Demon Derby (16 page)

It only took him fifteen minutes to arrive at McDonald’s, and once I convinced him I was okay, he bought me a shake. I think he could tell I wasn’t quite ready to talk about it all yet. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I could without him trying to have me committed.

“Thanks, Ky.” I drained the last of the chocolate-flavored awesome as we pulled into a parking spot at the skate park. “You are the best guy in the universe.”

“I’ve got skills, baby.”

“Dude, I love you,” I said as we got out of the car. “Someone should clone you. The world needs more people who aren’t douche bags.”

“I’m all for this plan. I vote that the clone does my American history paper, because it’s due tomorrow, and I haven’t started yet.”

I sighed. “That sucks. You pulling an all-nighter?”

“Probably.”

We started down the path, looking for a free spot to practice in. The half-pipe overflowed with junior-high kids on BMX bikes, so that was out. I saw the rest of our crew jumping one of the mini ramps with their boards; Willow went up, grabbed some air, and made a silly face before she landed.

My feet slowed despite myself. “Hey,” I said, “did you know everyone else was going to be here?”

“They usually are,” he replied. It came out sounding a little defensive. “Why?”

As usual, Kyle’s shouting attracted attention. Lupo elbowed Willow, who canted a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun as she looked our way. Talking to them seemed inevitable, so I pasted a smile on my face, even though I really wanted to have Kyle to myself. But instead of skating up to meet us, they turned their backs, grabbing their boards and rolling farther down the path like we might have something catching and they didn’t want to get too close.

I should have felt relieved, but it hurt. “What was that all about?”

He shrugged, dropping his board and rolling a little way down the path. “If we can find a free spot, I can show you the half cab impossible. You still haven’t seen it.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

He stopped but didn’t turn around. “All right. How about I answer your question and you tell me what happened to you this afternoon?”

It wasn’t something I looked forward to, but I knew I was going to have to tell him sooner or later. “Deal.”

“Okay.” He paused, rolling the board back and forth, testing the wheels. They looked new, the bright plastic smooth and unpitted. “They’re pissed, Casey. And I can kind of understand how they feel.”

“Pissed about what?”

“We understood when you were too sick to hang with us, but now you’re not. And we only saw you that one time before you dumped us for the derby thing. You don’t even text anymore, and you don’t pick up when I call you. It’s like you’ve written us off completely.”

“I thought you didn’t want me freerunning or boarding. The second I get near anything remotely dangerous, you get tense. So I started doing derby, which you don’t like either.” I threw up my hands. “I can’t win no matter what I do.”

“So I’m smothering you to death.” He sighed. “Heaven forbid I actually care. Or have an opinion.”

“Have all the opinions you want, but quit shoving them into my face.”

“You know,” he said in a sharp tone I wasn’t used to hearing from him, “eventually, you’re going to realize that the problem isn’t me or Rachel or anything else. The problem is
you
. You’re the one who can’t get past your diagnosis. You’re the one on this big quest to prove yourself. You’re the one picking fights with anyone who will fight back, because it’s the only way you can distract yourself from the fact that you’re scared out of your mind. So maybe instead of blaming all your problems on everybody else, you could start realizing what you have. Like, for example, a friend who drops everything to come get
you when you’re in trouble, only you can’t even be bothered to thank him.”

The longer he yelled, the smaller I felt. “Thank you,” I whispered.

He couldn’t hear me over his own voice. “I’m going to work on the half cab impossible now, which you were supposed to see about a week ago, only you forgot that too. You can stay or leave. I don’t care.”

Then he stomped off. And boy did I feel like an ass as I watched him go. The word “sorry” didn’t even begin to cover it. Because as much as I wanted to jump down his throat and defend myself, I knew he was right.

The benches overlooking the ramps were covered in graffiti, old bubble gum, and other unidentifiable gross things I didn’t want on my shorts. So I sat on the edge of the ramp, my feet dangling off the side, while Kyle finished warming up. For someone so tall and gangly, he was a really graceful boarder. It was like everything jelled for him once he was on wheels. He was a good freerunner, but those skills were nothing compared to his boarding.

Kyle needed to cool off, and I needed time to think about what a mess I’d made of things and how on earth I was ever going to make it right. Because at this point, there wasn’t anyone in my life who I hadn’t neglected or pissed off or both. I’d dumped all my friends and shoved my family away. And
now that I stopped to think about it, I couldn’t believe how I’d bitten Michael’s head off. Maybe he was nuts and maybe not, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d trusted me, and I’d leapt down his throat. I had some serious work to do if I was going to fix it all. And I could start by watching Kyle skate like I’d promised to.

He paused at the edge of the ramp, his eyes flicking in my direction. Neither of us spoke, but he knew I was watching. My mind threatened to wander—there was so much I needed to think about—but I forced myself to focus as he took off from the top of the ramp, building up speed in ever-widening loops. Then he launched himself into the air, spun, and flipped the board over his foot like it was a freaking baton and he was a sequin-covered chick in a parade. For a heart-stopping second, I thought he was going to fall, but the board continued to spin, and he landed on it smoothly and rolled down the ramp with an expression of triumph.

“Wooo!” I launched to my feet, holding my arms up over my head. “That was awesome! Do it again!”

