by Olivia Samms
“What?”
“That you’ll never lie to me again. Promise?”
“I swear, never again.”
“And no more track practice with those kids.”
“Hell, no. I don’t think I could run, anyway, the way my knee is.” So, maybe I’ll tag instead.
1 day
5 hours
45 minutes
I don’t see her car in the drive. I guess she’s not home from Chicago yet. That means no explanation about what I’m wearing or the bloody bandaged knee. But more important, it means I won’t have to deal with the wrath of Mom for making her lose her job—or more accurately, for the truth of why she lost her job.
I start up the stairs.
“Why did you do it, Bea?”
I peek around the corner and see her in the dining room, her back to me. She’s wearing her overalls, standing on a chair, painting, covering the full wall—all the way up to the ceiling.
“Mom. I didn’t know you were home. Where’s your car?”
“In the shop. It needed an oil change after the long drive.” Her right hand flings a swirl of angry black paint at a scary face—a mouth screaming, wide open, bloodshot eyes—a hand pulling at hair. Not exactly a children’s mural. Far from it.
“How was Chicago?”
“Fine. Give me a cigarette.”
“What?” I feel my face flush. “I quit.”
“Bull. I saw a pack in your purse the other day.”
“Okay,” I fess up. “But I’m cutting back. They don’t really help with my allergies.” Or my running.
“So, give me one.” She holds out her hand from behind her.
“But you don’t smoke.”
“I have been lately. Been lifting a few from your bag.”
“Mom.”
She snaps her fingers.
“Fine.” I pull the pack out of my backpack and hand her one.
She steps off the chair, turns, and faces me. “I need a light.”
I flick my Bic. She inhales. “I hope you do quit.” She ironically exhales. “Your father and I hate that you picked up that habit back in rehab last year.” She taps ash into a coffee mug and sits. “What are you wearing? And what happened to your knee?”
“I fell.”
“Why did you do it, Beatrice?”
“What?” I play dumb. “Fall?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You tell me what I know.”
“Mr. Connelly told me what you said to him.”
“You mean Michael?”
“It wasn’t appropriate.”
“Appropriate? Are you kidding me? Like you have the right to tell me what’s appropriate, Mom?” I pull up a chair and sit across from her. Our eyes are level. “Do you still love Dad?”
She abruptly stands, facing the wall, dangling the cigarette in her mouth, and adds a bloodred flame shooting out of the snaggle-toothed monster.
“Why do you want to hurt him?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why?”
“Why what?” she growls, throwing her paintbrush down on the floor. I watch the red paint bleed into the beige carpet.
“Why are you cheating on him?”
She shakes her head. “You don’t understand the whole situation, Bea.”
“Explain it to me then.” I stand. “I’m going to be eighteen . . . an adult. Stop babying me, okay?”
“I don’t baby you.”
“Yes, you do. You treat me like I’m handicapped. I messed up. I admit it. But I’ve been working like a dog to try and prove to you and Dad that I can stand on my own two feet.”
She faces me, her eyes filled with tears. “You have, and I’m proud of you.”
“Good, I’m glad you are, because after graduation I want to get an apartment and move out—live on my own.”
“What?” She takes a step toward me. “No. No. We need each other. We only have each other.”
“Uh-uh, Mom. You need me. You need something else in your life other than your stupid murals. Is that why you’re fooling around with that guy?”
“Oh my god, will you stop that? I’m not fooling around with him.”
“Yeah, right. The way you’ve been acting, and . . . those jeans you were wearing . . .”
“Those jeans mean nothing.”
“You tell Dad the truth, or I will,” I threaten.
She drops her cigarette into a coffee cup. It sizzles in the pooled dregs.
Her phone buzzes. She doesn’t answer—doesn’t even look at it.
“Is that him? Is that Mike?”
She closes her eyes.
