I did a sport that must remind my mother of my father every single day. The least I could do was make it pay off for her.
I heard the swoop of an incoming text:
I’m sorry for being hard on you. I don’t know how to deal with you being hurt. You know I’m not good at sympathy but I know that’s not what you need or want right now. You need to stay strong. Literally. We don’t have time for doubts or second-guesses. Everybody has a bad dive. It’s what you do next that counts.
CHAPTER THIRTY
MONDAY, APRIL 18
“Move over.”
Van had suggested we watch a movie together. After what Coach Mike had said in person, followed by that heartfelt text, I knew spending nights with Van was insanity. Van’s presence in my room tonight felt illegal.
I’d expected we’d watch downstairs on the sofa but Van arrived in my room with his laptop tucked under one arm.
Now Van was in my bed, legs stretched out on my girly bedspread, one foot away from me.
A very hot sex scene came on and we watched the starring couple make out in a shower. From my peripheral vision, I could see Van simply staring at the screen impassively, no indication that he was uncomfortable. I tried to adopt the same expression. What was he thinking?
“What?” He glanced over at me. For Van, he was extremely quiet tonight. We’d barely spoken.
“Nothing,” I said.
Van paused the movie. “Thanks for coming with me to the vet. Sorry to drag you into that,” Van said. He sounded like he’d been building up to say it. He unzipped his sweatshirt, balled it up, and stuffed it behind him to add to the pillows.
“I’m happy I was there.” When I said that, Van looked me in the eye for the first time all night. His shoulders relaxed. “How’s your mom?” I asked.
“She’s sad.”
“It is sad,” I said.
Van nodded and played with a stray thread on my pillow. “Everything changes eventually, I guess.”
I thought about how everything had been the same for so long and now, in only one year, we’d be away at college.
“What did your coach say?” he asked.
I slid lower down the headboard and focused on the china figurine of Little Bo Peep that had sat in the same spot, unquestioned, since before I could remember. I cleared my throat and aimed for unfazed. “Kind of a now-or-never speech. He wants me to dive tomorrow. Two weeks early.”
“What are you going to do? Or what do you want to do?”
The glow from the computer lit Van’s features, making me very aware that we were lying next to each other in my bed. It was almost too much and his questions about my life only made it worse. How was he not worried about leading me on? What did he think girls thought if he lay in bed with them at two in the morning? Did he not know he was attractive? Apparently, he believed I was asexual.
“I got out of practice tomorrow. My mom said no until I get cleared by the doctor. But what do I want? I want to blink my eyes and go back to normal and do my thing without thinking about it like I used to. Oh, and to sleep.”
Van half laughed. “Yeah, that would be nice. But think about what we would have missed.”
Van had just admitted he thought our nights together were better than sleep, even though we hadn’t come close to figuring out the problems that had brought us together. I was still scared to dive and he didn’t have any more clarity on his lost hours.
“Why do you think you have the mental block?” he asked suddenly.
It was a question that I may not have been able to answer two weeks ago when I never stopped to think. I moved all the way down on the bed so my head came to rest on my pillow. “Because I trusted myself and then got hurt. I think what’s shaken me the most is that I didn’t see it coming. I hate not seeing things coming.”
Van’s eyes grew serious. “Sometimes, if you look back, you see the signs. If you think about it, you see the buildup.”
“I have been thinking about it, actually. Maybe two weeks before the accident, I started to make more mistakes. But I’d just correct it quickly by placing myself farther out from the board. In the forty dives during practice, I was still only messing up a few more times than usual. Maybe I’m reading into it.”
Van collapsed the laptop and the room went dark. He threw aside his sweatshirt to the floor and scooted down so his head was also on a pillow. He turned on his side to face me. The two of us stared at each other and there was silence for a moment except for the soft in-and-out of our breath.
Then Van said, “I know it sounds like bullshit, but, no matter what happens, you’re going to be fine.”
“What do you mean, ‘no matter what happens’?” I asked, wary. He sounded like he knew something I didn’t.
“Just that.” But there seemed to be something more that he wanted to say. Van changed positions. He propped himself up on his elbow, resting his cheek on his palm. When he shifted, Van’s other hand came to rest between us on the bed and touched mine.
Did he know our hands were touching? All of my awareness came to that one point of contact, waves of attraction pouring from me. The same thought kept going through my mind: Why can’t I have this? I bit my bottom lip as if that would hold my feelings back. It was impossible to think he couldn’t tell how I felt. But he never gave any indication.
When I’d watched him at karaoke and realized what I felt for Van—that my crush had turned into something real—I’d known I had to get away from him. But here I was, in the dark lying next to him.
Van had taken the place of diving. He wasn’t some dumb distraction like I’d first thought when I’d renounced him as my crush, blaming his presence for my fall. He’d become something even worse in the time since. He’d become my adrenaline thrill. Diving was something I controlled. This was even more dangerous because it involved another person.
“Ingrid?”
“What?” I shifted so we were no longer touching.
“Nothing.”
If I weren’t crazy, I would have thought I’d broken a moment between us.
