by Ria Voros
“You guys want to hear some Elvis?” he interrupts me.
“Of course we don’t,” Dean laughs. “Play something from this century.”
James won’t look at me.
I’m not sure how to broach the subject because everyone’s acting so weird. The lacrosse guys move to the other end of the bowling alley and we wait in awkward silence for our lane to open up.
Gutter Ball
The bowling doesn’t go well. James is quiet and I’m bowling like a granny — literally.
Dean makes fun of my technique and I have to punch him in the stomach — and end up feeling his abs. So firm.
He squeezes my waist. James goes for a Coke.
“He seems kind of zoned out,” Dean says. “Maybe we should hang out somewhere else.” I put my head on his shoulder.
“I hate high school,” I mutter. “People suck.”
Just then, speak of the devil, in saunters the swim team — really, the WHOLE swim team. Shay’s at the helm and Nemiah’s in the middle, literally mediocre, and they all do a lap of the place before settling at the snack tables with their tiny skirts and perky ponytails. The swim guys lean on their ripped forearms and try not to topple over from the weight of their massive shoulders.
“See that?” I point to Nemiah in her solid pink velour tracksuit. “That’s the opposite of class.”
She’s become a stick of bubble gum. How apt.
Triangle
We play another game
and James bowls gutters every time,
which makes him even more pissed off.
He seems to be taking offense to me and Dean
sharing the same chair.
“You know there are empty seats right here,”
he says. “There’s no need to conserve.”
“She’s my lap-warmer,” Dean says,
and James looks away.
I’ve never seen him like this
and I start to think it’s my fault — our fault —
for being so together in from of him
when something happens that
makes it all seem like
nothing.
Catalyst
It only takes one look —
James walking to the washroom
past a posse of reclining lacrosse guys,
glancing over at them
for a nanosecond —
I see it because I’m so on edge
I can’t help watching him —
and just one guy
gives a flick of the hand,
some signal to strike,
and they all launch as one hulking mass
onto James’s back.
The Next Thing I Know
they are on the floor,
a storm of flailing limbs, and then
the swim team is hurtling into the fray,
their fists like maces. They grab indiscriminately —
a fight’s a fight.
Dean is gone from beside me,
swallowed by the brawl.
I realize I am screaming
like everyone else.
The alley manager,
a brawny guy
in head-to-toe denim,
wades into the fight
and fishes James out. Dean
is still somewhere inside.
Denim Man bellows one
long roar, and the fighters
cease like a pack of dogs
sprayed with a hose.
I rush up to James
and look past him
as Dean extricates himself
from a swim boy’s clutches.
“Who started this?” Denim Man asks.
“WHO STARTED THIS?!”
Five fingers point to James.
Dean starts to protest
but Denim Man yells,
“Get out now — all of you
or I’ll call the cops.”
Dean Grabs James
and I follow them outside,
across the street and up the road
to James’s car.
He doesn’t get in, just stands
on the frosty cement
and gulps frozen air.
His left eye is swelling up.
I pace to try and stop my body
trembling. My fingertips
are ice cold.
Attempt
Dean tries to touch James’s shoulder,
tries to say calming things
in a low voice,
but James is wound tight, can’t hear him,
shoves his hand away.
“I can’t believe,” he says.
“I can’t believe those freaking —”
“How come they can —”
He shakes his head.
“Let’s go,” Dean says.
“My place. We’ll get cleaned up.”
James looks at him, then at me.
“No,” he says. “I need to drive.
This is my thing. I need to think.
You guys go ahead.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” I say
but it feels flimsy —
I’m with Dean and it’s obvious
James doesn’t want to be reminded of that.
“You can’t help,” he says
as I open my mouth to protest again.
We watch him get into the car and drive away.
It feels like the wrong choice, but
we also have no choice — he doesn’t want us.
What can we do? I think. What can we do?
“We can go home,” Dean says beside me,
taking my hand, answering the question
I didn’t think I’d said out loud.
We Drive
I’m not ready to go home yet, and anyway,
I’m worried about James, alone in his car.
Dean murmurs to me like someone
calming a horse. My stomach flutters
at the low sound.
