Stand Alone

by P. D. Workman

  “She’s all rotten inside. Like a nice ripe fruit, that looks so sweet and juicy, and you bite into it, and it’s all rotten and wormy inside. Like Alien.” Justine popped an ollie while she waited for Christian to take his run. Christian ground the bench perfectly and landed smoothly, showing off like an Olympic gymnast on a dismount. Justine rolled her eyes. “She pretends that she’s all perfect and lovey and that she cares, and then she turns into mom from hell when I do something she doesn’t like.”

  Christian watched Justine take her turn, grinding the bench properly this time, but still not nailing the landing like Christian had. He waited for her to skate back.

  “So you’d rather she was nasty to you all the time?” Christian suggested, grinning.

  “No, just  … I dunno. Why does she even pretend anymore? Why doesn’t she just  … take off and never come back? Why keep pretending to take care of me and to want me around? She could call Child Services and just tell them to take me away. It’s not like there’s no documentation. She’s got plenty of proof that I’m incorrigible. Why put up with me any more?”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  Christian took another run at the bench, and muffed his jump this time, hitting the side of the bench and wiping out. He got up and picked up his board, walking back to her.

  “You okay?” Justine questioned, looking him over.

  “Nothing broken,” Christian confirmed. “So maybe she really does like you,” he suggested, continuing the conversation.

  “What, Em?” Justine’s brow furrowed. “What’s to like? I don’t like her, and she doesn’t like me. Why keep pretending?”

  “Maybe she really does like you,” Christian repeated. “It happens, you know. That one person loves, and the other person hates. Maybe even though you don’t like her much, she still loves you.”

  “That’s like  … no,” Justine shook her head. “I know she doesn’t like me.”

  Christian shrugged. Justine looked at the bench.

  “Okay, I’m bored here. Where do you want to go?”

  Christian considered.

  “Haven’t been downtown lately. How about it?”

  “Mmm,” Justine looked at the sky. “The sun’s fighting to come out, and it’s going to be a scorcher if it does. I don’t want to be downtown with it reflecting off of all of that concrete.”

  “Where then?” Christian prodded. “The big park?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Cooler there.”

  “Lots of little kids around with school out.”

  “Doesn’t bother me.”

  Justine shrugged and acquiesced. She’d already vetoed one plan, and she was the one who wanted to go somewhere else.

  “Let’s go,” Christian said, and he was instantly on his board and picking up speed, racing Justine.

  Justine hopped her board, grinning.

  “No fair!” she protested, pumping her leg as fast as she could to catch up to him.

  Christian laughed in delight, looking back over his shoulder at her for an instant. He kept going, cresting the hill in front of her and bombing down the long, steep incline on the other side at super speed. Justine crested the hill and looked down at him, as he again checked to see how close she was behind.

  “Look out!” Justine screamed. Christian was going too fast and not watching ahead of him. He didn’t see the garbage truck pulling out of the lane. The huge dark chunk of metal loomed like a dinosaur in his path.

  Christian’s face changed and he looked. Justine squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see the impact; but instantly opened her eyes again. She was also speeding down the hill and needed to see where she was going. Christian had disappeared. Justine looked in horror at the garbage truck, looking for any sign of him.

  “Here!” Christian shouted, and she swerved and instantly launched into the grass beside him where he’d bailed out. She landed with a jarring crash and went flying off of her board. The whole world twisted and turned around her, and she hit both her jaw and the back of her head with a force that made her head spin. Righting herself, Justine crawled over to Christian.

  “Are—you—okay?” she puffed, reaching for him.

  “I’m fine,” Christian giggled. “Did you know you did a somersault?”

  Justine rubbed the back of her head tenderly.

  “You’re okay?” she repeated, looking him over intently. He seemed to be in one piece. No obvious broken bones. He had a cut above his eyebrow, but it was barely bleeding. Christian was, however, as white as a sheet.

  “That was close,” he admitted. “Thanks.”

