by Tess Oliver
“We’re permanently warped, is that what you’re trying to say?” I asked.
“You, Tommy Jameson, are definitely warped. It just seems stupid to keep blaming my mom for all my mistakes. She wasn’t a great mom, but she’s good at what she does.”
“What does your mom do, anyhow?”
“My mom does pretty. And she does it so well, she lands one rich husband after another.”
“She’s a pro at pretty, huh? I guess some of her rubbed off on you after all.”
She waited for the pink blush in her cheeks to fade before she looked at me, really looked at me for the first time since she’d walked out there, and the impact of her gaze, her undivided attention, caused the breath to jam in my lungs. We coasted through one of those subtle moments where no words were exchanged but plenty was being said. We were connected. Maybe it was because we had so many similarities, Sugar and me. We had never suffered like some kids who came to school hungry or didn’t have shoes that fit right, but we both seemed to have missed out on normalcy, stuff that makes you grow up without having anger issues or a need to get attention by getting in trouble or sleeping with all the wrong people. For both of us, it seemed, there were boundaries for making stupid decisions. And, it seemed, that both of us had made plenty of those. Or maybe these wordless moments just happened for me because the rest of the universe vanished when Sugar was near.
“You never told me what you did to get yourself dropped into this place,” I said.
“You first.”
“Nothing too exciting. I was at a bar, drunk off my ass and flirting with a girl, a girl who turned out to be the girlfriend of a really big fucking dude.” I stretched my jaw open remembering what it felt like to get slammed by the guy. “After a few minutes, I got the better of him. The blood streamed so fast from his nose, the bartender fainted. It wasn’t my first fight or the first time I’d sent someone to the hospital. Judge told me to clean up or do time.”
“I got the same ultimatum. But without drawing blood.” She started swinging again. “I was out with a couple of guys one night.” She looked pointedly at me. “Friends. We were all stoned out of our minds, and for some stupid reason, we decided it would be cool to skinny dip in a stranger’s pool. We picked a real nice Tudor style mansion on a lovely tree-lined private road. Jumped the wall, took off our clothes and dove in. I hardly remember anything except that the wall was really high, and I twisted my ankle coming down the other side. But I was so numb with all the stuff pumping through my body, I didn’t even notice my ankle until they’d hauled us into jail.” She laughed. “The house belonged to a very prominent judge, and he was hosting a dinner that night when the caterer noticed us splashing around. I just remember sitting on the hard, cold bench in the holding tank shivering like crazy with wet hair and semi-wet clothes and looking down at my ankle. It had swelled up to the size of a tennis ball.” She glanced across the yard. “Hey, look who came out of his rock cave.”
Julian’s shoulders were up high, usually a sign that something had him tense. He had his blue cap pulled low over his face, and despite the heat, he was dressed in a long sleeve shirt and pants.
“Jeez, I hope the Count remembered to put on sun block,” I said. “What’s he working on anyhow? Disabling the government’s nuclear bomb testing sites? Hacking into the international space station’s computer system?”
Sugar stood up. “Glaciers.” She smiled over at me. The prickly crap between us from this morning was gone, and it seemed, for now, at least, we were good again.
“Did you say glaciers?”
“Yep, he’s collecting all kinds of data to see if he can pinpoint to the day when the last glacier on earth will be gone.” She seemed to be assessing something. “Hey, if I can make it all the way to the bench where Jules is sitting in ten cartwheels, then you have to play in the wiffle baseball game tomorrow against the ward assistants and nurses.”
“Wiffle baseball? I used to play that,” I said. “When I was three.”
“It’s residents like you, menacing and all that, who keep us from having real bats and balls. Do we have a bet?”
“What do I get if you don’t make it there in ten?”
