Reality Check (2010) (2 page)

down to their underwear, ran to the edge, and jumped, holding hands. They screamed their heads off on the long fall, then hit the water, not too cold on the surface, icier and icier the deeper they plunged. And darker and darker, too. Somewhere down in the darkness they lost touch, kicked back up into sunshine separately, and came together laughing. They kissed, their lips and faces icy cold, their tongues warm.

"The whole summer," Cody said.
"Yeah," said Clea. "I just wish . . ."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're not still thinking about calc?"
Clea nodded, drops of clear water falling from the ends of

her hair.
"Stop," he said. "It's summer. No more teachers, no more
books. We're free--free at last!" He shook his fist in the air.
Clea laughed.
They swam to a rocky ledge that jutted out from the steep
quarry walls, climbed onto it, lay down. The black stone soaked
up the sun's heat, soon warmed them up. It was quiet and peaceful, the only sounds their own breathing, and the quarry water
they'd disturbed still lapping at the walls. Cody felt a change in the atmosphere, like the air pressure was rising, bearing down; a change he felt in his stomach, and lower. He reached out, touched Clea's leg, could tell that the change in the atmosphere was affecting her, too--maybe it was just their own little private atmosphere. Cody moved his hand higher, the world shrinking very fast around him. Willpower, judgment, all kinds of other cerebral things started shutting down, like fuses shorting out in a fuse box. Then, very faint, he heard a
car engine. He took his hand away.
"Someone's coming," he said.
"I don't hear anyone," said Clea, taking his hand, drawing
it back to where it had been.
Cody sat up, heard the car again, coming up the slope, no
doubt about it. He rose, pulled Clea to her feet. She had a funny
little pout on her face, the kind of look her teachers didn't see;
maybe no one else got to see it, no one but him.
"There's never any space," she said.
"That's the thing about Big Sky country," Cody said. Clea smiled. A beautiful, private kind of smile. "I like how
you think," she said.
"Me?"
They followed the steep path that corkscrewed up the side
of the quarry pit, headed for the car. Another car, kicking up a
dust cloud, was coming up the road, two or three curves from the top: a black-and-white car, with blue lights, not flashing, on the roof. Cody and Clea hurried to Cody's car, started throwing on their clothes. They were just about done, Clea slipping on her sandals, when the cop drove up and stopped beside them, his window sliding down. His gaze, not friendly, went
from Cody to Clea, back to Cody.
"Sign too small? You missed it?" He pointed his chin at the
sign. Cody and Clea said nothing. "Who wants to read it for
me?" They remained silent. "How about you?" the cop said,
pointing his chin again, this time at Cody.
"We weren't doing any harm," Clea said.
The cop turned to her. "Was I talkin' to you?"
Clea shook her head.
"Read the sign, boy."
Cody read the sign in a low voice. "Absolutely no trespassing. No swimming or diving."
"Left out that second
absolutely
," the cop said. "Any reason
for that?"
Cody thought:
Absolutely
. He said nothing, just shook his
head.
"This your car?" the cop said.
Cody nodded.
"Let's see some ID." Cody handed over his license. The
cop glanced at it, handed it back. "Weren't fixing on swimming
down in the pit, were you?" the cop said.
Cody didn't say anything, but Clea had less experience
with cops, actually none, and she said, "No."
The cop smiled. "Then how come your hair's wet? Some
sudden shower happen up here and nowheres else?" Silence. The wind rose, blew across the plain.
"Got some ID?" the cop said to Clea.
"I don't have my license yet," she said.
"What's your name?"
"Clea Weston."
The cop gazed at her for a moment; then his eyes shifted.
Had he recognized that surname? "Get the hell out of here," he
said. "And don't never come back." His window slid up and he
drove slowly off.
"Goddamn it," said Cody. He kicked the nearest tire of his
own car, hard enough to hurt.
Clea patted him on the back. "He's just an asshole," she
said. Cody thought of his friend Junior Riggins, nose guard on
defense, tackle on offense, and the biggest, strongest kid on
the team, who said that human beings were all programmed
to turn into assholes some time in their twenties--what other
explanation was there? Junior was real smart, although no one
in charge seemed to know, maybe proving his point. Clea patted him again. "Forget it."
But Cody couldn't, not just like that. His face was suddenly
hot, burning red. He turned, and all at once found himself
running toward the edge of the quarry pit--
"Cody, stop!"
--and diving off, headfirst and fully clothed. This time
hitting the water reminded him of a moment halfway through
the last season, the very first play of his first start as varsity
quarterback, a quarterback draw--Coach Huff loved calling
the quarterback draw--when the gap had closed in an instant
and he'd been rocked from both sides by a pair of all-county
280-pound tackles, one of whom was headed for CSU on a full
ride.