  “If you ran into that garbage truck, I never would have forgiven you,” Justine told him severely. She dropped beside him and lay in the grass, staring up at the sky, cushioning her bruised head with her hand. She felt nauseous, and the world lurched unexpectedly this way, then that.

  “Are you okay?” he questioned. “That was a pretty sick landing.”

  “Uggh,” Justine groaned. “That was crazy.” She stirred, trying to sit up, but getting too dizzy. “Is my board okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  Christian got up and retrieved his own board and Justine’s, laying hers beside her on the grass.

  “You ready? Let’s roll.”

  “Gimme a minute,” Justine told him.

  Her heart was still racing like a sports car engine. She had been sure that Christian was going to collide with the dump truck. She had seen it happen in her head half a dozen times in the few seconds she was barreling down the hill. And here he was, ready to get right back to it again. Justine, on the other hand, was still feeling the effects of both the scare and the fall.

  Christian sat watching her. He shifted, eager to be on his way again. His restless energy made Justine anxious, and she levered herself slowly into a sitting position, hoping that once she was up, she’d feel better.

  “Walk it off, Bywater,” Christian quipped.

  Justine grimaced.

  “I’m trying,” she said.

  “It’s okay. Take your time,” he said, not wanting her to take his rebuke too seriously.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” Justine drew a deep breath. “Help me up, here.”

  Christian got to his feet and bent over to help Justine up. He grabbed hold of her elbow and levered her up. Justine leaned heavily on him, trying to get her equilibrium back.

  “You sure?” Christian questioned, watching her face intently.

  Justine breathed, willing the giddiness to recede. She tested her legs, tried to calm the shakiness.

  “Yeah, let’s walk,” she said.

  They started off, arm in arm, like an elderly couple. Justine found her head clearing and the steadiness starting to return. She eased her grip on Christian’s arm, and he glanced up at her.

  “Getting your legs back?” he queried.

  “Yeah, just about.”

  They walked on in silence. Justine tentatively let go of Christian, and still felt okay.

  “You gonna be able to skate some more, Just?”

  “Just about,” Justine said with a smile.

  Christian set his board down, and skated slowly beside her.

  “You tell me if you’re going to faint or something.”

  “I don’t faint,” Justine scoffed.

  “We’ll, whatever you want to call it when you fall flat on your face,” he snickered.

  “Knocked out,” Justine said. “I was KO’d that time, I didn’t faint.”

  “Whatever. Tell me if you’re going to take a dive,” he said comfortably.

  Justine put her board down and stepped on, to prove that she was fine and wasn’t going to faint. Her head was clearing, but she did still feel a little groggy. She wasn’t about to let Christian know that. He watched her like a hawk for the first couple of minutes, then started to relax. His movements and frequent looks at her told her that he was eager to move a bit faster, at their usual pace.

  “Go ahead,” Justine s
aid. “I’m coming.”

  He picked up his pace, skating out into the street to do a few tricks, to work his restlessness out. Justine kicked off a bit faster, testing out her body. Everything still seemed to be working. Her muscle memory filled in the areas that her fuzzy head left blank and she gained in confidence. She jumped and ground the curb, and Christian glanced over at her, smiling.

  “Keep your eyes in the road,” Justine told him irritably. “Don’t watch me. We don’t want you smushed by any more garbage trucks.”

  “Yes, Mom,” he teased.

  Justine shook her head. They both skated to their own rhythm, relaxing and forgetting about the close call. Christian moved to the side of the road to allow a pickup truck to pass him. As the truck passed, Christian grabbed the tailgate to skitch a ride. He whooped and motioned for Justine to join him. Justine was already going as fast as she could manage with her spinning head, and she wasn’t going fast enough to catch up to Christian. The truck driver noticed Christian riding behind him, and hit the brakes. The sudden stop made Christian bang into the back of the truck. The driver got out, swearing and walking around the vehicle to get after Christian. Christian laughed and skated away, much too fast for the driver to catch on foot. The driver saw Justine and swore at her too. Justine flipped him the bird, and kept going, not bothering to argue with him. The man got back into the truck and hit the gas, screeching his tires and spraying loose gravel across the road. Justine avoided the spray and kept going. The truck screamed down the road. Justine opened her mouth to yell at Christian, but the words froze in her mouth as the truck headed straight for him.

