Between Now & Never (7 page)

Jimmy.

He held up two glittery gold badges.
FBI. US Department of Justice.
Jimmy had outdone himself this time. They looked like Dad’s badge. Plus glitter.

One of Dad’s lines and one of Jimmy’s favorites—
trust your instincts
. Bad guys were always easier to catch during a storm. I don’t know why. Our instincts told us so, I guess. At least it was more exciting that way. And anytime a monsoon or other storm hit, Special Agents Cody and Jimmy Rush would rise to the call of duty, strap on our badges and guns with pride, and run out into the rain to answer the demands of justice.

A dream—
that’s all this is. Yet I feel as though I could open my eyes and Jimmy would be there, sitting on his bedroom floor as though he’d never left
.

T
he fissure of light between my eyelids is too bright. My head throbs. Sounds flutter in: some beeping, distant voices, a cupboard closing. Shoes squeak on tile. I let each noise drift around and settle in, a small corner of my mind trying to catch up.

Gone.

The force of it nails me down, not that I was going anywhere fast. But it hurts. Kills all over again. My brain wants to stop, to block out the light and dive under, back to that darkness where there is no pain.

So much pain.

Nothing new. Jimmy’s been gone for a long time. But I feel it all in full again.

Muscles ache, my arms reduced to dead weights at my sides. A burning sensation runs from my shoulder down into my elbow. Skin on fire. I try to swallow but can’t. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Every nerve along the side of my face throbs. Pulses.
And my leg.

“He’s waking up again!”

I recognize the voice: my mom.

I start to say her name, but my lips are pasty, stuck together.

“He’s trying to say something,” Mom says.

“Probably the same three questions again. Round five,” another voice says: Rachel.

My lips part. “Wh-wh—”

“What happened?” Rachel fills in, exactly what I was about to ask.

Mom shushes her. “Rachel, be nice.”

“Let him talk,” a deep voice resonates.
Dad.

I try to see him, want to tell him something. Blinding shafts of light flood in as I open my eyelids, and something scrapes my eyes. Almost like I have sand wedged in there.

“Dad,” I say. He leans over and offers a reassuring smile. I take in his blond hair and blue eyes and my own smile spreads. Safe. The feeling surrounds me and I hold on to it. Shaken up. Scared even.

“I—” The rest of whatever I was about to say flies away. Here and then gone. Or did I even know what I wanted to tell him in the first place?

Lizzy’s face pops up, inches away. “Hey, Cody!”

I wince, my head aching with every sound.

I’m in a hospital; that much I can tell. I scour my memory, starting at the present and scaling back. Lizzy’s face, Dad, Rachel’s and Mom’s voices, the splitting pain, the bright light, running in the rain with Jimmy—a dream—and then . . . nothing.

My head throbs as I throw a glance around the room. “What happened?”

Rachel’s eyes roll upward and then settle on my mom.

Mom pats my hand. “Oh, here we go again. Honey, you were hit by a car.”

“What?” I say, blown away. “In the Vette?”

“The Corvette is fine,” Dad says and heaves a deep breath. “You were walking when the car hit you. In a dust storm.”

I take it they’ve explained this to me before. But this is news to me.

“A
dust storm
?”

“Mm-hm.”

“When?”

“Last night,” Dad says.

I take a deep breath myself and let it out, my shoulder pinching with pain, my head aching anew, my leg hurting the worst of all. I take in the sight: the splint around my shin. My swollen leg.

“Ah, shiz.”

“Cody!” Mom exclaims, never one for foul language.

“He said
shiz,
Mom.” Rachel comes to my defense.

My heart rate flips into high gear as all I can think of is
basketball.

“When will it be better, Dad—my leg?”

I reach for my face to assess the damage but think better of it. Feels like I got the tar beat out of me in a fistfight. For now, it’s the least of my worries.
My leg.

Dad still hasn’t replied, which can’t be a good thing.

It all crashes in, pushes me back down. My leg. Basketball. The team I left at Desert Mountain. Everything I’ve worked for. How did this happen?

“He needs more pain meds,” Mom says on her way out the door. “I’ll get the nurse.”

I’m all light and dizzy, like I’ve been pumped full with meds already. For all I care, they can medicate me into oblivion. Knock me out so I won’t have to face reality.

