by Kasie West
“When I came home last night everything looked eerily perfect at my house. Exactly the same and it felt so wrong. This mess I’ve made is a nightmare but at least it represents how different my life feels now.”
“Are you scared?”
“Terrified.”
He kissed me then, bringing our linked hands behind his back, pulling me closer to him. He tasted like toothpaste and pulled away too fast.
“I don’t know how long I can stay before my mom wakes up and remembers she grounded me last night.”
My eyes were still closed from the kiss. “You don’t have to go yet.”
He gave a breathy laugh, then his lips were back on mine. The truck tipped a little, not fully balanced on its perch. I let out a gasp and Jackson pulled back.
“Is it going to fall?” he asked.
“No. Amelia and I tried all sorts of counterweight maneuvers on it last night to get some traction. It’s pretty much wedged here. It’s just teasing us.”
His eyes turned worried. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Worse-case scenarios?”
My shoulders tensed up and I cringed. “Let’s not think about those right now. Let’s just fix this.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I started to say, but then said, “My shoulders. I haven’t swum in a while. They’re stiff.”
He moved his hands to my shoulders and began rubbing them. “Do you think that maybe your shoulder pain has less to do with swimming and more to do with stress?”
“There does seem to be a correlation.”
“Maybe instead of working on conditioning them, you need to work on de-stressing your life.”
I laughed. “I’m trying.” I patted the edge of the truck. “This isn’t exactly the most relaxing situation.”
“We’ll fix it,” he said.
“We have to.”
Thirty-Six
Cooper’s truck rumbled up the drive.
“Cooper’s here!” Amelia called, shoving the rest of the donut into her mouth and running toward the drive.
“Oh,” Abby said as she climbed from the passenger side. “Fun.”
“So much fun,” I said dryly. “Did Cooper bring a rope or do I need to find one in the garage?”
“He brought one.” Abby turned to Jackson. “Hi, I’m Abby.”
“I’m Jackson. The boyfriend.”
I smiled with that statement.
Cooper joined us, putting an arm around Abby’s waist. “You ready to save this beautiful truck?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
As Cooper and I studied the bumper and wrapped the rope, I heard Jackson say to Abby, “So I heard you’ve met the guy who plays Heath Hall in the movies. Grant James.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
Amelia laughed. “You know I tell that to everyone with ears.”
Abby smiled. “Me too. And yes I have. He starred in a movie with one of my best friends: Lacey Barnes.”
“Wait, you know Lacey Barnes?” Jackson asked. “That’s what you should be bragging about, Amelia.”
“How is Lacey doing, anyway?” Amelia asked.
“Great. She’s working on another movie and still dating Donavan Lake.”
“Is he famous too?” Jackson asked.
“No, but he’s great.”
“I think this will work,” Cooper said, tugging on the rope and bringing my attention back to the task. “Just let me back up the truck.”
“Sounds good.”
I clutched the steering wheel, ready to direct the truck the right way as soon as it was free of the platform. Amelia, Abby, and Jackson stood off to the side, Jackson chomping on his second donut and Amelia laughing at something he said as they waited for the show to start. Cooper revved the engine. My heart was in my throat. I turned on the music to drown out the sounds of my own breathing that was making me even more nervous. Jackson gave me a thumbs-up—to show support or to show his approval for the Pearl Jam song that now blasted out of the speakers, I wasn’t sure. Or maybe he was giving the go ahead to Cooper because suddenly his truck lurched forward, my cue to give a little gas as well.
The rope tied between the two trucks snapped taut and vibrated with the new tension. My brother’s truck moved forward ever so slowly. At first my whole body relaxed with the motion until a sound so loud I could hear it over the scream of the music—a groaning, a screeching of metal—pierced the air. The underside of the truck was being dragged along the edge of the platform. My first instinct was to slam on the brakes, not wanting to damage the truck. Cooper either didn’t hear the sound or didn’t have the same instinct because he kept moving forward. That’s when two other sounds happened almost simultaneously: first a loud creak, then a bang as the entire platform bent to one side, then collapsed. I bounced in the seat as the truck slammed onto the ground, all four tires finally level. The second sound was a ripping of metal as the front bumper of my brother’s truck was ripped free, flying through the air, and hitting the back of Cooper’s truck, then falling to the ground. That’s when his brake lights flashed and he finally stopped moving forward.
Pressure pushed against my ears, muffling the sound of the music as I stared at that unassuming piece of metal on the ground in front of me. A piece of metal that was sure to ruin my life. This was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to fix this, not shock my parents. And definitely not break my brother’s priceless truck.
Nobody moved. It felt like time had slowed down. The hope of hiding all of this vanished. What had I done?
Images of my parents’ reactions flew through my mind in still frames, each one worse than the last. The final image, the one that stayed as if trying to burn its likeness into my vision was my mom, her arms folded, wearing the face I had seen so often lately: disappointment. No matter what I did, how hard I worked, I could never escape that face. Now it would follow me for the rest of my life.
