Hillari's Head

By Tim Stutler

Paralegal Kristina Orris has moved to San Diego seeking a new life—a normal life. She is burdened by the memory of Hillari, a sister with an oversized head and disfigured face. Home-schooled by a protective single father, Kristina herself had a vexing speech impediment and rarely left the house while growing up. But after her dad died, she knew she couldn’t stay. Kristina dreamed of being an attorney. Pursuing such a goal would prove difficult for any cloistered, mumbling orphan; but it would be impossible yoked to Hillari. At 18, Kristina abandoned her home, her past—and Hillari.

Now, eight years later, Kristina meets attorney Gideon “Duck” Ducker, “the single homeliest man she had ever laid eyes on.” But she instantly bonds with the warm, self-effacing lawyer. Kristina takes a job at Ducker’s law firm, where the two are thrown into the most tumultuous and intriguing case of their lives. Kristina thrives. Only one thing prevents her from becoming the confident, fulfilled woman she longs to be: the swelling burden of guilt and shame over her past. But is it too late to redeem herself?

Alternately touching, humorous and heart wrenching, Hillari’s Head is about family, intimacy, resilience and, ultimately, acceptance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Stutler
• Release date: Jul 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301481569

Tim Stutler

Tim Stutler is a California writer, lawyer, and humor blogger (timstutler.com/blog.html). His second novel, HILLARI'S HEAD, was published in the summer of 2013. His first, DEAD HAND CONTROL, was released in paperback and dust jacket forms in 2003 and in Kindle format in 2011. Born and raised in Ohio, Stutler enlisted in the navy after high school and sailed the Pacific for five years. Following his 1981 discharge he enrolled at California State University, Fullerton, graduating in 1984. Stutler then attended UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, where he earned a juris doctorate in 1987 after completing his 3L year at Harvard Law School. He served as a member of the CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW and an editor of the HARVARD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REVIEW, and has edited or contributed to other professional, scholarly and general-interest publications. Stutler is presently a Deputy City Attorney for the City of San Diego. He has held a number of other positions over his career, including dishwasher, burger flipper, taxi driver, sailor, soldier, law firm partner, Assistant United States Attorney, administrative law judge, and municipal court judge pro tempore. In addition to writing and practicing law, Stutler is a distance bicyclist and enjoys cooking. He and his wife Marilyn live in San Diego, California. They are proud parents of an adult son.

Book preview

HILLARI’S HEAD

a novel

By

Tim Stutler

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*******

Copyright 2013 Tim Stutler

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

http://timstutler.com/index.html

With love to Marilyn, my wife.

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Hazel White, for your generous time and guidance, and all of my friends who kindly reviewed and critiqued my drafts. I am particularly grateful for the substantial creative input of Jane Muir, Lori Padilla, Doug Keehn, Joanne Jao, Todd Tappe, Lourdes Duran, Steve Chu, Kathy Steinman, Beth Clukey, Michele Kenney, and Peter Crockett.

Table of Contents

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

PART II

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

PART III

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Part I

Chapter 1

Hillari’s head was huge. I’m not talking Elephant-Man huge or anything like that. But it was unnaturally large—bigger than any other girl’s head I’ve ever seen. Bigger than most guys’, too. And it caused her lots of problems. She had to wear pullover blouses with big neck holes or shirts that buttoned, because her head stretched out everything else. And she always said those one size fits all hats were a cruel hoax. Hill did not like hats.

Kristina Orris cradled her chin in her hand and read what she had typed. She had never blogged before, and wanted to avoid the subjects that girls her age usually wrote about: careers, personal growth, fashion, and men. Kristina didn’t feel she knew enough about those topics to say anything insightful or even particularly interesting. But she knew Hillari, and wanted to get her story right.

She began tapping on the keyboard again. The strokes were slow, deliberate, as she sounded out each word.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a big head. It can actually be a good thing. How do you think Vanna White got her job turning over letters on Wheel of Fortune? It wasn’t because she had some special intimacy with the alphabet; though maybe she did, for all I know. No, some offstage employee would light up the right letters; so they could’ve hired anyone to flip them over. But the show’s producer, Merv Griffin, saw that Vanna had something special—an enormous cranium. Merv said all the biggest stars in Hollywood had huge heads, like Joan Crawford and Marilyn Monroe. And they were beautiful. Vanna, too. Big heads are photogenic.

