Stand Alone (6 page)

“Hi Justine,” Clara, the student manning the reception desk in the office greeted. “What’s up?”

Justine handed over her sick note. Clara picked it up and looked it over.

“Okay,” she told Justine, “I’ll enter this into the computer. Everything okay?”

Justine rolled her eyes. Clara wasn’t actually supposed to be paying attention to any of the details on the sick note. She was supposed to act like she didn’t know anything, didn’t know anything about Justine’s personal life. That was all protected, private information.

“I’m fine,” Justine growled, and shouldered her back pack. “I gotta get to class now.”

“Next period starts in ten minutes. You might as well take your time.”

“Thanks,” Justine agreed, and walked out.

She stowed her board and her backpack and picked up her books for the last two periods. Her next class was math, and for the first few minutes, she was okay. But the lecture was beyond boring, and Justine’s mind began to wander. She glanced around the room, but all of the other students seemed intent on the teacher’s speech and the examples on the board. It was the same crap that they’d been learning already for two weeks, and Justine didn’t see why they needed to have yet another class on the same basic material. Justine was still tired and sort of foggy from her session with Dr. Morton that morning. She felt distant, mentally removed from where she was physically. She folded her arms on the top of the desk and closed her eyes, resting her chin on her arms. She could just listen to the lecture, she didn’t need to take any notes. She already understood what the teacher was going over again
  
…
 
and again
  
…
 
and again.

The next thing she knew, someone was poking her in the back, and Justine tried to shake off the drowsiness and figure out what was going on. Students were exiting the room. Obviously, the class change bell had already rung. The teacher was walking purposefully toward her. Justine stretched, rolling her shoulders and yawning widely, not even trying to cover it up. Mr. Peters stopped in front of her desk.

“Interrupting your nap time, are we, Miss Bywater?” he questioned sarcastically.

“Sorry,” Justine said, smothering another yawn, “I was up most of the night, and at the doctor’s this morning. I had
  
…
 
a procedure
  
…
 
and I’m still kind of groggy. I guess I shouldn’t have come in, but I didn’t want to miss class.”

It was close enough to the truth. Mr. Peters looked mollified.

“Oh. Well, that’s understandable. Is everything okay, then?” he questioned tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure whether it was okay for him to be curious about what medical trauma she was going through.

Justine nodded, and milked it for a little more sympathy.

“Yeah
  
…
 
they say I will be, anyway. Just a few more treatments. Then hopefully
  
…” she trailed off.

Mr. Peters nodded understandingly.

“Well, you let me know if you need anything. Extra time for assignments, or extra tutoring, or anything like that.”

“Okay. So far I’m keeping up okay. I was following today
  
…
 
until I nodded off.”

“We’re all rooting for you, Miss Bywater,” he said sincerely, as if the entire staff had already been talking about her health issues and were all up on what was going on. It was funny how people were so much more understanding about physical health than mental health. If she’d told him she’d been at her therapist’s discussing psychological compulsions and weird dreams, he would have reacted a lot differently.

Justine nodded.

“Thanks. I’d better get to next period. I don’t want to miss anything else.”

He helped her to gather her books together and escorted her to the door, looking as though he thought she might faint dead away at any moment, and needed someone to look after her.

“All right then, good-bye,” he said.

“See you tomorrow,” Justine agreed, and walked away.

Justine managed to make it through her last period class without falling asleep again, but it was an effort. She doodled on the side of her notebook, drawing fractal-like patterns instead of taking notes. She still felt groggy and unreal. She managed to stay below the teacher’s radar and not get asked any questions. Then class was over, and she made her escape.

“Hey Justine,” Mark, who had his locker next to hers, said as she dumped her school books and grabbed her board, leaving her backpack there. “I didn’t see you earlier. Where were you?”

He was something of a cross between a drama geek and a goth. Lots of earrings and black clothing, black lipstick, but no eye shadow or white makeup. He was casual and friendly, never participating in any effort to mock or bully Justine, but not really a friend. Just an acquaintance. Someone she saw often but never got to know.

