“Once,” he said. “We hadn’t even finished paying it off before he fell off the wagon again. My mom tried to get him to go back, but he never would. Too expensive. Too hard.” He closed his eyes, let out a long, slow breath. “They had started fighting about it again when he died.”
I couldn’t think of the right thing to say, so I filled the silence with the only words I could think of. “I’m sorry. I wish it had turned out differently. I wish he could have gone back.”
Jake’s smile was forced and bitter. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway. They’re happy to take your money, but they can’t make you change.”
“It’s not about the money,” I started.
“No,” he said, with a look that let me know just how thoroughly I didn’t get it. “When you’ve got it, it never is.”
I picture him now, needing help but thinking it’s out of his reach.
Maybe I still don’t understand. Maybe he’s too stubborn to accept help, even if I offer it. But I can at least try.
I spend the next two hours researching rehab facilities and programs and payment options. I print anything that’s promising, just in case. And when I’m done, I send a text to Jake, praying that maybe he’ll see it somehow.
It IS my fault, and I’m sorry. Whatever you’re going through, I am here.
Dictionary.com says
search means “to look carefully to find something missing or lost”
and warrant means “authorization, sanction, or justification.”
And search warrant means the cops can
dump out your brother’s drawers,
where the clothes still smell like him,
scatter the mail from thirty-nine colleges
you stacked on his desk,
grab the mattress so hard it rips
in exactly the spot he’d let you sleep
when you were lonely and sad
after your dad died.
I don’t think they would need the warrant
if they’d done a better job with the “search” part.
Because Jake has been gone for twenty-seven days,
and Mom says they haven’t even been looking,
not really.
She never shouts, but she shouts at them tonight.
“Don’t you think I’ve searched this room
for any clue about
where he went?
What are you even looking for?”
“Drugs,” says the short one,
and the tall one looks at him with an angry face,
like maybe
he wasn’t supposed to tell us.
“Drugs,” my mom repeats.
“Are you trying to find my son
or convict him of something?”
“We’ll need you to wait in another room, please,”
says the short one, and my mom says,
“Yes, I’ll do that.
I’ll be in another room
calling my lawyer.”
She shakes her head at me
when they’re not watching
so I won’t tell them
that we don’t have a lawyer,
because lawyers cost money
and we don’t have money, either.
I hold so still,
am so silent,
that they let me stay.
Jake would want somebody
keeping an eye on his stuff.
But when they’re done searching,
the short one turns his laser eyes on me.
“When my partner said ‘drugs,’
you didn’t look surprised.”
“Sometimes people’s facial expressions
don’t match social norms,”
I say,
which I know is true
because the school counselor said so,
but is also not
the whole truth.
“Okay,” he says.
“Were you surprised?”
I try to blend into the wall again.
It doesn’t work.
“You can tell us,” says the tall one.
“We really are trying to find him,
and it might help.”
I look at the clothes folded wrong,
the books stacked wrong,
the rip across the mattress.
If they really wanted to help us,
I could tell them how to
fold the clothes and
stack the books
the way Jake likes them.
If I really wanted to help them,
I could tell them there won’t be anything
hiding in the mattress,
because he always kept the pills
in the little metal tin
that says
FIRST AID
in his nightstand drawer,
and that tin
disappeared
with Jake.
If we both helped each other,
could we help Jake?
Maybe I could have kept all this from happening
if I hadn’t kept my secret.
“You have a story to tell us,”
says the tall one.
“I promise, we’re only trying to find him.
And help him, if he has a problem.”
“Will I be in trouble?” I ask.
“If I should have told somebody before
but I was
too afraid?”
“No, honey,” she says,
and even though
I don’t like being called food words,
I like her better.
“Can I write it down?”
I ask.
“Of course,”
she says.
So I get a pencil
and a piece of paper
and sit at Jake’s desk.
Mom comes in and tells me
I don’t have to tell them anything,
but it’s too late.
I’ve already stepped off the edge.
The story falls from me.
Jake stands on the roof, watching lights blink on across town. It hadn’t even seemed dark to him, but that’s how night comes on. You don’t realize how dark it’s gotten until there’s light again in contrast.
