by Selena Kitt
Ellie
I continued to try and avoid Cade but he wasn't the type of boy who took no for an answer. I didn't want to avoid him - quite the opposite. I had to. Maybe some part of him realized my avoidance policy wasn't entirely heartfelt? Of course, my life was difficult in so many ways he didn't understand at the time, and Katy Grebling was the least of it. I was grateful for the groceries he bought me that night, but I was also horribly ashamed. Looking anyone in the eye was difficult for me, let alone the gorgeous boy who had witnessed my poverty first-hand.
Nevertheless, he continued to sit beside me in history class, much to Katy's chagrin. As the days passed his manner changed too, at least when he spoke to me. He lost a little of his youthful bluster and started leaning in close to me, talking more quietly than I could tell he was used to. Such small gestures, and yet they mattered so much to me. One day, with Katy absent, I worked up the courage to ask him what the ubiquitous bottle of greenish-beige goo was that he seemed to have with him at all times.
He chuckled at my question and sharp little thrill ran through my body at the sound of his laughter.
"It's a protein drink."
"A protein drink?"
"Yeah. I'm on a special diet for hockey. Low carbs, high protein. You wouldn't believe how many eggs I eat."
"Does it taste good?"
I glanced at Cade as he theatrically pondered my question, almost afraid to meet his piercing blue eyes and then flushed with a strange warmth when I finally did.
"No, not really. It's supposed to be chocolate flavor but it mostly tastes like nothing. Do you want to try it?"
The word 'no' was on the tip of my tongue before I remembered Katy wasn't in class that day and decided to throw caution to the wind. Something about Cade, maybe it was just his presence, made me bolder than usual.
"Uh, sure."
I was very conscious of his eyes on me - on my lips - as I lifted the bottle to my mouth and took a small, tentative sip. It wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was pretty damned good. I took another, larger sip and then, realizing what I was doing, pulled away as my cheeks started to burn.
"Ellie, have the whole thing if you want. I don't even want it. Just don't tell Coach Hansen. He's really goddamned strict."
It took real effort not to gulp the protein drink down as fast as I could but I managed to make it last for a few minutes, desperate to conceal how hungry I was from Cade. For the rest of class I was floating on a little cloud of simple happiness. It was nothing, really. A shared drink. So why did it feel so momentous? Why was I so thrilled? It took me a long time - years - to figure out just what it had been about Cade that made me feel so good when I was with him. It was the feeling of being cared for. Of having another human being concerned for you, even in tiny, everyday ways. I knew it was something that happened, that most people experienced as normal, but I had never actually experienced it myself. Not until Cade. After class that day he took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders.
"You look cold. Can I walk you home?"
I panicked. I wanted him to walk me home, but I didn't want him to see where I lived.
"I - uh, I...I'm not sure." I said, lamely.
"You live out by the tracks, don't you?"
I nodded and then Cade said something that gave me one of my first hints at the man he was going to become, something that surprised me in its sensitivity.
"Are you embarrassed Ellie? You don't have to be embarrassed about where you live, you know. I want to walk you home."
I let Cade walk me home, along the crumbling sidewalks of the rough side of town. We chatted the whole way. He asked me if I had any siblings.
"Yeah, I have three little brothers."
"Three? Really? How old are they?"
I told him how old my brothers were and I told him their names.
"How about you?"
"I'm an only child. So I'm their only chance at glory."
He was laughing as he said that, but I sensed something deeper going on underneath.
"Really? What do you mean you're their only chance at glory?"
Cade looked down and kicked a chunk of loose concrete over the curb, neatly sticking his foot out underneath it and kicking it back into the air before it hit the ground. He was surprisingly nimble for someone of his size and I did my best to hide the fact that his athleticism had caused a little flower of warmth to bloom in my belly.
"Oh, I don't mean it like that. My parents are great, totally supportive. They moved out here for me - for my hockey career. But sometimes I feel like they don't understand all the pressure, you know? Like, everyone says I'm supposed to be this big star someday and...what if I'm not?"
I knew Cade was in North Falls to play for the Ice Kings and I knew the Ice Kings were a big deal, but I didn't know he was explicitly tipped for stardom.
"Are you?" I started, worried that I might sound like some kind of groupie, but curious about what he'd said. "Are you supposed to be a star, I mean?"
He shrugged. "Yeah, I think so. I mean, ESPN did a big story on me and my dad gets calls every week from NHL teams. It's just, I mean, what if I don't turn out to be so good? What if I don't live up to my potential? Lots of guys don't."
I watched his face as he talked, my eyes tracing the straight, strong contours of his jawline.
