Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover (21 page)

I wipe the sweat from my temples and nod. The coach blows the whistle, and I take off. I pump my arms, keeping the baton straight and steady. As I approach the next runner, she takes off. I watch her legs, matching my stride to hers. One, two, three, four. No slowing, no hesitation. My muscles know what to do because, for the past two days, Coach Evil has been pounding it into my head. Five, six, seven, eight. I hold my hand in an inverted V and swing the baton forward. I keep my feet in motion, in sync with my teammate. Up goes the baton. Up goes my face.

Someone stands near the finish line waving me on, her blond, perky ponytail bouncing furiously.

Smack!
The baton bounces off my teammate’s nose. She tumbles to the ground, and I fall over her. I scramble to my hands and knees and look at the finish line, but no one’s there. My confusion is quickly giving way to something hotter and sharper.

With this fall, there’s blood. My teammate is fine, but a long scrape stretches down my forearm.

“Go see the trainer,” the coach says. What she means is,
Go far, far away
.

I drag the towel across my face, mopping sweat and the sheen of humiliation. Liia, the trainer, checks out the scrape on my arm. “How bad did I look?” I ask.

“Maybe you’ll do better at middle distance,” Liia says. “I think we have room for one more runner in the 3,200-meter.”

“Isn’t that like a mile or something?”

“Closer to two.”

I stretch out on my back and watch the sky. Clouds have been forming, and a brisk wind has picked up, but we haven’t had a spring storm lately, not the kind that rips the sky and weeps for an hour and then disappears. My eyelids droop closed. If I were the crying type, I’d have swollen eyes by now. As the coaching staff of the award-winning Del Rey School women’s track-and-field team has learned over the course of two weeks, I’m not a hurdler, sprinter, or jumper. I can’t throw things without damaging myself and others, and I’ve turned the 4 x 100 relay into a contact sport. When it comes to track-and-field, I’m an epic fail.

Liia finishes with my arm and sits on an overturned five-gallon bucket. “Why are you here, Rebel?”

I rest my bandaged arm on my stomach. Joining the track team was a way to get thirty straight days of random acts of kindness. Then it became a matter of being true to my word. I’d promised to just show up, and I will, but now, things are blurrier. Pen is counting on me. The bungalow is more peaceful, and I can’t stop hearing Kennedy’s voice. That, more than anything, is eating at me. But it’s not just her voice. I’m smelling her and seeing her. I massage my head. The whole thing is making my brain ache. “Let’s just call it a random act of kindness.”

When I open my eyes, I turn onto my side and notice Liia’s leg. It’s a uniform “flesh” color and smooth as glass. Two strips of metal curve around the part of her leg just below the knee. It doesn’t look human. I must make some kind of sound because Liia taps her calf against the bucket, and a hollow
thud
echoes.

“A random act of drunkenness,” she says as she pushes down her sock, reveals a length of plastic, and unscrews her leg.

A breath catches in my throat. “What happened?”

“I was jogging one evening the summer before my sophomore year, and a drunk driver ran a red light and clipped me.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, I thought so at first, but here’s the crazy part. The accident was the beginning of my track career. I run in a league for athletes with disabilities and got a full scholarship to my number one college. I’ve come to believe that this”—she points to the plastic and metal—“is part of my journey.

It’s not what I planned, and it certainly hasn’t been without pain, but I believe there’s a higher being or unseen force that places us where we need to be when we need to be there.”

I throw my hands over my ears.
You are dead, Kennedy, and I’m making a choice. I’m banishing
you from my head. This is it. No more.

You don’t look well. Do you need something?

Something soft and warm presses into my shoulder.

Liia. It must be Liia, the trainer. I look at my shoulder and see the heavy polyester fabric of my uniform tank shift, but Liia’s hands are busy strapping back on her leg. I stand, my legs unsteady, as if I’d run two miles. “I … I … need to go.”

I don’t bother to change. On my two-mile run from school to the bungalow, my feet pound the pavement, the
thwack
loud and real and completely of my own making. When I get home, I toss my backpack at one of the brass hooks in the kitchen.