She bit her lip in thought. Her blue eyes smiled. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t lose.” She stretched her hands up and took off in a blur of long legs and arms. She’d done several, and her performance had caught the attention of Denise, the kitchen helper who was collecting tomatoes. Even Julian had dragged his eyes away from the computer to watch. I didn’t know much about gymnastics, but she was good. I’d been too busy watching her to count, but somehow in the middle of her dizzying display, she’d noticed that Denise had dropped the basket of tomatoes. Sugar yanked her feet to the ground and dashed over to help her pick them up. It was something I’d witnessed her do many times. She could be on the other side of the room or the other end of the yard and she’d stop whatever she was doing if someone needed help. It was some natural instinct she had to help people or worry when someone else was distressed about something. Hypersensitive to other people’s needs, I’d heard Dr. Kirkendall say. It was a good trait, something that we should all possess, she’d told Sugar once. Denise gave Sugar a big thank you smile and headed off with her basket of runaway tomatoes. Sugar cartwheeled over to Julian and plunked down next to him.
I walked over to them. “You didn’t make it,” I called to her.
“Yes, I did. That was ten. I didn’t say anything about going in a straight line.” She smiled up at me. “You have to play tomorrow, and you too, Julian. Wiffle ball game tomorrow against the ward assistants and nurses. We need everyone to play.”
Julian kept looking at his monitor. “Don’t think so, Sugar. That new ward assistant will probably be there. He’s inside right now mopping the hallway floor with some terrible toxin. That’s why I came out here. Had to clear my head of the poison.” The poor guy had more chemicals than blood squirting through his veins, and he was worried about inhaling floor cleaner. “I’ve already written to my dad to tell him they need to switch cleaning products in this place or we’ll all be asphyxiated.” Julian’s dad didn’t have much to do with Green Willow, but one call from him to the board of directors was all it would take.
“It’s just floor cleaner, Jules. It’s meant to smell strong. Gives the illusion that things are hospital clean.” I walked behind the bench and looked at his computer. He had a spreadsheet of numbers in front of him that looked complicated and boring.
“New ward assistant?” Sugar asked. “That big dude with the mop is a ward assistant? I thought he was just from maintenance.”
“What big dude?” I asked.
Julian shook his head. I could tell the topic was upsetting him.
“What’s going on, Jules?” I asked. “Can’t just be the floor cleaner that made you venture out beneath the cancer causing sun. What’s up, buddy?”
Sugar looked up at me. “The new guy is sort of scary looking with big arms and a scar that cuts right across his chin.” She pointed to her own chin.
Julian hunched his shoulders up and typed faster. Numbers and columns were moving, but there was no way a layman like me could make sense of what he was doing. “He’s been lurking. Came into my room to get my trash this morning, and he was wearing this mocking facial expression as he looked at my rock wall. I don’t trust him. I’ve told my dad.” Julian knew how to take paranoia to a whole new level, but he also had an uncanny ability to know people’s characters, whether they were good or bad. Sometimes, even though we didn’t interact that much on a personal level, I was sure the guy knew everything about me, about my past and every hardheaded thing I’d done.
“If you think he’s trouble, Jules,” Sugar said, “then I’m sure your dad will take care of it. Maybe he can find out more about the guy, and maybe he’s not trouble. Maybe he just looks scary. Like our frien
d, Tommy, here.”
“Thank you.”
The comment normally would have at least gotten a smile from Julian. He did love to occasionally point out what he called my thuggish tendencies, but his face was flat with worry. Sugar looked upset that she couldn’t make him feel better.
I leaned my elbows on the back of the bench. “Look, Jules, I’ve got your back, all right. Nothing is going to happen to you while you’ve got scary, menacing Tommy looking out for you.”
“And arrogant,” Sugar added. “Don’t forget arrogant.”
I raised a brow at her. “Yeah, I didn’t forget. It just didn’t fit in this context.”
“Oh, right. I guess not.”
Julian’s shoulders dropped some, and there was a hint of a smile on his face.
