“I heard Lisa on the phone with Tosh. They set me up to get busted for skipping school.”
“Bailey explained the trouble you’ve been having with Tosh, all the mean things she’s been doing to you. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Dad’s always saying people should learn to deal with their own problems.”
“He gives speeches to help adults deal with their problems. You’re fifteen. You should be able to tell us when someone is hurting you.” Mom stilled. “I’m glad you weren’t in that car.”
“Me too, Mom. Me too.”
She hugged me close. “I’m sorry about what happened to Lisa and Jarrod. My heart aches for their mothers. My pain at the thought of you being gone is only a fraction of what theirs will be forever.”
“What caused the wreck?”
“Jarrod’s mom saw them leave Save All with Lisa driving. They ran a red light while trying to get away. An eighteen wheeler crashed into their side.” Mom’s voice wrenched with emotion. “The police said they died instantly.” She gripped me tighter. “Honey, they didn’t suffer.”
Another round of tears fell as we cried together. I pictured Lisa and Jarrod speeding down the street with me in the back, laughing and feeling the exhilaration. Instead, I was living the nightmare while they waited to get put in the ground.
“The police found your phone.”
“I don’t care if I ever see that phone again.”
* * * * *
I woke to an empty room, sun filtering through lacy curtains, sending patterns of light across the far wall. With the sun resting at such a low angle, darkness would soon follow. Blinking, I wiped away the grogginess of spending an entire day in bed. When a knock sounded, I hoped it wasn’t Mom again or Bailey ready for her shot at making me feel better. Nothing could make the headache go away.
The door opened, but neither Mom nor Bailey crossed the threshold. I expected Pade to drop into the beanbag, but he chose the edge of my bed. “Are you okay?”
Would he ever stop asking me that? “Yeah.”
“I don’t get it, Jes. What were you thinking leaving school like that? I mean, your mom’s a teacher. Did you think she wouldn’t find out?”
I shrugged.
Pade’s eyes steeled. “That may work with Aunt Rainey, but I know you better.”
I drew a breath, anxious for words to make him go away. “I thought it would be cool to leave with Lisa since everyone said I was no fun.”
“No fun?” His eyes narrowed.
“You know, I was always lame.” I fixed my eyes on the ceiling. Did I only imagine spots in the paint?
“Who is everyone?” he asked.
The spots began to merge. I blinked away the tears.
“Who is everyone?”
Still I lay in silence, comforter pulled to my chin.
“Are you talking ‘Tosh’ everyone?”
“She would never leave me alone.”
“You seemed to deal with Tosh okay, even that night she tripped you.”
My voice felt strange, as if someone else formed the words. “I was never ‘okay’ with anything she did to me.” I laughed and faced Pade again, hating my weakness, hating he saw the tears.
He hesitated. “Do you know Tosh set you up?”
“I overheard Lisa on the phone with her at Save All. They planned to leave me without a way back to school, so I’d get busted for skipping.”
“Tosh was bragging about it after last block. I heard her and went to Aunt Rainey.”
My throat clenched. “You told my mom?”
“I was worried about you.” Pade reached down and grabbed a pillow I’d kicked from the bed. “She sent Bailey to get the twins and I followed her to see Dr. Greene.”
“Was Chase with her?”
A frown creased his forehead. “I haven’t seen Chase since the night of the game. What does he have to do with this?”
“I just figured he was with Bailey.”
“Bailey went to get the boys and Aunt Rainey called your phone. When you didn’t answer, I tried myself, over and over. I couldn’t think what else to do.”
“I dropped my phone in Jarrod’s car and didn’t realize until after they were gone.” I swallowed guilt. “Mom must have been freaking out.”
“She was and then Dr. Greene got the call about Lisa and Jarrod. The last time she tried your phone, a state trooper answered.”
I closed my eyes as a tear slipped down each cheek. Pade wiped the drops with his thumb, a gesture that only distorted my feelings further. I shrank away from his hand.
