Authors: Swati Avasthi
“Yeah.”
“Yeah? Okay, then, I’m going for a run.”
I say okay, but I wanted a real answer. How
does
he do that calm thing?
When he leaves, I return to the bathroom, pull off my shirt, and lie down, pressing my spine against the cold floor to suppress any leftover nausea. I think about my dad sitting at Lauren’s kitchen table, making excuses for me, making apologies, and telling her to forgive me.
We talked about love and second chances
.
Second chances. Who deserves one of those, anyway?
chapter 19
w
hat is it about New Mexico and cliffs?
I am standing at the top of another one, looking over the edge. Thank God I don’t have a real fear of heights. Just a healthy one. I scoot my feet farther from the edge. Beside me, Dakota is watching the waterfall that is crashing beneath us, churning up a sulfuric smell that I can’t figure out.
Dakota offers me the last bite of the Indian fry bread we’ve been munching on, but I let her take it.
A few feet from us on the ledge, two boys are shouting and pushing each other.
I hear the ubiquitous “Chicken …
bok, bok, bok
” call.
“If I do it, then you do, too,” says the chubby guy.
“On three?”
They approach the edge of the cliff, count to three, and jump. I grab my camera and start shooting as their figures plummet through the air and splash into the water below. I hold my breath until they both emerge.
“What the hell?” I say.
“Wanna try it?”
“Are you nuts?” I look at the water racing past. “Why is this called a dam?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Soda dam? I mean you wouldn’t think—”
“I’m doing it,” she says, and starts climbing up to the natural bridge over the waterfall, leaving her painting stuff on the rock.
“My camera?” I say.
She looks around. It’s just us and the kids.
“Leave it there.”
I watch her hips in her tight jeans, muscles working for the climb. I put down the camera and follow her.
“From here?” I ask.
“Listen, the key is that there’s only one spot where it’s deep enough, so you’ve gotta know where it is. If you miss, you might not come up, got it? So let me lead, okay?”
I take a breath, and I can hear my heartbeat over the roar of the water. “Wait a minute. Why would I want to jump off a roof?”
“I think it’s higher than that,” she says.
I back off.
“Aww, come on. Haven’t you ever jumped off a high-dive?” she asks.
“Once, but that was only because when I tried to climb back down the ladder, a couple of kids started throwing things at me.”
She looks over the cliff and starts the countdown. “One.”
“They threw watermelons … or something.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Two.”
“Has anyone ever died doing this?”
“Three.”
I’m holding her hand, safe on the cliff top, when she leaps, and her hand rips out of mine. She falls, her body straight and tight. Her head disappears under the water below. I wait. She does not rise. I search the churning water, but I don’t see her.
The water is racing past. Maybe she hit her head, and she’s sinking. Maybe she’s down there drowning while I stand up here watching.
I throw myself over the cliff, but my stomach stays up there. The sound of the air. The pull of gravity. The cliff face blurs before me as I fall.
Oh God, this is why they say you should look before you leap. They say a lot of things. Carpe diem. Even platitudes contradict each other. Man, this has to be the longest fall ever if I have the time to think all this
.
I look down and see the water rushing at me. And then I’m under it. The world goes
glub
, and my jeans have been pushed up over my calf into the bend of my knee, to say nothing of what just happened to my butt and my underwear. The water is warm. I open my eyes and endure the stinging, looking for Dakota under the water. I pop up for a breath.
“Jace!”
Dakota is in the shallow part of the pool, climbing out. All right, I’m an idiot, and she’s a witch—a safe, breathing witch who I want to kiss.
I swim to her, and she offers me her arm. I take it and crawl onto the bank.
She is laughing. Her wet hair looks even blacker. It is pressed against her head, dripping onto the rock below. Her clothes are stuck to her skin, and I can see the curves of her body without even trying. My imagination didn’t do her justice.
“Isn’t it a rush?” she says.
“You scared the shit out me.”
“I did?”
“You didn’t come up for air,” I say.