Today was their third day laying this roof. Hours of black underlayment and heavy shingles that would have been unbearable in the summer just felt like a solid workout now that the air had turned cooler. Plus, it’s impossible to look at the straight rows of shingles and not feel a sense of pride. He did that. His work would keep a family safe and dry for years to come.
Jake has come to like these quiet moments when the rest of the guys have gone. He offers to stay and clean up almost every day now. The extra work is worth the moment when he can sit down with a cold Gatorade and look out over the rooftops and unwind. Especially at this house—a two-story on a hillside where you can see all of Ashland, from the community college to the elementary school, from the Dollar Depot to the car dealership. Especially tonight, his last night on the job, since he’s got to get ready for basketball season.
Then a new set of lights comes on, brighter even than the dealership’s. Any other year and Jake would be down there on the football field. He’s never been all that great at football—good enough to make the team but not good enough to make any kind of a difference on the field. After struggling through summer conditioning, though, he talked with the football coach and told him he couldn’t play anymore. He needed to focus on basketball this year, because that’s where his scholarship was coming from. Needed to avoid another injury, especially after he’d already messed up his knee playing summer ball.
The f
ootball coach tried to talk him out of it. “I hate to see you miss your senior season because of a hypothetical. And you know, Jake,” he said, “an injury could happen anytime, anywhere.”
But when Jake insisted his mind was made up, they let him go without a fight, and that stung a little. He was helpful on the field, but not essential. Not really enough. Jake tried to tell himself it was because even the football coach knew this was the basketball team’s year, that everything was on the line.
Now, watching the headlights streaming into the high school parking lot, Jake knows his reasoning was stupid. He hasn’t spent any extra time in the gym these last few weeks; he just kept the roofing job. And even though the money has been nice, he wishes he were down there with his friends tonight.
But it’s too late to turn back now. On a lot of things, really.
Jake heads to the boss’s trailer and pulls a Glacier Cherry out of the cooler. He’s not sure whether he always picks it because he likes it or because Daphne does. Either way, he’s looking forward to drinking it.
Back up on the roof, he checks his phone, thinks about texting Kolt and Seth to tell them good luck. Or Luke, to see if he wants to go to the game. Or maybe Daphne, to see if she wants to join him here.
But there’s a distance between them now. He wishes they could go back to the way things were, to the way they fit together at the beginning of the summer. Those weeks after his injury were some of the best times they’d spent together.
Now she’s writing college essays and elbow-deep in AP classes and he’s…spreading tar and laying shingles, barely keeping up in his classes. He’s still hoping for college, and the verbal agreement with Arizona State makes it seem possible, because the only way he can afford it is with that scholarship.
But the football coach’s words echo inside him. An injury could happen anytime, anywhere. What happens to scholarship players if they get injured? No way colleges would spend all that money for a damaged product, right? Do you have to pay the scholarship money back? Do they kick you out right when it happens?
Jake paces the roof. He has to relax. He forces himself to sit, breaks the seal on the Gatorade, and leans back on his elbows. But damn, that doesn’t feel right. His left elbow screams when he puts any weight on it at all, probably from lifting shingles all day.
No worries. Jake has planned for this. He rolls onto his side and reaches into his pocket for one little round circle of relief, better than any coin or currency.
But it isn’t there.
He hasn’t even put his hand in that pocket all day. How could it have fallen out? He stands up and reaches deeper, his fingers hoping for anything but soft, worn fabric. He turns the pocket inside out.
No.
No.
No.
The pill is small, but it would stand out on this black roof, wouldn’t it? Jake crawls over the whole thing, darting around like an animal. He scrambles to the edge and looks at the dirt below. Could it have fallen there?
The ground is a muddy mess of boot prints and tire tracks. But maybe he can find it and clean it off. Hell, he’ll take it dirty. All he needs is enough white to see it. He jumps to his feet, and the ground seems to sway beneath him.
The desperation leads his mind to even more desperate questions:
Even if he does find this pill, what then?
Where will the next one come from?
How many does he have at home?
How many refills will the doctors give him before they want more testing or at least some answers?
It’s one more reason Jake should have played football: four months when he was expected to hurt, when there wouldn’t be so many questions.
He needs a plan. A way to get more. Because with or without football or basketball or roofing or school or any of it, he knows there is hurt ahead, because he can feel it and see it stretched behind him for all his life: the hurt that comes from never being enough.