"Well what if you don't? Turn out to be so good?"
Cade looked me right in the eye when I asked him that and I couldn't read his expression.
"You're the first person who's ever acknowledged that could even happen, you know."
"Am I? I don't know, it just seems like a good idea not to be counting any chickens before they hatch."
"Yeah," Cade replied, his voice rising slightly in agreement, "exactly. What if I just don't get any better than I am now? I feel like I'll be letting down so many people, including myself. I almost wish none of this hype was happening, it makes me so anxious sometimes."
We kept walking, trudging through the leaves and cigarette butts on the way to my trailer. He stayed close to me, closer than I was used to, but it felt good and right somehow. Part of me wanted to put my arm around him, to offer some small physical gesture of comfort, but I was too self-conscious, too clueless about interactions with boys.
"You should come to one of my games."
I looked up at him, half-wondering if he was joking. Inviting me to a game? An official invitation? I wondered if he realized how that would look to everyone else in North Falls. It would look like we were dating.
"Uh, really?" I asked, failing to keep a note of real surprise out of my voice.
"Yeah," he smiled, "really. What's so strange about inviting a friend to watch a hockey game?"
A friend. Of course. He wasn't from North Falls. He didn't understand how things were in very small towns. I accepted the invitation even though the word 'friend' had stung more than I expected it to. What was I thinking anyway? That the new guy - and not just any new guy, but the hot, hockey-playing, destined for the NHL new guy - would be interested in more than friendship with me? Not likely.
When we got to the trailer, Cade did his best to keep his reaction hidden but I saw it briefly, the slight look of horror on his face as he took in the scene: broken toys and car parts strewn everywhere and the tiny little trailer itself, dingy with years of grime and with no lights shining through the windows to soften the harshness of its appearance.
"Is - Ellie, is anyone home?"
I was about to answer when Baby Ben's smiling face appeared in the front window.
"Ellie! Ellie!"
His excited voice was easy to hear through the badly-fitted, single-pane windows and Cade seemed to have exactly the same thought I did.
"Doesn't it get cold in there?"
I tried to play it off. "Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not bad, we just put extra layers on, it's, um, we have a lot of blankets-"
I was cut off by the sight of Baby Ben's bare torso as he climbed onto the back of the sofa to bang excitedly on
the glass. A quick flash of anger at Jacob seized me, followed immediately by guilt. Jacob was seven years old. It wasn't his responsibility to make sure his little brothers were dressed properly, it was my mom's. And my dad's, except he'd left more than two years ago and he never came back. Neither of them had any interest in parenting. Embarrassed, I turned to Cade and spoke hurriedly.
"Listen, I have to go. I'll see you in class?"
Cade was watching Baby Ben through the window but he turned back to me, shaking his head slightly.
"Yeah, class. And you're coming to the game, right? Next Friday night?"
"Yes, I'll come to the game."
I was desperate for him to leave before he saw any more of my family's trailer or more evidence of the way we lived and thankful for the darkness that was hiding the color in my cheeks. I think Cade knew it, too.
"OK. Well. Have a good night."
He hesitated for a second, as if considering hugging me. For a moment there I almost felt like he was going to kiss me, but he did neither of those things because I was already rushing into the house, too eager to escape the awkwardness to spend another second outside.
As soon as I was in the living room I spotted Jacob and David peering out the window beside Baby Ben at Cade's retreating figure.
"Is that your boyfriend?" Jacob asked, turning to me with a slightly hopeful look on his face.
"No, Jacob, it isn't my boyfriend. Where is Baby Ben's sweater?"
"Mom threw up on it, it's in the bathroom sink."
I went into the bathroom with my three little brothers trailing behind me and sure enough, there was Ben's sweater. His only sweater, soaked with watery vomit and balled up in the sink. I didn't need to ask what had happened, I just pulled my own sweatshirt off and slipped it over his head.
"He looks like he's wearing a dress!" David commented as the hem of the sweatshirt trailed along the floor.
"Shush, David. He needs to be covered up, it's too cold in here to go without clothes. Why don't you boys go play in the bedroom and I'll make some noodles for dinner?"
They disappeared down the hallway, past the bedroom where I knew my mother was passed out and I got to work on cleaning the vomit off the sweater.
Cade
Ellie Hesketh's living situation had, even in the few minutes she'd allowed me to see it from outside the trailer, shocked me. At that point in my life, I had never seen real poverty. Not beyond New York's ubiquitous homeless population anyway, and my parents had been telling me since I was a child that they all had secret apartments and resorted to begging because they were too lazy to work. It took me longer than it should have to start to doubt that narrative but part of it had stuck with me, the idea that poor people somehow deserved their fate. That wasn't what I felt standing outside Ellie's filthy trailer. No, standing outside the trailer in the dark with her shirtless toddler brother banging on the windows just made me angry. Where was their mother? Their father? And on top of the anger was the knowledge that Ellie was embarrassed by her situation, that she wanted neither my shock nor my pity. It made me feel helpless for the first time in my life.