A doctor arrives, a guy in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. Doc has a warm smile and a wrinkly forehead, like he’s analyzed one too many charts in his day. He looks smart, and that’s good, I guess. Still, I wish I wasn’t here.

He asks how I am. I understate by saying I’ve been better.

I try to pull pieces of my memory back into place. Senior year. New school. New team.
The Reebok Classic Breakout camp
. “How’s my leg?” I ask.

Doc sits down. “We ran a number of X-rays and found a small fracture in your left fibula. You were lucky; an isolated fibula fracture in a pedestrian versus car accident is rare. Typically, both the tibia and fibula are broken and require surgery. In your case, we’re dealing with a nondisplaced fracture, so you won’t need surgery.”

“Good,” I say. “When can I walk on it?”

“You’ll need a cast for up to six weeks.”

My heart plummets.

Doc seems to sense this. “But you’re young. There’s a chance you’ll recover quicker. I’ve seen casts for these types of fractures come off as soon as four weeks.”

I think about the breakout camp in July, my best shot at getting a scholarship.

“But you’ll be in a boot for a while after that,” he says. “The boot will be removable and will enable you to start strength and flexibility exercises with a physical therapist to reduce muscle atrophy.”

A boot. Physical therapist. Muscle atrophy.

My head spins and I think I’m going to be sick.

Doc talks with my parents. I run through the basics; what I can remember at least. Our move from Scottsdale to Gilbert, Mom’s hometown. Grandpa Chadwick passed away two years after Grandma, leaving Chadwick Manor in my mom’s care. Mom loves the place, loves the land she grew up on, so we moved to be closer. I left my team at Desert Mountain High to go to Highland High. My mom, the floral designer. My dad, an FBI agent.
FBI . . .

“What is it, son?” Dad asks.

My brows are pulled together, creating tension that makes my headache worse. “Feels like there’s something I was about to tell you, but I can’t remember.”

Dad offers an all-knowing smile.

“I’ve said that before?” I ask.

He nods. “It’ll come. It’ll come.”

“Why was I walking?”

“That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us.”

Out late at night walking alone through a dust storm? Doesn’t make sense. “A
dust storm
?”

“Yeah,” Dad says. “Biggest one in years. Delayed flights at the airport. Power outages. Trees uprooted.”

“Wow,” I say, shocked that I can’t remember it. I dig for memories, but my head hurts. It must be there somewhere, buried. I would have caught a dust storm like that on camera.

“I take it I didn’t call you guys?”

Dad’s lips press into a stiff line. “You didn’t even have your phone on you.”

Now this really doesn’t make sense. “I always have my phone on me.”

“Yeah, well, it was nowhere to be found. We searched the scene of the accident.”

“Where was it—the accident?”

“On Power Road by the mall.”

“But why? Why was I even there?”

Dad throws me a sharp sideways glance, about to pop with irritation. Patience isn’t his best virtue.

Mom walks in and apparently senses the tension. “Let me do the talking, Ryan.”

I must have been driving them crazy, question after question, over and over. I got a concussion once in the fourth grade, playing soccer. All I kept asking was whether we won or not. I look at my family and note the signs of sleeplessness: rumpled clothes, bags under their eyes, crazy hair. Lizzy even has her pillow, a few ponies, and those polar bear slippers of hers.

I picture myself wandering around the streets last night like some mental patient, confused. No. Definitely not. There had to be a reason.

“I’m sorry,” I say to all of them.

“Oh, don’t be, sweetie,” Mom says. Dad shifts a restless gaze to the floor like he doesn’t share her sentiment. Rachel too. Lizzy is wrapping a latex glove around one of her ponies like a saddle blanket.

“Cody,” Dad says, “you left the house yesterday with your friend from the basketball team.”

“Vic,” Mom chimes in.

I remember now: Vic. At least I remember our basketball tournament in Vegas. I recall seeing the picture of his mom in his kitchen and figuring it out. My dad put her behind bars. I recall Vic’s living room. Playing the guitar. And Julianna.

She didn’t even glance my way.

The memories end there, my train of thought fizzling out into a big, wide-open nothing.

“I was with Vic last night?” I ask. Mom nods.

I thought I had decided to keep my distance. For his sake, for mine, for everyone’s. He’s bound to figure out who my dad is at some point.

