by Stacie Ramey
Twenty-Five
The next few moments are a blur. I watch helplessly as Julian rears back and throws the first punch. It sends that Anderson kid stumbling backward. I hear it, too, the sound of fist against face. The grunt of the person hit. There’s blood. So much blood. Chip tries to pull Julian back. Dave, too, but the Danbury players can’t hold Anderson, either. A circle surrounds the boys, and I’m screaming and screaming.
Red and blue lights flash in the distance.
I hear a siren. Kids race for their cars. Tires screech. The world is spinning.
Ben throws his car into drive. We are moving. Away from Julian.
“Where are you going?” I bang on the dashboard. “Stop. We have to stop them.”
“Police,” Rena points at the four cop cars that now descend on the parking lot.
“They’ll stop them,” I say, mostly to myself. “They’ll stop them.”
A helicopter flies above us, spotlight sweeping the ground. The players break away and race in all different directions. I can’t see if Julian is one of the guys who got away or if he’s still on the ground. Someone is. An ambulance passes us on our way out of the high school, and I’m crying and Rena’s crying and Ben is scared mute.
“That looked bad, didn’t it?” I say. “I mean, an ambulance.”
“It’s probably protocol,” Ben says.
Rena is working her phone like mad. “Shayna says they loaded one of the players in the ambulance. She isn’t sure which one.”
We pull into the driveway and Mom and Dad are outside. Mom has her arms folded in front of her, stamping in the cold to get warm. Dad is pacing. As Ben pulls into the driveway, they practically attack the car.
“Where’ve you been?” Dad demands.
“We’ve been texting you since we heard,” Mom says.
“Heard what?” I ask. Eric taught me it’s always useful to know what info they have before giving them more.
“About what they did at the dance. Which was over an hour ago. Where have you been?”
I hold up my smashed phone. “Sorry.”
“Let’s get you inside,” Mom says. “You’re freezing.”
“I want to know where my daughters have been,” Dad says, fuming, and I don’t want Ben to be the recipient of his ire.
“Let’s go inside, David,” Mom says, “Then we can figure out who is to blame.”
“It wasn’t Ben’s fault,” I say, but my teeth are chattering, despite the blanket Mom’s wrapped around me.
“We need to get you in the shower,” Mom says. “You’re too cold.” And now she’s crying and that just feels like the cherry on the sundae.
“I’ll take her,” Rena says. “I’ll help her.”
“I’ll do it,” Mom says, but Rena comes with us anyway.
“No shower,” I say. “Just clothes.” My body is numb from the cold. My heart is broken. I am broken. And I still have no idea how Julian is.
“Okay, sweetie. Let’s get you into warm clothes.”
I feel like a rag doll as Rena unzips me as Mom puts a sweatshirt over my head. Rena pulls thermal underwear on me over my cast. Together they help me to the bathroom and then to bed.
I put my hand out. “My phone.”
“What could be so important?” Mom asks.
Rena sighs. “It’s smashed,” she reminds me and hands me my iPad. “You can use this in the meantime.”
I curl up into as tight a ball as I can. Mom stays and rubs my back and arms until I’m not cold anymore. I fall into a deep cavern of sleep.
* * *
When I wake up, I find that Rena crawled in bed with me like when we were little, and she’s crying.
I try to get my mouth to move to ask what’s wrong, but I’m so tired and freezing and fiery hot at the same time.
Rena rolls over. “Jenna? Are you awake?”
I nod.
“It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“What?” I manage.
“Julian. He’s been arrested. And it’s all because of me. Because you had to come after me.”
My mind is a swirling mess of pain. My lips are dry. So dry. My throat, too. And I’m on fire.
Rena must notice I’m not reacting to her confession or her angst, and she puts her hand on my forehead. “Oh my God, Jenna. You’re burning up.”
I want to ask her more about Julian. I want to tell her it isn’t her fault. It doesn’t matter what I want or what I think, because Rena’s running out my bedroom, and I hear her frantic steps to go find Mom or Dad.
It’s snowing outside. I feel the flakes land on me as they load me into the ambulance. Nothing seems real. Deep down I know this is probably just a cold or bronchitis, or even a slight bout of pneumonia. I’ve had that numerous times. But right now I am so tired and so cold and so numb to everything that it feels like this is the end.
The doors shut.
“Jenna, we are going to give you some fluids by IV,” an EMT says. “You still with me?”
I nod.
“Nothing to worry about. A walk in the park.”
I wonder if he realizes that a walk in the park would be difficult for me. I wonder if he knows how much he takes for granted. The ride goes by pretty quick. I remember that when we bought our house, Dad said a good hospital was close by. They didn’t know I heard him say that, but I did. Who chooses a house by its proximity to a hospital? My parents did. Do. Because of me.
At the hospital, the doors swing open. My teeth are chattering even though I’m under a thermal blanket. I am moved down the hallway, into a triage unit, where I’m transferred to a bed.
Gary appears, and I’m grateful for the familiar face. “Here we go, darling. Here we go.” He wheels me into my room. “Seems like you’ve won yourself a stay at our fine establishment.” My eyes close. “Pneumonia. Bilateral. I appreciate your dedication.”