“Rebecca, pick that up!”

I race up the ladder to my studio and sit in the window seat, watching the fleeting sun set the wall of glass picture frames on fire.

I believe there’s a higher being or unseen force that places us where we need to be when we need
to be there.

Shut up, Kennedy!
Liia.
I mean shut up,
Liia
!

Who said the same thing as Kennedy.

Who couldn’t have touched my shoulder.

Fragmented bits of light tumble through the attic. I hop up from the window and begin to pace through the fractured light. Kennedy knew Liia because Kennedy was no track-team superstar. She was a support person, and she probably helped Liia when the trainer needed an extra set of hands. That makes sense. I’ll bet every jar of sea glass I have that Liia and Kennedy had more than one conversation about fate and destiny and life after death.

None of which I believe in.

I’ll hang my hat on a guardian angel.

“Please, Percy, not you, too.”

I slide my palm along my shoulder. But I felt heat. I saw the dip in the heavy polyester fabric.

I’m here for you.

“Nope, not going there,” I say aloud. “It was the wind.”

“Who are you talking to?”

My hands drop to my sides as Penelope pokes her head through the door in the floor.

“Did you hit your head with the discus again?” Penelope asks.

“Ha-ha.”

Pen rests her arms on the door opening. “I’m not joking, Rebel. Liia said you left practice early.

She was worried she said something to upset you. She wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“She thought maybe she freaked you out with her leg.”

“I’m fine.”

“Because Liia is a nice person, and I don’t want you treating her like a freak and hurting her feelings.”

“Dammit, Pen. I’m fine with Liia. I’m fine with her leg. I’m even fine with the discus. Got that?

I’m fine.”

Pen’s face folds in a frown, and she disappears down the ladder.

No lies.

Shut the fuck up, Kennedy!

The best way to get Kennedy out of my head is to get her bucket list out of my life.

I point to the repaired easels and boxes sitting in Percy’s maintenance closet. “Do you think you can get all of it into the back of your dad’s truck?” I ask Nate.

Nate squints at the art supplies and nods.

“Even the potter’s wheel? It’s awkward and heavy.”

Nate puts one arm around my shoulders, pulls me to his side, and brushes his lips against the side of my head. “Even the potter’s wheel.”

I push him away. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Hanging all over me.”

“Past experience tells me you like it.” He nuzzles my hair with his chin.

“Stop being a pain in the ass.”

“You shouldn’t swear,” he murmurs against my ear.

I elbow him in the chest in a nonplayful way. “I’m serious, Nate. I don’t want you to do that.”

“Really?”

“No, not here.”

We’re standing in the doorway of the maintenance closet at the end of Unit One. It’s Friday after school, and most of the student body has gone home. However, a few upperclassmen stand at the bulletin board posting prom posters.

“All right, Reb.” Nate steps back and throws his palms into the air. “Tell me what you want, then.

Tell me exactly what you want.” He sounds snappish. Today he wears his baseball-practice clothes.

Sweat and dirt ring his collar.

“I’m sorry,” I say. He had a tough practice, and he’s tired. “I’m in a bad mood and taking it out on you. I can get Percy to help.”

Nate runs a hand through his hair. The sides stick out like straw from a scarecrow’s hat. “No, I want to help.” He surveys the art supplies and nods. “So tell me again, what are you doing with all this stuff?”

I explain that Miss Chang, my art teacher, cleaned out the art supply room, and Percy rescued and fixed some of the supplies. The easels won’t fit in the attic crawl space, so I can’t use them, but someone could, some needy elementary school or scout group. Kennedy would know where to find little people in desperate need of art supplies. “I stopped by the guidance center, and Lungren gave me the name of an after-school program for at-risk kids,” I tell Nate.

“Sounds like the seeds of a 501(c)(3) charity.”

“Yeah, something like that.” I shift through the old easels. “Are you
sure
you can fit all of this in the truck? It’s pretty bulky.”

