Leapholes

by James Grippando

  Leapholes

  James Grippando

  James Grippando

  Leapholes

  Chapter 1

  Ryan Coolidge did not want to go to prison.

  He'd been going to prison every Saturday for the past eleven months. Without fail, his mother would wake him, she'd put him in the car, and off they'd go. He didn't like the smell of prison, didn't like the feel of prison. He didn't like the drab beige walls, the cold concrete floors, the countless pairs of dark, soulless eyes that stared out from between iron prison bars. He didn't like anything about prison.

  The thing he liked least of all was visiting his father there.

  "Do we have to go, Mom?" Ryan was holding up his head with his hands, elbows on the kitchen table, a soggy raft of cornflakes floating in the bowl of milk before him.

  "You should want to go."

  "I don't." He dropped a piece of toast on the floor. His Golden Retriever pounced on it like a half-starved wolf. It was gone in one bite, and then Sam laid his huge head in Ryan's lap, begging for more. Sam was a smart and beautiful purebred, but his table manners had gone right out the door with Ryan's dad.

  "A boy should want to see his father," said Dr. Coolidge.

  "I don't."

  "Your father loves you."

  "Well, I don't love him."

  "Never say that about your father. Never. Do you hear me?"

  The dog sighed, as if wondering if that next piece of toast would ever drop. Ryan stroked the back of Sam's neck.

  "Did you hear me?" Ryan's mother said.

  Sam sighed even louder. My sentiment exactly, thought Ryan.

  "Ryan Coolidge, answer me right now."

  "Yes, I heard you," he muttered, but the cry of a baby in the next room had already stolen his mother's attention. It was his little sister, Ainsley. Dr. Coolidge popped from her seat as if she'd just sat on a tack, the way she always did when Ainsley made the slightest peep. Ryan loved Ainsley, too, but lately the world seemed to revolve around her. Poor Ainsley doesn't get to see her Daddy. Poor Mr. Coolidge doesn't get to see his new baby. If it weren't for the way Sam shadowed him everywhere, Ryan would have sworn he was the invisible boy.

  "Your father is a good man. Shame on you for saying otherwise." She left him with his dog in the kitchen.

  Shame on me, he thought. Shame, shame, shame. Being a Coolidge was all about shame. How could you not feel shame when you'd seen your father stuffed into the back seat of a police car? How could you feel anything but shame when your family name was blasted all over the television news, when kids at school shoved newspaper headlines in your face and laughed, or when you came home from school early one day and caught your mother crying? Dads could be doctors, lawyers, or plumbers. Some dads coached football, baseball, or soccer. Whatever they did, they usually came home and sat down for dinner at night. They hugged and kissed their wives and kids and said, "So, what did you do all day?" Ryan's dad used to do all those things. But not anymore. He lived his days, slept his nights, and took his meals all in the same dreadful place, a place where a question like, "So, what did you do all day?" always drew the same answer.

  Nothing. Not a thing. Nada.

  So the last thing Ryan felt like doing was visiting his father. Frankly, he didn't care if he ever saw his father again. And one thing was for sure.

  He wasn't going to visit him today.

  Ryan paused to listen for his mother's footsteps. Silence. She was busy with Ainsley, probably changing a diaper. He gobbled up one last slice of toast, then pushed away from the table. Sam raced toward the back door. His retriever lived for these moments, just him, Ryan, and maybe a tennis ball to fetch.

  "Stay," Ryan said. Sam stopped cold and assumed his most regal pose, sitting tall with shoulders back, chest out, and ears alert. Ryan was guilty of cutting his dog far too much slack at the breakfast table, but when it came to basic commands, he had taught Sam well. With just one word, Sam would "stay" all day. Ryan gave him a bear hug, which was answered with a sloppy wet lick across the chops. It was almost like a cow's tongue, but Ryan didn't mind. Sam was the one friend whose loyalty could never be questioned.

  "Goodbye, boy," he said.

  Sam cocked his head, as if to ask where Ryan was going.