“Just skipping,” Justine told him.

“Oh. Cool. See you tomorrow.”

Justine nodded.

“See you,” she agreed.

Justine put her board down and rode it through the hallways, weaving in and out between the crowds, drawing a number of irritated exclamations and curses from the students. She managed to avoid any teachers or administrators seeing her, occasionally hopping off the board to walk by an adult, and then getting back on once she was past them.

Then she was out of the school. Escaped. Free. This was why she had insisted on coming to school. So she was free to skate the streets at the end of the day without having to get past Em. After the long session with Dr. Morton, she needed the wind in her face and hair, her muscles working, and the road stretching out endlessly before her. There was no escape quite so sweet.

After a couple of hours, she found herself at the cemetery. She and Christian had come here a few times, making use of the long pathways, grinding the curbs and stone benches. But never the gravestones. They agreed that the gravestones and statuary were off limits. Neither wanted that kind of karma. Justine hadn’t been back there for a long time. Once, a year ago, after a drenching downpour. She had wound through the pathways slowly, not looking for a thrill. Looking at the freshly filled graves. She rode by each one, checking the names on the little markers for each one. Until she found the one that said Christian Derron Fletching. She had never known his full name. He was just Christian to her. Justine hadn’t come back to the graveyard since.

Justine didn’t remember exactly which grave it was, but she remembered the general area. She moved slowly, looking at each of the gravestones until she found it. There was a permanent marker now. Justine didn’t even have to look at the name to know that it was Christian’s. It was a big black marble slab, with a skater etched in mid-ollie. It wasn’t a picture of Christian, but it did resemble him a little bit. His slight frame, his longish, curly hair. Justine sat down on the grass in front of it, studying it. The requisite name and dates. The epitaph ‘off the hook.’ She was impressed that his family had sprung for a fancy marker and actually memorialized his skating. They’d never given him anything while he was alive, and his skating had been a major point of contention. As she sat and gazed at it, she wondered if there had been some kind of public collection for him that had paid for the fancy headstone. The story had been in the papers. Maybe it had garnered some sympathy and someone other than his family had raised the funds and chosen the tombstone.

Justine’s throat was hot and tight. Christian had been gone for almost a year now. It seemed like forever, and it seemed like just yesterday. Justine had heard that the pain of loss grew less over time, that it became easier to move on with your life and to go without thinking of the person every day. But it didn’t seem to be true. The loss of Christian still felt raw and open, like she’d had the heart and guts ripped out of her while she watched. It was like half of her had been killed, and the rest was just an empty shell walking around like a zombie. She didn’t have the words to express how much she missed him. How much it hurt. No one could understand it. No one could hurt as much as she did over his loss. His family had planted this monument and moved on, patting themselves on the back, losing themselves in the day-to-day business of taking care of his siblings, making money, and watching TV. For Justine, the pain never ceased. It was a wide, gaping wound in her soul.

Justine scrubbed at her eyes, squeezing out the hot tears and wiping them forcefully away. Time to get up and move on. But when she stood up, it was too much. The thought of leaving him there, in the cold unforgiving ground was too hard. She should stay here. Curl up at his feet like the loyal dog. Stay there until she died too. She couldn’t leave him, live without him anymore. Here was where his mortal remains lay. Here was where she should lay. She fell back to her knees, the tears gushing from her eyes now, full force like someone had turned on a faucet. No sedate, womanly tears to be dabbed at with the corner of a tissue. Boiling hot, streaming down her face, her nose running, her mouth open and drool drawing two lines down her chin. Raucous, unleashed tears, devastating her face like the force of a tropical storm.

She covered her face with both hands, sobs racking her body, and just let it all go. The dam had burst. There was no more keeping the water contained. Afternoon gave way to evening. The sobs stopped. The tears stopped. The pain did not. Her shirt was soaked in tears, snot, and drool. She didn’t care. She lay at his feet, waiting for God to take her too. She and Christian belonged together. Why couldn’t he just come and get her now? She had nothing left to do in life. No reason to go on. Why couldn’t she just die too?