“Yes I did, but you were already on your way down. I thought you were jumping with me.” She pats me on the back. “Thanks for trying to rescue me. Want to go again?”
“No!”
She laughs again. “I’m sorry. Really, I am.” She shifts her weight onto one leg, and the curve of her hip pops into exaggerated relief.
“It was worth it to see you like this.”
She puts her arm around me, leans in, and kisses me. Her wet lips slide over mine, and I can taste the warm river. My hand skates along her hip to the small of her back. A vibration purrs in her throat.
Lauren’s throat is small enough for me to strangle her with one hand
.
I gently pull away from Dakota. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”
“I’m so sorry.” She stares at her shoes, and her wet hair falls forward, obscuring her face.
“It’s just that …,” I say.
“You’re with someone else.”
I don’t want to lie anymore; it’s just getting so damn confusing. I don’t want to hurt her feelings either. Just how am I supposed to be a good guy here? What would Christian do?
“No, I’m not. I lied about that.”
She stares at my face for half a second, her mouth falling completely open, before she turns and starts hiking away, leaving sloshy footprints on the rocks.
“Wait, Dakota. Wait.” I run to catch up with her and walk with her, even though she will not look at me. “I was dating someone in Chicago—Lauren. And we’re over, but …”
“You’re still hung up on her?”
“More like stunned by our explosive breakup. More like unable to see myself with anyone right now.”
Or ever again
. I stop walking. How am I ever going to date anyone? Dating someone I didn’t like, namely Caitlyn, didn’t work. And if I can’t date someone I
do
like …
My. Life. Is. Over.
“Why did you lie about it?” she says, stopping when she gets to our stuff.
“It was easier to say there was someone else than that I’m just a wimp who’s still dealing with … I wanted you to think better of me. I’m sorry, but I’m telling you the truth now.” I puppy-dog-eye her. “I’m working on it. Honesty lessons.”
“You’re an interesting guy, Jace. You steal, you’re sorry for it, you bring the loot back, and you charm your way into a job. Then you lie, but you admit it, apologize, and charm your way back into this friendship. You could charm your way out of hell, couldn’t you?”
What was that phrase my mom used to describe my dad?
Could charm the trident away from the devil
—something like that.
She continues, “I see a pattern forming. You might just turn yourself around, Jace, sir.”
I grip my hands together to keep them from going around her, and I bite my lip to keep from kissing her. I’m not going to be able to keep this up. I release my hands, but she grabs our stuff and hands me my camera.
“I have emergency towels in the car,” she says, “and I’m freezing out here.”
I clasp my hands back together and follow her.
chapter 20
m
irriam calls from the kitchen
, “Can you peel these potatoes?”
We’ve only been working on turkeys so far, so I ask why we’re doing potatoes, too. She explains that putting together a dinner like this requires that she work out the timing. I realize that she’s nervous to meet my mom, which reminds me …
“Hey, did you and Christian talk?”
“I’m thinking of getting a cat,” she says, scrubbing a dish.
She stops, dries her hands, leans over, and gathers her long hair into a ponytail and then curls it around itself, tying it into a knot. When she comes up, she reminds me of the night we first met, her black hair tied back.
“What?”
“A cat. You know, purr, purr.”
I can’t figure out the connection between a cat and my question, so I figure she didn’t hear me over the rushing water, and I let it go.
“Yeah, I know what a cat is. Ever had one?”
“No.”
“They’re not that much work. Lauren just adores her cat, Kali.”
“Who’s Lauren?”
I freeze for a millisecond, my potato peeler on pause, and then hope she hasn’t noticed. “No one.”
“Girlfriend?”
I nod.
“Still together?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Hmmm. You talk about as much as your brother does, you know that?”
“What do you want me to say? I liked her cat. So, you know, get a cat. They’re … furry.”
“Keeping my ear to the ground, I heard you’ve been talking about a girl from work,” Mirriam says.
“It’s a damn small school.”
She nods and smiles. “Gossip heaven.”
I remind her of Dakota and their meeting. She says she’s embarrassed about how she acted when they met and that she hopes they can get along, that it won’t be awkward.