  "Don't worry, I'll be back." He glanced toward the hallway that led to Ainsley's bedroom, and a fleeting thought crossed his mind. "But just in case, you take real good care of them, Sammy. You hear?"

  Sam gave him a puzzled look, but somehow Ryan was sure' he understood. Then Ryan turned and ran out the back door.

  Chapter 2

  Ryan hopped on his bicycle and didn't stop pedaling until his thighs were on fire.

  They weren't really flaming, but it was a good burn, the same tingling sensation he got when leaving the competition in the dust at the BMX races. Ryan had the coolest bike at Central Middle School, the fastest thing on two wheels that didn't come with a motor. It was silver with dark red striping. He'd paid extra for the striping, but it was worth every penny. It was his money. He'd earned it mowing lawns. Kids used to see him speeding by and say, "Cool bike, Ryan!" Parents would look at their little ones and say, "See, children, hard work does pay off. Look at Ryan Coolidge." But now that his father was in jail, people had a different take on it.

  They figured the bike was stolen.

  "Move along, boy," said Mrs. Hernandez.

  Ryan was sitting on the curb, still breathing hard from the ride. His sandy-brown hair was in a tussle from the wind. He was wearing his favorite basketball jersey beneath his sweatshirt, and he could feel it sticking to his back with perspiration. He looked up to see old Mrs. Hernandez standing on her front porch.

  "I said, move along!" she shouted, scowling.

  Ryan got back on his bike and continued down the street. It seemed that someone always had an eye on him. No one trusted him. They told him to move on, get lost, beat it. They assumed he was up to no good, that he was a bad kid. It was all because of that old saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," which meant that a son (the apple) is usually a lot like his father (the tree). Ryan wanted to hop off his bike and say, "Hey, I'm not like that. I know you think the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but the truth is, this tree was planted on a very steep hill, and when this apple hit the ground it rolled, and rolled, and kept on rolling clear into the. next county. And it didn't stop rolling until you could make a pretty good argument that my father and I were no longer members of the same species, let alone related as father and son, or tree and apple, or whatever else you wanted to call us."

  But he knew he'd be wasting his breath. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, and the tree was in jail. People just figured that the apple wasn't far behind. Both of them, rotten to the core.

  Ryan stopped at the traffic light. A red convertible pulled up beside him. It was a perfect day to ride around town with the top down, sunny and mild, the kind of weather people craved in south Florida. Ryan was admiring the old Mustang when he suddenly recognized the high school kid in the back seat. He tried to ignore him, but the kid spotted him.

  "Hey, Coolidge!" he shouted.

  Ryan refused to look.

  "Are you deaf, kid?"

  Ryan wished he would just go away. Teddy Armstrong wasn't the coolest kid in high school, but he sure thought he was. His father was a hotshot lawyer, a hard-nosed State Attorney who had been re-elected to his post three times. Some said he might run for Congress someday. Ryan hoped he would run, and he hoped to be old enough to vote against him when the time came. Mr. Armstrong was the man who had prosecuted the criminal charges against Ryan's father.

  "Coolidge, you want to race?"

  The driver revved his engine. Ryan just made a face and shook his head.

  "
Come on," the older boy said. "It's a fair race. A six-cylinder Mustang against you on your bike. You can whoop us. Just pretend the cops are chasing you."

  The teenagers in the car roared with laughter. The light hadn't turned green yet, but Ryan couldn't take it anymore. He came down on the pedals with all his weight and sped through the red light. A truck screeched to a halt in the intersection, the driver lying on his horn. But Ryan didn't care. He had to get away from his house, from Mrs. Hernandez, from Teddy Armstrong and his father. From everybody.

  Ryan was gaining speed, pedaling harder, flying down the street. His mind was racing even faster. It bugged him to no end when people said he was like his father, and no one said it more often than his own mother. To make things worse, she would always follow up by saying, "And you know Ryan, your father loves you very much." That, in turn, would lead to a conversation that Ryan could have repeated in his sleep, he'd had it so many times.

  "If he loves me, then why does he lie to me?"

  "Your father doesn't lie to you."

  "Yes, he does. Every time I go to see him, he tells me that he's innocent."