He sets up my IVs, types a bunch of stuff into the computer, dispenses pills, and fills needles with magic medicine to put in my IV. Mom sits by my bed, a tissue crumpled in her hand. Gary puts his hand on her shoulder. “She’s going to be just fine, Sharon. We got this.”
Mom sniffles and nods. Her hand goes over his.
“We gotta take care of our girl,” Gary says. “Let me just run and get some of those juices she likes.”
The door shuts, and Mom starts in on me. “I just don’t know what to say to you, Jenna. I know you all think you’re immortal, like nothing can harm you. But I promise you, that’s not true.”
For a great moment, I forget all that’s happened, all the misery, and I think of Rena and Eric. If they were here, they’d interrupt her and try to save me. I feel myself smile, and Mom scoffs.
“And Rena? She’s worse than you are. Let me say this, in case you didn’t get the memo: You two are grounded. For. Life.”
I want to argue with her. I want to ask her if she was ever a teenager. If she ever felt the way Rena obviously does about Chip (who knew?) or how I feel about Julian. I want to scream at her for letting that stupid-assed doctor screw up my life so much that I could be used as a weapon against the boy I love. I want to flail and cry and throw every single person under the goddamn bus, but I’m so damned tired it’s hard to stay awake, so I close my eyes and let myself sleep.
Twenty-Six
I’m half-awake when the door opens. “Jenna?” Rena’s voice greets me.
I open my eyes fully.
She sits in the chair Mom usually occupies and holds my hand. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” I lie. I feel like my chest is on fire. And that one syllable costs me a long, drawn-out coughing fit. Rena sits me up and pats my back until I finally stop.
“Well, maybe this will pick you up a little.” She waves a bag in front of my face. “I got you a new phone.”
I close my eyes and give her a throaty, “Thanks.”
“Let me just get this set up for you. You still have the same password, right?”
“Right,” I say. Then realize a second too late just what that means… Rena has my phone. With pictures that Ben must have taken of Julian and me when we were dancing. And the texts.
“Hey, this is a cute picture of you and Julian,” Rena says.
I open my eyes and see her squinting at my phone, scrolling through the texts, I guess. I can’t make my voice come out. I push the button to lift the head of my bed even though it makes me dizzy to do so.
“Jenna?” Rena’s face looks all puzzled. “Are you and Julian…are you…”
I’m sitting completely upright, finally. From here I can get some breath. “I can explain…”
“You and Julian are a thing? And you didn’t tell me?”
“It’s not like that. Exactly.”
She points the face of the phone at me. “It sure looks like it is.” I can see disappointment in her face, and I want to fix it, but she’s right. I didn’t tell her. But also, she didn’t tell me about Chip. So.
“Goes both ways, little sister,” I manage to get out before going on another huge coughing fit.
She chews her cuticle. I swat at her hand. “Disgusting habit,” we both say at the same time in the same Mom-voice. And the tension dissipates.
The door opens. Ben enters. “Hey sweets, what’s the haps? You hear from Prince Charming?”
Rena fires her words at him. “What? You knew, too?”
Ben puts his hands up in surrender. “Come on, Rena. We’re all friends here.”
“So? Have you heard from him?” Rena asks me.
I stare at my new phone. I have twenty-one texts. I’d counted them this morning on the iPad. Twenty-one texts from Julian. “Looks like it.”
Rena puts her hand out for my phone, when I won’t relinquish it, she asks, “What does he say? How is he?”
“I haven’t read them yet.” I put the phone face down on the tray table and give her a “don’t you dare” sort of look.
“Why won’t you read them?” Ben asks.
“It would never have worked,” I say. “It was stupid.”
“Oh. We’re doing this now, are we?” Ben says.
“Doing what?”
“Shooting this Julian thing in the foot because you’re too scared to see if it could work out.”
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“No?” Rena asks. “The least you could do is read his texts.”
“And what would the point of that be, exactly? He was just being polite. He doesn’t want to date me because of my CP.”
Ben points his finger at me. “Absurd.”
“You saw how he acted when they teased him about me. You were there.”
“I saw him coming to your defense,” Ben says.
I lean back against the pillows and sigh. “But I didn’t need him to do that. I didn’t want him to do that. I wanted him to get in the car with us and drive off.”
Ben cocks his head. “That’s sweet, but maybe not exactly reality-based for hetero hockey players en masse. First rule of any situation is you’ve got to know your customer.”
“Seriously, Jenna, you think Eric would have allowed those players to talk about you like that?” Rena’s eyes are huge, and she’s staring at me like she just can’t believe I would do this. “He’d have been right there with Julian.”
“I don’t need anyone to fight my battles for me. I don’t want anybody to fight on my behalf or because they feel sorry for me.”
We are so busy arguing that the three of us don’t hear the door open. We don’t know Julian heard that last line until he says a very hoarse, “Is that what you think I was doing?” He’s carrying a stupidly enormous stuffed purple bear that holds a heart balloon. His lip is split but now mostly healed, but there’s still a glaring bruise around his eye and a cut above it. It’s hard to keep track of time here, but I know it’s been at least two days, maybe three. My phone is on the tray next to my bed. I glance at it and then back at him. I wish I was wearing normal clothes and didn’t smell like a hospital.