“Where would it be awkward? It’s not like I’m not having her over for Thanksgiving. It’ll just be a family affair.”
Mirriam’s lips curve into a crescent, but she doesn’t look happy. She glances at the clock and asks when I think Christian will be back. When I tell her fifteen minutes, she picks up the pace of her cooking.
“You’re acting funny,” I say.
“I’m … not … I am? I’m just worried about the time. I have a parent-teacher conference … phone call tonight. Is Lauren the only girl you’ve dated?” she asks.
“No, but Lauren was the only one I fell in love with.”
She smiles again, and my lips tighten.
“You think I’m sixteen, so I don’t know what love is, right?”
She shakes her head, sad smile on again. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s the only time we really get to love someone completely. Without fear. After that first big breakup, we keep ourselves a little more protected, a little more hidden.”
She’s staring off.
“What are we talking about now? You?”
“No, Lauren. What’s she like?”
I think for a minute. How to describe Lauren?
“She has a backbone of iron; she can be little bitchy, you know, just because she knows what she wants, and she’s not afraid to get it.”
“Oooh,” she says, as if a lightbulb has popped on over her head.
“What?”
“I just understand why you would like her, a girl like that.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s not your mom.”
I slam the potato peeler on the counter. It doesn’t help that I know Mirriam’s right. I never noticed it before, but now, thanks to Amateur Psychologist, I see it, too. Every moment I spent with Lauren is cheapened by need.
“This isn’t let’s-analyze-Jace hour, all right? I mean, I’m just telling you something, and you go and find a way to make it all … psychological. Lauren and I weren’t like that; we weren’t all desperation and dysfunction,” I say.
“Okay.”
“We were good for each other.”
Her head is hitting the bricks, and her heels are scrabbling for purchase
. “Sometimes.”
“Why’d you break up?” Mirriam asks.
“Why are we talking about this?” I pick up the potato peeler again and jerk it over the skin of a Yukon Gold.
“Just making conversation.”
“Really? Why don’t you tell me about your ex-boyfriends? Why did you break up with them?” I say.
“All right, all right. I get the point. But I don’t feel like I should apologize for worrying about you. You have to admit that you’re coming from a difficult place. I’m sure whatever made you leave wasn’t easy. I mean, whatever it was—”
“He kicked me out. So you don’t have to go all tortured-soul on me, all right? No big last beating, no death threat, no Hollywood escape plan,” I say.
“You’re right. No drama there at all.”
I look at her, and she’s got her arms crossed and is smiling at me.
“Jace, I understand if you’re uncomfortable talking to me about it, but be sure you’re talking to someone, okay? I mean, I’d prefer an adult. I’d suggest a therapist—”
I glare at her, and she puts her hands up and continues, “But I know how well that would go over. So, maybe Tom, or even Dakota.”
I think of Dakota’s house and how, even though it was loud and everyone was laughing, I felt like there was something still and quiet, something unbreakable there.
“Christian never talks, and he’s doing all right.”
Better than me, at any rate
.
“Well, we disagree there. He has some real problems, and he—”
“Hey,” I say and point the potato peeler at her. “There’s a limit, all right. I’m his brother first.”
That sad little crescent appears on her lips once more.
“Mirriam, are you all right?”
“Yeah. You just sound like him.”
I do?
“Thank you.”
She looks at the clock again, helps me put the turkey in the oven, and gives me instructions for mashing the potatoes.
Mid-instructions, she breaks off and says, “She named her cat Kali?”
Before she gives me the lecture that I can see brewing, I say, “I always thought it was kind of cheap to name a cat after someone’s God, but not my cat, not my call.”
She gives me her proud-teacher smile, and I roll my eyes, which makes her laugh. She hurries through the potato instructions. But as she’s walking out the door, she stops and says, “Your mom’s going to love this. Imagine, making that trip and finding her family waiting for her, a turkey dinner all laid out. It’ll be great.”