  "He's not lying."

  "But he's in jail."

  "Just because your father's in jail doesn't mean he did anything wrong. Sometimes innocent people end up in jail. It happens."

  "But he told the judge he did it. And now he wants me to believe he was innocent? Why would he have confessed if he didn't do anything wrong?"

  "I'm sure he had his reasons, Ryan. We can't stop believing in him."

  Yeah, right, thought Ryan. The prisons had to be full of innocent people who had confessed to crimes simply because they had their reasons.

  Stop lying to me, Dad!

  A car flashed in front of him. Ryan swerved, but the car swerved with him. He hit the breaks, but he was going too fast. The rear tire slid out from under him. He released the break to stop the skid, but the momentum jerked him too far in the other direction. The front tire caught a hole or a bump or maybe it was the curb. Ryan didn't see it exactly.

  All he saw was the rear end of a station wagon sliding straight toward him.

  Suddenly, it was as if he were flying in slow motion. He could smell the burning rubber as the tires skidded across the pavement. He could hear the screech of metal against metal, his precious bicycle slamming into the car. He could feel the seat yanked out from under him, feel his hands leaving the handle grips. At that very moment, someone should have shouted, We have liftoff, because that was exactly how it felt. He was soaring in mid-air, and there was absolutely no way to stop.

  Until his head hit the window.

  It must have been a glancing blow, or maybe he was just lucky to have been wearing a helmet. He landed on the pavement and lay still for a moment, wondering if he were dead. But he wasn't dead, he was sure of it. He was in too much pain to be dead.

  "Oh, my elbow," he said, groaning.

  A man came running out of the car from the driver's side. He went straight to Ryan. Ryan looked up into his face.

  "You all right, kid?"

  Ryan tried to focus, but it was difficult. The man had a strange face. It was remarkably flat. Or maybe Ryan just wasn't seeing straight. "What just happened?"

  The man picked him up.

  "Hey, put me down!" said Ryan.

  The man didn't listen. He carried Ryan to his car and opened the rear hatch to his station wagon. Ryan did a double take. It was the strangest looking car Ryan had ever seen. It looked normal on the outside, but inside was a stretcher and all kinds of gadgets and medical supplies. It was like an ambulance with no lights or sirens, no markings on the outside to identify it as an emergency vehicle.

  The man laid Ryan on the floor. This was starting to give him the creeps. A strange man with a flat face. A car that opened up and looked like an ambulance. Where had that car come from, anyway? It seemed to have appeared from nowhere, which was appropriate enough. That was exactly where Ryan had been headed-nowhere.

  "Let me out of here!" said Ryan.

  The man raised his index finger, as if to quiet him, placing it just a few inches before Ryan's nose. Then he moved it back and forth, slowly, like a windshield wiper. Ryan's eyes followed his finger, side to side, left to right, and back again.

  "You should feel better now," the man said.

  Ryan blinked, trying to stay focused. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw the man smiling. Yes, there was definitely a broad grin stretching across that ugly flat face. Ryan held onto that image for only a moment, just a flash in his mind. Then he could fight no longer.

  His world turned black.

  Chapter 3

  Ryan was flat on his back in a hospital bed, the white fluorescent ceiling lights assaulting his eyes. Squinting, he propped himself up on one elbow and peered across the room. People wearing white smocks and green hospital scrubs were moving in every direction. They were at least fifty feet away, and Ryan quickly realized that he was in a large, common area with lots of other beds just like his. He had a semi-private cubicle, and the only thing between him and the patients on either side of him was a beige plastic curtain that was suspended from the ceiling.

  "Where am I?" Ryan said to a passing nurse.

  She stopped in her tracks and came to his bedside. Quite large in stature, she reminded Ryan of the girls' field hockey coach at school, the kind of woman who could pick up Ryan with one arm and toss him out the window with the other. "Hey, Rip Van Winkle's awake," she said. What do you know?"

  "Rip Van Winkle?" said Ryan.

  The nurse pressed a button on the headboard, and the mechanical bed adjusted to bring Ryan into an upright, seated position. "You've been out cold since you got here. We were worried about you."

