The scatter of sparks from metal striking metal, the piercing ring that cut right through the roaring, the sight of the sword shattering, Stewart’s wounded cry—it all became one sensation. The next thing I knew, I was at his side as he lay there on the ground, moaning with his eyes closed.
“Stewart! Come on, get up!”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even open his eyes. He just kept moaning.
“Jesus Christ, Stewart!” I was starting to get afraid now. I slapped his face lightly until he finally opened his eyes. They looked dark, hollow in the red light.
“Stewart!” I hollered again. “Stewart, are you okay?”
He moved his mouth a little, but no words came out. A faint smile appeared on his lips. I jumped up and paced back and forth a few times. I wanted to get the hell out of there before anything else happened.
“All right, buddy, let’s go.” I helped him to his feet, led him back to the Volvo, and put him in the passenger’s seat.
“I’ll drive,” I said. He nodded before closing his eyes again. It wasn’t until we reached the village that he finally opened his eyes and leaned forward.
“Welcome back,” I said. He looked down at his hands.
“Still vibrating, are they?” I asked.
He gave a little smile and sank back into the seat, though he didn’t really seem to relax until we were well up on the Heights and nearing home.
“Care to tell me what the hell happened back there?”
“Got a little carried away, that’s all.”
“Yeah, just a little.”
So much for life as it should be and all that Don Quixote bullshit from dinner.
I thought of Kaela’s number, sitting on my desk back at the house. I’d forgotten all about calling her after changing into my costume. She was probably out there right now, sitting around a fire, having a beer, talking to somebody who wasn’t me.
“Pull over, Sancho,” he said as we approached my house. I didn’t slow down.
“Screw that. I’m bringing you home.”
“No need. I am quite recovered.”
I ignored him and kept driving all the way to Shangri La.
I turned off the engine in front of the darkened house, and we sat there for a moment, tired and empty in the silence. Finally we both got out. He was still a little unsteady on his feet, but he could make it on his own. I was glad—I’d had to help my old man into bed more than a few times last spring on those nights when he’d been boozing. It was a major pain in the ass.
Stewart patted me on the shoulder as I walked up onto the deck with him.
“Thank you, old friend.” He paused before the door.
The crescent moon had risen enough to cast a thin light over us. The night was cold—no crickets, no birds. The silence had followed us from the car. I didn’t know what to say to the small shadow of a person standing beside me in the dim. I looked out across the valley to the row of red lights on the ridge. They looked smaller, too.
Gazing at the tower lights, I realized I’d forgotten to grab the remnants of his sword. I wondered what else we’d left on that mountaintop.
“Call me tomorrow, Stewart. We need to talk.”
He looked back down at his hands and nodded before going inside. Shaken by the transformation, I watched him disappear. He’d given me this spectacular night, only to turn around and destroy it, as if it were too good for me to keep. It seemed to be the way of things these days with Stewart.
“Farewell, Your Grace,” I whispered, then stumbled home to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next day was a Sunday, cold and wet and gray. I kept waiting for Stewart to call, but he never did. I even thought about going to Shangri La to see how he was holding up, but in the end I chickened out. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give him some time to get his shit together. I was pretty exhausted myself—it had been an intense night on the heels of an intense couple weeks, not to mention that two days of smoking after a month of abstinence had left me feeling a bit fuzzy. It had been so long since I’d gone more than a week without getting baked, I wondered if I’d been this way all along and just never noticed. Either way, I didn’t like it much now. I even almost threw away what was left of the second joint Ralph had given me. Almost.
All through the day, the weirdness of the previous night kept coming back to me. It seemed foggy, like a dream—being there under the towers, watching Stewart lose it, watching his sword shatter in the red light. It made me feel better to think of it that way. Nothing but a dream, like the ones that come in the night, the kind you shrug off before falling back asleep because you’re just so tired. Of course, what you wake up to can be far worse. My father had taught me that. His last lesson.
But this was different. Stewart wasn’t like Dad. It was just a blip. I’d simply underestimated the stress Stewart was up against, the feeling—at least in his mind—that he was carrying the weight of the production on his shoulders.
That’s what I told myself, anyway. But deep down in my gut, as I looked out the bedroom window at the empty plastic chair in the backyard and watched the rain turn to snow, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this whole thing was bigger than that, bigger than the play, bigger than I could handle.
I waved a hand in front of my face, the way Stewart always did. “Put it away, put it away,” I whispered. I could hear his voice in my head. No fear, Sancho. No fear.
Then Monday morning came along. Hearing a vehicle pull in, I grabbed my backpack and headed out the door, only to see Mrs. Bolger in the driveway, her SUV idling. As I came over, she didn’t smile the way she usually did.
She rolled down the window.
“Frenchy, hi,” she said, managing a slight smile. “Stewart’s not feeling too well today. He’s going to stay home.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s okay. I can walk to school.”
“Nonsense! Stewart insisted I give you a ride. Hop in.”