I look at the kitchen and sigh. It
will
be great. As long as she can get here.
chapter 21
i
t’s twenty days until my mom comes
, and I forgot my cleats. Stupid, yes. But why not? The rest of the day has been so perfect—I shattered a test tube in science and spilled some kind of acid on my shoe, which left a big hole over my toe, and I can’t imagine how much new shoes will cost. I didn’t get lunch because I forgot to pack it. So I distracted myself in the media center, checking my e-mail. My mother’s contribution to my day was, “O.K.” In two letters, she was lying. I wanted to write a scathing e-mail about protecting my dad via silence, but instead I typed in, “Good to hear. Stay safe.”
Then the dreaded one from Lauren. The Warrant e-mail came back to me once more. Previously, she had written “done.” Now:
Undone.
Your father came to see me a few days ago. I need to talk to you now more than ever. What can I do to get you to call me? To write? Confused and still in love with you,
Lauren
Then, just before the game, I realize that I’m cleatless, so I race to the apartment, fly up the stairs, and unlock the door. This day has got to get better, right? I’m owed a little luck. After all, it is statistically improbable that we will lose every game this season. We’re off to a ripping start of 0–8.
On the floor, slipped under the door, is an envelope with my name on it. Hmmm. I open it up and pull out three white sheets of paper that I unfold. A pink Post-it is stuck to the top sheet.
J,
Found this when I was cleaning out some old stuff. Thought you might like to know …
M
I rip off the Post-it and flip through the papers: “Statistics on Intimate Partner Violence or Spousal Abuse,” “Resources for Domestic Violence Victims,” and “Domestic Violence Centers.” I hold my breath and scan the top sheet.
I never realized how much I hated statistics until this moment. How pleasant, how reassuring, how helpful to know that my family is not an anomaly, that all the times my dad has come after us can be reduced to fat black numbers and percentages on a page.
Oh, and good, what I did to Lauren is also represented here, in a special break-out section called “Teen Abuse.”
I get a number, too. I’m four times as likely to become a fuckup and hit my own girlfriends because of where I’ve come from. How nice that I’m in rotten company. We should form a club. Is that what Mirriam meant when she wrote that she thought it might help? I have to remind myself that she doesn’t know that I hit Lauren and isn’t trying to piss me off. It was one of the many stats on the sheet. She’s trying to let me know that I’m not alone and that I can “get help.”
I clench my teeth until my head hurts and end up finding my cleats under the freaking bed in Christian’s room. (Why did I put them there?) I drive back to the school at around ninety miles per hour. But I’m late anyway, so the coach benches me for the first half, and I watch Tom fritter away chance after chance. When I get in, I get no touches on the ball until there’s less than two minutes left and we’re down 2–1. The entire fight is downfield, and our defenders are digging it out. Finally, a midfielder gets it to Eric.
I’m open. I have a clear shot to take it up the sidelines and then cross it back to him in the box. On the left side, Tom has lost neither the midfielder nor the defender.
Eric scans the field and sees me. We make eye contact for half a second. I lift my hand. He turns and tries unsuccessfully to thread it through to Tom. He’s been doing this all damn season. The opposing team picks up the ball.
I’m sick of losing and sick of his shit.
I pivot and push hard against the ground, seeing the cross the defender is going for. I sprint as hard and fast as I can. I trap the ball with my chest, dribble it up the center, and see Eric. I should pass to him, I know it. Not a chance. I take it up myself and fake a hard shot, expecting the goalie to go for it. My foot is already on the ball, swinging through for the strike, by the time I see that he did not bite. The ball soars, but it’s an easy get.
After the game, we’re in the locker room, and I’m avoiding Eric, and he’s avoiding me, even though our lockers are three apart (another one of the signs that God has forsaken high school). Coach Davis slams the door open, and we all freeze.
“Out!” he screams. “Everyone but Jace and Eric, out.”
Tom hops by, trying to get his shoe on as he hurries out of the locker room.
It is suddenly silent, and everything we say echoes a little.
“You two. You aren’t leaving here until you get this worked out,” Coach Davis says, and walks out the door.
I stare at Eric.
He stares at me.
