“No need,” she says, her words are labored. “Germs can’t … hurt me now, honey.”
I set the bottle back down, let her frail hand fall into mine. “Been thinking about you,” I say, nervous.
“Bash was here earlier.”
“I’m on my way to see him,” I tell her.
“I know.” She holds her stare. “Wouldn’t stop … talking about … you.” She pauses in between words, struggles to get them out. The life is draining from her body. I can’t fully explain the feeling even as I sit with her, but I feel it—the room is more empty than full. When I sit with Benny, I don’t feel it, death, the way I thought I would when they said he was too far gone. But with her, it’s everywhere. In the air, in her words, her eyes, and suddenly I feel so grateful and guilty for feeling grateful at the same time.
“When it’s … all over”—she places the mask on for just a moment to breathe, then removes it to finish speaking—“take care of him. My worst fear is him being alone.”
Unsure of what to say, I bite my lip, my heart squeezing too tight in my chest.
“Promise me … he won’t be alone. And make sure he gets … the letter. Promise.” She presses on my hand with whatever strength is left.
“What letter?” I ask surveying the room.
“He’ll understand when it’s time. Please. I need to hear the words before I go.”
“Everything will be … okay. I promise.” My stomach’s all bunched up, twisted. She presses a little red button with her free hand. Medicine slithers down from a giant robotic machine and into her bloodstream. Within minutes, she smiles again from the place the ruby lipstick has faded, places the mask over her face, and closes her eyes.
I pull the ornament from my pocket where it’s warmed, and wrap the flimsy yarn around a tiny tree branch near Bash’s drawing. The tree almost topples but doesn’t. It hangs on for dear life, kind of like Benny, kind of like Camilla.
Kind of like me.
I gently place her hand beneath the sheet, and with one final look, almost a good-bye, I leave.
Driving is effortless now, my mind not so gloriously happy as before, but in this strangely empty space. I’m not running equations or stopping to take pictures of the last three pieces of roadkill I passed. Instead, I’m thinking about fate. If things are destined to be the way Sarge says, a grand plan we’re not in control of—something kismet, out of our hands—do my choices even matter? If I hadn’t snuck out to a party, if I hadn’t unhinged the stroller, propped it up against the garage, maybe:
a) I’d have never met Bash (at least not that night), had no reason to confess, to distract Mom.
b) Something else would’ve distracted her anyway.
c) I’d have gotten out of my head long enough to get Benny’s car so Mom could take him inside, where he’d be safe.
d) None of the above. Maybe it was literally just an accident—something that should’ve never happened, but did.
I contemplate going to the gas station to see Althea, have her give my irises a look, but quickly remember that’s Violet’s thing. And I can’t anyway. Bash agreed to meet me at the ice skating rink, which is really Hyde Park’s frozen pond where the center is always a questionable experiment with said fate. When I arrive, he’s sitting in his car blowing warm air into his hands. We make brief eye contact and meet around my driver’s side door. He’s obviously annoyed.
“I’m not late,” I say, challenging the look on his face that seems more angry than happy to see me.
“I know.”
“What’s your deal?”
He scans the lot, points to a car that’s struggling to fit into a skinny spot. The tan clunker reverses then drives, reverses, drives again, and finally lands cockeyed with its tail end spilling into the open aisle.
“If you’re not going to use a turn signal or learn how to park between two yellow lines, your fucking tires should just blow off.”
I’m laughing, but confused. “What?”
“A warning to everyone who doesn’t use it—like, if you see someone’s tires explode on the highway, you know that idiot didn’t use the little stick connected to your whole driving console and he didn’t make it, so you should probably use yours. The blinky thing and those two lines actually have a goddamned purpose…” His words trail off under his breath, but I’m still laughing, which makes him stop and smile. “Never mind.” He briskly rubs his hands together again so violently it’s like he’s trying to erase the previous conversation from his skin.
“Don’t you have gloves?” I ask.
“Nah.”
I look around at the snow. It’s becoming more of a blanket that’s coating us.
“Sure you want to do this? We could just go to the—”
He sears a look into me that stops me cold. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I walk to the window, where a long line of anxious skaters has formed. He pulls me to the side of the building where the trash reeks.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He’s picking the lock to the gate. I offer to pay for both our skates, but even though my voice carries, he pretends he doesn’t hear. “Too easy. Live a little, Couch Girl.”
The lock pops and we slide inside, closing the iron gate behind us with a loud CLANK. Filled with people from this county and the surrounding area, the giant, uneven circle of ice looks as if it’s daring us to come fall straight through the center to where we’d never be heard from again. The crowd—from the wobbly to the strong, the confident to the unsure, and my favorite, the falling to the completely eating it—are crying, laughing. All these emotions jam-packed into one family-fun (or first-date) outing.
“We don’t have skates,” I say. Bash looks around, a deliberate something in his eye, something devious, and walks over to a young couple in the midst of removing their shoes. It’s so crowded they don’t notice Bash as he casually lifts their skates when he passes by. He bumps into me, pushes me along to the other side of the rink, before the couple notices. “Are you kidding me? I have money.”
