There’s no moon, and it’s dark all around us, except for streaks of dusty snow over black ice. The frozen lake is so peaceful. It’s the calmest, most right I’ve felt all day.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“Sometimes when I stand on the ice, and I look down into the water, I wonder if I’m really under the ice, looking up.”
“Deep.” I smile and nudge his ribs with my elbow.
“You’re really tough on people sometimes,” he says. “Like your brother.”
My smile drops. I tell him about Shelly and Hunter sleeping together, and he thinks about this for a second.
“People mess up, you know? But you can’t see past it. It’s like you choose one thing about them—the worst thing—and say, ‘That’s who they are,’ and ignore the rest of it. Why not choose the best thing about them instead? Or the thing they do the most?”
“So you think I should thank Hunter for all the times he didn’t sleep with Shelly.”
“No, I’m saying that’s just one thing out of a thousand. What about the nine hundred and ninety-nine times he’s been a good brother, or Shelly’s been a good friend?”
I don’t say anything.
“I mean, do you know how many times my sister drove me to school when she was a senior? None. And then there’s your dad. I know you hate that he’s in a wheelchair. I get that, but—”
“That wasn’t one thing. That was a hundred little things, over months and years, like choosing what he eats every day and what he drinks and whether he exercises, all adding up—”
“I know, and I’m sorry about that, but—I’d rather have your dad than mine sometimes.”
“Don’t say that. My dad’s really sick.”
“And you can’t accept it. You can barely stand to be in the same room as him.”
“Because this isn’t how he’s supposed to be. I just want my old dad back.”
“But …”
“Is this why you wanted to go for a drive?” I mumble. “To tell me how much I suck?”
“No. My point is you’re tough on other people, but you’re toughest on yourself. What happened at the diner—the way it ended up wasn’t your fault. And your heart was in the right place.”
My heart. Right. That foreign thing in my chest I’ve been trying to expel for months now.
“You wanted to save the gunman. I don’t know anyone else who would’ve thought about it that way,” Ricky says, looking at me with something like wonderment. “But even if you think it was your fault, it’s just one thing. It’s not who you are. You’re millions of other things. You’re funny and beautiful and dedicated and athletic and smart, and you’re a good teacher, and your students miss you, and you have this hard shell, but sometimes you let me see how sweet you can be, and I feel so special I get to see that side of you that you try so hard to protect.”
He cups my face in his palms and kisses me, hard and loving, but I break it off.
“What’s wrong?”
I stare down at my lap. I could take the easy way out and thank him for saying all those nice things about me, but soon enough we’d be back where we started—with me begging him to fight, and him refusing, and me never knowing whether I can.
I glance up at him and whisper, “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t take me seriously.”
“I do take you seriously—”
“I’m small, or whatever, and I’m cute—you’ve said it a few times. But those words also mean I have no power, and if that’s all you see … you’ll never see me. Or at least, the person I want to be.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but the only way I know how to prove to myself that I won’t freeze up again is to be in a fight. If you want to respect me, you have to respect the fact that I know what I’m asking. That I understand the consequences.”
“One fight?”
“And you can’t hold back. If you hold back, that’s worse than not doing it at all.”
“But what about your hand?”
“If someone’s gonna pick a fight with me, they wouldn’t care that I’m injured. They’d consider it an advantage.”
He refocuses his gaze forward, onto the lake. “I don’t know. I just think one of us is gonna get hurt, and you’ve been hurt enough.”
“Ricky, before I met you, I loved my friends and my family, but I think I loved teaching most of all. I thought I was making a difference, but I’m just passing on the same problem. How can I teach people how to defend themselves if I don’t know how? How can I teach girls what to expect in a fight if I’ve never been in one? All my fights, every single one at the dojang, have had rules or time limits or a beginning, middle, and end, choreographed as much as one of Shelly’s dance recitals. It’s never been real. I need something real, or I’ll never know. That’s all I’m asking.”
“But …”
I wait for him to continue. Even when he starts the car and puts it into reverse, I wait. I wait the whole drive home. Nothing comes.
Whatever he was going to say has drifted away. I guess the thought wasn’t worth continuing, or maybe he didn’t have anything to continue it with.
When he pulls into my driveway, he insists on walking me to the door. He looks so sad and earnest in his green-striped scarf and puffy jacket.
“So you don’t want to be with me anymore?” he says.
There’s nothing I want more, which is why I shouldn’t have it. I don’t deserve the things I want. I shouldn’t be happy—not for a moment. All the time I’ve spent with Ricky was stolen from a dead man.
I dream my heart is a peach being eaten by rats until only the pit remains, wrinkled and tough, like a pecan.
Children’s Home Rule number four: Children will maintain good relationships with their brothers and sisters.
What if you want to, but it’s been so long that you don’t know how?
The day before Christmas break, Mrs. Hamilton calls me and Dad in for a conference to talk about my grades and everything else.
I show up early, startled to see Grant Binetti slouching on the bench outside the counseling office, his backpack and skateboard at his feet. I wonder why he’s seeing Mrs. Hamilton. Maybe I’m not the only one who got defeated by Bleak House.
