Awakening Foster Kelly

by Cara Rosalie Olsen

  His hands froze, his eyes slowly rolling upward.

  Blinking, as if ripped from his focus, he paled. His face filled with remorse. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “No.” I shook my head and smiled. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I have a low tolerance for pain.”

  “I was checking the alignment of your spine,” he explained. “If you had a slipped a disc, you might—never mind,” he broke off, shaking his head. “I should have given you some warning before prodding you like that. I’m sorry.” He righted my clothing and rose to his feet, stepping away from me.

  Turning around, I stared bemusedly. The look on his face was someone agonized.

  Dominic seemed much too upset for someone who had accidentally caused me a small amount of pain. As I thought about it, this wasn’t uncommon; it was as if seeing me in any sort of pain was agonizingly unbearable for him.

  “Does everything . . . look okay?” I asked, settling the sweater so it lay flat.

  He shoved his sleeves past his elbows, then rested his hands on hips. “You have a viciousness dent in your back,” he said, his lips forming a tight line, “but that should go away overnight. For the next couple days, though, your lower lumbar vertebrae are going to be very sore. At least for the next couple nights, try and sleep on your side, okay?”

  “Okay, Dr. Kassells. Good thing you were here to examine me,” I said, smiling brightly.

  He gave a halfhearted smile. “You might experience some swelling, too, but I have something that should help.” He placed his hand between my shoulder blades, moving me toward the back of his car. I realized he was putting distance between the door and me. He swooped into the passenger seat and unlatched the glove compartment. After shuffling around a moment, he reappeared holding a white bottle. He spilled two small brown pills into his hand and reached into the backseat to retrieve something.

  “You keep Advil in your car?” I asked, a little surprised. I hadn’t thought anyone else but I took these sort of precautionary measures.

  He held out a closed fist, carefully transferring the small brown bills into the palm of my hand.

  “I didn’t used to,” he replied dryly, giving me the first real smile since he’d picked me up. He handed me a bottle of water, removing the cap first.

  “But you do now?” I swallowed them, pressing my lips together to remove the excess water drops.

  “Yes.”

  I was keenly aware that there was something he wasn’t saying. He encouraged me to drink more water, nudging my elbow upward. I took a deep gulp, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

  “For you,” he added succinctly. I didn’t know whether to be offended or heartened by this gesture.

  “Oh.”

  He stepped forward, putting his hands around the sides of my shoulders. “You look like you don’t know how you feel about that,” he divined correctly.

  A little sullenly, I responded, “I suppose it’s the smart thing to do . . . I would just rather you not have to stock up on anti-inflammatory medication before spending time with me.”

  “So,” he paused, “I shouldn’t mention the fire extinguisher and first aid kit in the trunk?”

  My eyes flashed to his, incredulous. Realizing he was only teasing me, I leaned my cheek against his shoulder, sighing contently when he pulled me in for a hug. He was careful to keep his hands high, pressed to the middle of my back. All kidding aside, it really had been fortunate, I thought, that Dominic had been there to assess the damage.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked, considerably impressed by not only his examination, but by how knowledgeable he was. “Looking at the spine, vertebrae, slipped discs . . .”

  “I taught myself,” he replied, his voice was soft and wistful. “For Deanna.”

  A hot ignominious flush rose to my cheeks. I should have known that, I chastised myself. I didn’t even think—

  “Stop it right now,” he warned, but his tone was warm. He pulled back to look at me. “You didn’t say anything wrong, Foster. That was a fair and valid question. Not many people my age—with the exception of geniuses like you—would have that sort of medical knowledge. I forbid you to feel guilty, okay?” He smiled and folded me back into his arms. “I was there for most of her doctor’s appointments. And I watched the physician examine her enough times to know what a spine shouldn’t look like.”

  They came without warning, stinging my eyes. I sniffed them back, determined not to cause him any unwarranted grief.

  “Are you crying?” he asked gently.