We start at the same time and run over each other’s words: I don’t give a shit; I scream, he screams.
“You could have passed me the ball,” he says.
“Your showboating cost us the game.”
“Goddamn prima donna.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of losing?”
Even I can’t hear what I’m saying anymore. I stop. When he’s quiet, I say, “Just take out Caitlyn, bonk her until you can’t see straight. I don’t care. Leave it off the field.”
I slam my locker closed and walk out.
When the coach steps in front of me, I say, “I’ve got to get to work so they can pay me next to nothing.”
He’s slower than me, so I get around him.
“Get back here and sort this out.”
Before a backdraft, if you’re looking for it, a little smoke leaks. I get a whiff of that now and say, “I can’t be late or they’ll fire me. You want that?” I am yelling it, I realize. “I’ve gotta go.”
Gotta go before I punch your face in
.
He gets in a final shot: I’ll run laps at seven a.m. on Monday morning or I’m off the team.
Dakota is not at work when I get there; she has called in sick, and I’ve got a customer who seems to want to push each of my two hundred and seventy buttons in quick succession. Oh, wait, the universe missed one. Douglas sees me slamming cash register buttons and suggests the stockroom; I know he’s right, but I swear at him before I go.
On the way home, I’m trying to figure out how Christian does it, remains calm. I remember him running his hand through his hair and his anger disappearing. Could I ever do that? I remember Mirriam’s voice:
Those kids were broken
.
Can the broken be fixed? Is four times as likely equal to inevitable? It would be easy to say yes and have done. But there’s Christian, who has never hit a girlfriend.
Undone
, Lauren wrote.
When I get home, my brother has decided to make us … Oh my, mushrooms and soup. Can we live off something else? I remember my scanty paycheck and shut up and eat. He wants to have a brotherly talk.
“How was your day?”
Sucked. Remember high school?
“Okay. Yours?”
“You know what, Jace? This isn’t going to work.”
I’ve already agreed to all your ground rules; I’m working my job; I suck down soup and mushrooms without complaint, and
keep the apartment in shape, stuffing everything of mine under the couch, under the desk, under the filing cabinet. Shall I just shrink into the woodwork? Would that be better for you?
I try to borrow his calm and place the spoon down gently, even though I can barely see it. “Okay, what do you need me to do differently?”
He looks at me funny. “Not you. This place. When Mom moves out here, we’ll need something bigger. I won’t be sending her money anymore, so we should think about moving.”
You’d think that would calm me down, the idea that Mom is coming, the idea of both of us welcoming her in. Instead I see nothing but white for a second. I don’t want to think about it right now. I push it off.
“What about Mirriam?” I ask.
“We broke up.”
“You what? Why?” I say.
“She was not happy with me.”
“Why on earth not?”
Christian stirs his soup, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows.
That bitch
. I remember how she was trying to avoid him the other day, and that sad smile that kept coming to her lips whenever we talked about Christian, and how she is showing up here, slipping notes under the door for me. I push the chair back and walk out the door.
“Jace!”
I pound on Mirriam’s door. She answers it just as Christian catches up.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
Her eyes flick over to Christian. He explains, and she tells me to come in so we can talk.
I refuse to take one step into that traitor’s apartment. “
You
told
me
to be patient, that it was hard for him to open up, and here you are, ending it. You’re a such a hypocrite, Mirriam. What’s wrong? Is he a ‘broken kid,’ too? Too much for you to handle?”
“Jace,” Christian says from behind me in the hallway. “Stop.”
“He’s played by your goddamn rules, and still you dump him. You fucking bitch.”
Mirriam’s face loses its unflappable teacher expression. She takes a step back, and as I’m taking one forward, Christian reaches through the doorway and pulls at my arm. My muscles are coiled. When I try to shake him off, he clamps down on my wrist.
“Jace.” His voice is as firm as his grip. “Get back in the apartment.” He locks my arm down, keeping me immobile until I look at him. His eyes pin me. “Right. Now.”
I relax my arm. He lets me go, and I stomp back to the apartment and slam the door.