Sugar leaned right up next to Julian. He tensed up, but only for a second. He seemed to expect physical contact from Sugar, and he’d learned to accept it, like any normal, warm-blooded guy would. Could have just been that streak of arrogance that everyone seemed to like to point out to me, but sometimes, it seemed that hanging out with us was better than any of those intense therapy sessions he went through with the doctors. Sometimes, it seemed good old interaction and joking around with friends was the thing the guy needed most. It was good therapy for him, and for us too. Julian wasn’t the kind to warm himself into the hearts of people or spark up fun at a party, but he was definitely someone Sugar and I liked to hang with.
I walked around and sat next to Julian. Sugar leaned against him on the other side, and the three of us sat and stared out at the nicely manicured grounds. We were mismatched in so many ways, but there was something, a sort of kinship, between us all. Something we desperately needed. Something that made sense to us, and while we didn’t know it then, something that would change each of us forever.
Chapter 6
Considering the afternoon sun was beating down pretty hard, a surprising amount of staff and residents had shown up for the stupid wiffle ball game. Julian had pulled on a red cap and stuck a chair under the massive mulberry tree, which I knew the name of only because of the silkworms we raised in the fifth grade. Our teacher would send us out of class to pick leaves from the mulberry tree to feed them. Raising silkworms in class was cool and it kept my attention, so I’d learned the name of the tree. The mulberry on the grounds was one of the few sources of shade on the entire property.
Someone had created makeshift bases out of rubber mats. Sugar was huddled with our team; the starlet, the hamburger heiress, the self-made businessman with the stick up his ass, the permanent frowner, and Carl, an older guy who had a paunch that made him look pregnant. The other team consisted of three nurses and three ward assistants, including my good buddy, Lawson, who looked as if he could chew a wiffle ball as easily as a Cheerio. Nurse J., as we called him because he had a name with too many syllables to ever pronounce correctly, looked as if he’d played ball in school with the way he was practice swinging the plastic bat like it was the real thing. Nurse Greene, the woman who was usually sitting at the front desk to take all our complaints, outweighed the wiffle ball by only a few pounds, but something told me, she could be their secret weapon. The other nurse, Nurse Simmons, was already dripping sweat down her t-shirt. I didn’t give her more than fifteen minutes before she pulled up a spectator’s chair next to Julian. The other two ward assistants were only part-time workers, and I’d never learned their names. But the new guy, the one Julian seemed worried about, was nowhere in sight. I hadn’t seen the guy yet.
Sugar waved me over. Pete glanced up from the huddle as I approached.
He grimaced. “Jameson is playing?”
I looked at him, and, as usual, he flinched. “Dude, stop with the hate crap. I’ve never said two words to you.”
Sugar turned to Pete. “We need him if we want to win.”
“Oh, now what kind of talk is that— need,” I said. “How about want? Want would be nicer.”
Sugar flicked up a sweet, overdone Southern smile. “Tommy, we really, really want you to play on our team.”
“I like that word— want.” I said it suggestively. “Actually, need works too.” I gazed at her long enough to earn a deserved eye roll from Sugar and make everyone in the huddle squirm uncomfortably, which was, of course, my goal.
I pulled my attention away from Sugar and clapped my hands once. “What’s the line up?”
“You’ll be pitcher,” Sugar said.
Pete grunted in disapproval and was about to comment, but the loud stutter of a car motor turned everyone’s attention to the parking lot outside the security gates. It was a bright yellow Camaro with black stripes.
“Whose race car?” I asked.
A big guy, maybe six four or five, stood up out of the door. His shoulders spanned the top of the car.
“Frank’s here,” Nurse J. announced to no one in particular.
“It’s the new ward assistant,” Mandy said, with just a bit too much admiration in her tone. Sugar turned to Pete. “See, told you we needed Tommy.”