“Are you all right dear?” An old gray haired woman bent over her, tugging her to her feet, and giving her a firm, bony hug. “It’s hard,” the woman said. “It’s always hard to be the one left behind.” She looked at the picture and inscription on the headstone, looked at Justine’s board on the ground. “Almost a year now, and the pain doesn’t go away,” she acknowledged. “But you’re alive. You have to find a way to go on.”

Justine shook her head.

“I can’t,” she protested, her voice hoarse.

“Come on,” the old woman insisted. “Walk with me, I’ll introduce you to Alfie.”

She took Justine by the arm with claws of iron. Justine picked up her board and went with the hag. She had no will of her own. The woman’s destination wasn’t far from Christian’s grave. A little gravestone. Cheap. Already weather-worn and getting harder to read. Justine glanced over the inscription and the dates apathetically. Fifty years. Alfie had left his wife fifty years ago. Justine looked at her with new respect.

“We’ll toast him,” the woman said, pulling a flask from the capacious black purse slung over her shoulder. She opened it and handed it to Justine. Justine put it in her mouth and tipped it up and took a couple of swallows. The fiery liquid burned all the way down. Justine handed it back, and the woman drank down a mouthful as well. “Love you, Alfie,” she said simply, tipping the flask toward him. “It won’t be long now.”

Justine looked at her companion. The alcohol steadied her a bit. She didn’t feel like she was going to break down again.

“We go on,” the woman said, “because we have to. He doesn’t want you there, lying on his grave. He wants you out there,” she gestured to the world beyond the graveyard, “popping three-sixties and doing other gnarly moves.”

Justine laughed in surprise at her knowledge of skater slang. The old woman grasped her arm again and gave it a squeeze.

“It’s not over, dear. We have to just go on. And when you do finally go on to meet him, you can tell him you did enough living for both of you.”

Justine took a deep lungful of air.

“Have you?” she questioned.

“You bet I have, honey,” she chuckled. “I’ve got so much to tell him.” The old lady looked at her sweetheart’s gravestone. “The doctor told me last week I have terminal cancer.” Her eyes shone weirdly in the dimness. “He thought he was telling me I was going to die. But he was telling me I’ll finally be able to start living again.” She smiled. “Soon.”

Justine nodded.

“Thanks.”

“He’ll be waiting for you. Don’t you worry about that. You just go on and make him proud. Live life to its fullest.”

“Okay,” Justine sniffled.

The woman thumped her on the back.

“You take care now,” she offered. And then she retreated and was gone, like a ghost, leaving no trace. Justine studied Alfie’s worn headstone. Then she put her board down on the nearest pathway, showed off a couple of ollies for Christian, and kicked off.

Justine didn’t go home. She hopped the fence at the outdoor kiddies pool and jumped her board into the empty wading pool. It was too early in the year for it to be filled yet, and all of the dips and swells in the smooth concrete made it an excellent place to skate. No one else was around. She took the curves at speed, made jumps, worked on a few new tricks. She was almost frantic, trying to get all of her living in. She skated for Christian, but she also skated to forget him. That didn’t work too well. His face was constantly before her. The way he laughed exultantly when he nailed a new move. His constant ADHD restlessness. Bravery in the face of bruises and broken bones, not all of them from skating. Skating brought her nearer to him, but also nearer to the realization that he was gone. That, like the old woman, Justine wasn’t going to see him for another fifty years, and then only if there really was an afterlife.

The park was a whirl around her. She didn’t see it, though she could hear the wind blowing through the trees and the distant noise of traffic. She was going too fast. She shut the rest of the world out. Forget Em. Forget Dr. Morton. Forget school. Forget court. Just her and her board, doing the one thing she did well.

It had grown rather dark over the hour that she had been working the course. There were lights around the pool, but of course they were turned off because it was not open yet. A flashlight cut through the darkness at her.