  Christian heard it coming and jumped the curb to get off the road and onto the sidewalk. He was on another steep downhill and was going at a pretty good clip, but he made the jump and the landing easily. He looked like a pro. Christian laughed and gestured at the truck as it flew by him. The truck ran straight through a red light at the next intersection, too busy gesturing and yelling at Christian to even see it. A police car pulled out, siren wailing, and the truck was forced to pull over for him. Christian bombed by the stopped truck, laughing hysterically and looking back to yell at the driver.

  “Christian!” Justine screamed.

  There wasn’t time for him to look around this time. Going at top speed down the hill and making gestures at the pulled-over truck, he was too distracted and didn’t have enough time to see the small car crossing the road in front of him. Christian hit the car going through the crosswalk. Justine saw him bounce across the hood and windshield of the car and she screamed. She waited for him to get up on the other side of the car and laugh at her, displaying his new road rash or a bump on his head to match hers. Maybe even a broken arm. He had to get up. Christian always got back up, he always made it. He took falls that would have made an Olympic skier wince, and he always got up again, laughing and hooting about what a rush it was.

  Justine tried to slow her board and jump off as she reached the intersection, succeeding in bailing for a second time that day into the grass beside the sidewalk. It was more of a face plant than a somersault this time, but Justine didn’t stop to assess any injuries. She scrambled to her feet, leaving her board in the grass, and ran around the car to see Christian.

  She fully expected him to be sitting up, laughing at her taking another fall, holding his arm, bleeding at the knees. But he lay in a heap on the road, still and lifeless. Justine ran up to him. The woman who had been driving the car was screaming, saying it wasn’t her fault, swearing about kids skateboarding where they weren’t supposed to be, screaming about her own kids and how they should be protected from delinquents riding skateboards, being so wild and reckless.

  Justine touched Christian’s face. His chin jutted out at an awkward angle. His face was covered with road rash. His eyes stared glassily at nothing, and his head  …

  “Chris? Christian? Oh Chris, no, come on! No! No, wake up, Christian! Wake up!”

  The words came out of her mouth but she wasn’t aware of her own screams. She tried to cradle him, tried to pick him up, tried to shake him and wake him. He didn’t move. She looked at his arms and legs for any injuries, held him against her like her own heart could get his pumping again. Then someone else was there, pushing her out of the way, trying to administer first aid.

  “Don’t move him, miss…” the policeman made a brief examination. “He’s not breathing. I know CPR.”

  Justine sat there on the road, watching the cop blow air into Christian’s mouth, watching Christian’s chest rise with each breath. He was alive. His chest wouldn’t be rising if he wasn’t alive. The cop did compressions, pumping on Christian’s chest to keep his blood circulating.

  “No,” Justine wept. “No, no, no  …”

  “I didn’t see him,” the woman driver protested to the cop. “I never saw him coming. He was going too fast. He just ran straight into my car. I didn’t hit him. He hit me. Ran right into me.”

  The driver of the truck was there too, standing there with his mouth open. He had long, greasy, black hair. Justine thought he might be part native. He didn’t say anything, he just stared at Christian. Stared at the tragedy that he had caused.

  “It was your fault,” Justine yelled at him. “You tried to run him down! He was trying to get away from you!”

  The driver shook his head, mouth parted slightly.

  “He was stunting,” he protested in a higher voice than Justine had expected from him. “It wasn’t my fault. I was stopped already. It wasn’t my fault.”