I cleared my sore throat. “I’m going to try to get some rest.” It came out sounding formal and then a long pause hung in the air. We had done everything together every consecutive evening since the police had knocked on my door and neither of us had abandoned the other to try to “get some rest.” We’d had a silent agreement that we wouldn’t leave the other person alone.
My words had just put a barrier between us, which made our physical proximity suddenly seem much more obvious and newly awkward. Van’s entire body lined up with mine, just inches away.
“Sounds good,” Van finally said. I rolled onto my side, facing away from him. I waited for the feel of his weight to leave the bed, the old mattress springing back up to life.
Instead, Van misinterpreted what I’d said—that I wanted to be alone. He drew closer. His entire front just barely touched me, like a seam sewn along my back. Surprised, I whipped my head around to look at him, my loose, tangled hair splayed out on the pillow between us. He ignored my movement and adjusted his position a little bit lower, curving his bare feet under mine. I was completely enveloped by Van. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to relax, to let my feet rest on the tops of his.
I was barely breathing, taking shallow little breaths, my fingers distractedly playing with the softened, worn edge of the top sheet crumpled beneath my hip. I thought about what Izzie had said a couple of days ago: that no one smiled the way Van had smiled at me in the hallway unless they have feelings for you. I tried to concentrate on Van’s rib cage moving in and out behind mine, seemingly unaffected, taking normal, long inhales. His lips had to be somewhere in my hair. Maybe this was the position we had slept in the other night. But that had happened accidentally.
I stared out the window I faced. The dark branches of the oak looked almost purple. With the lights off, my room was darker than the night sky.
Van shifted and lifted his head behind me, readjusting the position of
his cheek on my hair. I pressed my feet down into his and he pressed up.
“What’s your plan for prom? Are you going with John Michael?” he asked.
“No.” I started to sit up but his arm stayed me and I settled back down. I felt his smile. I tensed, waiting for what he might say next.
There was a weighted silence. A pause.
I felt the surge, the overwhelming wave of attraction. Instinctively, I turned over to face Van. His lips met mine instantly.
Van rolled onto his back and pulled me on top of him, his mouth on mine, my hair brushing the sides of his face. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I filed away the stunning fact that my first kiss was with Van.
His hands were in my hair and then traveled over my back. I propped myself up on my elbows for better access to Van’s lips and he gently held my face in both hands, his fingertips on my cheekbones.
After long minutes, he swiftly turned us to our sides. There was a split-second pause, both of us breathing like we’d just run a race. When I reached for him, he held himself away.
“Give me a second,” he rasped, tipping his head back and inhaling. Then, he lay there watching me as he calmed his breathing. I wanted to know what he was thinking. But he stayed silent, and it seemed like he was waiting for me to say something first. I loosened my fistful of his shirt and slipped my hand beneath it, gliding my fingers up the long, smooth planes of his chest, feeling the lean muscle. Van sucked in his breath and his hand high on my rib cage moved lower, curving around my backside. I spread my palm on his bare skin, over his heart. It pounded against my hand.
I let my fingertips trail down his chest and fall away. We stared at each other and his eyes were onyx. Van leaned forward and kissed my jawline quickly and naturally, like we did this all the time. “Are you cold?” he whispered.
“Um—” I started to speak but Van was already reaching for the yellow flower-print duvet that had half slithered off the foot of the bed.
Any second, I expected the weight of the blanket over us so I could pull him back to me. We still had hours.
Instead, Van came to sit up more fully, his attention caught on the window.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MONDAY, APRIL 18
A golden light suddenly bathed my room.
“What?” I sat up. Then I realized the weak, on-again, off-again yellow light of the neighbor’s outdoor motion sensor had come to life.
Our shoulders hovered next to each other’s before Van sprang off the bed in one lithe motion. Alone in the middle of the bed, I felt the absence of his warmth. Van took up his usual post, his body tucked against the chipped white window frame, off to one side where no one could see him. I was finding it hard to mentally shift gears after what had happened ten seconds before.
“Come here,” Van whispered. I rolled over and walked three feet to stand next to him. Without looking at me, Van loosely wrapped an arm around my waist and then positioned me away from the window and closer to him. I allowed myself to rest my head on his shoulder. He tightened his arm around my waist.
Because we’d been watching for such a long time, it was hard to believe there was finally action next door. It was like staring at an empty horizon for so long that you doubt your eyes when the view changes. When I finally comprehended that this wasn’t a drill, I broke away and took a giant step to the other side of the window, both of us attempting to hide our bodies in the dark and just barely turn our heads to see out the edge of the window.
Two people were shuffling in the alley below, their shoes making the softest, muffled crunching sounds in the pea gravel. One of them bumped into a trash can. They froze, as if waiting for someone to round the corner and catch them. They were carrying something low and working together, one person walking backward. They resumed their work.
When he tipped his face up into the light, I recognized the boy as a senior named Jack who sometimes hung out around Seba. And then Seba moved into the light. What was notable was how absolutely silent they were. If it hadn’t been for the light, Van and I would still be lying in bed.