Kristina had never actually seen Vanna White, or any other celebrity, in person. But Hillari had been around since she could first remember, and Kristina thought she was pretty enough—at least initially.

Hill had thick Indian-red hair, smooth skin, and naturally coral lips so vivid that she didn’t need lipstick. She was my sister, and I didn’t know her head was too big for years. She rarely dealt with anyone outside our family, so I didn’t see their reactions to her until I was maybe four or five.

Not that strangers ever noticed her massive head, anyway. It wasn’t her defining feature—at least not to the outside world. Hill had oligodontia. That meant she didn’t have any permanent teeth except a couple deformed nubs in the front and the first molar on each side (at the back of her mouth). She was a normal girl in most other respects—except for her oversized head, of course.

Kristina stopped typing and listened. Stepping to the back of her ground-floor condominium, she peeked out. A heavy fog enveloped the grounds around the complex. She couldn’t see anything. Kristina checked the lock, and then walked back to the kitchen for one of the scones she bought earlier that week. She stood behind her chair and bit into the hard biscuit. Crumbs and bits of dry blueberries cascaded onto her bleach-spotted sweatshirt. She brushed them into a napkin and sipped her coffee. It was cold. Setting the cup on a chipped saucer, Kristina gazed at the screen.

She was the only one left who knew about Hillari. Kristina had decided that she should write about her while she was able; she had plenty of time now. Kristina had finished paralegal school three weeks earlier and was looking for a position with a local firm. That took up maybe an hour a day. The school’s web site promised a robust and fast-expanding job market for its graduates. Neither term described Kristina’s bank account. But the prospect of intrusive, probing job interviews was so daunting that she had applied with only a few firms. She’d managed to get in the door at one, a small estate-planning practice that seemed like a nice, low-key environment for a paralegal, heavy on document reviews, drafting and filing.

What a disaster that interview was. She knew all the right answers, but they’d come out so tense and terse that anything other than a rejection would have shocked her. Picking up her cell phone, Kristina replayed the message from the school’s career counselor.

Hi, it’s Rosalyn. I called Dunphy and Moore after we spoke. They sent me the résumé you gave them. It wasn’t the one we worked on together, Kristina. I see you deleted your LSAT score. Kristina, I told you it doesn’t matter that you didn’t go to law school; just finishing in the ninety-first percentile on the admission test will tell a firm that you can do the work. If you won’t talk about yourself in the interview, your résumé has to speak for you. Well, at least it was a good learning experience. Call me, girl.

Kristina erased the message. Good learning experience? She didn’t know how many more such learning experiences she could survive. But she knew she was too embarrassed to tell real lawyers about her taking the Law School Admission Test—when Kristina knew damned well that she’d never follow through on actually becoming a lawyer. Taking a written test was one thing, but speaking in public . . . No thanks.

She focused again on the computer screen. The blog was Rosalyn’s idea; she’d told Kristina that posting about herself might help her open up. Kristina had agreed to try, but found she just couldn’t expose herself like that—even to faceless strangers she’d never meet. Besides, Hill would be more interesting to them. She moved her fingers back to the keyboard. Kristina thought she was a good writer and a decent typist. Maybe she could try being a legal secretary, or a regular secretary. She sighed. She’d still need to interview.

This blog is about my sister Hill. Maybe nobody else will find her interesting, or even read this. But if you do, and you like it, please post a comment letting me know. If not, just keep your opinions to yourself. Kidding ;}

Pffft, Kristina exhaled, pouting at the paragraph. She was not really an emoticon kind of girl. Shrugging, she stood and stretched her back. Pouring out the rest of her coffee, she rinsed the sink, and then refilled her cup. She sniffed it. Scalded. At least it was hot.

Kristina walked to the sliding glass door at the back of her unit. The fog was starting to thin. Momentarily forgetting about Hillari and the blog, she unlocked the door, cracking it open just enough to squeeze through. She’d only recently moved into the condo, and was still adjusting to her surroundings. The complex abutted a lush green park ringed by a large oval path. Dotting the park were shrubs, perennials, and—most important to Kristina—palm trees.

Just five months earlier she had been living back East. Kristina still thrilled at the sight of the tropical trees so unlike the maples and elms of her hometown, Smethport, Pennsylvania. She hated the cold. She’d spent the last three years at college in DC, and had vowed never to return to northern Pennsylvania and its numbing winters.

But the Beltway wasn’t for her, either. The mosquitoes and summer swelter were far worse than Smethport’s. Kristina had no job or anything else tying her to either place; so as soon as she had enough credits to graduate, she headed for southern California and its Mediterranean climate.

