by J. K. Wise
“No, really, I want to walk.”
He doesn’t argue anymore, but he squeezes my hand before he lets it go and walks over to his Jeep, throwing his bag in the back with a big arch before he grabs onto a metal bar and pulls himself inside.
As I walk away from school, my stomach feels shakier than my legs. I’m going to a dance with Alec Newton?
CHAPTER FOUR
Warnings
At the end of practice, we huddle and chant, and then, it’s time to hit the showers. I take a soak in the hot tub to try to loosen up my shoulders. By the time I get back to the locker room, only a few guys are still around.
“Hey, Portillo, no practice tomorrow. You going out?” Robbins asks. “People are going to Carter’s.”
It’s a rare Friday night without a game, so of course, there’s a party at Ryan Carter’s place. The acres of desert behind his house are party-central. His parents either don’t know or don’t care, so there are crowds, kegs, and pick-up trucks circled up around bonfires in the back of the Carter’s property most weekends. Those parties are a lot more fun off- season when I can actually have a beer or two.
“I’ll be there. I promised Stina,” I say.
“Hot Stina,” he whistles. “If you can’t make it, I’ll take care of that for you.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I say, but I don’t really care. The guys give me shit all the time about her. Hot Stina, Sex-On-Feet, and a whole list of more disgusting names for my girl. They make a big thing about how she’s so blond, and I’m so brown. Just more words I let roll off. People just want to stir shit up.
“I’ll be at Roberts’s later tonight, but I’m going down to campus to see Will after lunch.”
“Sounds like fun. Say hey from me,” Chris says, rubbing his side. “Tell him I wish he were still blocking for me.”
We walk out of the locker room into the evening air. At the edge of the parking lot, the saguaros cast long shadows across the asphalt, and in the distance, the mountains are purple with shadows and red from the setting sun. The days are getting shorter.
“Hey, isn’t that your neighbor?” Chris asks, nodding over his shoulder before glancing down at his phone.
Across the parking lot, I see Melanie walking away from Alec Newton and his Jeep. “Yeah, that’s Mel.”
“I’ve never seen her talking to a guy before,” Chris says. “Why start with him?”
“She doesn’t really talk to anyone.” That’s the truth, and I should know. I’ve lived next to her my whole life. We played together a lot when we were kids, but since she got hardcore about swimming, I barely see her except coming and going from practice.
“Well, she’s talking to Newton.”
“Poor Mel.”
Yards away, Alec shakes his head as he watches Mel walk away. He jumps in his Jeep and blasts his stupid music as soon as he hits the ignition. What a dickhead.
“Chris, will you cool it out with Newton? If you want to fight him, fight your own fight. Don’t make it about me,” I say.
“Hey, I’m a lover, not a fighter,” he says, holding up his hands. “Newton pisses me off, though. He’s lazy, and then he blames it on you?”
“Whatever. He’s always saying something ignorant. Always has.”
Alec Newton used to follow me around recess calling me his landscaper and dumb stuff like that. In sixth grade, I got sick of it and slammed my fist into his nose. I got suspended. Dad was so mad. I thought he would get even madder when I told him all the shit Newton had been saying to me, but that wasn’t how it went. He calmed down and shook his head. Alec Newton is going to end up an asshole like his crazy dad, he said. Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you get angry. It was the first time I ever heard my dad use a swear word, so those words stuck with me. Now, when Newton or anyone else gives me shit about being brown, I try to blow it off. So what if my grandparents were born in Sonora? I don’t get what the difference is between there and here except a stupid wall that doesn’t keep anyone out or in?
“Hey, that was an actual earthquake during practice earlier,” Chris says, reading from his phone. “Not big enough to mess anything up, though.”
“I didn’t even know it was possible to have an earthquake in Tucson,” I say.
He laughs and tucks his phone back in his sweatshirt pocket.
“Anything’s possible, bro.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Surfacing
My alarm goes off in the dark. I roll over and braid my hair automatically while I sit on the edge of the bed. Morning swim is a way of life, if you can even call this morning. More like the middle of the night. I walk into the kitchen and grab an orange from the counter. Mom hands me a bowl of oatmeal.
“I don’t remember going to bed last night,” I say.
She laughs. “You fell asleep on the couch. Your dad walked you up to your bed. I hope you didn’t have homework.”
“I’ll finish it in home room. It’s been a long season,” I mutter. Mom gets it. She gets me. She’s been taking me to practice or the trainer or sitting in the stands every day since I learned my first stroke.
“I know you will,” she says. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”
I finish up my oatmeal.
. . . . .
After practice, the rising sun warms up the crisp air. I walk through the narrow hall, gravity pushing me down. My bones are heavy. People walk slowly in front of me, and I can’t set my own pace. The metal lockers in the walls bounce back sounds. I miss the rush and the swoosh of underwater.
Next to me, I tune into two girls talking loudly as they walk slowly past the gum tree in the library plaza.
