These Gentle Wounds (6 page)

Next to me, Kevin clears his throat. “Thursday, Ice,” he says, which puzzles me. I have no idea what he's talking about.

The swing propels me up and past him. The whole planet seems so far beneath my shoes, and even though I know it isn't true, it seems like if I just jump off I'll land on someone's roof or get stuck in the top of a tree.

“Hey,” Kevin calls. His voice is no-nonsense enough to get me to drag my feet in the dirt and slowly bring myself to a stop. “Did you hear me?”

“You said something about Thursday.” I do my best to think about the word and not what it might mean.

Kevin doesn't play along. Instead he kneels down in front of me, holding on to the chains of the swings, one in each hand.

“You have to go see your dad on Thursday. After school.”

I breathe and relief floods through me. “Can't. I have practice.” For an optimistic minute I expect him to shrug and accept it, but instead he shakes his head.

“I know. Jim is going to have to call your coach and tell him you won't be there.”

It's true that bad things all happen at once. Just like That Day happened, but The Night Before happened too. And neither could have happened without the other.

Up until this minute, I thought that having to spend time with my father was the very worst thing that could happen to me. But I was wrong. Missing practice on Thursday means being benched during our last game of the season on Friday. I need hockey. In spite of my recent actions, I need practice too—the speed, the chance to turn off my brain and let my muscles do the work. Going too long without skating makes it harder for me to concentrate and harder for me to bounce back after a spin.

“I have a game on Friday. If I miss, they won't let me play.” My voice is a whisper eaten up by the wind. “Come on, please,” I plead, but I know there's nothing he can do. I sometimes forget he's a kid just like me. Well, not just like me. But he doesn't get to call the shots either.

“I know.” Kevin's voice is sad. He means it, but it doesn't change anything. “My dad is working, so I'll take you to DeSilva's office after school. They say it'll only be twenty minutes, and then it'll be over and hopefully he'll just crawl back into whatever hole he's been hiding in.”

Twenty minutes is the length of a period of hockey without stoppages. Worlds could be created and destroyed in that amount of time.

Kevin pulls himself to his feet. Grabbing a handful of stones, he whips them, one by one, at the dead center of a tree. Each time one hits, my stomach twitches.

“What do you think I'm supposed to do there?” I ask.

Kevin rubs his temples and sighs loudly. “I don't know, Ice. Just talk to him. Or let him talk. Maybe all he wants is for you to listen to him and then he'll go away.”

My thumb starts twitching. There's nothing my father could say that I'd want to hear. I've heard his vulture voice enough to last a lifetime.

I push the swing off the ground, but every time I fly up, my stomach stays below. I pump my legs until I'm as high as the swing will let me go, and, just as it starts its descent, I jump. For a second, I'm free. For a second, it's just me and the air.

I hear Kevin yelling but I know how to land, bending my knees so I don't break anything. Once I'm on the ground, I walk over to the bushes and puke my guts out. It's probably the only thing that keeps my brother from kicking my ass.

When we get home, Kevin's still muttering under his breath and I have to take a gulp of water to wash the taste of puke out of my mouth. It's eight o'clock. I wonder if that's too late to call someone on a Saturday night.

I expect him to yell at me some more, but instead Kevin says, “You might feel better if you talk about it,” really softly. This is funny coming from him, because my brother never talks about anything that happened.

I shake my head. If I told him everything, he'd know it was all my fault. He'd hate me and even though it's probably what I deserve, I think that actually
would
kill me.

“You don't have to talk to me. You could try talking to someone else again,” he suggests.

I stare at him. Given the number of hours he's had to spend with the school shrinks and the equal number of hours he's spent bitching about it, his suggestion is almost funny.

“No.” I say. “I'll be okay.”

I'm sure Kevin doesn't believe me. I don't even believe me.

“Fine. Here, Romeo,” he says, tossing the phone to me, his version of a peace offering. I think about the chances of my pulling it together to call Sarah now, and about what I could say.

My heart is beating a little fast. I know I'm looking at the phone like it's some giant vat of ice cream that I want to eat and eat until I pass out.