Dread gives me a hard jab as I wonder if he already knows. Did I give it away? Could Vic have gotten mad last night, really mad? I think of his jacked arms and wonder if he threw a punch. Knocked me senseless? Vic’s sure to have a vicious swing. But no, it was a car.

“Wait a minute. Who hit me?”

Dad is all eyes on me now, his gaze calculating. He’s no longer just Dad; he’s the special agent. I’ve seen that look, the look he gets when something doesn’t add up and he’s determined to figure out why.

“We don’t know,” Mom answers. “They must have driven off.”

“A lady drove by as the dust passed and saw you lying on the sidewalk. She called 911,” Dad explains. “She said she didn’t see any other cars near you when she pulled up.”

“No one saw the car,” Rachel says. “I’m surprised she even saw
you
, the dust was so thick.”

“Detective Ferguson seems to think the lady found you pretty soon after you were hit,” Dad says.

Rachel stands. This is the first time in forever that I’ve seen her without her eyes rimmed in black. “Here, look at this,” she says and pulls something up on her phone.

She shoves her iPhone in front of my face as a YouTube clip starts. It’s a video taken at night, the lights of Phoenix dotting the screen. A huge cloud piles up along the horizon, dust that grows higher and higher and then sweeps over the entire valley.

“Holy—” I stop there, speechless.

“Yeah,” Rachel says and takes her seat on a chair, curling her legs under her. “You were in that. Dust all over you.”

“Your lungs took in quite a bit,” Mom says, her face drawing into a frown.

“I called Vic,” Dad butts in.

My ears perk up. “You did?”

“Mm-hm. Called your coach and got his number. I spoke to him on the phone about an hour ago.”

“What did he say?”

“I told him about the accident and your concussion, how you spent most of the night repeating the same questions.”

“And?”

Dad watches me, reading my every expression. I force myself to relax.

“To his credit,” Dad says, “he sounded genuinely concerned.”

“Of course he did,” Mom says and throws my dad a sharp glance.

A light knock pulls our attention to the open doorway, where a police officer stands.

He extends an encouraging grin in my direction. “Detective Ferguson.”

Dad shakes his hand. Detective Ferguson requests a moment to ask me a few questions. I assure him I’m with it now. I hope I’m right.

His balding head reflects the bright lights of the hospital room. He asks questions, most of which I can’t answer. Still, he manages to jot plenty down on his report.

“His friend, Vic, will be here any moment,” Dad says.

“He’s the one you were with last night?” Detective Ferguson asks me.

I shrug. “I guess so.”

Vic arrives as promised, his hands jammed in his pockets. He wears a careful smile and a small cut lines his bottom lip, spiking my curiosity. Seeing him is a relief for some reason, a sort of reassurance that the pieces of the puzzle will come together in time.

Vic shakes Mom’s hand and offers a wave to Rachel and Lizzy.

When Vic extends his hand to my dad, I watch for any crack in his friendly front, a clue that he might know who my dad is. I see nothing.

Vic smiles and introduces himself to my dad. “Thanks for calling me,” he says before turning to me. “Hey, Cody. You—ah—you’ve looked better.”

I laugh, and it hurts everywhere. “It’s weird, man, I can’t remember a thing about last night.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” Detective Ferguson intervenes, pulling Vic aside. They stand outside the doorway, out of earshot. Almost. I listen in as Vic relays the story of how we stopped for something to eat on our way to Connor’s house.

“We both wanted different fast food,” Vic says.

Dad stands at the door, listening in as well. He nods once, like he’s heard this all before. Vic must have told him over the phone.

Vic tells the detective how I wanted Wendy’s but he wanted El Pollo Loco. Sounds like Vic, I guess. Vic tells the detective he dropped me off at Wendy’s and when he came back for me, I was nowhere in sight.

None of this sounds familiar, but then again, nothing from last night does.

“And that cut there on your lip,” Detective Ferguson says. “How did you get that?”

Rachel snaps her gum and Dad shushes her.

“Got an elbow playing basketball,” Vic replies.

Detective Ferguson jots it all down. “Who elbowed you?”

Vic rubs his chin. “It was pickup ball. At the park. Don’t know his name.”

Fergusson nods. Finishes up.

“Hey, Vic,” I ask when the detective is gone, “do you remember if I had my cell phone on me last night?”