We didn't talk about it. She clearly didn't want to and I was too young and inexperienced to know what to say. So we said nothing. The days passed before the hockey game and I started deliberately bringing extra food for lunch, extra sandwiches and fruit and giving them to her when I 'couldn't finish' them. She took them, too, playing along with the charade, pretending that she hadn't had time to eat lunch herself and then stuffing my mother's sandwiches into her backpack, where I knew they would remain until she could get them home to her brothers.
It wasn't charity, not then. I was still mostly a selfish, self-involved kid. I probably wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the fact that something about Ellie just made me want to be near her in a way no other girl ever had. I started looking forward to history class the way I used to look forward to hockey practice, nearly bubbling over with happiness as the time approached. Sometimes I would stand outside the classroom for a few moments before walking in, making sure I didn't have a big, dumb, obvious grin plastered all over my face at the sight of her.
When game day arrived, I brought two tickets to class with me and gave them to Ellie.
"I thought you could bring one of your brothers along. I can get more tickets if you need them."
She smiled and took only one of the tickets out of my hand.
"It's just going to be me tonight. Jacob is busy."
A seven year old boy, too busy to attend a hockey game. The worst part of it was I knew Ellie wasn't lying. Her brother was almost certainly watching his two younger siblings.
"Do you want me to pick you up? I have to get there early, obviously, but I could give you a tour of the dressing room or something?"
Ugh, 'a tour of the dressing room'. As if Ellie had any interest in seeing that.
"Are your parents going to be there?"
My parents were going to be there. In fact I'd already told them I was bringing a friend to the game, which had led to a grilling from my mother and my instant regret at mentioning any of it to her. I told Ellie they were going to be there.
"No, I mean, are they going to be driving?"
Of course, she didn't want my parents to see where she lived.
"No. I'm driving myself. Can you be ready at five-thirty?"
I actually hadn't planned on driving myself but I changed my plans instantly so I could pick Ellie up alone, knowing she wasn't going to go for it if my parents were going to be in the car.
"Yeah. Should I - should I wear anything special?"
I shook my head, unable to stop smiling at her.
"No, it's just a hockey game, no need to dress up."
I don't usually get nervous before games. Even big games tend to just make me more determined to do well. That night, I was nervous. And I knew it had nothing to do with hockey. I pulled up outside Ellie's trailer and she appeared immediately, along with three pale little faces in the living room window, watching us intently.
Ellie was wearing a dress and a pair of black boots, neither of which I had seen her in before. When she hopped into the passenger seat of my dad's Lexus, it was difficult not to stare.
"Hey!"
It actually took me a couple of seconds to get myself together enough to respond.
"Hey, Ellie. You look...you look really good."
My awkwardness around Ellie Hesketh was getting worse, not better. She was beautiful, but in a way none of the other girls at school were. They were blonde, blue or green-eyed and all ripe, youthful curves. Ellie had thin, pale limbs, dark hair and those mysterious dark eyes. Her body was distractingly feminine, though, skinny or not. When she moved it was difficult for me not to notice the way her breasts bounced slightly under the thin fabric of the dress or the momentary glimpses of creamy thigh when she shifted in the seat. As we drove to the arena I did everything I could to think about anything except how Ellie looked in that dress. The last thing I needed was to walk into the dressing room with a fucking hard-on.
"Thank you."
Another thing I noticed about her - she wasn't as introverted as she had at first seemed. As we got to know each other better she got more and more talkative, more relaxed. It made me feel proud to be around her, to be someone she trusted enough to be herself with. When we walked into North Falls arena together I was nearly bursting with happiness. Until we ran straight into my parents. Before anyone had even said a word I could see the look of mild distaste on my mother's face as she looked Ellie over.
I made the introductions. My parents were perfectly polite, but there was a coolness to their response to Ellie that I hadn't ever seen before. It pissed me off. It pissed me off even more that Ellie had noticed it, too. As I walked her to her seat in the chilly arena, she looked over her shoulder at me.
"Your parents don't like me."
"I - I, no, Ellie. Why would you say that? They did like you," I stammered, taken aback by Ellie's forthrightne
ss.
She sat down in her seat and looked at me.
"It's ok, Cade. You don't have to make excuses. It's not like this is new for me."