His face split into a reluctant grin, transforming him back into the friend I’d lost. “You sure?” he asked. “Don’t you need to skate?”

“This is more important,” I said emphatically. “I’ll skate later.”

“Cool.” It didn’t feel like everything was over, but maybe we were on the right track. At least he could look at me again. Then he added tentatively, “You know, if you wanted, I might be able to watch you skate in a while. Give you some pointers.”

“That would be awesome.”

We stayed there most of the afternoon. Every time his feet left the board, my heart stopped, and I waited for him to splatter on the pavement. And every time, he landed without a hitch. The irony of our switched positions didn’t escape me. It was my turn to feel overprotective, not to mention sheepish because I’d always gotten so upset when he did the same thing to me.

We didn’t talk much on the ride home; in this case I think our actions spoke more than words ever could have. Besides, I was preoccupied with the whole existence of demons and soul jars shaped like bobbleheads, and he was blasting music so loud that we couldn’t have carried on a conversation anyway. But I made sure to give him a hug before he left. Neither of us could stay mad at the other for very long. And trust me, we’d both tried at one time or another.

The house was empty. Mom was catching up on things at the office, and Dad was directing a production of
Romeo and Juliet
, only all the actors were dressed like people from the Civil War, and Juliet’s family had slaves and Romeo’s didn’t. I’d seen a couple of the rehearsals, and I had to admit that it actually worked.

Enough was enough. I was done hiding. And I was determined to prove it, to myself just as much as everybody else. So I went back to the one place I’d sworn I’d never go again.

The smell of the hospital hit me when I was two steps out of the elevator—bleach, air freshener, and metal. Air so sharp, it felt like it might cut your nose. That smell was associated with long days that ran into each other until they were one big blur of waiting for my cell counts to go up or a certain test result to go down. For ages, the quality of my day was predicated on a series of numbers on a piece of paper. One whiff of the fourth floor of Mackinaw University Children’s Hospital, and my stomach started to churn.

This was not a place I wanted to be. What did I think I was proving? I leaned against the wall next to the circus mural with the dog that looked like it had hip dysplasia. I’d always hated the mural. Little Casey and I had once tried to draw a mustache on the dog, but the nurses caught us first.

“Big Casey!” Phoebe, one of the day shift nurses, spotted me against the wall. Her shiny face broke out into a wide grin, and her name tag pressed into my cheek as she folded me into a hug. “We haven’t seen you in forever, girl. What’s up?”

“Honestly?” I shuffled my feet. “I don’t really know what I’m doing here. Maybe I should just go.”

She tilted her head, her mouth twisting into one of those smiles that isn’t really a smile. The corners of her mouth turned up, but her eyes were sad. “It’s okay, baby girl. Sometimes our kids come back one last time to close the door on things. I’ll give you a chance to look around. Just make sure to stop by the nurses’ station before you go, okay?”

“Sure.”

She hustled past me into room 402, which in my day had been occupied by a steady stream of short-termers. I’d never really gotten to know any of them.

I continued on to 409. My old room was now occupied by a baby in a bassinet dwarfed by a jungle of monitors. A man slept on the foldout, drool puddling under his cheek. It would have been wrong to disturb them by going into the room, so I moved on without feeling like I’d chickened out. I didn’t want to go into that room ever again.

Little Casey’s name was back up on the nameplate, door, and wall surrounding 411. It had become a thing—she had signs and posters and caricatures all printed with her name. Inside her room, the walls were covered with them. At least, they had been.

The fact that she was back after all this time did not bode
well. The question was not whether she’d be in bad shape, but how bad it would be. And if not for my blind luck, this would have been my fate too. It wasn’t fair. If I could have changed places with her, I would have.

I wanted to leave. But I pushed open the door.

Little Casey stood beside the bed in her street clothes, shoving sketches and posters into a large cardboard box. She was taller than I remembered, and there was color in her cheeks. She turned to face the door with a smile.

“Oh my God! Big Casey!” she exclaimed, running and throwing herself into my arms. “Did you come to see me off?”

“Um … not exactly?” I rested my cheek against the smooth dome of her head. “Are you leaving?”

“Yep,” she said proudly. “I’m back in remission. The docs gave me this super-secret experimental treatment that turned my pee pink. Isn’t that the coolest thing?”

“Yeah! The recovery part, anyway. I’m not so sure about the pee.” I grinned.

“Anyway, I’m outta here, and I’m never coming back.” She pulled a decorative license plate that said
CASEY
#1 off the wall and tossed it into the box. “Want to give me a hand?”

“Sure.” I took down a poster and started to roll it. “So, what are you going to do first?”

We’d played this game a lot—coming up with the most atrocious things to do on our first day out of the hospital. I’d say I was planning to build a glider out of papier-mâché and fly to Kansas; she’d say she was going to kidnap a sea turtle from the zoo and hide it in her bathtub, and we’d keep
going and going until our creativity—or our energy—was exhausted. But when I’d first gotten home, all I’d done was sleep.

“I think we’re going to stop at McDonald’s,” she said.

“Do they have sea turtles there?” I joked, but she didn’t crack a smile. “What’s up?”

“My mom’s not doing so good,” she said. “She hasn’t come to see me in, like, a month. Dad says she won’t even get out of bed. You’d think she’d be happy that I’m better, right?”