Carlsbad’s cool summer nights were a surprise. She placed her cup on the patio railing and tucked her fingers into the warmth between her arms and ribs. The sky had the look of a summer morning back East before it rained. Patches of fog still obscured most of the park. Kristina had just learned that the clouds and fog were part of a marine layer, which would burn off by afternoon. Still, it couldn’t have been more than fifty-five degrees at the moment. She wished the sun would come out now.

Squeezing the soft flesh padding her ribcage, Kristina reminded herself that she still needed to shed the twelve pounds she’d put on in college—fifteen, according to her scale. But the scale was a recent purchase not yet to be trusted, so she gave herself the benefit of the doubt. She should be able to lose twelve pounds, with a little discipline. Not that Kristina thought she looked that bad. But slimming down would help impress potential employers—and maybe even one of those surfers she saw loping across Pacific Coast Highway, boards tucked under their arms. Not likely. How could she compete with all those jiggling beach girls who had nothing else to do but play volleyball all day?

Kristina frowned. Why are men so damned obsessed with looks?

She decided she was glad it was chilly; she didn’t feel guilty about not wearing a swimsuit when she went to the beach. Not hardly.

I shouldn’t have bought those stupid scones. I’m throwing the last two out.

Aw, screw the surfers. They were probably a bunch of narcissists anyway, Kristina concluded, preening with their dripping wet suits unfurled halfway down their dripping hips.

She sighed. I need to join a gym. Or a weight-loss program. Or something. Maybe then . . . .

Kristina could easily have tortured herself the rest of the morning, but something moving through the fog on the oval path caught her attention—a figure sheathed head to toe in black and perched on some sort of . . . bicycle, she judged.

She had seen plenty of bikes in Smethport and DC, but nothing like this one: a single slate-colored tube angling upward from back to front, atop two narrow wheels. It looked like a thick broomstick poised for launch. Contrasting the dull finish of the bike, the rider’s helmet, long-sleeve jersey, and tights had the slippery black sheen of a water snake. The helmet, an elongated teardrop with a face shield, shrouded any identifying features. But the rider was clearly a woman—a very fit woman. She pressed back against a reclined seat, practically supine. Her long legs extended forward to pedals whirling above the front wheel.

Kristina gaped, spellbound, as the wraith spun through the thinning mist, picking up speed with each revolution around the park as if propelled by centrifugal force, until both specter and mount risked catapulting from its orbit.

Judgment Day.

What? Kristina asked dumbly, snapping out of her trance.

That’s her name—Judgment Day, a voice several feet to her left repeated. It added, with authority, She’s a witch, you know.

Kristina squinted at the speaker standing on the patio next door. It was her neighbors’ son, a tween she had seen riding a small mountain bike around the complex. The boy was now wheeling his bike out onto his patio. What? she asked again, unsure how to respond to the pronouncement.

Yeah, she can’t show her face during the day, a young voice off to Kristina’s right interjected. That’s why she wears that black mask.

Why can’t she show her face? Kristina asked the second youth. He was fastening his helmet from atop a bicycle the same size and design as the first boy’s.

Because she’s a witch, the first boy answered, using a tone usually reserved for explanations chased with a withering duh. He glanced warily at the oval track, and then continued in a subdued voice. If she showed her face, swarms of big black crows . . . .

They’re ravens, Jake, the other boy corrected.

No, they’re not, Jake snapped, strapping on his helmet.

Are too!

You don’t know, Owen. You haven’t even seen ’em. Anyway, if Judgment Day showed her face, all these big black birds—these CROWS, he repeated, snorting at his friend. They’d swoop down out of the sky and start screaming at her—like they just knew she was evil. ’Cuz she is. And if she ever exposed herself to the sun, she’d shrivel up and die and the crows would peck her eyes out.

That’s stup . . . that’s silly, Kristina replied indignantly. And it’s mean. Just because she’s a little different . . . .

Nuh-uh, that’s not it. Why do you think Judgment Day is wearing that visor? She always wears it when she’s on her . . . her stick, and big hats and scarves and sunglasses when she’s not.

Maybe she’s shy, Kristina replied. Or self-conscious about her looks.

Jake shook his head. Nope, it’s the light. And the crows. I seen ’em. And anyway, if she wasn’t a witch, then tell me how she broke her neck and died, and then came back to life.

Oh, come on. Please!