Nate squints. He does that when he’s deep in thought, while staring at a twenty-five-foot sailboat that will someday be his, while painting bird decoys, while looking at me. “Yeah, we’re good.” So true. Nate is good, a good student, a good son, a good kisser.

“And you can help me deliver them on Saturday?”

“No worries. Got everything under control.”

That makes one of us. “Then let’s go to the beach.” I need to feel warm sand slipping between my toes.

“I don’t get it,” I say.

Nate makes an
mmm
sound.

“We cleared the weeds. We set up the decoys. We built the chick condos and fencing. You alone spent more than a hundred hours on the nesting site. The rest of the birds should be here by now.”

“Mmm.”

I thwack him on the chest. “The nesting grounds, Nate. Look at the nesting grounds. Except for that one bird on the fence post, they’re empty.” He hauls himself out of my lap, where he’s been resting with his eyes closed and toying with the tips of my hair. I point to the mudflats we’ve been working on for the past month. “It’s mid-May, and the birds should be here. It’s weird.”

He squints at the mudflats. “You’re right. It’s weird.” He settles back into my lap.

“And you’re not worried?” I ask.

“Reb, the birds will get here when they get here.”

“But—”

“I have faith.”

I picture the gold chain hanging at his neck, the one that holds the tiny gold cross. Nate has faith.

He’s the one who suggested there was something on Kennedy’s list that I, and only I, needed to complete, and he believes I will complete the list because I’m true blue.

My fingers glide up to the thick, lush folds of his hair. It’s so easy to be with Nate. That’s what’s making my life bearable. With Nate there’s no track-team humiliation, no fights with school admin about trees, no possessed bucket list taking over my life.

He loops a curl of my hair around his finger. “Go to prom with me.”

“The first time was funny. The second time is annoying.”

He rolls out of my lap and sits, facing not the ocean, but me. “I’m serious, Rebel. You talk about living your truth, and you pointed out how most people are less than honest, including me. The truth is, Reb, there’s not another girl in the world that I want to dance with right now.” Nate’s dark eyes are clear, intense.

I pick at a seam of my cargo pants.

“Now your turn.” Nate takes my hand, lacing his fingers with mine. “Tell me the truth. Is there anyone you’d rather tango with?”

“All right, I’ll say it. There is no one I’d rather dance with than you.” I stare at our intertwined hands, a good fit. “But I won’t go to prom.”

Nate’s hand tenses. “Why not?”

“I’m not a prom kind of girl.”

“But I’m a prom kind of guy.” One side of his mouth crooks in a half smile, and I catch my breath. He plucks a spray of purple wildflowers from a sandy part of the outcrop and runs the bell-shaped flowers along my leg. “And don’t say you didn’t enjoy our tango.”

Yes, we’ve tangoed, and I enjoyed being in Nate’s arms, but this whole prom thing isn’t about dancing. “Think this through, Nate. Can you picture me at a prom? If there were a gathering of Children of the Anti-Prom, I’d be the poster child. I hate dresses and can’t walk in high heels. I can’t dance. I’m not good at small talk and ooing and aahing over sparkly new shoes. I would be the world’s worst prom date. You wouldn’t have fun with someone like me.”

“It’s just a dance.” The petals slide along my arm.

“Drop it, Nate, please. I’m not up to this discussion today.”

“But I am, and I want you to tell me why you’re so dead set against going to prom.”

“It’s just not my world.”

“It’s mine.”

“So I should forget all about who I am and what I stand for to make you happy?”

“For one night, Reb, why not?”

“Shouldn’t the question be
why
? Why is it so important for me to go to prom with you? Do you need me to prove something to you or all those other people you care so much about?
Hey, world, look
at us! We’re a couple
.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“We’re not a couple.”

The flowers still at my shoulder. “Really?”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Nate drops the spray of flowers. “Exactly what are we, Reb?”

“We’re friends. We know how to tango and kayak together. And we have warm, fuzzy feelings for each other.” I burrow my toes into the sand. “But whatever we are, we’re temporary.”

“Says who?” Nate’s tone is sharp.

“Why are you in such a pissy mood?”

“You’re the one raising your voice.”