Something inside whispers, Your mom can’t afford this anymore. But they’ve met their deductible, and really, he doesn’t have to quit roofing to focus on basketball after all. They tell you sports shape character, but won’t this job build muscle and character and his ability to work with a team in ways that shooting around in the gym or reps in the weight room never could?
He sends a text to his boss: Hey Tim. Never mind about today being my last day. I can stay until November.
But none of this answers the real question: Where will the painkillers come from? How can he fix this problem of the empty pocket—and his empty wallet—and thereby fix all his other problems?
And then there they are. Those words again.
An injury could happen anytime, anywhere.
The thought is so surprising and so perfect it makes him laugh: a short, clipped sound with no happiness in it at all. He steps to the edge of the roof as a plan begins to form in his mind.
Careful with the arms and hands. You can rehabilitate an injury in time, but you can’t rebuild a shot.
It was your left knee that was injured last time, so better to protect that one.
Even from here, he can hear the roar from the football stadium as the Warriors score without him.
He flexes and stretches the muscles in his back that he’s counting on to soften his landing. He realizes how lucky it is that he knows his body so well, knows exactly what it’s capable of. Knows how to hurt himself just enough that he can get what he needs to heal.
But what if he can’t drive to the hospital afterward? Better to have a backup plan than to lie here for who knows how long. Kolt brought girls to this hillside—probably this very cul-de-sac—for postgame make-out sessions last year. “Cul-de-sex,” he called it, even though Jake knows for a fact Kolt’s never gone all the way.
No, Jake doesn’t want Kolt or his girl-of-the-week or anybody else to find him. But he still needs a backup, so he texts his boss again.
Finishing up now. Leaving your slate cutter at the site in case you need it this weekend.
Tim is a good guy, but he’s obsessed with his new slate cutter. He’ll be here in ten minutes, and if Jake’s not already gone, it’ll be for good reason.
He leans over and gauges the distance to the ground below. Maybe fifteen feet. A hoop and a half. Not so far, really. But far enough.
It’s startling how quickly the plan formed and the details fell into place. Almost as though it were meant to be, as if this were the only way forward.
Because honestly, if there were another way, Jake would take it. But the emptiness in his pocket and the hurt in his heart are too much. He’ll do what must be done.
Then three things happen at exactly the same time:
Jake closes his eyes and steps off the roof.
Luke steps out from behind the construction dumpster.
From the stadium below, the crowd roars.
Here’s what I write for the police:
You maybe know about the accident.
The night of the first home football game
I rode my bike up to where Jake was working.
Thought I would surprise him with some Laffy Taffy,
since it seemed like he’d run out of Jake jokes.
See if I could jump out and scare him
and then do my porg eyes
and my porg squawk
that always make him laugh.
I hid behind the construction dumpster
that looked like a drone barge,
that smelled like sawdust and cigarette butts,
and waited
waited
waited.
The plan was this:
I hide until
Jake gets in his truck, and then
I jump out and scare the crap out of him.
We both laugh like Jabba’s little mon
key lizard
(that’s what Jake calls him).
We load my bike into the truck.
We go to the football game together.
And also this:
Jake sees me.
Jake laughs.
We’re together.
Jake sees me.
Instead, he stayed up there on the roof
f o r e v e r
and right when I was about to give up:
He closed his eyes.
He stepped to the edge.
He stepped off the edge.
I ran to him,
saw the bones of his leg
bent all the wrong ways
like the rabbit we hit with his truck last Halloween.
At first, Jake was mad
when I made him stop the truck,
because he was already late to pick up Daphne,
but I could hear the sorry in his voice
when he said to the rabbit,
“I didn’t see you there,”
and to me,
“It’s too late for her.”
I saw his eyes, sad and shining, when
we drove the truck
thump thump
over her small body
so she wouldn’t have to hurt anymore.
And I thought about that rabbit
at the construction site
as I knelt by my brother’s body,
both of us breathing hard,
and whether he was speaking the words
or I was just remembering them,
I heard his voice again.
“It’s too late”
and
“I didn’t see you there.”
But then
“I thought I’d land it better.”
I was crying, screaming
over Jake,
my heart all thump thump,
which made me cry harder,
and I knew it wasn’t helping.
I KNEW,
but it was all I could do.
Then there was a man
with the kind of face that could be
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