“What the hell,” Van said one second before I saw for myself what they were carrying, now visible in the puddle of light. I covered my mouth with my hand. A boy’s body dangled, stretched out between the two boys who carried him by the arms and legs. They began to back out of the open gate with the dead weight.
Wilson ran up, shirtless, a younger girl right behind him. We couldn’t hear what they were saying but Wilson stopped their progress. They lowered the body to the gravel. Seba paced and threaded his fingers on the top of his head, elbows high in the air.
Both Van and I jumped when we heard the jarring buzz of Van’s phone, vibrating on the glass-topped side table. I expected the group below to immediately look up at the noise. Van stretched long to retrieve the phone. He looked at the caller. “What?” he answered harshly. Then, Van walked out in front of the window, in full view.
Below, I watched as Wilson spoke into his phone while he looked in the direction of Van’s house across the street. I heard his voice clearly through the phone, an eerie sensation when we were peering right at him. “I need your help,” Wilson said. He sounded extremely calm. “I’m across the street.” Then, as if he sensed Van, Wilson looked up at my window.
Van took the stairs two at a time with me right on his heels. He fumbled with the back door’s lock so I took over and flung the door open. With bare feet, we tore over the prickly oak leaves, down the alley between the houses. When we pushed opened the gate, the small group stood waiting for Van, taut and desperate.
Max’s body was splayed out on the gravel. Van immediately kneeled and put his hand on Max’s chest and then began to slap his cheeks. I knelt on Max’s other side. His breath was shallow.
“He’s freezing. Why is he so cold?” Van sat fully down on the ground and pulled Max into his lap. “Call 911.” He looked directly at me.
I came to Van’s side and was fishing his phone out of his pocket when Seba knocked it out of my hand.
“We can’t,” Wilson said. I saw then that his pupils were scary small. In them, you could see his mind whirling. “You need to take him in your car, Van. Please.” I noticed Wilson’s tattoo. And how skinny he was compared to only a few months ago, the outline of his ribs visible beneath seal-smooth skin. The girl with him couldn’t have been more than fifteen and was obviously high on something, too.
“He’s passed out and freezing cold,” I said.
“He’s fucked up. He’s going to be fine. Just try to wake him up,” Seba said.
“Wilson, tell Seba to give me back my phone,” Van said, deadly.
All at once, everyone started talking fast and pointing fingers. The girl quickly backed away and disappeared. The arguing was reaching a volume that would wake neighbors and Jack was desperately shushing Wilson, Seba, and Van.
“Let’s turn him on his side.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. So high-pitched and scared.
“Give it to me,” Van demanded, but he was looking at Wilson.
Wilson’s eyes looked like he’d just put his finger in an electrical socket. Then he looked confused, pulled between two masters. His sustained eye contact with Van finally seemed to center him. Wilson turned to Seba. “Give it to him, man.”
After a long pause, all eyes trained on him, Seba threw the phone at Van’s chest. “Get everyone out. Dump everything. It’s over,” Seba said with disgust, like it was such a shame everyone had to go and ruin his good time. He and Jack left us, presumably to take care of business inside the house.
I picked up the phone by Van’s hip.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
I cleared my throat and went into the mode I called on when I needed to shut out fear and focus.
“Alcohol poisoning.” At the operator’s next question, I looked to Wilson. “Did he take anything?”
“Xanax.” Wilson looked like a little boy. He scrubbed his arms anxiously.
Va
n kept slapping Max’s cheeks. Max tried to turn his face away and he began mumbling protests but his eyes stayed closed. Still, it was a big relief.
After I gave the information, they told me to stay on the line. In silence, we waited, just the four of us, Max’s head in Van’s lap, Van’s long fingers gently holding the sides of Max’s face. I sat on the other side and counted inside my head, waiting for a siren, waiting out the scary-long pauses until Max’s chest lifted. Max’s breath was noticeably slow.
Finally, like he couldn’t help himself, Van spoke, his voice dripping with accusation. “You were selling the shit we found inside the house, weren’t you? And throwing parties?”
“They weren’t parties. We were quiet. We kept the circle so tight. We just did things and let people use the rooms,” Wilson said.
“Like some seedy motel?”
“It was only going to be a few times. Then Seba found the prescription pad.”
I sat back on my heels, phone to my ear, and looked from Van to Wilson.
“What really happened that night?”
Wilson immediately knew what Van was referring to. “What are you talking about? You were passed out,” Wilson said dismissively.
“No,” Van said with such finality that I forgot about the phone and watched him closely. “I trust myself. I trust what I saw.” His expression didn’t change but there was a steadiness in his eyes I’d never seen before.
Wilson’s body language transformed. His shoulders slumped and he looked ashamed, like the stronger version of himself had vanished in a cloud.
“You saw the hole in the wall,” Wilson finally said.
“What’s the fucking ‘hole in the wall’?”
“It’s the path. How people came in and out from the greenbelt. It’s how this whole thing worked.”
“Those are our woods. We know all the trails.” Van sounded confused. And a little bit like his younger self.
“We didn’t look hard enough. Seba found it.”
“Who was that girl I called the police about? The one who screamed and then disappeared into the greenbelt?” I asked.
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