Riley Park

by Diane Tullson

  I hear Darius’s laugh. I watch him swimming.

  Red and white roses.

  Officer Rex stares at me. Was I talking out loud? I say, “Then a girl came.”

  Officer Rex tilts his head. “A girl?”

  “Rubee. I don’t know her, not really. She works at Safeway, the one near Riley Park.”

  Officer Rex writes something in his notebook. “So what about the girl? Was she with you?”

  My eyes hurt, like the light is suddenly too bright. “No. Not with me.”

  “With Darius?”

  Wildman.

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Probably.

  I say, “She didn’t stay long.”

  “So she wasn’t there when you were attacked?”

  Red and white roses, floating on the water, but they weren’t on the water. There were no roses. I’m imagining them.

  I say, “She wasn’t there.”

  “Looks like you’re the only witness.” Officer Rex pockets his notebook. “Maybe you’ll think of something you missed. If I’m going to find the guys who killed Darius, I don’t have a lot to go on.”

  Darius. How can he be gone?

  Officer Rex moves to the door and then turns to look at me. He says, “I’m sorry about your friend.” He leaves.

  Chapter Seven

  I’ve been in the hospital for a few days, and already the food is old—in every way. I push aside the tray of hospital lunch—tuna sandwich made with bread that curls up at the edges, and vegetable soup with orange-colored grease blobs on the surface.

  Officer Rex is here, again. He takes the sandwich. He sniffs it and says, “It’s perfectly good.”

  “It’s all yours,” I say.

  Maybe my parents will bring me real food, like a pizza. They come every night after work. There’s a price to their visits. My mom always cries. My dad always looks like I did this to him. If I cracked my head open in a hockey game, it would be okay. It’s not okay that I was drunk at a party—like it really makes any difference.

  I watch Officer Rex devour the tuna sandwich in three bites. He says, “I guess you prefer hot dogs.”

  I shudder. I say, “Uh, you’ve got some sandwich stuck in your braces.”

  He tongues the front of his teeth. “It’s a splint.”

  I hand him a carton of milk. “Here, you can have this too.”

  He eyes the milk and then says, “You should drink it.”

  “It’s warm.”

  He shrugs. “Okay. No sense it going to waste.”

  By the look of his gut, Rex doesn’t let much go to waste.

  He swigs the milk and then swishes it in his mouth to dislodge the food bits from his dental work. If I was hungry before, I’m sure not hungry now. He finishes the milk and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

  He says, “I brought some pictures for you to look at—see if you recognize any of the guys that attacked you.”

  He hands me a sheet of about fifty small photos. I say, “What are these, mug shots?”

  “Driver’s license photos.” He burps. “We only have mug shots if a guy’s been arrested for something.”

  I push the button that turns on the light over the bed. “The pictures are so small I can hardly see them.”

  “Take your time.”

  The photos are all of young men with similar features. I scan the photos and point to one. “This could be the guy with the bar.” I move my finger down the sheet. “Or this guy.” I hand him back the sheet. “There are about ten pictures that look like the same guy.”

  “Did the guy with the bar have any distinguishing marks—a tattoo, maybe, or a scar?”

  “It was dark. They hit us from behind.” I think about Darius on the ground. “I didn’t get a good look at any of them.”

  Officer Rex sighs. “Try again.” He hands me the sheet.

  I hold the sheet up closer to my eyes. Now the images blur. My head hurts from looking so hard. I say, “There’s a good reason I’m looking at these?”

  “Maybe. I watched the girl, Rubee, and I happen to know her boyfriend. It’s her boyfriend, right?”

  He says it like I should know. I say, “Rubee doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Oh?”

  “She used to. But she dumped him.”

  “To go to Riley Park with you guys?”

  “No. Or maybe he dumped her. I don’t know. All I know is that she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  He nods. “Well, it looks like they’re back together.”

  I study the page of photographs. I point to one. “Is it this guy?”

  “Don’t guess.”