  The cop didn’t say anything, just kept pounding on Christian’s chest and blowing into his mouth. Justine put her face in her hands. Not trying to stop the tears, but trying desperately just to hold herself together. She felt like she was physically falling to pieces. She was dissolving right there in the middle of the street, melting away into a whimpering mass of jelly.

  “No, Christian,” she moaned.

  How long was the cop there before an ambulance finally arrived? A paramedic took over the CPR and he and his partner put Christian onto a backboard, put a cervical collar around his neck, and lifted him on the backboard onto a gurney, strapping him down. Throughout, the paramedic kept up the CPR, counting steadily aloud, a death-defying beat. There was a slick pool of blood on the road where Christian had been lying. The cop stood there in silence for a few minutes, looking gray, watching the ambulance pull away and head to the hospital. He finally looked around, like a sleepwalker waking up, taking in his surroundings a bit at a time. Eventually, he focused in on Justine, sobbing into her hands.

  “Miss. Miss, are you okay?” he questioned. “Are you hurt?”

  Justine dropped her hands from her face.

  “He’s okay,” she said hopefully. “They wouldn’t keep doing CPR and take him to the hospital if he was dead. Right? He’s okay?”

  The cop shook his head.

  “No,” he said dully, his voice distant, eyes cloudy. “No pulse. No respiration. It’s just a matter of procedure. They’ll keep doing it until a doctor at the hospital declares him.”

  “No!” Justine protested, “No way! I saw his chest moving. He was breathing!”

  “That was just the breaths I blew into him. I’m sorry, miss… He’s gone.” She saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. “He didn’t have a chance.”

  “What do you mean he didn’t have a chance?” Justine’s voice rose to a screech in her own ears.

  The policeman gazed at her compassionately, not answering at first. Justine could still see Christian as if he was right in front of her. His neck twisted at an awkward angle. The devastating head injury.

  “He didn’t suffer,” the policeman said finally.

  “He can’t be dead,” Justine sobbed. “No, he just can’t be!”

  The officer didn’t argue with her. His shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug.

  “What can I do for you?” he questioned. “You’re bleeding. Where else are you hurt?”

  Jus
tine touched her fat lip, throbbing and dripping down her chin.

  “No,” she said. “No, it’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Come here and sit on the curb. Let me have a look at you.”

  Justine worked to get herself to her feet. He helped to lift her up. Justine swayed drunkenly, the back of her head throbbing and sending knife blades of pain through her head and deep inside her eye sockets. She gasped, holding onto him.

  “Whoa, there. Come here. Sit down. Put your head between your knees.”

  “I’m not fainting,” Justine protested, even though she was. “I don’t faint. I got knocked out.”

  “Okay. Just right here. Breathe. It’s okay.”

  Justine sobbed, gasping for breath.

  “Christian,” she begged. “Tell me he’s okay. He’ll be okay.”

  “Shhh,” he soothed, rubbing the back of her neck and her back. “Let’s focus on you for a minute. You took a pretty good spill too.”

  “Twice,” Justine gasped. “Oh, man, but Christian’s gonna make fun of me. But he fell too. He fell twice too.”

  “Did he? Keep breathing. What’s your name?”

  “Justine.”

  “Justine. That’s a nice name. Do you live around here, Justine? Can I call your mom for you?”

  “No. I don’t want her,” Justine couldn’t deal with Em right now. “I’m fine.”

  “Did you hit your head? Did you break anything?”

  Justine’s fingers sought the bump on the back of her head, prodding the tender mass gently.

  “Right here. It’s  …” her own gentle fingers sent another bolt of lightning through her head, terminating behind her eyes. Justine covered her mouth. “I’m gonna—I gotta—” she pulled away from him, crawling a few steps away, and throwing up. She moaned, holding her stomach, holding her head, doubling up into a ball and rocking  …

  It was a while before she again became aware of her surroundings. The intersection was busy now. Lots of policemen. Someone cradling Justine’s head and holding her pulse. She opened her eyes and saw another paramedic.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not hurt. It’s Christian  …”