Goodbye from Nowhere

by Sara Zarr

  Idk if your “oh ok” is supposed to make me feel bad, but sorry, you’re not the only one under stress right now. Do you get that?

  He pulled his hand back and covered up with the blanket as if Emily could see him.

  Emily continued, I’ve had my stupid SAT study group every day and my mom is going through some kind of midlife crisis and now this farm thing and Alex will not calm down. And actually shouldn’t you be doing SAT prep too?? How are you not studying all the time? How do you have time to cut class and stalk people lol

  Every word including the lol hurt, and told him he was a selfish dickhead who, by the way, was ruining his life. He wanted to go back to Cyd/Nadia but then he couldn’t think of anything but how he’d treated Nadia in real life and now he was sticking her in his jerk-off fantasies like she wasn’t even a real person he cared about?

  Sorry I’m so selfish, he shot back.

  It sounded sarcastic, and he kind of meant it that way, but it was also the truth. He thought about what Mateo had said at the workout. And now that Emily mentioned it, there was an unopened email in his school account about test dates.

  Don’t be like that, Kyle. My dad’s a psychologist. Emotional manipulation doesn’t work on me.

  Sorry, he repeated.

  I really am here for you but that doesn’t mean I can text 24/7. I shouldn’t have to worry that you’re pissed at me every time I can’t text back within five seconds.

  Don’t worry, Em. I get it.

  Ugh. Kyle. Stop.

  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. He didn’t know how else to say it. Emily was right, Nadia was right, Mateo was right. The accusations battered him.

  He turned off all his devices and closed his eyes to think about Cyd again, and didn’t let her turn into Nadia this time. She became a generic older woman with dark hair and long legs. Straddling a chair, thighs and heels. Then straddling him: curling her hands around his arms and his neck. Then bra off, everything off but her fishnets and heels. Moving her hips and stretching back on his lap until he finally stopped thinking.

  9

  KYLE TRIED to get himself hyped for the kid-coaching thing, see it as an opportunity for redemption. He was tired of sitting around feeling crushed by the pileup of mistakes—his, others’—and bad news. But he’d been late leaving school because his English teacher wanted to know where the hell his paper was (his exact words), and then he hadn’t realized he wouldn’t be able to park near the field at the elementary school. When he got there, the kids were already in the middle of a scrimmage, and his lateness was one more screw-up to add to the pile.

  He went over to a black dad-aged guy in a green windbreaker and matching cap, holding the telltale coach clipboard.

  “You Kyle Baker?” he asked without turning to actually look at Kyle. “You’re late.”

  “I couldn’t find parking. Sorry.”

  “Park in the teacher lot next time.” He gestured with his clipboard behind the field. “There’s never any space in visitor parking.” He clapped. “There it is! There we go!”

  Kyle scanned the field. It was pretty nice for an elementary school, except the playground was right next to it, and a basketball half-court. The kids were so much littler than he’d expected. Scrawny or pudgy or gangly. He saw a flash of a brunette ponytail at first base.

  “So it’s girls and boys?” Kyle said.

  “Anyone who wants to play.”

  “Oh, okay, so it’s not like a serious baseball thing.”

  Finally the coach turned and gave Kyle a look up and down. “You can’t be serious baseball with kids? You can’t be serious baseball with girls?”

  “No, I just—”

  “Some of these kids wish they were at Little League instead, but their parents can’t or don’t want to commit to that until they’re a little older. Some are here because they like it. It may be only an after-school activity, but we are actually teaching baseball.” The coach clapped again. “Come on, Ruby!” He turned to Kyle. “That’s my daughter. She’s one of the ones who want to move up to Little League.”

  Kyle watched Ruby smack a line drive and the shortstop cut it off. Then Ruby was out and one of the smaller kids was caught in a rundown between first and second. The coach made a note on his piece of paper.

  “Keeping your daughter’s stats?” Kyle asked.