“You really like her,” Kevin says. I can tell he's relieved to be talking about something that makes sense to him. His little brother crushing on a girl.

“It's just school,” I say, but we both know I'm lying, and that feels weird. I get up, so I don't have to see the look in his eyes, and find the paper with the phone number on it. Then I stare at each digit, waiting to see if they'll tell me what to do.

“Sure it is.” Kevin says. “Go ahead and call her. Maybe it will help.”

I nod, because doing what he says seems easier than trying to figure anything else out.

There's a dull buzz as I mechanically punch each number into the phone. A part of me hopes no one answers. A part of me is scared no one will. Somehow, where Sarah is concerned, I always seem to be feeling two opposite things at once.

“Hello?” I'm pretty sure it's her.

“Sarah?” My voice is all choked up like I've been smoking or something. I have to cough to clear it.

“Yeah?”

“It's Gordie.”

I wait for her to say, “Gordie who?” or to ask why I'm calling or to tell me to go away.

“Hey, I was hoping you'd call,” she says, and it makes my stomach flip.

I suddenly realize I have no idea what to say now that she's on the phone. The line is filled with silence. Too much. My hand starts to tighten and a shadow that may or may not be real moves across the room.

“Are you there?” she asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, just … sorry.” I shake my head and the shadow disappears.

“Oh, okay,” she says. “So, what do you think about going and taking photos tomorrow afternoon? Maybe somewhere around the monastery?”

She talks for a while about the things she can photograph. I'm not really paying much attention to what she's saying, just to the rhythm of her words. Eventually there's a pause and I know that I need to add something.

“Sure.”

Kevin raises an eyebrow. I turn to face the other direction so that he doesn't see the small, embarrassed smile on my face.

“Does one o'clock tomorrow work?” she asks. “I can meet you there.”

“One sounds perfect,” I say, and I mean it.

Nine

Sarah is right where she says she'll be and already bustling around. I don't know exactly what she's taking photos of. And I don't know what types of “harbingers of doom” I'm going to photograph. It's snowing huge white flakes even though the sun is shining, and it looks like we're in the center of a snow globe. I know I need to care about the assignment, but I'm not sure I really do.

Sarah rushes around checking angles, shadows, and light while I climb up to the roof of the old wooden train and lie down, watching the snow fall around me like feathers. It's not cold out, for Michigan anyhow, and the snow melts as soon as it hits the ground, so I just look up at the blue, blue sky and watch the flakes and the clouds.

When we were little, Kevin and I would go into the yard with Mom and play the cloud game, trying to figure out what each cloud looked like to us. Mom would always see something funny: a rabbit with a top hat, or a flower being nibbled by an elephant. Kevin was always practical. To him the clouds were shaped like a truck. Or a cigar. Or a mailbox.

Sometimes I saw dragons, and castles, and elaborate scenes with moats and armies of knights. Sometimes all I saw were clouds. But it didn't matter. It wasn't the clouds that made the game fun.

A plane flies overhead somewhere in the distance. If I try really hard, I can hear Sarah's camera clicking away as she talks, to herself and to the things she's taking photos of. She even talks to the sun. I wonder if she really expects it to move just so that she can get a good picture.

I close my eyes and press on my eyelids, watching fireworks of color explode behind them.

I'm off, lost in the sounds and colors until Sarah's voice pulls me back as she climbs up to the top of the train.

“I wish it wasn't so bright out, but I think I got some good shots,” she says, sitting down next to me.

I want her to keep talking, but she doesn't. So I sit up and watch her watching the sky.

It isn't just that I think she's pretty. It's that she seems more confident and sure of herself than anyone else I know. I can't even lie to myself about it anymore. I want her to like me, even though I've never cared what anyone thought about me before. Even though there's no reason she should.

“You could do something with that darker cloud over there,” she suggests, pointing off in the distance. As she turns her head, a charm swings from a chain around her neck. Framed like a little painting is a bird with multicolored wings, wings that stretch out toward the side of her neck. It reminds me a little of the photo she put in my locker.

“Thanks,” I say. “For the picture.”

She breaks into a wide smile. “Glad you liked it. It won an award at my old school.”