“Go ahead. . . . Answer it. I don’t care. I don’t care anymore what you do.” I run upstairs, take a quick shower—douse my hair with her expensive olive oil—line my eyes with dark, heavy makeup, slip on a maxi dress, jean jacket, and cowboy boots, and grab a suitcase from my closet. I’ll move in with Chris. That’s what I’ll do. I can’t stay here any longer, with her lying to me, to Dad. . . . I can’t.
My phone rings. It’s Chris:
Me: I was just thinking about you . . .
Chris: Bea.
Me: I can hardly hear you. You okay?
Chris: No. I’m hurt. I got jumped.
Me: What? Oh my god! Where are you?
Chris: St. Joe’s. Emergency. Please. Come.
1 day
4 hours
40 minutes
I rush into St. Joseph’s emergency room and am instantly hit with the thick air of pain, worry, and sadness. A family huddles in the corner, crying deep, gut-level sobs. An old lady, who doesn’t smell exactly fresh, is sprawled on two plastic chairs, sleeping, snoring away, plastic bags packed with stuff tightly clutched in her hands. A man in a hospital gown is yelling at the receptionist, “I’ve been waiting for three hours!”
I approach a nurse . . . or doctor. I have no idea who this woman is, but she acts important—wears a white coat and carries a clipboard.
“I’m looking for a patient. Chris Mayes.”
“Uh-huh.” She walks fast across the speckled tile floor of the hallway.
I follow. “He’s been beat up. I don’t know where he is.”
“Bea?” I hear a weak voice coming from down the hall, ten feet ahead.
Chris sits upright on a gurney in the hallway, his bare legs dangling. Half of his head is patched with blood-stained gauze. The other side of his blond hair is tinted red.
I rush to him. Hug him. “Chris.”
“Ouch.” He winces.
I pull back. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
“I’m okay, Bea. It looks worse than it is. Just a couple cuts they had to stitch up—thankfully, it was the short side, ’cause they had to buzz it.”
“But there’s so much blood.”
“They said the head bleeds a lot, I guess. And I’m waiting for them to X-ray my ribs.”
The blood, the smell . . . makes me want to throw up.
The disgust must register on my face because Chris says, “I’m sorry I called you.”
“No. No. Don’t be sorry. I’m here for you. What can I do? You need something?”
“A ride home? They’ve given me some stuff. I don’t think I should drive.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, of course. But what about your parents?”
“Thank god I’m eighteen. They didn’t have to call them. No way will they understand. I’ll tell them I fell off the uneven bars, trying out for gymnastics, or something.”
“Yeah. Right. That’ll fly. . . . You fell into shards of glass.”
“Bea. Stop. Please, don’t make jokes.”
“What about Ian?”
“We broke up.”
“What? Oh, no . . .”
“Yeah, I think that hurts more than my wounds. He needs space, he said.”
“Oh, Chris.” I gingerly hug him. “Who beat you up? Tell me.”
He covers his face with his hand. “It all happened so fast. I messed up. I shoul
d have listened to you. I shouldn’t have said anything . . . but I had to. He was in the library, holding court, bragging about his stupid SAT score.”
“No, Chris, don’t tell me . . . Zac . . .”
“I was so upset with the Ian thing. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say I knew. I whispered something stupid like, ‘Why don’t we ask Billy what he thinks about your score?’ ”
My stomach drops. “Oh, no . . . why did I tell you? I never should’ve.”
“It happened really fast. All I remember is that I was in the school parking lot, unlocking my car, and then something crashed over my head. I think it was a glass bottle, and I guess I went down when he kicked me. I remember crawling into the driver’s seat, and I somehow got my ass here.”
“Mayes. Chris Mayes?” A guy in a blue uniform calls out.
“Here.” Chris raises his hand like it’s roll call at school.
The orderly walks over. “We’ll be taking you up to radiation for an X-ray soon. Lie back,” he orders.
Chris does, holding onto my hand as if we’re in one of those sappy movies—like he’s going into some major surgery and was given crappy odds. He’s rolled ten feet into a sterile room, with three curtained-off cubicles. An old man moans through the thin curtain; he’s mumbling something about Jell-O.