“What’s wrong?” His voice barely covered a whisper.
“Nothing.”
He grabbed my hands. “Damn it Jes, look at me.”
As I remembered Tosh say the same words, my eyes opened. “I saw you in the locker room.”
The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed.
“With Tosh,” I said, drawing back against the headboard.
“Tosh?” he choked.
“I came to find you after the game. When I walked into the locker room, I saw you with Tosh.”
He stared down at his hands, which were fumbling with the edge of the pillow again. “You were in the locker room?”
Some combination of his worry and obvious guilt set my anger on fire. “You were kissing her.”
“I…I…” Pade said. “I’m sorry, Jes, I…never meant for you to see that.”
The clock ticked to eternity and the light on my wall faded. When Pade spoke again, he was at the bottom of an avalanche. “Is that why you left with Lisa? Is everything my fault?”
“I’m the one who got in the car.”
“I knew you were upset after the game, but I couldn’t figure out why. If only you’d told me.”
I shook my head as the anger fizzled. “It’s okay.”
He laughed without humor. “Just like that, you’re gone again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time I get close you pull back and hide. Maybe it’s pain, maybe it’s love, but it doesn’t matter. For a moment, you were mad. It was like you flipped a switch and became the same girl you were that first day. You weren’t hiding then. That night at the movies you hardly noticed me.”
Hardly noticed him? I wanted to tell Pade how nervous he made me on our date, how I felt electrified when he touched my hand. I wanted to relive our kiss, despite Tosh, but only two painful words emerged. “I’m sorry.”
He stood then, cool and collected. “If you’re pissed, next time tell me.” With cruel ease, he headed for the door.
“Pade?”
For ten steps, I thought he would ignore my plea. He opened the door and hesitated, but didn’t turn.
“Can we be friends?” I asked. “Real friends?”
“I thought you had Chase now.”
Pade taking notice of Chase wiped away some of the shame. “He’s not you.”
“We’ll be just like before.” He stepped outside, pulling the door behind him. His feet whispered along the hall and beyond my tears, beyond my pleas for the door to reopen. Each creaking stair left me trapped with the tingle from his hands touching mine, and no meaning of ‘before.’
* * * * *
The beep played again. Even in sleep, I heard the two-toned nightmare. Three times. Four.
After climbing from bed, I managed weightless steps downward. On the bar rested my phone, as I feared. The battery was dying slowly and taking my soul along. Pushing the button was the easy part, unlike stilling the sound in my head. The phone found a new home in a drawer below the counter.
No.
I pulled the drawer and lifted the phone, squeezing without success. One slide opened the keypad, but I flexed the phone wider until plastic cracked.
No more sound.
I choked a silent breath that wouldn’t pass my throat, pounding my forehead with a balled hand, desperate for the pain. Any pain. The numbness made me dead inside. Dead, as if nothingness could be a feeling. Lisa was gone
. Jarrod was gone. I could have been gone, like the sound.
I stumbled into the kitchen, eyes straining under the moonlight. Beams reflected on the oven’s door, marking a path across the floor. Next to the oven stood a wooden block, securing Mom’s special knives. I slid a hand along the black handles and snatched at random. Maybe not so secure.
Mom used the knife only when she made bread. The length had always intimidated me, forced me to avoid the jagged edge. Fear became pointless as an unfeeling thumb glided across the peaks and valleys of the blade. At the tip, I pressed and a red drop appeared just above my nail.
Yes, it would be too easy.
I brought the knife to my wrist, a fine white line appearing over blue veins. Only the memory of Mom’s face stopped me. Her pain had been real, the same pain I wanted to swab from the deepest cuts in her mind. The pain I caused and would cause again.
I sank to the floor, dropping the knife, while a tear slipped past the gates. “I’m sorry,” I said, as if making a solemn promise to Lisa, to myself. I’d fight the demons inside.
At least the pain had returned.