I feel a weird surge of pride swell through me, followed by something cold and empty. The more I learn about her, the less I understand why she'd want anything to do with me.

“Don't miss the cloud,” she says.

I follow her finger and try to get my head back into our assignment. It's a good idea. People always used to try to get hints of their future by looking at the sky or following the weather.

I nod. She takes the camera from around her neck and hands it to me, but I'm not sure what to do with it. Mom had a camera when we were kids. I'm not sure what happened to it. We don't have many photos of anything since That Day, and the old ones are mostly packed away somewhere.

Plus, the camera Mom had was a little thing you could put in your pocket. This is different. This is more like what real photographers use, with lenses that come off and flashes that clip on.

“So how does this work?” I ask her.

She drapes the strap around my neck and moves behind me, up on her knees. I bring the camera up to my eye. When she leans over to show me how to adjust the lens, she rests her arms against my shoulders and my heart thumps double-time.

“Just look through the viewfinder and then use that little ring in front to zoom in and out.”

It all seems pretty easy, but I'm so distracted by the weight of her arms on my shoulders that my hands are shaking. I freeze, with the camera pointed straight ahead. I'm afraid that if I move, I'm going to knock us both off the train's roof.

“Gordie, the cloud is up there,” she says, laughing. I try to stay focused on the assignment, but it's hard. I could just watch the snowflakes for hours, but Sarah is distracting in a good way, too. I don't mind it so much. It just means I have to work really hard but not show it. I'd love to believe she thinks I'm normal, but I know that's impossible. Everyone in this stupid town knows everything about me.

I redirect the camera under her guidance and then she moves her hand on top of mine. “You just click this button when you're ready,” she says. The wind moves her hair and I can smell some sort of flowers that must be her shampoo. It reminds me of my mom's lilacs and I inhale and hold it all in before I snap a few photos in the direction of the dark cloud.

She moves back and takes the camera from around my neck, playing with some buttons on the back of it.

“See.” She flips through the images one by one. It's pretty cool, actually. I can see why she likes taking pictures. It freezes things in time. The cloud has already moved from where it was when I snapped it and it will never be back there again. I wonder if she could do that with me. Just freeze me in a moment when I'm not spinning off so I can stay here with her.

“What else do you want to shoot?” she asks.

I've thought about it, but really, I don't know. The only bad omens I can think of are really, really bad ones, ones I don't want to deal with. Ones that don't have anything to do with
Moby Dick
.

I shrug. “I don't know. Any ideas?”

“No, but we don't have to rush and do it all now, anyhow.” She pulls her knees up and wraps her skirt over them. “It's so nice to be outside. I think I could live outside. Like when you're camping. You ever been?”

“Kevin and I used to camp in the backyard.” I tell her about how I remember us sleeping out under the stars, eating chips right out of the bag and telling each other silly stories with just flashlights for light.

“That kind of counts,” she says. “And it sounds like fun.”

I don't know what it is, but it's both so easy and so difficult to talk to her. Being the town freak should get you over worrying about having to say the right thing all the time, but it doesn't work like that.

“Camping was always such a production when we were little,” she says. “You know, it had to be the right tent and someone usually forgot the directions on how to put it up. And then there was the food and gas for the stove. Something was always left at home and we'd all blame each other.”

She squints into the sunlight and tips her head back to look at the sky. I do too. Then she pauses and says, “We're going next Saturday night. Camping. Luke and Jessie and I are going to Ross Park. You could come if you wanted to.
I hate when it's just them and me. You know what they're like.”

Two things hit my brain at once, like trains colliding.

First, I realize that Sarah's brother is Luke Miller—the captain of our team.

Second, I realize she must be screwing with me. Why else would she invite me camping with them? Had the photography thing not been my idea, I'd be sure she was only here with me to win some sort of bet or something.

I feel myself inching away from her as my hand starts to twitch.

“Are you okay?” she asks. Before I can even think about answering, she puts a hand on my arm. “You don't have to come with us. You're allowed to say no.”

I shove my hand under my leg and look at her.
Really
look at her. She doesn't seem like someone who is just trying to win a bet.