I went around to the passenger side and got in, and we headed off. We didn’t say much on the way down Suffolk Heights. It was pretty awkward, actually, just the two of us in the car. We’d never spent any real time alone.
“So I hope he’s okay,” I offered as we crossed the river and headed toward the village. “What’s he got? Cold or something?”
She hesitated. “Nothing like that. He’s just tired, that’s all. Poor thing hardly got out of bed yesterday. It’s the play—the production is running him ragged.”
“It’s a lot of work,” I agreed. “And he has the biggest role of anyone.”
She nodded. “But we’re so pleased he’s doing it. That you both are. It’s just so cool. Stewart says you’re quite good.”
“Not as good as him.”
“Well, it’s certainly become his new passion. You know Stewart—whatever he does, it’s all or nothing.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
She nodded again, her mouth tightening into a little frown. “He was furious with me for keeping him home. Didn’t want to miss rehearsal. But…I insisted.”
“It won’t be a big deal for him to miss one day,” I said. “We can work around it.”
“Good.”
We didn’t say much else until we reached the school.
“Well,” she said as we turned into the parking lot, “tell Ms. Vale she’ll have him back tomorrow, rested and ready to go.”
“I will.”
We pulled up in front of the school. I thanked her for the ride and was about to get out when she stopped me.
“Frenchy, you don’t think this whole theater business is too much for Stewart to handle, do you?”
She had this weird expression on her face, all worried and intense. With her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, she suddenly looked like Stewart in a way I’d never noticed. I shifted a little in my seat. We were moving beyond awkward now into something else entirely. I knew she was looking for me to say the right thing; I just couldn’t tell what it was she wanted to hear. I didn’t even know
the right answer myself.
“I don’t think so,” I said at last. I hesitated. “I mean, do you?”
“I don’t know. He’s so focused. It’s been difficult.” She took a deep breath. “He’s just going through a phase.” She looked over at me and smiled. “Everyone does at some point, don’t they?”
“I’ve certainly had my share.”
As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted it. Her smile vanished, her eyes filled with tears, and there it was—the look.
“Oh, Frenchy, you poor thing,” she said. “Of course you have.”
I opened the door and grabbed my backpack.
“Yeah, but it’s okay. I’m good.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. She could tell I was embarrassed. “I’m just a little tired this morning.”
“No problem,” I said. “And don’t worry about Stewart. Three weeks from now, this’ll all be over. In the meantime, he’s got me to look out for him.”
“I know he does. Thank you, Frenchy.”
“Yeah, well, thanks again for the ride.” I shut the door and took off. My skull felt like it was on fire, like I’d just come from a pit stop. I wished I had.
“Want another?” Bryant said, pushing the candy dish a few inches my way.
“No thanks.”
We’d been at it for ten minutes or so. Nothing too serious—just the normal chitchat, a little update on how things were going, that sort of thing. “Checking in,” he liked to call it.
He leaned back in his chair—slowly, quietly—and gave a little smile, and that’s when I knew we were heading for deeper waters. He always made that move when it was time to get serious. By now, I also knew it was up to me to go first. Hence the pause, the inviting smile. Another little trick from the old shrink handbook, I figured. No big deal. I could play along.
“So, did you miss me?” I asked.
At our last session, Bryant had suggested we start meeting every other week. “You seem to be making progress,” he’d said. I didn’t really know how the hell he could tell something like that based on a few hours of conversation, but I didn’t argue.
“Sure did. You’re quite entertaining, you know.”
“Yeah, thanks. I get that a lot.”
“You’ll be getting it a lot more, I’m sure, after the play. Ms. Vale says you’re very talented.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “So what else did she say?”
Bryant laughed. “Not too much else. Just that you’re a hard worker. That the other kids really seem to like you. You know, that kind of stuff.”
“Oh. That’s cool, I guess. What about Stewart?” I started to reach once more for the candy dish, then hesitated and grabbed the baseball sitting next to it instead.
“What about Stewart?”
“Well, what did she say about him?” The ball’s leather felt soft in my hand, the stitches worn. I guessed it had seen some serious play.
“What makes you think we talked about him?” he asked.
“Never mind,” I said, and tossed him the ball. He caught it with one hand.
I could see his gaze sharpen. Just a little.
“Do you want to talk about Stewart?”
Ah, good one, Bryant. Very clever.
“We can,” I said. “If you want. I mean, I don’t feel a need to or anything.”
He tossed the ball back. “No. But he is an important person in your life. You mention him quite a bit.”
My thumb traced the curve of the ball’s stitching, an endless loop. “Well, we’re in the play together. We spend a lot of time together.”
“Would you say your friendship is a good one?”
I looked up at him. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“No reason. It’s good to have a close friend, Gerry, especially in tough times. And this whole development with the play is great too. You’ve seemed a lot happier in our last few conversations compared to the beginning of the year.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, putting the ball back on the desk, “there’ve been a lot of changes.”
“Like what? I mean, besides the play.”