  "I still don't know where I am," said Ryan.

  "You're in the ER, honey. Emergency Room."

  "How long have I been here?"

  "Seventeen years."

  "Yeah, right. What are you going to tell, me next, Mt. Rushmore is a natural phenomenon?"

  "Oooh, you're a smart one, aren't you?" She checked her watch. "I'd say you've been here about two hours."

  "What happened to me?"

  "I was hoping you would tell us that."

  Ryan felt a pain in his elbow, and the sight of the bandage sparked his memory. "I remember riding my bicycle. A white car came out of nowhere, knocked me down. I think I skidded across the windshield and then hit the pavement. A man picked me up and took me to his car. Strange looking guy. Then I blacked out."

  "Hmm. That must have been the man who brought you here."

  "Is he still here?"

  "No. Looks like he pulled a little hit and run."

  "Well, he didn't exactly run. He brought me to the hospital."

  "Thank goodness for that. But he dropped you here and disappeared. Didn't leave his name. I guess he was afraid the police might arrest him for reckless driving. He didn't give us your name, either."

  "Oh, my name's Ryan."

  "Ryan what?"

  "Ryan-" He started to answer, then stopped. A simple question like What is your name? wasn't so simple for a boy like Ryan. Not that he didn't know his surname. The problem was, everyone else seemed to know it, too, ever since his father's picture had been plastered all over the front page of the newspaper. "Oh, you're Ryan Coolidge," they would say. Then their faces would fill with disapproval, and Ryan would know exactly what was going through their minds: You're Ryan Coolidge, son of that jewel thief aren 't you? Ryan suddenly remembered why he had jumped on his bicycle in the first place, and why he had been pedaling so fast. He was tired of the stigma, the embarrassment. He was tired of being a Coolidge.

  He didn't want to see that look of disapproval anymore- not from anyone ever again, starting with this nurse.

  "My name's Ryan…" He scrunched his face, as if straining his brain. "I-I don't remember my last name."

  "Oh, my. That's not a good thing. Do you remember your phone number, maybe? Or where you live?"

&n
bsp; Ryan gave her that same blank expression. "Nope, sorry. All I seem to remember is that my name is Ryan."

  "No need to apologize. It's not your fault, honey."

  "What do we do now?"

  "I'll let the ER physician know that you're awake. She'll come and examine you. Meanwhile, you just rest. I'm sure your memory will start coming back to you in time. And just as soon as it does, you can give us your phone number so we can call your parents. They must be so worried about you."

  "I'm sure my mom is," said Ryan. Then he realized he wasn't supposed to have any memory of his parents. "And my dad, too," he added quickly. "Whoever they are."

  She seemed puzzled by his response, but she let it go. "How's that elbow feeling?"

  "Hurts."

  "I'll see if I can get you a painkiller." She gave him a gentle pat on the hand and walked away.

  Ryan retreated into thought, which took some of the edge off his elbow pain. He wondered how long he could pretend not' to know his own name. How long could he convince the world that he was not a Coolidge? He'd tried that charade only once before, and the results had been disastrous.

  It was the day of his father's final court appearance, the worst day of his life. Many months had come and gone since then, but the memory still burned in Ryan's mind as if it had all happened yesterday. He closed his eyes, and even though he was still lying in a hospital bed, he could see the car pulling into their driveway. He could see the woman dressed in the gray business suit walking to their front door. It was all coming back to him again, playing in his mind's eye like an old movie from which there was no escape.

  The doorbell rang, and Ryan knew it was the lawyer.

  From the very beginning, Ryan's father had assured him that he was innocent of the charges against him. Ryan wanted to go with him to the court hearing. He needed to be there when his father looked the judge in the eye and told him that he'd done nothing wrong. For some reason, however, his parents told him to stay home. Courtrooms were open to the public, so Ryan couldn't understand what they were trying to hide from him. At three-thirty in the afternoon, his parents got in the car with the lawyer and drove to the court hearing, leaving Ryan with his grandmother. Ten minutes later, Ryan snuck out of his room and bicycled to the courthouse.