A girl—I think I recognize her from rehab last summer, but hope not, because she’s totally high out of her mind, laughing and dancing with her curtain as if it’s a ball gown, exposing her butt cheeks, chewing a wad of tobacco, and spitting onto the floor. “Isn’t this friggin’ amazing? It’s like, oh my god, I love the music.”
There’s no music playing.
We reach Chris’s designated corner. I sit on a folding chair, try to make myself comfortable—impossible, to say the least.
Chris’s bottom lip quivers. Tears drip down his cheeks. I lean over and wipe them with a tissue.
“I loved Ian.”
I squeeze his hand. “I know you did, but he’s not good enough for you. You’re going to meet a ton of hotties at school and you won’t want to be attached to a high schooler . . . it’ll be open season for you.”
He forces the corners of his mouth to curl. “You’re probably right . . . as always.”
“But, that ass, Zac. . . . I feel like killing him, or hiring someone to beat the crap out of him.” A fabulous fantasy flashes through my mind for a second: Reyna and Roxanne rabidly chewing, gnawing on his bloody carcass.
“Leave it alone, Bea. Like you told me to. He’s a monster. I don’t want you to get hurt, too.”
No way am I going to leave it alone; no way.
The old man suddenly yells, “And whip cream on top, the fresh kind. None of that Cool Whip stuff.”
A girl who looks younger than me parts the curtain. “Hi. I’m Dr. Mendez.” She introduces herself. “And you are?”
I stand, towering over her, and I’m only five foot five. “I’m Beatrice Washington. And this is my best friend Chris Mayes.”
“Very nice to meet you both.”
“Is he okay?” I barrel past the how-do-you-do’s.
She leafs through what I assume is his chart—a clipboard filled with three inches of paper.
“Hasn’t he only been here a couple hours? I mean, what are you doing? Don’t look at those papers . . . look at him.”
“Bea, stop,” Chris pleads. “Let the doctor do her job.”
Dr. Mendez ignores me. “Mr. Mayes, I’m going to ask you to roll over to your left side. From what this paperwork says”—she throws that in my face at a speed of ninety miles per hour—“it seems one of your ribs may be bruised—hopefully not fractured.”
Chris complies, winces.
“Please, Bea,” he whispers. “Don’t tell anyone he did this. Please, let it go.”
I lean into my friend and hold his hand, kiss his tears.
The doc finishes her exam. “The orderly will bring you up to radiology. It’ll take about an hour,” she says in a brusque tone, and disappears through the curtain.
“You’ll wait here, right, Bea? You’ll stay?”
“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.” The orderly whips open the curtain, raises the railing on Chris’s bed, and starts rolling him out of the room.
I peek in on the old man. “I’ll check on the Jell-O.”
“Whip cream,” he yells as I leave the room, “the real stuff!”
“Annie?” I part the curtain. She’s sleeping. I read her clipboard hung on the base of her bed. Damn. It is her. The Annie from rehab. Her drug of choice was heroin, smack. She’s one of the nice ones, incredibly sweet when she was sober. And smart—damn, she was one of the most well-read teens I’ve ever met. She loves poetry and quoted Emily Dickinson all the time. Not in a snobbish way—she just got it, life, deeper than anybody else.
It’s that depth, the ability to touch stuff that most don’t see, don’t even know is there. . . . It’s scary, lonely, and can take you down into the hole.
I’ve never met a stupid addict.
I have an hour and really want to see Junior since I’m already here, so I hustle to the intensive care unit. It’s shaped like a horseshoe. Pods jut out—the rooms of the most critically ill. The sound of machines beeping; low, concerned voices; soft weeping. The smell in the air is thick with the sweet stench of rubbing alcohol, spilled guts, worry, and grief.
A man in blue scrubs approaches—he could be a doctor, a surgeon, or he could be in housekeeping. I’m sure it matters to him, but it doesn’t to me.
“Hello. I’m here to see Junior,” I say, realizing for the first time that I don’t know his last name, or even if his real name is Junior.
He points to the third door on the left. “Are you family?”