  I point to another. “No, it’s this guy.”

  He looks at the photo. “Are you sure?”

  My stomach knots. “No one looks like their driver’s license photo. How can I be sure?”

  “Because it’s all we’ve got.”

  I say, “I thought you said you knew this guy. So he’s a criminal, right?”

  “No,” he says. “He’s been a person of interest in several crimes. But we haven’t nailed him yet.”

  I throw the sheet of photos at him. “So you know who he is and you’re making me tell you?”

  He says, “I don’t know anything. I wasn’t there.”

  “But you think Rubee’s boyfriend, or whoever he is, came after us.”

  “You tell me.”

  “What does Rubee say?”

  He rubs his temples. “Not much.”

  “But you talked to her?”

  “I did.” He pauses, like he’s choosing his words. “I suggested she see a doctor about her eye.”

  White-hot adrenaline squirts into my spine.

  He continues, “She said she walked into a door.”

  “It wasn’t a door.” My head starts to pound. “And it wasn’t Darius.”

  He nods. “I’m pretty sure you’re right about that.”

  I say, “So the bastard kills my best friend and beats up a girl and you let him walk free?”

  He sighs. “We don’t have anything to charge him with.”

  “Give me the photos.”

  He puts the sheet of photos on the table by the bed. “I’ll leave them with you. Maybe you’ll remember something.”

  No pressure. Not like it all depends on me.

  I say, “When you talked to Rubee, did she know?”

  “About Darius?” He lifts one shoulder. “Hard to say. She seems scared.”

  I want to ask him if my name came up. Did she ask about me? Does she care if I’m okay? I say, “Do you think she had anything to do with it?”

  He tilts his head. “I wondered. What do you think?”

  I think of roses, of the red stone bracelet she wears. “No way. She’s not like that.”

  Then I think of the black cord tether on her wrist. Did the boyfriend give her that bracelet? I think of Darius asking her if she’d ever spent the night with a wild man. “I mean, why? Why would she be that mad?”

  Officer Rex watches me, like he’s waiting for me to answer my own question.

  Darius would never hit her. I wouldn’t.

  I was so drunk.

  I say, “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “That much is clear.” Officer Rex tosses the photos onto my chest. “Let’s hope you start remembering something.”

  Chapter Eight

  The physiotherapist stands at the side of the treadmill. He’s hooked me up to a machine to measure my heart rate. “Start out walking slowly,” he says. “If you feel like it, you can pick up the pace.”

  The clinic is in the basement of the hospital. I’ve been coming down every afternoon. The first time, I had to take a wheelchair. Today I took the stairs. Just getting out of bed is tiring, but I’ll do anything if it gets me out of the hospital.

  I look down at my runners. One shoelace is undone. I bend to do it up.

  “You okay?” the physiotherapist says.

  My fingers feel like I hav
e gloves on. I can’t seem to get the shoe done up.

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s normal,” he says. “Sometimes patients with brain injuries have to relearn a few things.”

  Like tying shoes? I don’t think so. I manage a loose knot. The ends of the shoelaces hang onto the treadmill. I stand up and say, “Let’s go.”

  The physiotherapist checks his stopwatch. “When you’re ready.”

  I take a step and the treadmill resists. Another step, and finally the mat begins to move. I feel my face already turning red. I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Good work,” he says. “That’s sixty seconds.”

  I groan.

  The physiotherapist grins. “Have you ever jumped the gap at Riley Park?”

  He makes conversation, but we have nothing to talk about. The first time I came to the clinic, I told him what happened, how I got beat up at Riley Park. Now it’s like he’s my buddy.

  He continues, “I used to jump the gap. One year I did it in November. I actually broke through ice.”

  “Uh-huh.” Even if I wanted to talk, I’d find it difficult. I’m busy breathing.

  He says, “It was just a patch of ice, more like thin glass. But the water was so cold that I thought I was going to freeze to death.”