“Just stuff,” I said. “I’ve gotten to know this girl a little. She’s pretty cool.”
Bryant nodded. I thought for a second he was going to let me get by with that, but then he came right at me.
“How about the smoking? How’s that going?”
I glanced up at him, then shook my head and looked away.
Bryant held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get you in trouble or anything like that. Not in this room. It’s just part of the conversation. And it’s something we haven’t really talked about yet. Maybe now’s the time.”
“Yeah, but it’s not really that important, is it?”
“That depends,” he said. “It can be pretty important.”
“Okay. Well, the good news is that I stopped. When the play started, I stopped. For the most part.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Well, I had a little this weekend. You know, Halloween and everything.”
He smiled. “Halloween, huh? It didn’t have anything to do with Friday? With what happened at rehearsal?”
I frowned. “Who told you anything happened at rehearsal?”
He didn’t say anything. Just gave me his goddam Yoda smile.
“I’m not a druggie.”
“I never suggested you were.”
“I mean, it’s not like any time something bad happens to me, I have to turn around and get high. It’s not like I was walking around baked all the time or anything. In fact, it wasn’t even my idea most of the time. Most of the time, I couldn’t have cared less. It gets kind of boring after a while.”
“So whose idea was it, then?”
I didn’t say anything. I just folded my arms and frowned.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s try this instead—if it wasn’t your idea, if getting high was boring, then why did you do it?”
“I don’t know. Something to do. I mean, I was doing it way before everything happened with my father.”
He hesitated. “Listen, Gerry, people do drugs, alcohol, all that stuff for a whole bunch of reasons. Sometimes it’s to have fun, sometimes it’s because they’re bored, sometimes it’s to fit in, that sort of thing. And in terms of the outcome, it can vary too. Sometimes it’s a problem from the very start. Sometimes it’s never a problem. And sometimes it starts off okay, only to become a problem later on. As a counselor, I get especially concerned if a person’s using while going through a rough patch, through something major.”
“You mean like a death, right?” I snapped. “Yeah, I get it.”
“I’m sure you do. So you probably know that when you’re going through a difficult spell, you’re more vulnerable. Your defenses are down. Drugs and alcohol—they’re kind of like medicine. They make you feel better. You know, keep the demons at bay. It’s really as simple as that. There’s even a term for it: self-medicating.”
“Hey, if it works, right?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, that’s the problem, Gerry. It doesn’t. Not in the long run. All you’re left with is a nasty little chemical dependency problem on top of everything else. Makes everything more complicated. Very tricky.”
“So it’s a good thing I stopped, then.” I sat back in my chair with a grin.
“Yeah, I’d say so. A smart move.”
“Well, it was Stewart’s idea for us to quit, really. He’s on this whole purity kick.”
“Because of the play?”
“Something like that.” I looked up at him.
“Speaking of Stewart,” he said, “I wanted to ask you about him. How’s he been lately?”
I kind of froze up. I tried not to, but I started thinking about the Friday afternoon freakout, about Saturday night at the towers. And then that look on Mrs. Bolger’s face this morning, that look of fear.
Bryant, of course, noticed. When I didn’t answer, he tried again.
“So this thing happened on Friday, right? Stewart lost control. You fought.”
“You make it sound so dramatic.”
“How did it make you feel?” he asked, ignoring me.
“How did it make me feel? Wow. What a penetrating question. Where’d you learn that one—Therapy for Dummies?”
He just laughed, the bastard. “You’re stalling now. Come on. Did it make you angry?”
“No.”
“Worried?”
“Not really,” I said. “We’d been busting our asses all week. We were all a bit punchy.”
“Well,” he said with a shrug, “there’s punchy, and then there’s punchy.”
“Everyone has bad days. Besides, why are we even talking about him? I’m the one who’s fucked up, right?”
Bryant didn’t say anything. He just leaned back in that stupid chair of his—slowly, quietly. I don’t know how much time passed, but it felt far too long.
“He’s going through a phase, that’s all,” I said at last. Mrs. Bolger’s line suddenly sounded pretty good. “A lot of pressure with the play and everything. It’s just a few more weeks.”
“Did you know he’s failing all his classes?”
I looked up. Bryant wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Why are you telling me this?” I said. “I mean, you’re not supposed to go around talking about other students’ grades like this, are you? Isn’t it, like, a confidentiality breach or something?”
Bryant shrugged. “Normally, I wouldn’t. But you’re Stewart’s best friend. And you’re a pretty smart guy, even if you do try to hide it. I figured I’d ask if you knew what was going on.”
“Why don’t you just ask him?”
“I probably will. But I wanted to see what you thought first.”
“Okay. Well, here’s what I think—there’s nothing wrong with Stewart. He just thinks about things differently. He always has. That’s what I like about him. But he knows what he’s about. And if other people have a problem with that, then that’s too fucking bad for them.”
I was looking down at my feet, but I could feel him staring at me.
“You’re a very loyal friend, Gerry,” he finally said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
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