Powers
The next day, October fourteenth, was one I planned to spend alone.
When the phone rang, Dad’s usual call while getting ready for bed, I pulled the comforter over my head. Mom crossed the room, without knocking, and laid the phone near my ear.
“Jes,” he said and I reluctantly lifted the phone. He asked how I slept and gave his usual dose of advice. When I asked how things were going in Tokyo, he said “fine,” though fine felt like more than just a checkup visit to the dentist. He figured at least a month still before he’d be home.
About an hour later, Mom knocked on my door, even though the door stood wide open. I squeezed my eyes shut until she beat hard enough, the bottom edge of the door bounced off the doorstop.
“Can’t I sleep a little longer?” I asked.
“No reason to be antisocial, especially when you’ve got company.”
“Tell Bailey to come on up.”
“It’s neither Bailey nor Pade.”
Chase sat at the kitchen table, across from the boys, listening as they described another video game. When I slid into the chair next to him, he made a half-wave in my direction, his eyes never leaving the boys.
Mom placed a steaming plate of biscuits and gravy in front of me. “If you could choose anything for us to do today, what would it be?”
To leave me alone. “Anything as in mall or movies?”
“Anything as in your heart’s desire. We can even invite Chase. Come on, this will be your day. What adventure can you imagine?”
Having had more adventure than my head could wrap around, I had to find a way back to the safety of my room. “Fishing.”
Mom’s hand jerked, tipping her glass and spreading milk across the table. “Fishing, as in pole and hook?”
“And water,” I said. “You and Aunt Charlie always talk about how your dad took you fishing.”
Chase’s eyes grew to the size of his plate.
My face was rigid, though every molecule inside me felt ready to explode. It was her eyes moving about the room, the way she hesitated, flexing her hands, in tense calculation of how to stop me.
Mom leaned her head to the side, smiling weakly. “Fishing it is.”
* * * * *
The dirt road narrowed across a bridge that was no more than a couple of wooden planks and a rusted side rail. Mom slowed the van to a crawl across the bridge, assuring us that she could drive to the property with her eyes closed if need be. Chase looked straight ahead through the windshield, away from the creek that flowed on each side of the wooden planks, as well as in between.
“Don’t worry,” Bailey yelled from the backseat, in the middle of Pade and me. “That water’s only about a foot deep. Pade and I used to follow those rocks all the way to a waterfall near the old mill.”
The dirt was smooth up ahead, untouched to a clearing where a blue house stood. Branches littered the roof with pinecones and pine needles piled up until the metal was no longer visible. Windows covered by boards made me mourn the house. The blue was not shiny, but faded in the sun and peeling. A satellite dish, probably as heavy as the van and still on its metal pedestal, engulfed a corner of the front yard, grass circling the legs. To the right of the house stood a barn, roof half caved in.
Mom parked the van, twisting to face the boys. “This was my home when I was your age.”
“Wow,” Danny said.
Collin pointed to a trail as he jumped from the sliding door. “Where does that go?”
“To the lake,” Mom said.
Outside the van, a sauna of July proportions forced a tug at my collar and a curse for not layering. Chase made a laughable mirror image wrapped tighter than an Eskimo, not that I minded company while sweat filled the buffer between cotton and skin. I wondered about his decision to wear long sleeves and a wide brimmed hat, until I remembered how he hated the sun. At least the extra fabric kept Mom from suggesting another pound of oozy sunscreen.
Sun dazzled across the dark waves, sparkling light in all directions. Each breath was a taste of fish cased in the air’s warmth. The edge of my own hat shaded my head, leaving dark sunglasses to take care of the rest, another prescription pair I’d managed to hang onto, thankfully.
Mom led our way down the hillside with the twins trailing, each carrying a white tub of worms. I muffled a laugh as Chase attempted to match Pade’s stride while they carried the tackle boxes and buckets of minnows. Since Mom had the cooler, Bailey and I carried the poles.