I can barely see where I’m going as I circle the apartment; I grab the back of a chair and slam it to the carpet. The metal back bounces with a thud. One, two, three chairs on the floor. We can’t lose Mirriam; she’s teaching me to cook. She’s bothering to slide irritating statistics under the door and ask me questions, even if I don’t want to see the damn stats or give her answers. She’s the one who got Christian to let me stay.
I kick the couch, my bare foot slamming into the cast-iron bed frame. “Fuck!” I hobble over to my latest victim and sit down, feeling the cushions give under me.
Through the paper-thin door, I hear Mirriam say, “That’s what I mean, Christian. Something is eating at him.”
“We’re doing fine, and you … You’re not a part of it anymore.”
“Oh, yes I am. He just came over here.”
“He won’t bother you again. I’ve got it,” he says.
“You know I don’t mean it like that. Has he ever talked to you about Chicago? Told you about the night he left?” she says.
“He doesn’t have to. I know it.”
“No, you don’t. Neither of us has any clue what his life has been like for the last five years. It’s more comfortable for you to think you know it, so you can continue to avoid it.”
“No, I’m just giving him the space he needs. When he is ready, and not before that, he’ll talk. It’s not fair to push him, to make him get better on my time line.”
I stand up, and my foot throbs in protest. I walk out the door. “Did you break up because of me?”
Christian is in the doorway in half a second, his body blocking me from her.
“No,” they say together.
“Go back inside,” he says.
I look around his shoulder at Mirriam. “This isn’t right. How can you do this to him when he opens up to you?” I say.
He turns me around by my shoulders, ushers me back inside, and says sorry to Mirriam before he closes the door behind him.
“Don’t you ever do that again. What happens between Mirriam and me is just that. Between her and me. You stay out of it. Got it?”
“But she isn’t—”
He lets go of my shoulders, puts a finger up in my face, and waits until I look down. He heads into the bedroom. I try to see something other than white. There’s a door in front of my face, I know it. Something soft hits me in the head and then drops to the floor: running clothes.
“Put them on,” he says.
“Christian, my foot is—”
“You wanted to know how I do it? How I keep calm, even when I’m so pissed I could put my fist into your gut?”
I blink in surprise.
Fist in your gut?
Whose language is that? Certainly not my brother’s. My imperturbable brother.
He goes back into his room, and I change into the shorts and T-shirt. My foot is already swelling, but I stuff it in my shoe anyway.
He comes back, also geared up.
“Didn’t you run already today?” I ask.
“Let’s go.”
We’re about two blocks from the apartment building, standing on a parched dirt path next to a fenced-in golf course. The twilight has turned the grass into a green lake, the blades of grass blurring into one dark surface. The night air bites at my bare arms, and I wonder if he decided to toss me a sleeveless jersey as part of my punishment. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
“Go,” he says, and nudges my back with his shoulder.
I start jogging, in spite of my protesting toe. Christian jogs next to me; I watch him finding his rhythm, knowing he has shortened his steps for my pace. I open my mouth to explain, but he cuts me off.
“No talking,” he says. “Just listen.”
But he doesn’t say anything. He gazes out, not looking at me. I push the pace faster until I’m sprinting past him. I look back, and he is trailing at his own pace. When I stop, he strides by me, still silent. I catch up and keep his steady pace, not knowing how long we’ll be running. Hell, this guy runs 26.2 miles for fun, but apparently he does it silently.
What am I supposed to listen to?
Half a mile of road later, I start to hear it: my footsteps striking in a steady rhythm; my breath in and out; the wind singing in my ears. I glance at Christian. He is mesmerized by the horizon. I focus on it too and watch the sky soothe itself into blackness.
Everything goes out of my head: my forgotten cleats, the stats, my fight with Eric, Mirriam’s face stripped of her calm-teachery-mask, my mom’s hand not touching mine when she promised to come out, Lauren crumpling on the ground … It all fades … all I hear are my steps, breath, wind … all I see are the changes in light as we run under the streetlamps … crossing from lightpool to light-pool …