“I told my parents about wanting to be a writer,”
I say quietly.
“Right on. I’m proud of you,” he says in
such a gentle way I don’t want to say
anything else, to ruin it with how badly
the conversation went.
We drive to the end of a cul-de-sac with big,
expensive houses. A playground emerges on the right.
“Come on the slide with me.” Dean says,
and it seems like the best idea in the world.
My brain goes blank as I close the cold door, my skin
tingly, warmed from the car.
It’s the chaos, the shock of everything
that makes him so irresistible, makes me
follow him
anywhere.
Slide
The playground
has never been a more fascinating place,
full of kid things that are transformed
in the dark,
places to hide and kiss
and touch.
Frost covers everything like velvet.
We brush it away
with our sleeved hands
he lays his jacket down,
we sit at the top of the slide
and feel each other’s skin.
Dean’s breath is hot
on my mouth,
his fingers travelling
under my bra strap,
burning my skin,
making my heart crash in my chest.
A dog barks from across the street,
startles us, giggling, down the slide.
The stars are so still and white
from my position
in Dean’s lap.
We laugh
as a distant siren makes the dog
howl.
Details Aside
We get pretty close to something
in that park,
but I’m not going to go there
here.
Let’s just say
<
br /> !!
Vibrations
Once we’re back in the car, my phone tells me someone’s left a message. My gut twists: my parents must be freaking. Until this moment I’ve forced myself to forget the shackles, possible electric chair awaiting me.
We sit in Lucy, talking and kissing with the heat blasted. My hormones have started to drain out of invisible holes in my skin.
I just feel tired and stupid.
Dean’s phone rings. I jump out of my seat, wondering how my parents got a hold of his number.
It’s not them. Someone’s yelling on the other end. Dean holds the phone from his ear, trying to decipher the voice.
“He what?” he finally says.
There’s a pause on the line and then I hear the reply from across the car.
The Drive
is full of nothing-noise: the shudder of Lucy’s old-car body, the whine of her tired engine, the rumble of other cars on the street. Dean pops his jaw over and over.
I try to ask questions and he won’t stop talking, the words jumble up in his mouth.
He tells me what he knows: James was driving his mum’s car on the highway and there was a collision, we don’t know with what yet. The car is totalled.
He’s in the ICU, unconscious and unstable and who knows what else. His mother’s been there since they brought him in. She’s the one who called Dean.
And, oh god, it’s his fault, his stupid fault, Dean says, then clamps his mouth shut. Our make-out session at the park seems idiotic now. I can’t clear my throat.
Dean signals to turn into the parking lot but turns on the windshield wipers by accident.
What Does Someone in the ICU Look Like?
I realize I’ve never been
in a hospital like this before.
Once I went to see my aunt,
dying of cancer, but I was ten
and we didn’t stay long.
Will he be all wrapped up,
with wires and IVs everywhere?
Will there be blood?
My heart rams into my ribs
and I grip Dean’s hand
which is sweaty and cold.
It’s Bad
My first look at him,
I know.
Unstable
is scarier than it sounds.
Face
James’s unconscious face is swollen huge
on one side, bandaged and gruesome.
Ugly bruises deform him into a troll.
He isn’t even breathing on his own —
a machine does it for him,
through a tube down his throat.
It all looks fake.
How could this have happened?
Two hours ago he was fine.
His mother is a small woman
with dark brown hair
and a face hidden in the green
hospital sheet on her son’s
bed. She looks up with puffy
red eyes and a small, quivering
mouth.
Haiku: Life Draining
out through snaking tubes
what are they putting back in?
Put his LIFE back in!
Constance
is a tall, thin woman with frizzy blond hair
in old-fashioned clips. She stands to shake our hands.
She holds a clipboard, a pen, the answers
to all our questions.
She is the social worker.
The sympathetic ear assigned to James’s family
because his injuries are so traumatic
they don’t want us to keel over from shock
or get violent. She is a walking, talking
pacifier.
Dean ignores her.
He Walks
straight-faced to the bed,
amid the beeping of machines
the hard breathing
of James’s mother,
the screaming
in my head.