Down in the cold and dark, Cody remembered somehow bouncing up off the turf and saying, "Nice hit." He swam to the surface, treaded water. Clea was gazing down from the top, her face anxious; and then not. The sun had moved a little, no longer shining all the way to the water, leaving him in shadow, but it backlit Clea in a way that made her shine with her own light. Cody felt better.

under a pair of old cleats in the trunk of his car, drove Clea home. She lived in the Heights, the only really fancy neighborhood in Little Bend. The Heights weren't very high, just high enough to stand over the rest of the town. Cottonwood, a huge stone house at the very top of the top, and therefore with nice views of the river, had broad lawns cut like putting greens, lots of trees, two swimming pools--indoor and outdoor--and a tennis court. Cody pulled into the long circular drive. He cut the engine, turned to Clea. She was gazing at the house, the report card held tight in her hand. Sunlight glared on all the windows. Her mind was on something, exactly what he didn't know. Cody searched for words that might help out.

"Um," he said.
Clea turned to him. "Come inside."
"Huh?" said Cody. He'd been inside only once before, one

afternoon not long after they'd started going out, when he'd come to pick Clea up and Fran, Clea's stepmom, had ushered him in to meet the family, meaning Mr. Weston and the two little stepbrothers. It had taken Mr. Weston what had seemed like twenty seconds to establish where Cody lived, who his father was, and Cody's future plans, which at that time came down to going to a D-1 college on a football scholarship, and still did.

"No one's home," Clea said. "Fran took the boys to Cowboy Town and my dad won't be back till late."
Cody didn't move. "He doesn't like me."
"That's not true," Clea said. They sat in silence. "He doesn't even know you," she added after a while. More silence. A little warm breeze sprang up, flowed through the open windows of Cody's car, ruffled the red roses in the Westons' flower beds. "Besides," Clea said, "
I
like you. I like you plenty."
Floral smells came wafting in.
"Come on," Clea said, touching his bare shoulder.
"I don't have a shirt."
"Lots of shirts inside."
Cody reached for the door handle.

They walked around the house until they reached a big glassed-in room the Westons called the conservatory, although Cody had no clue why. "This is never locked," Clea said. She opened the door and they went inside. The conservatory had a stone floor with a fountain in the center; water splashed from the mouth of a bronze frog. Clea led him to a door, around a corner, past the laundry room, a room almost as big as Cody's whole apartment.
"Just a sec," she said, darting into the laundry room and returning with a perfectly ironed button-down shirt, dark blue with thin white stripes. "Here," she said, tossing it to him. "Put it on."
Just from the feel of it in his hands, Cody knew this shirt was much finer than anything he'd ever worn. He checked the label:
ANDREW TOT TEN
,
LONDON
. And a smaller label stitched in