  “No,” I answered instantly. “Maybe. A little. Yes.” I sniffed again. I felt the rumble of his laughter.

  “You remember what I said to you earlier today? About Deanna?”

  “You told me she’s brave,” I mumbled.

  “I did,” he agreed. “I also told you that she’s doing everything a girl her age should be doing. Actually, I forgot to tell you that I talked to my mom today, and she told me that Deanna’s dating someone. It sounds like they really hit if off,” he said, the big brother in him unsure whether this was good or not. “They met during physical therapy. I give him points for being the one to approach her. My mom says their conditions are similar, though not completely.” A tinge of sadness crept into his voice. “His disease is degenerative.”

  “Do you know if he’s older or younger than she is?”

  “Older, I think. From everything my mom told me, he sounds like a very nice kid. Of course, I’ll have to be the judge of that when I meet him.” He laughed. “I don’t plan on going any easier on him because he’s in a wheel chair.”

  “You have plans?”

  He gave a snort. “She’s my baby sister; of course I have plans.”

  “And these tests,” I inquired, playing along. “Are they written and oral exams?”

  “For Deanna—both,” he said matter-of-factly. “That reminds me, though. I have something for you.”

  “For me?” I was mildly startled by where his train of thought had taken him. “Okay, but I hope you’re grading on a curve.”

  He released me a little, pulling back with an expression on his face somewhere between amusement and curiosity.

  “A curve?” His mouth quirked to one side, and in response my stomach gave a deep tug. “Just what exactly do you think I have to give you?” His eyes narrowed into vivid blue slits, framed with lashes so thick and dark, they almost didn’t look real.

  “I, ah . . .” I collected myself and tried again. “I’m not sure. We were talking about tests, though, weren’t we?”

  His lips peeled back, revealing the brilliant white smile that did very little in mitigating the stomach pulling.

  “We were, yes.” I watched his expression suddenly sober, his eyes roaming down to where his hand still lay in wait inside his pocket. Slowly, he began to pull the mysterious something from his jeans, his eyes widening in mock horror the closer he came to revealing the surprise. He gasped, as the very top of a box—small, black, and velvet—came into view.

  “Do you think you can handle this?” His whisper was loaded with ominous insinuation.

  A silly grin spread across my face and my hands began to fidget nervously. “What did I do to deserve this?”

  “You’re you,” he said romantically. “And I promised you a birthday present.” He turned his cheek to me, cutting me off before I could object. “Nope. Don’t want to hear it. Consider yourself lucky that it fits inside one little box.”

  He raised his hand, the black box balanced in precisely the middle of his palm. He met my eyes over the top, his eyebrows low and expressive with mischief and mirth.

  “Oh, and another thing you should know about me,” he added, “along with not doing patient well, I tend to go a little overboard with birthdays and holidays. I hope you can live with that. Now . . . what I really wanted to do was throw you a princess party—to make up for that one you told me about. And this time, I’d make sure the jester pronounced Sacajawea co
rrectly.”

  I laughed, but couldn’t take my eyes off the box.

  “Open it, Foster,” he said quietly. “I hope you like it.”

  “I will love it,” I whispered, carefully using one hand to steady the base and the other to lift the lid.

  He waited—almost patiently, I thought affectionately—as I came closer to opening it. Surprises—even good ones—made me nervous. With one last glance at his expectant face, I flipped it open, drawing in a gasp when I saw it.

  “Dominic . . .” My voice was hushed with awe.

  “Do you like it?”

  I shook my head slowly. A delicate, exquisite, silver necklace; there was nothing about it not to like. I hadn’t been wrong . . . I absolutely loved it. I slipped my fingernail beneath the pendant, the fuzzy velvet sliding softly against my skin, and stared at the word Believe written in elegant script. A small colored stone acted as the dot over the i in believe. My heart gave a tight squeeze; it was an amethyst.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . .” My lips remained parted, fumbling for the words. I looked up, smiling helplessly. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  While I had always appreciated the way jewelry looked on other people—especially the way Emily’s E set off the fine bones around her neck—I always felt that anything more than very simple and plain jewelry looked silly on me. Other than my parents, no one had ever given me something so exceptionally lovely. And this, once fastened around my neck, wouldn’t be coming off.