This is
so unnatural, unfair, unbelievable,
un-everything.
My hands make fists.
Bad dream bad dream bad dream.
Wake up.
Wake up, James.
The Situation
is dire, we learn from Dr. Ziola, a warm-eyed,
pretty doctor who seems out of place in this terrible world.
James has serious head trauma. There is
some internal bleeding,
they don’t know how much yet.
They are trying to get his hemoglobin up
so he can make it through surgery.
He can make it. Dean latches onto this idea,
turns the can into a will. The doctor
tries to offer reality, but Dean isn’t listening.
I look around
at all the life-saving equipment,
the things that exist for the purpose
of helping people not die.
Five Minutes Later
A nurse comes in to take some readings.
We all stare at her, at the machines telling her things
we want to know, even if we can’t understand them.
Constance speaks to us in low tones,
comforting, like a hostage negotiator.
I want to smack her and hug her at the same time.
James’s mum paces, holds her head in her hands,
like a grieving parent in a movie.
The nurse looks at the machines,
does something to the IV bag.
She leaves, rustling in her green scrubs.
I put a hand on Dean’s. I know what he’s thinking,
and I tell him it’s not his fault. Not our fault. For letting
James leave the bowling alley, for not doing something
different. But I know my words aren’t getting through.
He’s torturing himself already:
I, I, I could have stopped this.
I want to echo: no, no, no, you couldn’t
but could we have?
Beep-Beep
A machine drones. Little lights blink.
The nurse returns.
I come back from the grey place where I was drifting.
We are in Sickland. James is not dead.
His Geeks Rule the World t-shirt is gone
who knows where,
ripped off in efforts to discover his injuries,
but suddenly it means so much more.
It means everything.
The beeping beeps.
The machines hold James’s life, and they are only machines.
1:13 A.M.
I finally check my messages.
There are five.
Halfway through
the third one,
as my mum’s voice falters,
my eyes fill up.
I make myself listen
to them all.
They have called everyone they know,
everyone in the school,
even Ms Long.
I can’t
I can’t call when everything’s uncertain
everyone’s rushing,
questioning, waiting.
But the empty-belly feeling
of not calling them
eats me until I am a shell,
full of nothing.
Just when I thought
it was so great to not listen for once,
I replay
the messages,
listen
to hear how much they want me home.
Good Enough
Dr. Ziola tells us they have to take James for surgery.
He’s as stable as he’s going to get
and they can’t wait any longer.
This isn’t reassuring.
Dean wants to know that he’s going to make it.
He prods and prods to get this answer
and finally
Constance has to take him out into the hall.
I can hear him hyperventilating.
I stay for James’s mother,
who looks like her life is being taken
away on that hospital bed.
There is nothing I can do that is of use.
I back up to the door, equidistant
between the grieving mother and cousin,
and act as a doorstop.
Dean Paces
in the hall: down, turn,
back again, down.
His face is like
stretched canvas
over sharp bones.
He doesn’t see anything —
not me, not the passing
nurses or doctors,
not the old man on a gurney
watching him with sad eyes.
Then they wheel James out,
carefully, quickly, no more
explanation,
ignoring Dean’s frantic questions,
and even after they’re gone,
he asks more,
like a lost, demented parrot.
Then Dean Takes Off
And I am chasing him down the hall,
into the stairwell,
down two flights, three flights,
knees buckling, going so fast.
I yell for him to slow down. He screams wordlessly.
We run down, down — how much down is there?
We run into the basement
and I remember from TV and movies
this is where the morgue must be.
I catch up to Dean,
or he slows down for me,
and we stop, breathing hard, our knees
jittery. He doesn’t push
the door open. He knows
what’s in there.
This is the underworld.
He Folds
into a ball on the shiny
stairwell floor.
No crying, just silence, his eyes
staring empty, chin on knees. I sit beside him,
shoulder touching his.
He whispers,
“He has to be okay.
This is crazy, right?
He can’t — no, he can’t.
It’s okay.”
He doesn’t know I’m here.
I grope for something to say
that will make it okay, but nothing will.