  “Mm-hmm.” He looked up. “That kid on the run, that’s Jake. After he makes an out here—and he will—you can work with him on his agility. You can do that? Ito said you could do all that.”

  “Sure. I know some drills.”

  The coach stuck out his hand. “Greg Malone, by the way.” They shook. “I teach history over at the junior high but come here after school for Ruby and this group.”

  “Cool.” Kyle noticed that the kid, Jake, had been tagged out.

  “You know how to work with a kid without making him feel bad about himself?”

  I guess? “Yeah.”

  “Be encouraging. I want them to have fun, but also . . .”

  “You’re also teaching them baseball,” Kyle said.

  “Right.” The kid, Jake, wandered toward the bleachers, where some parents sat watching. Malone cupped his hands around his mouth. “Jake! Jakey!” He waved him over. “I don’t know where he thinks he’s going.”

  Jake turned around and jogged toward them. Though it was more like a slow, foot-dragging kind of shuffle that was at least as slow as walking.

  “This is Kyle,” Coach Malone said. “He’s going to help me out here sometimes.”

  “Hi,” Kyle said. Should he shake his hand? He’d always kind of hated when adults shook his hand when he was that age, like everyone was pretending you were a grown-up.

  The kid’s arms hung there. “Hi.”

  Malone adjusted his hat. “You two head out to the back of left field. I’d say watch for fly balls, but these kids don’t usually hit that far.”

  “Come on,” Kyle said, and started to jog. The kid did the same draggy thing he’d done before, glancing over to the bleachers every few seconds. He didn’t exactly have a lot of hustle. Kyle slowed down. “Did you get hurt? In the rundown?”

  “No.”

  Then why are you moving like molasses, little dude? was what he wanted to say. But he was here to redeem himself, not make more people feel bad. “One time I seriously twisted my ankle when I was caught between second and third.”

  “My name is Jacob. Not Jake.”

  “Oh, okay.” They found a good spot way out. “Do you know the three-cone drill?”

  “We don’t have any cones.”

  “No, yeah, but do you know it?” Work with me here.

  Jacob shrugged, and Kyle got a more solid impression of him now that they were out there, standing still. He had kind of sand-colored hair sticking out from under his cap, skinny arms and legs, a little belly. Giant feet.

  Kyle knelt down and unlaced his shoes. “We’ll pretend my shoes are cones. And I guess . . . I’ll use a sock for the third one.” He dropped his shoes about five yards apart, then put his sock an equal distance from the others, but perpendicular to them. “It’s basically an L shape, right?”

  Jacob nodded. He was smiling a little, like he wanted to laugh at Kyle.

  “I know I look stupid.” With his one bare foot. The grass between his toes felt good. “So here’s how this goes. . . .”

  He demonstrated the drill, which was basically sprinting from cone to cone—or shoe to shoe—and touching it and getting to the next one or back to the first one as fast as you could. Jacob did okay, not great, kind of half-assed.

  “Try to get a little faster every time,” Kyle said.

  Jacob was not a natural athlete. Maybe he was one of those kids who did a sport because his parents expected him to, or because his friends were doing it. Not that there was anything wrong with those reasons, as long as you were having fun. But he didn’t seem to be having any fun.

  “You want to go one more time? Give it everything. I’ll time you on
my phone.”

  “Don’t time me,” Jacob said, breathing hard and leaning over, hands on his knees.

  “How come?” Usually that was a motivator. Kyle had always loved being timed, trying to beat his friends’ best times or his own.

  “I just don’t want to be timed.”

  “Okay. You don’t have to.” Kyle thought maybe he’d overworked him, but then Coach Malone called them back in and Jacob sprinted all-out, way ahead of Kyle in a flash. “Damn, kid,” he muttered.

  He glanced at his phone. Emily had sent him a gif of Fred Astaire saying to Ginger Rogers, “Let’s face the music and dance.” Was it an apology? Or forgiveness?

  what’s that from?