But if that's true, then she really wants me to come with them. And I'm not sure that makes a whole lot of sense either.

I want to say that I'll go, but can't imagine how much it would suck if I started to spin—not only in front of her but in front of Luke, too. I haven't even thought of sleeping over at anyone's house since That Day. But at the same time, I don't want to say no.

I swallow hard. “I need to ask Jim.”

“Is that your dad?”

For a minute, I wonder if she's asking just to hear me say it. But maybe she really
doesn't
know, although I'm not sure how that could happen.

“No. Kevin's dad,” I say, giving her the benefit of the doubt. In front of me is a pile of blue threads from the hem of my jeans, which I didn't notice I was pulling out. “But I live with him.”

She looks confused but doesn't ask anything else. I'm sure Luke or any of the kids at school can fill her in on whatever she wants to know.

“Well, tell him that Luke invited you. I mean … he'd be cool with that, right? Since you're on the team together and everything.”

I shrug. I guess he'd be cool. I've never asked to do something like that before.

“Are you and Kevin close?” Sarah asks. “I've seen him at some of your games, but I've never really talked to him.”

It's probably a normal question, just not one I've ever been asked. I tie some of the threads in knots and then toss them into the air. How the hell am I supposed to explain my relationship with my brother to anybody? There are times he makes me crazy and times when I'm sure I make
him
crazy. But I can't imagine what I'd do without him. I don't want to imagine it.

“He's my best friend,” I say, because I don't know the words for the rest and that sums it up as well as anything.

Sarah smiles. “That's nice. I used to feel that way about Luke, but then we got to high school and he turned into a pain in the ass. All he thinks about is sports and girls, you know?”

I nod, because that pretty much describes almost every guy in our school.

“I think he and Jess are pretty serious, though. At least they think they are. My parents probably have their wedding all planned out already.”

In truth, Luke and Jess scare me a little. I've seen them after games in the hallway outside the locker room. I've seen the way she looks at him, like he's her own sun, and how he touches her like she's the Holy Grail. It makes me jealous and uncomfortable, but I can't
not
watch them. When they kiss, they're like wax melting into each other.

Sarah opens her mouth and catches a snowflake on her tongue. She smiles like she's just eaten the best candy in the world, and I feel my whole body flush.

“I wonder what it's like,” she says. “You know, to be with someone and think you'll be with them for the rest of your life. I mean, how do you know?”

I laugh. She could have asked the monks and gotten a better answer than I'm going to be able to give her.

“Maybe you just meet someone, and … ” I know I'm failing to get what's in my head out of my mouth, so I try again. “Maybe it's like a best friend. They just get you and you don't want to let that go. And if you're lucky, neither do they.”

She tilts her head to the side, the snowflakes landing in her hair. “You make it sound a lot less scary,” she says. And then she reaches over and puts her hand on my leg. It feels like all of my nerve endings come alive at once. “I hope you're right.”

I nod because I don't trust my voice to work. I hope I'm right, too.

“Okay, so let's talk about the rest of your photos,” she says.

I don't want to. I don't want to think about gloom and doom, or anything bad. Or even school. I just want to watch the snow; to watch her. I want her never to move her hand.

But she's waiting for me, so I don't have a choice.

In
Moby Dick
, there's all this superstitious stuff. All these dreams about hearses and things you supposedly need in order to have good luck. And there's a story about a hawk. We decide to go with the bird because it's the easiest. There are always hawks flying around here. Maybe because it's the only open space for miles and miles. Besides, the thought of going to a funeral home to take pictures of a hearse makes me physically sick.

In fifteen minutes, we're done and back on the ground. I only realize how quiet my head has been all this time when I start to feel an edgy buzzing. I wonder what happens next. It's been so long since I've talked to anyone besides Kevin, or about anything other than hockey, that I want it to keep on going. But I'm clueless about how to do that.

Sarah says she'll print my photos along with hers and bring them to school. She gives me a quick hug and then walks off.

Our goodbye is over so fast that I kind of miss it, and I stand there until she's just a tiny speck in the distance.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
It's just school
, I tell myself. But this time, even I don't believe it.