Ben grabs Rena’s arm. “We were just leaving.”
Julian nods at them as they depart. Then he sits down, wincing a tiny bit as he does. When Rena came to visit me yesterday, she told me that Julian got three bruised ribs in the fight. “Hey,” he says. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
“You worried a lot of people.”
“I could say the same of you.”
His hand goes to the area above his eye where the stitches are still held together with the butterfly bandage. “Yeah. I guess.” He looks at my phone. “You never going to answer me?”
I lean back and cross my arms over my chest, feeling exposed. “I haven’t read them.”
“What?” His voice squeaks. “You never read my texts?” He shakes his head like he can’t believe what I’m saying, then cradles it in his hands. “Can you tell me why?”
“I just got a new phone. The other one was smashed.”
“So no other way to get your messages?”
I don’t answer.
He stares at the ground for the longest time. When he looks up at me, his eyes are bright red. Like he’s about to cry. I’m shocked to see that I have that much power over him. “Why?”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You couldn’t read the texts or didn’t want to?”
“Couldn’t. Not after what happened,” I say.
“I didn’t mean for it to get that bad.” He gestures toward my phone. “If you’d read the texts, I told you that.”
“I didn’t want you to fight him because of me. There was no need. Unless…”
“Unless what?” There’s an edge in his voice now that kind of kills me.
I don’t know what to say. Which is a weird situation for me to be in. “I can’t be with someone who is embarrassed to be with me.”
“Who ever said that? Why would you even think that?”
“Admit it,” I say. “It got to you when they said that about me. It embarrassed you.” Maybe Rena’s right, maybe Eric would’ve reacted the same way as Julian. But if there’s any chance this is true, I need to end things now, before they even start.
Julian shakes his head. “You’re wrong.”
“No. I’m not. He got you mad because you don’t want to admit that you’re embarrassed by me. So you decided to act like a big hero, but really you’re just a jerk.”
Julian winces. I can tell that my words have hit their mark. “So that’s it? You’re just going to give up on me? On any possibility of us?”
I close my eyes. “Why do you even like me?”
“Because you’re funny and smart and you’re beautiful.”
I open my eyes. “No, I’m not.”
“You are. You’ve got these gorgeous eyes. And your hair…” He motions with his hands. “Your smile is the thing that gets me, though. And how you look at me when you and I get the same joke and no one else does.” He stops. Takes a breath. “And I used to think you were nice.”
“Used to?” The words lodge in my stomach like a rock. I gaze down at my hands, unable to look at him anymore. My own tears are finally forming.
“I guess we’re done here.” Julian pushes himself out of his chair. The echo of the door closing tells me all I need to know. He’s gone. And he’s not coming back. Was I right then, if he would leave so easily? Was he embarrassed of me? Or did I just blow it all?
Rena and Ben file back in but they can see I’m not in the mood to talk, so Ben gets in bed with me and Rena puts on Into the Woods because we both love that one. Me and my stupid fairy tales. I start to cough, and Rena jumps up. “I’ll get you some more juice,” she says, headin
g back out of the room.
Ben picks up my phone. “Are you sure you don’t want to hear what the boy said?”
I pull Ben’s arm back around me. “I can’t. Not yet.”
“Let me look at what he’s written?”
“No. You’ll tell me, and I don’t want to know.”
“The boy is hurting.”
“He’ll heal.”
“But will we?” Ben asks.
“No,” I say. “We will grow old and stay lonely and never marry. We’ll have no cats and no dogs and we will buy eggs in half cartons and half a loaf of bread.”
“I’m sad for us.” Ben lays back against my pillow with me. “But I’m glad we are sad together.”
“Always.”
The nurse comes in. Not Gary, unfortunately. This one is very businesslike and assesses the situation. She looks at Ben and shakes her head. “I believe it’s time for you to go. Jenna needs her rest.”
“I need my bestie,” I complain, but it’s hard to do it effectively because I’m exhausted. In fact, I’m almost asleep when Ben lifts off the bed, kisses me on the forehead, and puts my phone in my hand. “Think about it, sweets.”
And then I’m alone. Alone to think about everything that’s happened.
Eventually, my mind goes to Jennifer and what she would be like if she was the one in this position with Julian. I can see her walking on the street, her back held straight as a board. She’s dressed in all black, wearing high-heeled boots. I stare at her shoes, like her walking in them is a miracle in and of itself. Like maybe she’s a circus performer and these are her stilts. It’s that amazing, because I could never do it.
She’s magical, with her perfect posture, and she steals the breath right out of me. She’s a force of nature. A gravitational field. She is an element. Fierce and strong and every single thing I wish I can be.
She feels eternal. And ethereal. Here and gone in the same breath. Like if other people looked at her, they’d see the bushes behind her. The houses she passed. But not her. To them she’d be the wind that blew. The rustle of the leaves. And a suggestion of something else. Something magical and important, but if they blinked she’d be completely gone.