  Follow the Fleet, 1936

  He had to say the right thing. The perfect thing. From now on, he’d be perfect with her.

  “Baker!” Coach Malone was calling him. “I’m not paying you to be on your phone.”

  Kyle put the phone in his pocket and sprinted in to ask, “You’re paying me?”

  “No. But stay off your phone when you’re at practice.”

  “Sorry.”

  Malone slapped him on the back. “Go meet some of the parents.”

  Jacob was walking over to the fence, toward a girl. A very hot girl. Very, very hot and beautiful, wearing big sunglasses and a white button-down shirt tied at her waist. Jacob’s older sister? She looked darker than him, hair and skin both. She turned her head like she knew she was being watched and Kyle kept walking toward her, with purpose, as if he had something important to say.

  “Hey,” he said as he got closer to the fence. Jacob turned around with a look like Why are you following me? Kyle said to the girl, “Jacob did a good job today.”

  “You’re the coach now?” she asked.

  “Just helping.”

  “Me too. Gotta give this kiddo a ride home.” She tousled Jacob’s hair the way you would a five-year-old’s. Jacob yanked his head away with a grimace. The girl had short fingernails painted dark red. “Let’s go, Jacob. I don’t want to hit traffic.”

  “Are you his sister, or . . . ?”

  “No. Just a ride home.”

  “Um, I’m Kyle.”

  She smiled politely and nodded like No one asked, but thanks for sharing. And they walked away. He wanted to know her name, what to call her in his thoughts. When he stopped staring after them, he realized the crowd of people was pretty much gone. He wandered over to Malone to help organize the equipment. Ruby was there too, sitting in the dugout and writing in a notebook.

  “That’s Angeline,” Malone said as Kyle handed him a couple of bats.

  “Who?”

  “’Who?’ The young lady you were talking to who, when you were supposed to be meeting parents. She’s Jake’s babysitter, or I don’t know what to call her, she helps out his parents when their work schedules are busy.”

  “Oh.” Angeline. Kyle had never known anyone named Angeline. “He doesn’t like to be called Jake, he said.”

  “He should speak up about it, then.”

  He did, Kyle wanted to say. To me. “Are most practices like this? Scrimmage game? Some drills and stuff?”

  “Basically. Since we’re not part of a league and the elementary schools don’t have teams per se, it falls under after-school programs, doesn’t run long, and we don’t have a uniforms budget or parent volunteers to be driving kids around to all kinda games.” He bent down and zipped up the big canvas bag of bats and balls and a few spare gloves. “So I just teach them what I can, and they can move on to Little League and maybe high school teams later on. Speaking of that, when you come next time, I was thinking you could talk to them a little about what it’s like to play in high school.”

  Kyle didn’t enjoy standing in front of people and talking, but he’d probably annoyed Coach Malone enough for one day. “No problem. You need help with the equipment?”

  “Nope.” Malone stood and heaved the bag up. He was stronger than he looked. “Okay. I’m off to grade history tests.” He gestured to Ruby, and she hopped up to follow her dad. She turned back to wave. “Bye, Kyle!”

  Kyle sat in his car, took a deep breath, and texted Emily.

  Hey you can say no but I want to video chat soon, when it’s a good time for you. No pressure though.

  She wrote right back: sure tonight at like eight would work

  No punctuation, no emojis. But if she was really mad, she wouldn’t have sent him that Fred and Ginger gif.

  When he got home, he got on his laptop and tried finding out more about this Angeline person. All he had was her first name and her face, and that she probably had a connection to the school’s neighborhood. After about fifteen minutes of trying everything and finding nothing, he made himself stop. There was curiosity, and then there was stalking. And he had that English paper to finish.

  He made good progress on the homework, did some push-ups and crunches. Didn’t go wandering around the house looking for his parents so he could keep score on their screw-ups. When eight o’clock arrived and Emily’s call came in, he was ready to show her the best version of Kyle. He thought he’d start by talking about the baseball kids.

  “You’re pixelated,” he said.