Something snapped in me. Despite what I’d been saying about how I had changed and I wanted things to be different, until that moment, I had hoped they could at least be close to how they were before. But nothing could be the same after this. Anger coursed through me, anger that had been resting just beneath the surface for a long time.
I tugged open the door and stalked toward the bumper. The music poured out of the open cab behind me, my soundtrack to a breakdown. I thought I heard my name but my ears still felt blocked, pulsing with the sound of rushing blood. Even as I told myself I was overreacting, even as I tried to calm my beating heart, I couldn’t stop myself. I picked up the bumper. It was heavier than it looked and threw me off balance for a moment. I stumbled forward but then righted myself. I lifted it over my head, my shoulders protesting with a sharp pain ripping through them. I ignored the warning and hurled the bumper with all my might to the ground. It kicked up a few rocks but skidded to a halt, its leash still attached to Cooper’s truck. I picked it up again by one end and hit it over and over again onto the driveway. Each strike left a black mark on the white pavement. And each strike mangled the bumper a little more. As I was about to lift the bumper again, a crackling voice came out of the cab of Eric’s truck behind me.
“Those are the songs that make me feel alive. Although, if you’re listening to this now, it’s probably because I’m dead. In which case, I hope you played at least one of those songs at my funeral. If you didn’t, go dance on my grave to one of them. I know, Mom, too morbid. But if you can’t laugh, what’s life worth?” His voice was so familiar, a bit like my dad’s, and yet so foreign.
I couldn’t catch my breath. It came in rapid short bursts that weren’t filling my lungs like they needed to be filled. My shoulders hurt so bad I was sure I had torn something.
My eyes darted to the bent and battered bumper. A pair of arms wrapped around me from behind. The smell of flowers enveloped me. Amelia. “You’re okay,” she whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”
Jackson was on the groun
d untying the bumper from the rope.
Cooper was out of his truck, eyes wide. “I’m sorry, I thought that ring was anchored to the frame.” He was pointing at a piece on the back side of the bumper. “I hadn’t meant for the bumper to handle all that pressure.”
“Can we fix it?” Jackson asked, freeing the bumper and analyzing the damage. “We can rebuild the platform, right?”
Cooper’s eyes went to the collapsed platform still beneath the truck behind them.
Abby was walking around it now. “The supports are just bent. If we unscrew them and pound them out . . .”
“No,” I said.
Everyone went still and looked at me.
“No. We can’t hide this. It’s done.” I had done this and now I’d have to face my parents. The air was quiet, no more music was playing and no other hidden messages from my brother.
“What do you need us to do?” Amelia asked.
“Nothing. I wanted to talk to my parents. This is good. I just need some time alone if that’s okay.” I needed to think and to stand under hot water, then ice my aching shoulders.
“Are you sure?” Amelia asked. “I don’t want to leave you alone like this.”
Like this. Like the mess that I had become. The girl who could beat her brother’s bumper to twisted scrap metal. The girl who was obviously unstable. “Check in on me if you need to but I’m fine. I promise. I need to prepare myself. I need some space to think.”
Amelia nodded and went to the house, probably to gather her things.
Cooper gave me an apologetic shrug. “Sorry about . . .” He looked at the bumper, at the platform, then back to me.
“It’s okay. Thanks for trying.”
Abby gave me a small wave and she and Cooper climbed into their truck and left.
Then it was just me and Jackson. I couldn’t even look at him. He probably thought I was crazy. I felt a little crazy.
As if reading my mind, he said, “It’s about time you lost it.”
My eyes snapped to his and he had on his trademark smile. The one that made it look like life was just a joke waiting to be told.
“I told you a long time ago to run as far from me as possible, didn’t I?”
“And to think if I had I would’ve missed this awesome display.” He nudged the bumper with his toe.
“Apparently, I have to be the best at breakdowns as well.”
He laughed. “I was thinking the same thing. Show-off.”
I smiled as well but then took a deep breath. “Jackson, I—”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he said before I could finish. “Come on, I’ll help you clean things up.”
He stepped toward me but I stopped him with, “I just need time. To think.”
He looked hurt and that confused me.
“You need your earphones?” he asked.
“What?” It took me another second to realize that he was upset because he thought I needed time to think about him, about us, when I really just meant I needed to think about the night in front of me with my dad. And how I was going to clean up the mess I’d made. I was about to say as much when he put on his smile that closed him off, protected him.
I started to panic. Why was he pulling away?
“That’s what you do, right?” he asked. “Shut out the world when things get real. I thought you had some sort of breakthrough. That you realized that closing yourself off to everyone and climbing inside your head, living in the past, didn’t help. That you realized you need other people.”
My defenses shot up with his attack. I didn’t need him telling me how to deal with my problems and I definitely didn’t need him telling me everything I’d been doing wrong. I’d already had a guy willing to do that. “When did I say any of that?”
“I don’t know, maybe when you showed up on my porch last night. When you texted me this morning.”
“I asked for a little space, Jackson. Is that so wrong? What do you want from me?”