No, it’s true, Owen affirmed, nodding vigorously. My dad said it was in all the newspapers.

Kristina noticed an older lady watching the witch—the bicyclist—from the condo beyond Owen’s. You guys shouldn’t talk like that. People are going to think you’re nuts, she chided, pointing with her chin at the lady.

Oh, everybody here knows about Judgment Day. Anyway, Mrs. Winkler can’t hear us. RIGHT, MRS. WINKLER? The boys giggled as the lady continued gazing at the oval, undisturbed.

Kristina saw that other residents had appeared on their patios and balconies and on the sidewalks between the buildings, too. Some carried coffee or juice. All intently watched the sinister-looking stick bike and rider. Jake followed Kristina’s gaze.

Oh, this is the usual Saturday routine for this place. But it’s actually pretty cool, I guess. Judgment Day’s wicked fast . . . for a girl. An old one, I mean. Nobody can touch her—because she’s a witch; she always wins.

Always, Owen echoed.

You watch. A couple roadies are gonna show up—maybe some pro racers, and sometimes a whole bunch of them. And then it’s on.

Oh yeah. It’s ON! Owen shouted, gesticulating toward the road fronting the complex and park.

As if cued, three athletic cyclists on regular bikes coasted in from the road, down the access path and onto the oval track. Each racer wore the same yellow jersey and shorts, and their bikes were glossy and expensive looking. Kristina leaned forward over the railing. The men had to be in their twenties. Like her.

She caught a flash of muscular thighs pulsing beneath spandex, and felt her cheeks flush hot and red. She straightened and folded her arms over her chest. Casting her eyes down, Kristina noticed that her blue Gallaudet University sweatshirt clashed with her green sweatpants. Dry morsels of scone still clung to the sweatshirt.

I knew I should have changed.

The newcomers wordlessly joined the black rider in her feetfirst tear around the oval. They chased her for half-a-dozen laps, and then rocketed back out toward the road. The boys pedaled furiously behind the racers. Taking two more turns around the oval first, the black rider shot after them all. Some of the residents hooted as she passed.

The two-lane road extended east for about a mile before curving out of sight. The boys were right: the black rider was fast—old girl or no. Owen and Jake had a considerable lead, but she quickly overtook them. The three racers were still well ahead. They rounded the bend without slowing. Their pursuer disappeared a minute later. The boys cut an arc across the road, circling back toward the complex.

Kristina noticed that none of her neighbors were returning to their homes. Several strolled to the roadside. They quietly chatted, sipping their drinks. Owen and Jake dropped their bikes at their feet. They flopped down in the grass near the bikes, panting.

Residents would occasionally glance east toward the bend. After ten minutes, they were all looking.

The trio of racers suddenly reappeared around the bend, heads bowed in effort. They had formed a tight line and moved as a single unit. Mere inches separated each bike from the one ahead. The black rider’s stick bike careered into view five lengths back. The boys leapt cheering to their feet. Others joined in. The black rider surged forward, narrowing the gap. The challengers’ line broke as she drew within a bike’s length.

She caught the two fading cyclists a half mile out. It now came down to a final sprint between the black rider and the leader. They charged toward a streetlamp marking the boundary between the park and condominium complex.

The group lining the road started clapping. Kristina heard them chanting, softly and rhythmically at first.

Judg-ment-Day. Judg-ment-Day. Judg-ment-Day.

Kristina clutched her hands in front of her mouth, silently urging the black rider on. The lead bicycle rocked violently from side to side. The stick bike coursed after it, its rider dead still but for her oscillating feet and legs.

More residents joined the incantation: JUDG-MENT-DAY! JUDG-MENT-DAY!

If the black rider heard, it only fueled her furious cadence. With a powerful burst, she jockeyed ahead just before the other rider reached the streetlamp. The hollering boys pumped their fists. Casting a glance in Kristina’s direction, the black rider continued west past the condominiums. She disappeared from view.

Judgment Day’s competitors stopped pedaling. They now sat upright, hands on hips, chests heaving. The vanquished racers coasted past, following the black rider’s path. The show was over. The residents drifted back to their homes. Kristina realized her heart was pounding. Looking up, she saw a pair of large crows perched on the streetlamp, impassively watching the activity below.

See, I told you she was a witch, Jake chortled as the two boys drew closer. You see how she beat those roadies? She crushed them! Judgment Day always wins, he added, as if proving her unholy nature.

Always, Owen echoed.

"Well,