  The silver changed colors slightly, reflecting back a cuprous pale peach as the overhead lights flickered on.

  “I’m glad you think it’s beautiful,” Dominic said, obvious pride and pleasure in his voice. “Can I put it on you?”

  “Yes.” I nodded vehemently. “Please.”

  “I picked this out for two reasons,” he began, his lashes lowered as he gazed thoughtfully at the necklace. “The one you can probably guess—your birthstone.” He smiled. The box gave a loud snap as he shut it with two fingers and stuck it back into his pocket. “The other reason is equally significant. The word believe—I chose it because, just before meeting you, I didn’t have reason to believe in anything anymore. I had no hope that things could ever be good again.”

  All the small noises—people getting out of their cars, the wind shaking the leaves, footsteps on the black top—dissipated, leaving only the sound of Dominic’s deep, velvety voice and the loudness of his eyes.

  “Then I met you, Foster,” he said urgently. “I know there’s still a lot to be said, a lot you don’t know.” He swallowed, a fleeting shadow crossing his eyes. “But I want you to know that it’s you who made me believe. The way I feel about you—the way I feel when I am with you—holding you—laughing with you . . .” He paused, and the look he gave me was the purest look I had ever seen on any one person’s face. “You’re the most incredible person I have ever met. You surprise me. Just when I think I can’t possibly find you any more beautiful, you do something, say something, and . . . you prove me completely wrong.” He smiled, observing me with quiet contemplation. “You are beautiful.” Carefully, he took my cheeks in his hands, eyes moving slowly, but with purpose taking me in. “It’s your heart I’m infatuated with, though, Foster. Not your face.

  “And tonight,” he continued, “when you walk out on that court to sing the National Anthem, I want you to think of that heart. I want you to believe in you the way I believe in you. Believe that you are, to me, my angel.”

  Stepping behind me, he lifted the necklace high over my head. It settled at a place too high for me to see it, slipping into the hollow at my throat. Tears pressing at the back of my eyes, I pressed my fingers to the pendant, expecting to find the silver cold and smiled when it wasn’t. No, of course it wouldn’t be.

  Dominic was always warm. And so were the things he touched.

  ~

  I stopped abruptly, my mouth going dry and slack.

  No. This can’t be right. It can’t be.

  What I was looking at was not a gymnasium. This was an airplane hanger, minus the airplanes. It was as if I’d come up against an invisible wall; I couldn’t seem to make myself take another step. The people fanning us on both sides, didn’t appear to be experiencing this stymieing barrier.

  The unshakable pillar of determination I’d manifested into, dissolved into pencil shavings when Dominic and I passed through the open double doors. Craning my neck, I stared upward, knowing for certain that even with two unmistakably obvious basketball nets hanging from Plexiglas rectangles, scoreboards erected above them, and bleachers stacked so high, there was no doubt a change in altitude, I had to be in the wrong place. Facilities like this one didn’t exist for high school basketball games.

  Unless that high school was Shorecliffs.

  My eyes panned the gym, taking in both the expected and unexpected. The championship flags hanging from the ceiling, retired jerseys and banners proudly mounted, displaying victories won over the last thirty years, and a hundred fluorescent orbs, coruscating like flashing headlights, all telling me I was in danger.

  A sharp sound broke through my stupor, slicing a serrated dizziness down the middle of my forehead. Seeing black spots, I turned away from the lights and toward the boys in purple and black uniforms. They sat on the court, spread around a rictus mouthed shark head biting through the floorboards. Clustered in small groups on the floor, they stretched or took shot from the curved lines marked along the perimeter. Quite obviously, there was some significance to them, though I wouldn’t begin to guess what it was.

