her. She seems like she doesn’t mess with people’s heads.
All of his hormones and neurons seemed to have kicked into high gear at once, and he was emotionally flying fitfully all around the room like a helium-filled balloon that spurted out of someone’s hands before it got tied.
Lewis’ soul looked like a dry, used sponge-worn, frayed and full of holes. Yes, he had put holes in people’s souls by his behavior, too, but the damage done to him far exceeded all that he had done. He was damaged.
Toni never needed a support group while she was growing up because she was fortunate enough to have loving parents and family, and possessed a strong personality. Maybe it was his eyes; she wasn’t sure yet, but Lewis intrigued Toni. She was sincere in wanting to get to know him. She was emotionally healthy; he wasn’t, but he could be fixed if she could form a support group for him.
After the auditions, they went to the pizza shop.
“Ever been here before?” she asked.
“I’ve been coming for a slice on Saturday to get out of the house,” Lewis answered. “I don’t come after school because it’s always the same group of kids on weekdays and they like to torment me.”
“Your life has a lot of unpleasantness. Have you ever had therapy to help you overcome the negativity in your life? Are your parents attentive? And what about school? You are being bullied. Won’t the principal help?”
“Yes, my parents are concerned about my wellbeing; they’ve been sending me to therapy for ten years. I’m much better than I used to be. I can go with the flow a lot easier and not let things bother me so much. I spoke to the school social worker and she spoke with the principal, but he thinks that I bring things on myself and he’s still upset after what I did to Marcus Abercrombie, plus he doesn’t seem to like me—so, ‘no’, to that question. “Let’s change the subject, okay?”
“No, it’s not ok. We need to get you more help, and you need to tell me your side of the Abercrombie story.”
“I’m surviving. What kind of pizza do you want?” he asked, ignoring the remark about Abercrombie.
“Cheese. I’m not giving up. Sometime, we’re going to talk about you whether you want to or not.”
They spent the next few hours enjoying each other’s company. Once they had a chance to be themselves, and no one bothered them, Lewis began to relax more. He became entranced by Toni’s lighthearted conversation, as she did most of the talking. She kept it lighthearted purposely in hopes that he would open up some. He did, a little, but not much. Then, she did something that nearly caused his heart to stop.
“Will you do something for me?” she asked coyly.
He didn’t stop to consider how to respond.
“Yes.”
“Will you take me to the play?”
It took longer for him to respond than she imagined it would.
Finally, after realizing that she wasn’t lying, then wondering why she wanted him, and finally telling himself it didn’t matter why, he said,
“Yes.”
Smiling, she took his hand.
“For now, walk me home before the sun sets.”
Five minutes later, they were still holding hands. Lewis was half-listening, half-walking on air with his head in the clouds. He never had a girlfriend, nor had he allowed himself the possibility of having one.
The pizza parlor was half a mile from Toni’s house; all they had to do was go in a straight line, and turn right onto Spring Garden Road to get there. They were oblivious to everything, making awkward but important small talk, gazing into each other’s eyes, feeling a tingling in each other’s hands, squashing acorns under their sneakers.
The roar of an engine reached their ears, but they heard it only in the recesses of their minds. As they reached the corner of Spring Garden Road, though, they couldn’t help but hear the car. Lewis glanced both ways and saw a vehicle moving fast towards them from the left, and a slower moving, but much closer truck from the right. Toni saw them, too. Out of the corner of her eye, she also saw a red ball bounce into the street. It looked like one the kids next door to her played with. Instinctively she let go of Lewis’ hand and began running as fast as she could.
Lewis followed her, yelling for her to be careful, glancing to his left as he ran. The speeding car was only fifty feet from them; the truck was beginning to pass them on the other side of the road. The car started to slow but there was no noise or skidding of tires. The truck driver, wearing ear buds and checking his GPS for his next delivery location, looked up in horror at the unfolding scene. He slammed on his brakes and turned to the right to avoid the oncoming car.
The glare of the setting sun reflecting off the windshield and the shiny paint on the car did not allow anyone to see the driver and no one ever knew if he saw the little girl starting to run into the street after the ball. He had to have seen Toni; she was in his lane.
Close to the child now, Toni began to scream at her to stay where she was as she ran further out into the street to get between the car and the girl. Lewis was screaming at both of them to get out of the way.
At his speed, if the car driver hit the brakes he’d skid into Lewis. He floored it hoping to get safely past all three.
Lewis turned his face towards the driver, yelling for him to stop, to no avail. After hitting Lewis a glancing blow, the car hit Toni at sixty miles per hour. Her pelvis and left leg were crushed and after flying one hundred feet in the air and landing awkwardly on her head, she was dead. The little girl was sent flying fifty feet and landed on the sidewalk in a heap, blood pouring from her injuries.
The driver of the car never stopped.
Initially, there was only the sound of the truck’s engine, but quickly the screaming of the little girl’s mother pierced the air. The shaken but aware truck driver, punched 911 into his phone, removed his ear buds, put them in the glove box, and shut off the GPS display. Then he jumped out of the truck and ran to Lewis, the closest victim.
He looked to be dead. The 911 operator came on the line. The truck driver was feeling for a pulse; Lewis had a faint one.
“There’s been a horrible accident in front of 6 Spring Garden Road, one guy is down, and his pulse is faint. I’m heading to the woman now…she’s dead, now the little girl…she has a bad broken leg and her head is bleeding. Yes, I have a jacket and blanket in my truck that I can put over them. I’ll give you my name in a minute; I’m not going anywhere. How long? They better get here soon, yes there are only the three. No, I’m not hurt. The guy who did this drove away. He never stopped. Those screams are from the little girl’s mother, I think. I hear the sirens now. No, I can’t stay on the line, the cops are going to want to talk to me, and I saw the whole thing.”
He hung up as a patrol car screeched to a stop and a police officer jumped out. Seconds later an ambulance arrived from the opposite direction and a paramedic ran to the little girl. By then the mother had stopped screaming and was able to talk about what happened as one of the paramedics assessed her daughter’s condition and the other ran towards Toni. Confirming her death, she then moved on to Lewis as additional ambulances, police cars, and a fire engine pulled up.
“He was hit by the side of the car as it went past him. He fell backwards and didn’t move after he fell. I saw what happened to him. I didn’t see much of anything when the lady and girl were hit,” the truck driver told the paramedic.
He spent the next ninety minutes providing the paramedics and the police officer with the information he had. He was certain that the car was a 1997 yellow Mustang Coupe; he knew that because his cousin had one until it was totaled. He didn’t mention anything about his possible culpability for not doing more to avoid the accident. Maybe none would ever be determined because there were skid marks his truck made when he made a last second attempt to swerve away from the car. The accident reconstruction team would ultimately figure it out. The police had no reason to charge him with anything at this point.
The little girl and Lewis were taken to the hospital. Toni’s body was taken to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy. The truck driver was allowed to leave, with a story to tell, the owner of a clear conscience.