  “Jumped lately?” I manage to ask between breaths.

  He shakes his head. “Nope. At some point I figured out that the risk outweighed any possible fun.”

  “You got old.”

  He shrugs. “If thirty is old, it’s not a bad thing, considering the alternative.”

  The alternative. I didn’t tell the physiotherapist about Darius. He wants me to walk on a treadmill, and I can do that. On a treadmill, it doesn’t make a difference that my best friend is dead. In everything else, it makes a difference. It makes a difference that when I brush my teeth I use the same kind of toothpaste that Darius used. I don’t eat green peas, ever, after Darius puked green peas in seventh-grade science class. When I listen to music, I hear songs Darius downloaded. That stuff makes a difference.

  Yesterday, I called Darius’s cell phone. I just wanted to hear his voice on the recording.

  The physiotherapist clicks his stopwatch. “Okay. Take a break.”

  I grab the rails alongside the treadmill and step off. “Toss me my water, would you?”

  He hands me my water bottle. It’s my hockey team’s bottle, made of stainless steel, with the team logo on the side. My teammates signed their names on the bottle, writing stupid things like “At least it was just your head.” Jason brought it for me.

  Jason couldn’t be too sad about me being in the hospital. Now he’s got a shot at playing.

  I open the lid on the water bottle and drink.

  The physiotherapist says, “Water bottles will kill us. If the plastic ones don’t give us cancer, that kind”—he points to my water bottle—”will give us Alzheimer’s.”

  I know what he’s talking about—the metal that’s in pots and antiperspirant. What is it called? I say, “My bottle is stainless steel.”

  The other kind of metal, it’s the same stuff as tinfoil. House siding too. What is it?

  He says, “My mother made my porridge every day in an aluminum pot. I’ll be lucky if I don’t lose my marbles.”

  Aluminum. That’s it.

  I say, “Can people get their memory back?”

  “Not people with Alzheimer’s. Something happens in the brain. It changes.”

  “What about other people?”

  He looks at me. “Are you having trouble with your memory?”

  “No.” I snap the lid back on the water bottle. “Shouldn’t we get back to work?”

  “This time we’ll do it with special effects.” He turns to the heart-rate monitor and flips a switch. The sound of my heart reverberates from the machine. “Sound and lights.”

  I step on the treadmill and start to walk. At first, the sound of my heart stays the same. I try to keep my breathing slow and calm. It’s just a walk. I could walk all day like this. I feel my face getting warm. The sound of my heart increases in tempo.

  Some memories I wish I would lose. Like Rubee’s voice, how she called Darius “Wildman.” I remember Darius and Rubee at the fire, or I think I do. It must have been before I passed out. Rubee was standing close to Darius, and he had his arm around her. I remember how her dark hair shone, like it caught the light from the fire. I remember how she threaded her fingers through Darius’s belt loop.

  “Take it easy, Corbin.”

  My heart rate is thudding, the sound keeping pace with the thud in my head.

  Officer Rex thinks I know more than I’m saying. But I don’t know anything.

  I don’t know if what I remember is real.

  I remember the sound of Darius’s heart monitor. I remember the sound it made when his heart stopped.

  “Corbin?”

  I stumble and the treadmill pulls my feet out from under me.

  “The rails!”

  I grab the rails. The physiotherapist snaps off the monitor. He says, “You just about lost it.”

  “I’m not getting any better.” I’m breathing so hard I can barely speak. “When am I going to get better?”

  He says, “Well, you’ve lost some muscle tone and your coordination is still impaired.”

  “When?”

  “It could be that your perception has been affected, how you judge where you are. I could run some tests...”

  “Just tell me. When will I be normal?”

  He waits a long time before he answers. “This kind of injury, Corbin, redefines what is normal. I’m not saying you won’t see some improvement. But you can’t expect everything back the way it was.”

  Nothing is the way it was. That’s just the way it is. Welcome to my new normal.