“Showtime,” Mom said, when we reached the rocks that lined the bank. She pulled a minnow from one bucket and slid a small hook below the back fin. “You don’t want to kill it. The minnow swims and the fish grab it like a burger and fries.”
Pade lifted his pole and a tub of worms and walked down the bank.
“Don’t play in the worms,” Mom screeched as the boys laughed. Half of the black soil, speckled with white, surrounded their feet. Even I enjoyed fishing my fingers through the dirt in an effort to capture the wiggle motion. She cast each of their lines, making two small splashes beyond the bank.
“Where did you learn to fish?” Chase asked, as Mom took his pole and tossed the line.
“I grew up here, on this farm and seven-acre lake. Daddy made fishing a treat reserved for every weekend, sometimes even after school.” She laughed. “He wanted a son, but instead had only girls. I think that’s why he raised us like boys. After my mom died, it was just the three of us. My older sister Charlene—”
“My mother,” Bailey said.
Mom nodded. “Charlie would’ve been here, but one of her coworkers caught the flu and she had to go in.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to see her,” Chase said.
“Oh, there will be plenty of time,” Mom said, looking down at me, irony thick in her voice. “If you practice, by our next fishing trip you’ll probably be an expert. For now, you can start with standing closer to the water.”
He eyed the water. “How close?”
Mom gave Chase a gentle nudge, but his feet were rooted in the bank. “Is there a problem?” she asked, studying his face. “Is it the water?” When Chase swallowed, eyes still on the waves, she circled an arm around his shoulders. “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid of water.”
“Why would you be afraid of water?” I asked.
Mom tightened her grip on Chase. “Everyone has fears. You were once afraid of water.”
I rolled my eyes. “I can’t remember being afraid of water.”
“I can remember a time when you wouldn’t go near the tub without me being there.”
“I almost drowned once,” Chase whispered, shrinking away.
“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “I’m an excellent swimmer. I’ll be close if anything happens.” Something in her voice made even me feel better. She took Chase’s pole and reeled in the line. “Here.”
Chase took the p
ole and stepped closer to the water. He tossed the line, ending with two splashes, one for the hook and another for the minnow. Try after try, he flung each minnow off before his hook hit the water. On his fourth try, Mom insisted he practice before rebaiting. After help from Mom and encouragement from Bailey, his hook landed with a soft splash, minnow still attached. He smiled while Mom praised his good throw.
Bailey leaned against a nearby rock, tipping up her ball cap. “Chase, why don’t you come over and sit by me?”
I glanced to where Pade sat. Concentration tightened his face as he gazed across the water, watching for any movement of his line, in the zone like when he played football.
Easing down the bank, I threw out my line and stole the other half of his rock. Water beat against the shore, reaching for our feet as a fish splashed halfway across the lake.
“Bailey really likes Chase, doesn’t she?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
He sighed. “Is there anything she doesn’t tell you? Bailey and I used to talk about everything before you moved to Credence.”
I shifted on the fiery stone, wishing for a seat down by Mom.
“I know it’s not your fault,” Pade said. “I just miss my sister, that’s all. You don’t know how it feels to be that close to someone and have them taken away. I…” he said, turning. “What did I say wrong?”
My eyes stayed on the infinite rise and fall of waves. “I’m sorry you feel like I’m taking your sister away.”
Pade found his voice, fast. “I didn’t mean to put you down. I just thought we could talk. Like friends,” he added, with an emphasis on ‘friends.’ Pade looked back at the water. “Remember, you wanted this.”
I touched his arm. “Thanks.”
He stared at me strangely. “For what?”
“For being you,” I said and smiled.
As tension drained from Pade’s arm, I fought the memory of his lips on mine. My head clouded with reasons to snatch the hand back and run, but beyond the mockery of knowing he kissed Tosh remained the guilty weakness of my heart. Instead of listening to reason, I leaned closer.
Pade’s eyes widened in anticipation, before cutting to our audience down the bank.
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