I take a spot on the floor, as far away from him as possible. We’ve kept to ourselves in class lately.
The hallway’s empty except for us and silent except for the soft ticking of the big clock outside Principal Simmons’s.
“Where’s your crony?” Grant says after a while.
“My … what?”
“Your crony. Your friend, the dancer.”
“I know what a crony is,” I say.
“I never see her around anymore.”
“She transferred to a school in New York. A dance school.”
“Oh.”
Long silence.
“Does she like it?”
“Does she … ?”
“Does she like dance school?”
That’s an excellent question. “I, uh, I don’t know, actually.”
“I didn’t mean to push her that time,” he says. “My friends shoved me into her; they were fooling around. I didn’t mean to push her.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Do you still do Tae Kwon Do?”
Before I can answer, Mrs. Hamilton sticks her head out. “Grant, you’re up next.”
I wonder how long he’s been in counseling and whether it’s the reason he never gives me a hard time anymore.
“Good luck,” I say. It just slips out.
He looks surprised but recovers. “You too.”
Dad arrives a few minutes later, wheeling up the ramp and through the automatic doors. Snow dusts his jacket and head, matting his hair down. He doesn’t see me right away.
I watch him rolling himself through the hall, and I remember sitting in the police station waiting for him, watching him exactly the way I am now, and I think, this is my
father.
This is my real dad.
He is in a wheelchair.
This is who he is now, and I will have to learn to love this version of him.
“The problem is Imogen is stuck,” says Mrs. Hamilton. Even though I’ve been coming to her for months now, today she acts like I’m not in the room. She addresses everything to Dad.
“She was deprived of a fight-or-flight response at the diner, and the chemicals in her brain are still waiting to do one or the other. The continued denial of that response has made her anxious, scared, and depressed. This is common in children or teenagers who feel helpless. We’ve reached an impasse, and it’s obviously affecting her schoolwork. She’s failing English Lit and Current Events and getting Ds in everything else.”
“Is it the same for Ricky?” Dad asks.
“Ricky has employed a different set of coping mechanisms. But as far as Imogen’s concerned, I think we should keep moving forward, try to get to a place where she realizes it was an impossible situation she had no control over.”
Wasn’t that what I was trying to do with Ricky? Set up a fair fight on a level playing field to get it out of my system? Why can’t she explain all that fight-or-flight nonsense to him? And what have his coping mechanisms been this whole time? They can’t be weirder than mine.
She finally speaks to me directly. “I’ve arranged for you to visit with Officer Jenkins over break. He’s set aside a half hour on the twenty-sixth to speak with you at the police station.”
My nonheart vibrates disconcertingly, shaking back and forth like an elevator plummeting to the ground. I don’t want to go back to the station. This is a terrible plan. Neither of them sees my panic, or if they do they’re ignoring it.
Mrs. H. turns back to my dad. “When she speaks to Officer Jenkins, Imogen will learn, hopefully, that the situation in the diner was a distinct event that will not be repeated and that she’s still a capable, skilled young woman and martial arts is still worth doing.”
“She gets to start again in January,” Dad says.
“I don’t think I’m going back to martial arts,” I say.
“What? Why not?” Dad protests. “You love martial arts.”
But I don’t even know if that’s true. I loved what it gave me. And then I hated it for what it didn’t.
Mom’s upset about my grades. She thought I’d actually finished Bleak House. I don’t know what could possibly have given her that impression; at one point the book’s sole purpose was to help me reach the top shelf of the pantry.
“No one realizes how hard it was for me to get Bs and Cs before,” I tell her, leaning against the fridge. “I worked my ass off.”
She frowns at the word “ass” but quickly recovers, deciding that’s a battle for another day, I guess.
“Why did you work your … butt off last year and not this year?” she asks.
“Because I had to keep my grades up for Grandmaster Huan.”
“So you only did well in school so you could continue doing martial arts?”
“Basically.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have pushed you to be in the class ahead,” she muses. “Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you redo junior year, at your own pace. Give you some more time.”
“And be stuck at Glenview High for two more years?” I cry. “No. That’s not an option.”
Of all the years to relive.
“You’re failing classes. You’re clearly not ready to move on,” she tells me slowly, as if I don’t remember. “You’re not mature enough to see the big picture.”
“Right. I’m only sixteen. I’m practically a baby.”
“No one’s calling you a baby. I’m just saying maybe you would handle the sophomore material better.”
Oh GOD. If I have to spend another year in that shithole while all of my friends graduate, I will seriously do something drastic. “Fine, so let me go do my homework.” Children’s Home Rule number five: Children will do their homework in a timely manner.
Mrs. Richardson said if I fix my summaries and write five honest, thoughtful responses for the Current Events assignment, she’ll pass me. Barely.
Summary of Article: In Dusseldorf, Germany, there’s an old folks’ home where the staff has trouble with confused Alzheimer’s patients leaving the grounds and getting lost. To curb their disappearances and keep them safe, the town has constructed a fake bus station where patients can sit and wait for hours. It’s a bus stop to nowhere. For each patient it represents a different place: home to their families, maybe, or to childhood, or a town that no longer exists. They wait all day, until they forget what they’re waiting for.