“Nothing, Hadley.” And with that he walked away. I didn’t move as he started his car. I didn’t move as he drove away.
“What just happened?” Amelia asked, her backpack on her shoulder, her shoes in her hand.
“I think he’s done with me.”
“No, he’s not. He’s just upset that you don’t need him to stay.”
I wondered if she was projecting. If she was the one upset.
“He’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll understand. You just need some downtime. You’re kind of in a big mess right now.”
She understood. I nodded.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
Jackson was wrong, I had learned that I needed other people. But I had also learned that some things had to be faced alone. “I’m sure.”
“Call me if you need me.”
Thirty-Seven
I rewound the tape and listened to those six sentences . . . for the tenth time. There was a smile in Eric’s voice as he spoke and I couldn’t help but agree with my dad. His tone, his making something serious into a joke seemed very much like Jackson.
I’d put the mangled bumper in the bed of the truck and moved the truck to the driveway. I’d tried to move the platform that was now bent and broken, but it was too heavy. The torn-up grass I’d pieced back together the best I could, covering the major bald spot, but it was a muddy mess even when I was done. Inside the truck, I’d cleaned the floor mats, wiped down the seats, and even refilled the water gun. I’d showered until the hot water ran cold and now I sat in the cab, ice packs on my shoulders, listening to his voice over and over. My parents had some home videos of my brother from when he was younger, cancer free. But none from when he was older. So this was the first time I’d heard his mature voice.
After he spoke, there was twenty minutes’ worth of silence. I knew this because I listened to every second of the rest of the tape to make sure he hadn’t said anything else. Then I rewound the tape all the way to the beginning and played the whole thing again, taking note of the songs now that I knew what they represented—songs that made him feel alive.
It was late in the afternoon by the time I finally pulled myself from the cab and went inside. I hung the keys to the truck carefully back in their glass box in the kitchen. Not that it would help. My parents would still know I had taken them out. My phone had died an hour before so I plugged it in.
Three missed calls were waiting for me when it got some charge back. All from my mother. Did she know? Had my neighbor called and tattled? There was no way someone hadn’t seen what was going on this morning.
As I was contemplating whether to call her back or not, my phone rang again, her name flashing on the screen. I took a deep breath and answered.
“Hello.”
“Hadley, hi. I’ve been trying to call you.”
“My phone was dead. Is the race done?” Maybe if we talked about that first, she’d know I was still a good daughter.
“It finished a couple hours ago.”
“It went smoothly?”
“Very. I was going to stay until tomorrow, but I’m tired and your father is coming home tonight and I just want to have all day tomorrow with the two of you. I need some family time. So I’m already on my way home. I should be there by nine.”
Family time? Now she wanted family time?
“And Dad?” I so needed my dad to be home first. He would help me explain this all to Mom. He would make it better.
“I think he’ll be home closer to ten.”
I swallowed. When the lump in my throat didn’t budge, I swallowed again. “Okay.” It wasn’t too late to run away. My grandparents might take me.
“How was your weekend?” she asked. “Fun?”
I might as well prepare her now. “Interesting. I need to tell you something when you get home.”
“Did you throw a party?” she asked, laughing like she knew it wasn’t a possibility.
“No.”
“What is it, then?”
/>
“I’d rather not talk about it over the phone.”
“Okay, we’ll talk when I get home, then. Love you.”
“Love you too.” I was glad we’d said it now because it might not be said for a long time after today.
My first instinct when I hung up was to get onto my computer and talk to the guy who’d been giving me advice for over a month now. It took me two seconds to remember that guy was also the one who just walked away from me like he was finished. No, he wasn’t finished. He was just hurt that I didn’t want him to stay, like Amelia said. Everything would be fine once we talked again.
I signed onto the computer anyway, thinking I could just read over our old conversations and get something helpful out of them. But they were gone. Every last private message we’d shared had been deleted. And since I hadn’t done it, that meant Jackson had. My heart tightened in pain and I quickly shut the computer. If I hadn’t thought he was walking away before, I knew now. He was done with me. Just like that.
The next five hours went by both painfully slow and alarmingly fast. I spent them cleaning. Icing my shoulders more. Making sure everything was in order so that when Mom came home, at least she’d be happy about one thing. I wasn’t sure if I should wait outside, sitting on the tailgate of the truck. Or if I should let her have her reaction in private and wait inside, where hopefully she’d have concealed some of the initial shock.
Like the coward I decidedly was, I chose inside.
I wore my hair down and put on a nice outfit, as though I were waiting for a date. I was usually in swim gear so this, too, would make my mom happy.
The key in the lock sent my heart racing. I began a silent plea, to God or to my brother or to whoever was listening, that this wouldn’t break apart my family. The sound of things, her purse maybe, hitting the entryway floor, followed by rushing feet prepared me for her arrival. And then there she was, standing in the doorway to the living room, a panicked look on her face.
When she saw me, that panicked look melted into relief. I was confused by the reaction but then anger took over her features. That’s what I’d been expecting.