  “We’re done,” I say. I pick up my water bottle. “Here’s a souvenir.” I lob it to him and he catches it. “Stainless steel, guaranteed not to make you crazy.”

  My shoelace has come undone again, but I’m not going to try tying it again, not now. I just have to get out of here.

  Chapter Nine

  The air feels cold, like the season changed from fall to winter in the weeks I was in hospital. It’s raining. I crank the heater in my car, waiting for my breath to clear from the windshield. If anyone knew I was in my car, they’d have something to say about it. I’m supposed to be home in bed. But anyone normal is either at work or at school, so no one has to know. I rev the engine. A spot the size of a grapefruit clears on the windshield. If I hunch over the steering wheel, I can see out of the clear space. I put the car into gear and head out.

  I recognize other cars in the Riley Park lot. Jason’s car is here. He must have skipped last class. I pull my hat lower on my head to cover the bald space from the surgery.

  The trail into the park feels long. People walking their dogs greet me as they pass. Sometimes a dog runs up to me, but I don’t stop to pat it. I watch each step on the uneven path.

  When I near the fire pit, I hear voices. People are crying. Then I see Jason and a group of others. Plastic-wrapped flowers lie heaped on the ground. On top of the pile is a brown teddy bear. It’s not Darius’s funeral—I missed that when I was in the hospital. But it feels like a funeral. I stop on the path, suddenly unsure if I should intrude.

  One of the girls sees me and runs over to me. She’s been crying—mascara runs down her cheeks. She pulls me over to the others.

  Jason is standing with his hands in his pockets. He gives me a long look. “You’re out.”

  “Nice to see you too.”

  Jason says, “I could have picked you up. We skipped last class, just wanted to come out here. You know, to remember Darius.”

  The way he says it, I know what he’s thinking: Too bad it was Darius. Too bad it wasn’t me. I say, “Yeah, I do know. Too bad Darius is dead. Too bad no one stuck around that night.”

  Jason looks like he’d like to say something, b
ut he doesn’t.

  I continue, “Not that you’d have been any use in the fight.”

  Jason pulls his hands out of his pockets. “From what I heard, you guys didn’t have a chance.”

  “From what I heard,” I say, “you thought I did it.”

  More girls are crying.

  Rain is falling hard now. Rain bounces off the teddy bear’s head.

  Darius didn’t even like teddy bears.

  I nudge the bear with the toe of my shoe. It tumbles off the pile.

  Jason moves between me and the pile of flowers. He says, “No one thinks you killed Darius.”

  Rain is running down his face. He could be crying.

  A girl retrieves the bear and brushes mud from it. She holds the bear like a doll.

  Rain gathers in puddles. A loose flower tumbles into a puddle. It’s a rose, a red rose, and it floats on the puddle.

  It makes me mad to see the rose. It shouldn’t be here. None of this should be here. I turn to Jason. “I fought for him. I’m missing a piece of my brain because I stayed and fought.”

  Jason’s shoulders tense. He says, “If Darius had left with the rest of us, maybe there wouldn’t have been a fight.”

  I throw a punch and my fist glances against Jason’s cheek. It hardly registers on him, but it sets me off balance and I fall back into the mud.

  All the girls are crying now.

  Jason isn’t hurt. I’m too weak to hurt him. He offers his hand to help me up but I knock it away. I say, “I fought three guys. I fought them until they ran away.”

  Jason sighs. “Or they ran when they heard the police sirens.”

  I struggle to my feet. “You weren’t there. How do you know anything?”

  He doesn’t know anything. Does he? Could Jason look at the photos and see the guy’s face? I say to him, “Were you there?” I hate how it sounds like I’m pleading.

  He shakes his head. “No, Corbin, I wasn’t there. I’m sorry.”

  Yeah, I’m sorry too. I turn from the group and leave.

  Chapter Ten

  At Safeway, there are no carts left. It’s so busy it must be double-Airmiles day or something. But I don’t need a cart—I’m not shopping.