“She won’t talk to me anymore. I didn’t even know that she was talking to him. I have a boyfriend anyway. I can’t help it if he texts me,” singsongs the girl wearing a green shirt cut through the neck so it falls off her shoulder. She pauses to take her blue gum out of her mouth and stick it on top of generations of petrified gum smeared across the trunk of the tree. Blue gum. A boy texted her who shouldn’t have, she has a boyfriend anyway, and her gum is blue. True facts.
I go back to focusing on my breath and my voice in my head. Right, left, right, left, I think over and over as I watch my feet hitting the ground in a rhythm and head for the Science Wing. Bi-o, bi-o on my way through the tile-floored hall. A syllable in my head for each step. I float past everyone, blocking out the noise. I think about the next time I can be in the water. I think about being faster.
Then, I see him, and I stop. I come to the surface, sputtering.
Alec leans against the wall outside of the music room wearing the same black-framed sunglasses that he wore to my meet. He looks around, and people nod at him as they walk by. He nods back, the benevolent gesture of a new royal who hasn’t been on the throne long enough to behead anyone. I can’t figure out what he is thinking. Alec asking me to Homecoming last night definitely headlines in the news of the weird. When sees me in the hall, he catches up with me and walks me to class. In the plaza, I notice that everyone is watching us.
“What’s up, Melanie? Your face is red,” Alec asks.
“People are looking at you.”
He shrugs. “Actually, they’re probably looking at you.”
I feel dizzy. I hate attention when I’m out of my lane.
Alec tries to take my hand, but I pull it back. He laughs and steers me toward the D-Wing. I hear more giggling, and when I look up, a whole table of girls is sneering at me.
I dive back into my bubble. I haven’t even told Corrina about Alec yet, and she’s my best friend. She’s going to be so mad. Somehow, everyone knows about Alec asking
me to the dance. I wasn’t trying to keep a secret or anything. It never occurs to me that people are interested in things that don’t have anything to do with them.
I text Corrina: Alec Newton asked me to Homecoming.
She texts back: No shit.
I don’t hear anything else from her. Yep. Definitely mad. She’ll get over it. She knows me well enough to know that I didn’t even realize this was going to be a thing anyone wanted to know.
At dinner, I ask my parents about Homecoming. First, Dad asks about Alec. I tell him that I didn’t know much about him. Dad gets all quiet. Oh god, I hope he isn’t going to give me a “talk.” We don’t do that. The most that I ever get from him is a pat on the head after I win a meet, like a dog that deserves a treat. It works for both of us. I know he loves me. He’s just quiet like me.
He looks away now. “Money’s tight.”
I know it kills him to say it. His chiropractor practice was hard hit when all of the banks went bankrupt and other businesses started to fold. I heard him talking to mom one night, and I guess that he lost money in stocks too?
“Trainers are expensive, Melanie. We don’t have a lot of money for extras.”
I can see the lines on his face. No extras, like dresses and shoes and whatever else.
“Don’t worry about it, Dad. I don’t need to go,” I say.
Mom clears her throat. “If it’s important to you, we’ll find a way.”
I shake my head right away. “Homecoming isn’t important to me. I don’t even understand it. I don’t know why Alec asked me in the first place.
There’s a long silence at the table. We’re a quiet family, but this silence is heavy. I want to say something to make Mom and Dad understand that I mean what I say about Homecoming, but I also want to let it drop.
“There was an earthquake at practice today,” I share.
“I heard about it on the news,” Mom says. “I didn’t feel anything here. It was a small one.”
“I heard some of the other swimmers say that they saw the water slosh in the pool. I was in the middle of a set. I barely felt it.”
Dad asks me about my times from practice, and I tell them my practice schedule for the rest of the week. When dinner is over, I clear the plates, even though I can barely feel my legs under my body after today’s two-a-days.
I’m slowly making my way to the stairs when I glance over my shoulder. Dad stands with his hands on the back of the kitchen chair, his head hanging down. Mom walks over to him and raises her hand to touch his shoulder. She stands there for a moment, not moving. Instead of comforting him, Mom drops her arm, takes a step back, and shakes her head. She squints her eyes while she looks at the back of his head, like she’s trying to see through to his brain. I should turn my head, but I don’t. I steal this glimpse behind a screen of my parents’ real life that is usually closed to me.
Mom turns away from him, her face smooth as cold as ice now.
I make myself climb the stairs to my room. I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling.
Alec Newton likes me.
Earthquakes happen in Tucson.
Mom walked away from Dad in the kitchen.
True facts.
CHAPTER SIX
Things Shift
Stina talks about the Homecoming Dance the whole time we’re walking through the Plaza, down the bus lane, and across the parking lot to my car.
What she’s going to wear.
What I’m going to wear.
Who we’re driving with.
Where we’re going to dinner.
I guess she’s forgetting that there’s a football game first. I can’t think past the game. Another loss like last week, and I don’t think I can stand it.