  Along the sidelines, men wearing whistles and collared purple shirts stood huddled together, staring down at a white three-ring folder. Over and over, they gestured wildly with their hands. I looked behind them, noticing the metal bleachers again. Even with more than an hour before game time, they were already filled with bodies. I needed to do that, I reminded myself—save seats for my parents—but my feet resisted me, like they’d been nailed to the floor.

  Two men carrying large duffel bags in each hand rushed toward us, conversing in loud, emphatic tones.

  “There isn’t room for it,” the one said roughly, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “The equipment’s safer in the truck.”

  “It’s just a couple of bags, Tom,” the other replied, sweating and irritated. “Nobody’s gonna notice.”

  They split off, one brushing past Dominic, the other past me. The one on my side said, “Yeah, but I don’t want my stuff trampled. There’s gonna be over eight hundred people here tonight, man!”

  Eight hundred people? Here? Tonight?

  The strident sounds—rubber soles moving abruptly on wood floors, the repetitive smack of dribbled balls, the buzzer going off in intermittent intervals—continued to pierce and puncture my sensitive auditory nerves. I just wanted to back away—and run.

  As I was having this thought, I found myself floating sideways, being pulled away from the entrance. The basketball scene eventually vanished in front of me, like a landmass from the view of a yacht out a sea. I was placed on a bench gingerly.

  “Foster? Foster, focus on my voice,” a faint and familiar voice said placidly. I let the sounds filter out of my ears and focused on the velvety voice speaking at a low, firm decibel.

  The glaze over my eyes cleared. I centered on Dominic’s slightly dismayed face stooped a few inches from mine. “I hear you,” I said, my voice huskier than normal. I began to cough almost immediately.

  An imperceptible frown pulled at his mouth. “Drink this,” he ordered, gathering and placing my hands around a pliable texture.

  Styrofoam, I said to myself. I sipped at the liquid manually. Water. For some reason, naming objects was a small comfort; something about the reminder that, while the alternate universe I’d been swallowed up by was disorienting, inhabited by athletic aliens and foreign sounds, not everything had changed; there was still Styrofoam and water.

  “Foster, talk to me.”

  Dominic kneele
d in front of me, folding his warm hands around my clammy white ones. The rest of me felt sticky and warm as well, like the balmy heat of a steam room was hovering over me.

  “There’s people . . . a lot of people,” I mumbled incoherently.

  “It’s a basketball game. Did you think we’d be the only ones?” he asked with a smile, but I could see the apprehension lining his eyes.

  “No,” I replied breathlessly. I took another sip of water, relishing the moisture tending to my dry throat. “I just thought . . . I thought . . .” I struggled to remember what it was exactly I had thought.

  “You have been to a basketball game, right?” he asked, tentative.

  It was as if the machinery that was my brain malfunctioned; the power plant going dark and inert. I squinched my eyes tight, willing myself to locate the information necessary to answer this question.

  A picture of my Roxbury High’s gymnasium coalesced in my mind; the dingy room no larger than fourteen hundred square feet, the walls cracked and discolored, the musty smell of sweat and mildew. I panned to the right where the wood bleachers shined dully, eight long benches accommodating an occupancy somewhere around eighty-five bodies . . . if people closed in tight. The surface was stained and weathered, and slumped toward the middle like a tort that hadn’t quite risen. Lastly, I looked up at the worn nets hanging despondent and precariously from large metal rings.

  My eyes remained close. “Yes,” I answered finally. “I’ve been to a basketball game.” My reply sounded automated.

  “And, at this game, were there people?” Dominic spoke to me like I was a small, frightened child; or perhaps a member of the psychic friends network.

  I searched the picture in my mind, finding what he asked for. Yes, there were people. I counted them. Sixteen. Twenty-eight including the players. Thirty including the coaches.