"Go on," Clea said. "It's just a shirt. And you can keep it-- he'll never notice."
Keep Mr. Weston's shirt? Out of the question. But with the A/C running it was a little chilly in the house--no A/C in the apartment over the Red Pony--so Cody put on Mr. Weston's shirt, too tight on him through the shoulders, too baggy everywhere else. Clea tilted her head to one side and studied him.
"A nice color on you."
"Blue?"
"That shade of blue. Navy blue." She took his hand--he noticed that she'd left the report card on the ironing board-- and led him toward a staircase, kind of narrow for such a grand house.
"What's this?" he said.
"The back stairs."
They went up the back stairs, shadowy and smelling of old wood and wax--even a bit shabby, almost like it was a small leftover of some other house, not so grand, the kind of house Cody was more used to--and came out in a beautiful broad hallway lined with Persian rugs, the walls hung with paintings of the Old West. Cody knew nothing about art, but he wouldn't have minded lingering a bit; another time, maybe. This time, something was leading him along, and not just Clea's hand in his. She opened a door at the end of the hall.
"Ta-da!" she said.
Cody had been in only one other girl's bedroom before this--Tonya Redding's, almost a year earlier. Tonya lived in Lower Town, a few blocks from the Red Pony, where her mother worked as a waitress. Tonya's bedroom was kind of girly, with pink walls, dolls on the shelf, stuffed animals on the bed; despite everything, he'd wanted out of there pretty fast. Clea's bedroom was different: much bigger, of course, and beautiful, with a bank of windows on one side and French doors on another, but there was nothing girly about it. The walls were white, decorated with framed black-and-white photos of Clea on her horse, Bud; there were two bookcases, one filled with books, the other with trophies; the furniture was dark and spare. Clea's riding boots stood by the bed--a queensize bed or even bigger, but it had plenty of space--and her riding helmet lay on the comforter, a comforter that looked like it might be made of silk.
Cody opened the French doors, stepped out onto a balcony. Below lay more gardens, the swimming pool, an acre or two of lawn, a barn, a corral, and Bud standing stock-still by a water trough, his white diamond-shaped blaze visible even at this distance. A perfect sight, very like a photograph, this one in color. Cody had a funny feeling, as though time had stopped for a moment. Then he felt Clea's hand on his back. He turned. She put her arms around him and they kissed. Clea liked to keep her eyes open when they kissed, and wanted his open, too. That had taken getting used to, the intensity close to painful. Clea had light-colored eyes, closer to green than anything else--a little surprising what with her hair being so dark, almost black--and during these kisses he seemed to sink beneath the green, down into something good and pure and giving that at all costs must not be harmed.
They went back inside and lay on the bed. Time grew erratic again, not stopping now, but instead becoming elastic, stretching and contracting, speeding up or slowing down, all depending on what was happening in Clea's bedroom. Cody sank into green waters, and knew without a word being spoken that something similar was going on with her. And there, so deep down, almost oblivious to anything else, he barely--just barely--heard Bud neighing in the corral. Some little corner of his mind grew preoccupied with the sound, worried at it, and all at once, Cody realized he'd missed something else, sensed but not absorbed: a faint crunch, the kind of sound a tire makes on a gravel driveway.
He sat up.
"What?" said Clea. "What's wrong?"
"Someone's coming."
"Impossible."
But she believed him and sat up too, holding the comforter--yes, silk--to her chest, all the way up to her chin. Cody started throwing on clothes and Clea did the same. It could have been funny, this repetitive dressing in hurry-up mode, but it was not. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, again fully dressed, again slipping into her sandals, and Cody was standing by the French doors, sweatpants on, barefoot, fumbling with the buttons--there seemed to be way too many--on Mr. Weston's hand-tailored navy blue shirt with the thin stripes, when the door burst open and Mr. Weston himself strode in.
"Daddy? What are you--"
Mr. Weston made a chopping motion with his hand, a hand that held--Cody saw at that moment--the report card, and Clea went silent, her own hand frozen on a sandal strap. The room suddenly seemed much too small, and not because Mr. Weston was especially big. Mr. Weston was no taller than Cody-- about six feet--and, while twenty or thirty pounds heavier, no more powerfully built. He had thinning reddish hair and a broad freckled face that had a funny way of looking warm and friendly from just below the eyes to the tip of the chin, like a smile could flash out at any second, but at this moment showed not a millimeter of friendliness. His gaze went to Cody's hands, still fumbling with the buttons, and then down to his bare feet. Nothing wrong with Cody's feet--strong, broad feet, size ten and a half--but now all he wanted to do was to somehow cover them up.
Mr. Weston's eyes--similar in color to Clea's but in no other way--rose slowly up to Cody's face. Did he notice that Cody was wearing his shirt? No way to tell.
"That your car in the drive?" he said, not furious, not even loud, but Cody's spine felt icy just the same. "I asked you a question," Mr. Weston said after a moment or two of silence.
Was it a serious question? Mr. Weston had seen Cody's car before, and besides, who else's could it be, an old banger like that in the Westons' circular driveway? "Yeah," Cody said, trying to look Mr. Weston in the eye, forcing himself to meet that gaze; and in it he saw, or thought he saw, that Mr. Weston didn't hate him, not exactly. It was more that he, Cody, wasn't important enough to merit Mr. Weston's hatred. Cody felt something catch fire inside him, a hot feeling that had come to him only once in his life, a few years before, the night his father punched him in the mouth.
"Look, Mr. Weston," Cody began, trying to keep the anger out of his tone, and maybe not succeeding very well, "Clea didn't do anything wrong. We were only--"
Mr. Weston held up his hand, the one with the report card. It shook. "I'm not interested in hearing from you on that subject, or any other, for that matter."
"Daddy!" Clea said.
Mr. Weston kept on, as though she hadn't spoken at all. "I'll let you find your own way out," he said.
The meaning of that didn't penetrate at once. Then it did. Was there any choice? Not that Cody could think of. He turned to Clea, still sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes wide, one sandal on, one sandal off. What to tell her? He couldn't come up with that, either. He just stood there, mouth open, turning red.
Clea rose, took his hand. "Go," she said. "I'll call you." She leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek.
Cody nodded. He turned, walked past Mr. Weston--now his mouth was open too--and out of Clea's room. The door closed behind him. He went down the hall but couldn't find the back stairs. Cody went the other way, trying one room and then another. It took him five minutes or maybe more to get out of the house, and by that time he was pouring sweat. He ripped off the hand-tailored navy blue shirt with the narrow stripes, flung it away, jumped into his car, and sped off, spraying gravel behind him and grazing a stone gatepost topped by a lion's head at the end of the driveway.