“Money is boring,” he says. “This is an invaluable life skill. Can’t buy that.”
“Stealing is a life skill?”
“Not stealing—surviving.” He flashes a crooked smile, and despite all the negative thoughts stacking up in my brain, file by file, I don’t fight it. We lace up these skates that barely fit and hide our shoes near the gate we snuck in through. Heavy and awkward, I wobble like all the others eating it out on the ice. This must be what being a baby giraffe feels like. This is even worse than regular skating. Much worse.
“Ever done this?” he asks, unnaturally graceful on the two thin blades.
“When I was little.” Dad held my hand so I wouldn’t fall. He always caught me, made sure I knew he was there.
Bash holds out his cold, red hand. I hesitate, remembering when he let me fall at work. He grabs ahold of me before I overthink it and pulls me across the ice to the ominous center. We weave through the crowd of laughing children and smiling faces, and every time my arms flail, my legs buckling, he catches me, never lets me fall.
The plummeting snowflakes melt in my hair, dampening the stray pieces around my face. A thrill shoots through me as we glide along. I feel alive. With Bash’s hand against the small of my back, I fling my arms into the air, close my eyes, and feel the wind brush against me. He pulls me closer, and with all my trust in him, my hand in his, he guides us along the turns. When I blink open my frost-laced lashes, he’s looking at me in this whole new way, like he’s seeing me, the real me, for the very first time. Our eyes linger, until everything around me fades. All I see, and feel, is Bash.
He pulls me off to the side where others are awkwardly falling onto and off of the ice, to the concession window of a tiny brick building. He digs deep in his pocket, produces a fistful of change; the bigger, more valuable coins jump from his hand onto the ground and roll away. I offer to pay, but he refuses, says he’ll take someone else’s hot chocolate before he
’ll let me pay, then likens it to another invaluable life skill—sacrifice.
Fifty cents, mostly pennies, later, we’re sharing a lukewarm cup of powdery hot chocolate. We hide out near the shelter where wooden benches line the government center building across from the rink/park. We’re laughing at how stupid we look in these skates that don’t fit right, our reflections mirroring our every movement in the center’s glass doors.
“I’m sorry if I was ever a jerk to you,” he says.
“Was?” I joke. “You still are!”
He rolls his eyes, changes the subject. “How’s your brother?”
“Better, I guess.”
He looks as relieved as I do. “Good … good.”
I sigh as my fingers unlace the skates to let my feet breathe. “I mean, he’s not awake yet, but other than that.”
He nudges my arm with a playful punch. “He’s not missing much. Have you seen that new”—he uses his fingers to make air quotes—“‘meat goat farm’ over by the Christmas tree lot?”
My jaw falls open at the familiar reference. “What kind of signage is that—meat goats? When I think of eating a hamburger or bacon, I don’t say they came from meat cows or meat pigs. Should be implied. The words just sound unappetizing. Better feed the meat goat before the meat goat starves. I need to buy a meat goat for my meat farm. Gross.”
He laughs kind of hard, the skin between his eyes pinching in a cute way. “You and your words.”
There’s a shift in the conversation now, a quiet that lingers. I listen to the sounds of the ice skaters from afar. “You know, I tell everyone I’ve got this hope—hope Benny wakes up, hope this, hope that—but the truth is, I don’t even know what that means. Hope couldn’t, didn’t, save my nan. It’s just a word.”
He stops me. “You don’t need to intellectualize everything, you know. Hope isn’t just a word—it’s a feeling. Like Love. Hate. Sorrow. Regret. It’s all the same. If you feel it, that’s all the scientific proof you need. And sometimes it means something else. Like believing what is happening is the best thing. Like in Ma’s case, she’s had the shittiest year ever, so I have to believe her leaving me is the best thing. Not for me, but her. If she’s okay, I’m okay. That kind of hope, the stinging kind that’s mixed with love and fear and, well, complete shit, it’s not a word—it’s my lifeline. Without it, I disappear.”
He looks away, then back to me with a forced smile. He swipes a stray tear that starts to run down. “Anyway … what are your plans after graduation?”
“I have a morbid fetish with dead things, so thought I’d make something useful out of it and go to UC Denver, study to be a medical examiner. If we can come up with the money in time. My scholarship fell through.”
“You want to play with corpses?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“That explains … so … much.” He laughs, but there’s something nervous in his eyes, his whole face, something I can’t place. The silence sits between us for a whole minute, and I suddenly think of Brønsted–Lowry. According to the theory, acids are divided into groups by how powerful or how feeble, and right now, by the look on Bash’s face, I can’t tell which I fall into.
“Sucks about the money. I know from experience if you have it, life’s a damn ball; if you don’t, it ruins everything.” He fumbles with his hands, and I notice he’s still wearing the only shirt I’ve ever seen him in. The collar pokes out of his jacket.
“What about you?” I ask him with a smirk. “Since I now know you didn’t actually graduate and weren’t only in town for that one party night.”
“Funny, Couch Girl. I can’t think that far ahead. Life has a twisted way of fucking me.”
“Like Newton’s Third Law.”
“Like what?”