“So it’s back to need?” I said. “Beefy guys like that are usually more bulk than talent, unless it’s football.” My knee ached at the thought of football. I’d been a quarterback, the youngest in my school’s history, with a lot of potential, supposedly, until another player took out my knee. A few surgeries later, my dad insisted I get back out on the field because it was the one thing I was good at and it kept me out of trouble. The one thing? Throwing a fucking football is my one claim to fame? I’d repeated back to him just before letting him know I was done with it. Probably would have played again if he hadn’t said it was my one thing. And if I hadn’t hated the coach and some of my teammates. My dirt bike accident solidified the idea that I would never play football again. Military school came pretty quick after I’d given up on my one thing.
So, Frank, or Frankenstein, which was more fitting, joined the ranks of the other team. They made him pitcher. We started the game. After a coin toss, residents were up at bat first. As Frank walked to the pitcher’s mound, from the corner of my eye, I saw Julian get up to head back inside with his hat pulled low and his laptop clutched under one arm. I followed him to the door.
“Jules, where are you going?”
“Can’t stay, Tommy. I told you I don’t like that guy.”
“Yeah, but he just looks big and dumb. I think he’s O.K..”
He shook his head hard. “No he’s not, and my father refuses to do anything about it. Told me I need to stop worrying so much. He’s not stuck in here with that villain.”
“Villain?” I laughed and then felt bad. “Sorry, buddy, I get it. You don’t like the guy. This is going to be lame as hell anyhow. Heck, I might just join you in there if things get really dull.”
He hurried inside and practically race walked to the hallway before disappearing around the corner.
“Is he all right?” Sugar asked.
I spun around. “Damn, do your feet even touch the ground when you walk? I didn’t hear you. Jules doesn’t like that new guy. Not sure why he’s so freaked out about him.” As we walked back to the game, Sugar reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny braid of hair.
“I was bored this morning. I made you this. For luck and stuff.”
I took hold of it. “It’s hair.”
“Yep.” She walked past me toward the game. “And I don’t give locks of my hair to just any guy. Remember that.”
“All right,” I said. “I will cherish it, I guess.” There it was again. That wall. The girl I was crazy in love with had handed me a lock of her hair, and I was mocking her for it . . . outwardly. But inside I was thinking— holy shit, Sugar gave me a lock of her silky hair.
She stopped, turned around and stuck out her hand. “You know what, this was a mistake. Give it back to me.”
I pu
shed it into my pocket. “Nope, I want it.”
“Asshole,” she said under her breath.
Pete was holding the bat out for Sugar. “Jayleen struck out,” he said with disgust as if this was an important game and not just something to pass another day in this place.
Sugar took hold of the bat and made extra sure to swing her hips as she peered back at me over her shoulder. She stepped up to bat, and immediately, Frankenstein, who’d had a stiff as marble expression up to this point, beamed.
“Do you like it fast or slow?” he asked her.
My fists curled as he leered at her from the rubber mat pitching mound.
“I’ll take it any way you want to give it to me,” Sugar quipped back. I stepped forward into her line of vision. She flicked a mischievous smile my direction and then leaned over with the bat raised, making extra sure to stick out her ass. For most people, she went out of her way to help them, to please them. But when it came to me, she went out of her way to drive me nuts.
She thwacked the ball and took off running. Frankenstein, with his deep chin scar that went nicely with the name I’d given him, snatched up the ball. Greene was waiting with her tiny hands and tiny feet, ready for him to throw it to first, but apparently, the long legged runner was too enticing. Sugar squealed as he chased after her with the ball. She landed firmly on base, but he went the extra mile, awesome team player that he was, and touched her side with the ball. I looked away or risked getting pissed and truly giving Pete and Jayleen something to complain about.
“You are fast,” Frankenstein said with an ugly grin.
Greene put her mini hands on her hips. “You were supposed to throw it,” she said angrily.
He held up the ball in surrender. “Next time.”
“Subtle,” I said from the sidelines as he reached the pitching mound. He caught it just like I’d meant him too.
He stopped and looked my way. “What was that?” he asked it in that ‘dare you to say that again’ tone that most others probably missed, but I hadn’t. And I never shied away from a dare.