Stina kisses me before I climb into my car. Her lips taste special, a flavor somewhere between strawberries and sex…I mean, I guess. When it comes to sex, Christina is all about waiting until the time is right, but holy shit, we’ve been together for a year. I’m pretty sure that the time is right RIGHT NOW.
I work hard to push my thoughts of Stina and her strawberry-sex lip gloss out of my mind. The drive to campus is an easy shot down the freeway past the scrubbiest part of Tucson. Trailer parks and burned-out diners line the interstate until the stories-tall “A” on the closest mountain signals that the next exit is the University.
I’ve only visited my buddy Will a few times since he graduated from Northside last May and started at the University. Everytime I visit him, I can’t believe the smorgasbord of hot girls hanging around his house. I don’t know how Will stays focused. College seems like a mine field of distractions.
I end up parking almost a mile from Theta Chi. All the fraternity houses line Second Street in the shadow of the football stadium. My big dream was to play ball on that field. That’s not going to happen. This is my last season playing football ever, a sad but true fact.
After I find Will’s room down a cinderblock hallway already filled with loud music and the smell of sweet smoke, we take a ball out to the basketball court in the parking lot and play two-on-two pick-up until we run out of sweat.
“Man, I miss playing football with you guys,” Will says, dribbling the ball as we walk up the wide steps to three-story tudor-style Theta Chi house that looks out of place in this desert town of stucco and adobe brick.
“Robbins is getting killed without you blocking for him,” I answer.
Inside the open courtyard of the fraternity house, the night is warming up. Girls are everywhere, and I’m a sweaty pig.
I grab a quick shower down the hall. When I walk out of the shower stall, dripping wet wearing nothing but a towel, two girls stand in front of the mirror checking their makeup. They turn around and glance at me. One of them mutters a flat, uninterested “hey” before they turn back around to keep working on their hair? Their makeup? Who knows?
Wow, hot girls in the shower room. College is seriously some kind of paradise. I take a breath and walk past the mirrors on my way to the hallway. The tan, tall, dark-haired one with the huge eyes turns around again as I walk past them holding my towel shut on my hip with a tight fist.
“Hey, you don’t live here, right?” she asks.
I stop and stammer. “Well, I live in Tucson. But no, I don’t live here. I mean, at this house. Right here.” Water drips from my wet hair down my chest. God, could I be more high school?
‘Yeah. Got it,” she says, her smile almost a sneer. “But you know Will?”
“Yeah.”
“We saw you guys playing basketball outside.” She smiles. “You’re cute in your towel.” She laughs, more like a purr than a giggle.
“Might be cute out of your towel,” her blond friend says under her breath.
I almost blush. She watches me check her out. It’s hard to feel cool when you’re standing around naked making small talk in your friend’s shower shoes.
“Yeah, what about you?”
“Well, I’m not wearing a towel,” she answers, playing the game.
“Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll see if I can find you one?” I say, surprising myself. I invite them down to Will’s room, which is what they wanted anyway. Sigh. The giggle of a college girl is my heroin. I’m willing to do just about anything to get some more.
Back, dressed, in Will’s room, I know I need to get out of here. Stina’s waiting for me. More people keep showing up. Blond Ashley drapes herself across my lap.
Daaammmmn. I really need to get out of here.
Then something is happening. The ground moves, and sound rips through the air like yesterday in the practice room, but this time
, it’s louder than standing next to a train. The lights flicker, and then it’s black. No light. Complete darkness. There are screams and even laughs, but my own voice catches in my throat almost as quickly as I make the sound.
The emergency lights flash on. I look up just as I hear the crack of the beam over the roar from the moving building. I can’t breathe. Dust chokes me and stings my eyes. Everything is happening in slow motion. The wooden header splits in two, and there isn’t time to scream before it happens. The ceiling buckles and falls into the room. I’m thrown to the floor. More ceiling falls, and more wall collapses, a chain of destruction all around us. I’m coughing and screaming at the same time. Someone stomps across my legs as they scramble to get to the door.The emergency beams are the only light, and now I can see the dust and flying pieces of house.
It’s loud, so loud. Screams for help, screams of pain from the people under the beam and the drywall. Through the shadows, Ashley’s legs lie twisted underneath her. Her neck is unnaturally crooked, her face leans away from where I was standing. A dark shadow grows under the people on the floor. The shadow grows bigger. It’s blood, and there’s more and more of it. I form the words in my head before I understand what they mean.
Earthquake. Earthquake. Get out. Get out, or you are going to die.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Out of the Blue
“So what do I do, just walk up to him and say ‘I can’t go to the dance?’” I ask Corrina on the phone while I lie on my bed and try to get my Mom’s blank face from earlier out of my head. “Or do I have to work up to it, like small talk, or whatever?”
“I have to teach you how to talk?” she laughs.
I roll over onto my back, pull my comforter up around me and stare at my bedroom ceiling. “Tomorrow is Saturday. I won’t see him tomorrow. I could text him…”