“You know, that whole ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ thing? Forces come in pairs.” I smile bigger, he smiles back with one eyebrow arched. Suddenly embarrassed, I cower and adjust the glasses hanging on the bridge of my nose. “Never mind. That was stupid.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you’re not smart. Your brains are the hottest thing about you.”
I look down at the ground. “Gee, thanks.”
His hand grips my arm. “No, I mean, you’re beautiful, not pretty,” he smiles, “but that brain is what separates the two. Don’t hide it.”
My face warms to what I’m sure is the color of beets or tomatoes or something completely metaphoric and perfect for how much blushing I have going on.
His phone buzzes. He hides the screen, reads the message, then shoves it back in his pocket. “So … any news on who hit your brother? I mean, have they found any leads?”
I chew on the words, so abrupt, the blushing fades. “No. In some ways, it feels like everything is stuck in the exact position as when the accident happened, and in other ways, everything is being propelled forward faster than any of us are ready for.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
There’s this weirdly long silence. He’s looking at the ground. I am, too. We’re both kicking our feet in the air, moving to stay warm.
“I kind of wish we’d stayed in the apartment,” I say to break the quiet. “Then maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
“Yeah,” he says.
Our conversation fades. Words dissolve almost as fast as they’re said and it’s clear neither of us know what to do, or say, next. I let a minute or two pass before I cut through this moment.
“Well … I better get going,” I say.
He’s quick to unlace his skates, and we toss both pairs near the bench for some other couple learning “invaluable life lessons” to find. We’re barefoot, nearly hopping across the snow-covered ground, to the spot we left our shoes. I feel like he’s not ready to go, part of me isn’t ready, either. He walks me to my car door. My back is leaning against the cold metal. He steps closer, a lot closer, with his face close to mine, his eyes drinking mine in. He reaches behind me and pulls on the handle of my car. I feel his warm breath on my skin again. It forces those little hairs on the back of my neck to rise.
“You really should start locking your door,” he says.
A grin forms. I see it, lingering an inch from my mouth. My lips twitch, daring him to do something—anything. He brushes a piece of hair away and tucks it behind my ear and moves to my cheek, where his lips gently press down. I close my eyes and feel every part of his mouth on my skin until he leans back again. The skin pulses and tingles until it’s numb.
“Be careful in this weather,” he says, his voice soft. “Roads might be slick now.”
I’m nodding, wondering why he won’t kiss my mouth as I get inside my car. Was it the fish story? Or maybe my breath is wretched. WHAT IS IT? Maybe it’s because I told him I’ve only had that one kiss so I couldn’t possibly be any good at it. Or maybe it’s because I’m just a game to him—the mouse. My thoughts are racing. I need an answer. Why? I watch through my window as he throws his body up against his door. This time, it’s five slams. He waves, I wave back, and make sure to use my turn signal as I heave up the rounded drive so my tires don’t blow off. Once I’m far enough away, this feeling overcomes me—something sickly and pukey and kind of tingly and awesome at the same time.
I’m a mess.
I’m in love.
LESSON OF THE DAY: In chemistry, there are two kinds of heat. One is caused by chemicals, and the other, physical activity. Extra activity (i.e., kissing, wanting to kiss, dreaming about kissing) makes more molecular collisions that create heat. Some of those collisions, like love, or whatever that means, are inevitable, no matter what you do to stop it.
I can only hope it won’t hurt too bad.
BASH
I knew I couldn’t go for it.
Her eyes, lips, wanted me to. Hell, I wanted to. But aside from the fact that I cannot be just another fish wading around in her mouth, I shouldn’t be anywhere near her heart. I know
I’ve crossed a big line already. I just don’t know what to do about it. I will never be one of those guys who believe women are things we use—we being this collective group of completely clueless boys—to make myself feel better, less alone. Ma always said a real man doesn’t have a lot of women hanging on his arm when he doesn’t give a shit about them. He has one. And a real man knows when to walk away from something before it breaks that special one.
If there’s anything I need Ma to know before she leaves this earth, it’s not just that I’ll be okay, but that she did her job as a mother. All those times she made me hold a door open, helped me with all my, you know, feelings and crap, made me stop and think about what it must be like to be a woman and how hard it is when there are so many d-bags out there ready to pounce. Well, Ma, please know, it paid off. You taught me about respect. To treat women as the treasures they are, just like you.
Except, I can’t seem to walk away from the treasure I want the most, even if she is everything I should avoid.
As I’m driving home from the ice rink, I trace my lips with the tip of my fingers and think about how her face felt against them. Warm and soft, even in the frigid winter air. And she tasted like powdered sugar and cherries and that feeling she keeps going on about—hope.
The snow is still falling in waves, so I’m careful along the winding highway. The large flakes melt into the windshield just as quickly as they fall. My wipers work to clear the glass, but they suck, and the window is just one smudged, blurry mess I can barely see out of. My phone vibrates as I’m pushing my neck as far forward as it will go to see through the sludge. I quickly glance at the screen.
It’s not Kyle, not Birdie. It’s the nursing home.
“Hello?” I ask.
“Bash,” Nurse Kim says, softly. “I’m sorry…”
The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash Page 21