I nod, kind of in a circle. Could be interpreted both ways. “How is he?”
“He’s been in and out of consciousness since surgery. We’re waiting for the swelling to go down, and won’t know what we’re looking at for a couple days.”
He’s a doctor, I gather, or a very well-informed janitor.
“But he already has visitors. You’ll have to wait,” he adds.
“Oh, okay. That’s fine.”
He gestures toward a line of stacked chairs against a wall. I thank him and take a seat across from Junior’s pod.
His curtain is closed shut across the glass. The nurse sits on a stool, taking notes. I’m sure he’s interpreting the flashing numbers, the graph-lined screen in front of him.
The beeping of one of the machines suddenly picks up, and the nurse enters Junior’s room, swings back the curtain, and I see him, lying in the bed. His head bandaged, wrapped; his body motionless. Reyna, Archie, Johnny, Roxanne, and a couple kids from the team I haven’t met yet, along with Coach, the gold chains on his wrist glistening, surround him.
The nurse speaks with the coach. He listens with a concerned face. Then he nods, and the group rises. Reyna kisses Junior on the cheek. They’re silent, heads lowered. Roxanne wipes tears away as they walk toward the exit, toward me.
Damn . . . they’re going to see me. I slump, covering my face with my hand, and then realize that I don’t have to. I’m dressed like a girl—Bea, not Boy. I relax, nod as they pass, and then oh my friggin’ god, I sneeze.
The coach stops for a beat, looks at me. “Bless you.”
Fuck! I mumble back a thank-you and wait patiently on the hard-backed chair until the nurse settles back on the stool. “Is it okay if I go in now?”
“Only for a couple minutes—that’s it,” he says to me. “Please keep him calm. We don’t want to upset him.”
“Of course. But will he be able to hear me?”
“We think so. He’s not able to speak yet, but he’s been responding to basic commands.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It’s a good sign, yes.”
“So he’ll be okay?”
“The swelling’s go
ne down, but it’s still too soon to tell.”
I head into the room. “Hi, Junior.” I sit on a chair next to his bed. A lightweight tube that splits into two prongs hangs from his nostrils; lines reach from his arms to bloated baggies with fluid that hang on a T-shaped roller; patches on his chest are connected to a machine with colorful squiggly lines. The beeping of the machines is steady, slow, strong.
He looks peaceful, his handsome face relaxed. “Junior, I don’t know if you can hear me or if you even remember me, but I’m the girl who was pretending to be a boy, the one in the holding cell with you that day. My name is Bea. Beatrice Washington. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.” My voice trips with sudden emotion. “I didn’t know what the tennis balls meant. I’m so sorry I ratted on you. I really didn’t know.”
Junior’s swollen, heavy lids struggle to open.
“You can hear me!” I sit straighter, take his hand in mine.
He makes a grunting noise, and taps my hand with his finger.
“What, what is it?”
The beeping picks up on the monitor.
“I was told not to get you upset. I should go.”
I start to stand, and he reaches out, brushes my hand. I sit back down and he lifts his finger again. But this time he moves it around in the air, like it’s a pencil, like he’s . . .
“Drawing? You want me to draw something? Okay.” I pull my sketchbook and a pen out of my bag.
Junior’s eyes open a bit wider, and I peer into the wet darkness of his eyes, and instantly letters come marching in, rolling like a combination on a lock: I-S-P-Y. I look down at what I wrote. “ISPY? What does this mean, Junior? What are you trying to tell me?”
His heart rate, the beeps, suddenly pick up speed—race. The lines on the machine fluctuate in waves—high and low. The nurse runs in the room, swiftly ushers me out, and closes the curtain.
1 day
1 hour
12 minutes
Arm in arm, we shuffle in the rain through the heavily-lit hospital parking lot. I hold my jean jacket over Chris’s head (I forgot an umbrella and make a mental note to add one to the collection in my backseat), so as not to get his bandage wet.
“Hey, instead of driving me home, do you think I could stay with you for a while, at your house? Please?” Chris asks, his voice muffled under the jacket.