What the U.S. Can Learn: We can be more innovative in the ways we treat senility.
Personal Response: I’m probably supposed to think this is sad and horrible for the patients, but don’t. I envy them. They still believe there’s somewhere they can go that will give them back all the things they’ve lost.
I don’t resurface for dinner. I wait until cocktail hour: after Mom and Dad have gone to bed but before Hunter gets home from work. He keeps a spare key to the liquor cabinet in his sock drawer. I’ve never used it before.
Christmas break starts tomorrow, and I have no plans. Or at least nothing I’m happy about. The only thing on my schedule for the next few weeks is “Stop failing classes” and “Talk to Officer Jenkins.” I’m afraid I’ll have a panic attack just from being near him again.
If only Ricky could go with me to the meeting.
But Ricky won’t be coming over to practice. Ricky won’t be coming over at all.
The cabinet’s in the kitchen at the back of the pantry, floor level, with glass and wood casing. I think it was a gift from Mom’s sister. I’ve never paid it much attention, and I don’t know the difference between the bottles, some of which are dusty, so I take out five and prepare a taste test, using Dixie cups.
“To freedom,” I mutter sarcastically, toasting precisely no one.
The first drink’s amber colored. It goes down so harsh it lights my eyes on fire; it’s an oaky-wood sting that leaps up my throat to my nose. The membranes feel like they were rubbed in sandpaper and then slapped with disinfectant. Mmm, tasty. Alcohol: If you’ve ever wished you could drink floor cleaner, this Bud’s for you. They’re all pretty nasty, but the raspberry Stoli, which is half-full and looks clear as water, is the least nasty. Democracy: When you vote for the lesser of all evils. Why am I creating bumper stickers in my head? It sucks that Ricky’s not here to hear them, that I’m the only one laughing at them because I’m the only person in the room.
I don’t know how much you have to drink to get drunk. Five gulps? Ten? I place the bottles back except the Stoli, which is kind of small and fits conveniently in my coat pocket.
I put on shoes, a sweater over my pajamas, a heavy coat, and a scarf, and I creep outside. It looks like the whole world’s had a pillow fight. Feathers of snow have drifted over every surface, coating the streetlamps and roofs, casting a soft glow as far as I can see.
“Good-bye, Mother. Good-bye, Father,” I whisper. Children’s Home Rule number one: Children will greet their parents when they come home, and say good-bye to them when they leave. (Nobody said they have to hear you.)
Stoli nestled securely away, I set out through the neighborhood, toward Glenview Martial Arts. The studio on the second floor is closed of course, completely dark, and looking up at it hurts my neck.
Grandmaster Huan was pretty crafty. He never had to hire a cleaning service, because high-ranking belts were responsible for keeping the dojang clean. After the last class of the night, we wiped the windows down with Windex and paper towels and pressed a soapy rag over the sweaty punching targets. Vacuumed the carpet and put away all the paper cups for water.
He was running a business, and running it well.
I finish the Stoli and picture myself hurling the bottle at the largest window of the studio. But I can’t bear the thought of Grandmaster Huan showing up on M
onday and seeing that someone’s desecrated his lovely school. Can’t bear the thought of any little kids stepping on broken glass or feeling unsafe when they come to practice.
The school was my home. It made me feel like I could do anything. Every kid should get to have that feeling, even if it doesn’t last.
I drop to the ground, on my back, and make a snow angel to protect everyone. The movement makes me nauseous, but I don’t stop. Tears and snot drip down my cheeks into my ears. I wipe away the evidence with my sleeve.
When you pour water on a dead bug, it twitches out a final dance, just enough to trick you into thinking it’s alive. That’s how I feel, waving my arms and legs: unreal, like an imitation of a girl playing snow angels, like the rubbing of a gravestone, like a tracing-paper sketch.
When I was with Ricky, I felt solid. Without him, I tear apart easily. Is it the same for him? Is he lying somewhere in the snow on the other side of town, feeling the same way? I’m sorry, Ricky. I’m sorry.
I black out, and when I come to, there’s vomit near my feet, and my pants are wet. Not from snow.
It all seems so familiar: the ruined clothes, the stench, the sticky skin. Like this has happened before, and it’ll keep on happening until I get it right.
When I stagger home, the lights are all on. At first I think of beacon lighthouses in a storm, guiding me safely over the rocks. Then I think we’re overcompensating for our lack of Christmas decorations. Then I realize everybody’s up, waiting for me in the living room. I stumble through the door and flop down in the hallway, pleased to be lying down again, cool, smooth, comforting floor, where the world doesn’t spin as much. I’m stinking up the place, waiting for the cops to cut me out of my clothes. How many pairs of pants will I ruin this year?
“Where have you been?” Mom cries. She’s in a housecoat and one boot, a mug of coffee in one hand, clearly about to Search Party me out.
“Do you know what time it is?” Dad croaks, swiveling in his chair to face me.
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