  “Hang on.”

  Her face turned into a blur of floor and walls and doorways, then back again. “Is this better? I’m in my mom’s office. The router is in here.” She came into focus.

  “Hey, you cut your hair off,” he said.

  Her previously shoulder-length hair was gone, replaced by a short, messy style. It was shocking, almost disappointing, to have her not look the way he was used to. But best-version-Kyle would not be disappointed in something as superficial as her hair.

  “Oh, yeah. It was making my neck hot and I got tired of ponytails and of random men commenting.”

  “Sorry. About men.” This would be a good time to mention the kids. “I helped out with these little fifth graders today,” he said. “Baseball. It was kinda cute. Around Alex’s age, I guess.”

  He kept staring. She wasn’t as pretty to him without her hair. With the nose ring and the short hair, she was changing. Could people stop changing for two minutes? Should he even be thinking that his own cousin was pretty?

  “Is something wrong?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said quickly. “Just . . . you know, everything that was wrong before, plus now the farm.”

  She nodded, and waited. Tilted her head and squinted. “My haircut threw you off.”

  “No, it looks good.”

  “You’re lying,” she said with a slight laugh. “I can tell. I’ve been getting this all week from friends at school.”

  Shit. He was messing up, over something so dumb. “I like how I can see your eyes better.” That was true.

  “I just think it’s funny how so many people who aren’t me have such strong feelings about my hair.”

  All he wanted with Emily was to be honest. Not weird. Not hiding.

  “I don’t see you that often,” he said carefully. “And I picture you a certain way in my head, and when you just came on and it didn’t match up, it surprised me.”

  “That’s fine.”

  She was mad. He wanted to make her understand how much he needed them to be okay with each other. Not in some and-now-I-don’t-trust-you world like with Nadia, or disappointment in him like his friends and teachers, or don’t-mind-us-we’re-just-burning-everything-you’ve-ever-known-down like his parents.

  “Emily . . .”

  “Kyle?”

  “Emily.”

  “Kyle?”

  She laughed first, then him. Even though he laughed, his eyes also stung a little with tears. If something like a haircut could throw you off with someone you cared about as much as he did Emily, anything could. It scared him. He didn’t know where to step, what words to say to hold on to this thing that suddenly felt fragile.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been up my own ass so much lately,” he said.

  “Okay. You look super inte
nse. What’s up.”

  He dug deep, so deep that he felt scraped out as he spoke. “I see my parents, you know, and what happened with me and Nadia. How easy it was to lose baseball, too, and friends, and everything that kind of made me me.” A tear got out; he brushed it away. “And now the farm. I really really really want, like, you and me? You know? To always be good. Where nothing can get in and fuck it up. It matters to me so much right now. Like, it’s hard to even express.”

  Then he truly was glad to be able to see her eyes with no hair falling in the way, because her eyes couldn’t lie and he knew she understood what he’d just said, whether or not it was exactly the right thing to say.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I don’t like feeling like we’re fighting.”

  “We’re not,” she said. “And I agree we should always be a good thing for each other. There’s enough shitty stuff.”

  He couldn’t let himself be disappointed that it didn’t sound as important to her maybe as it was to him. He knew that her reply was one hundred percent honest, that he could trust that she would not say more or less than she felt.

  “Tell me . . .” Tell me we’ll always be okay. “. . . about school and stuff,” he said, breathing in, breathing out.

  She sighed. “School is a relentless beast that’s ruining my life and stealing my joy and hopes for happiness. But only for like five more weeks.”

  She talked about her AP classes, about her study groups. He heard about Aunt Brenda coming in at two a.m. from a cast party and how upset Uncle Dale was about it. Listening to her talk reminded him of when he and Nadia were good, their lazy bedtime conversations about their days and their families and school stuff.

  He missed that. Missed Nadia specifically, but also missed having that person, that special person who wanted to be the one to hear all your random thoughts, and you wanted to be the one to hear theirs.