by Lacey Dailey
“From where’s she at? I don’t––"
She’s gone.
All the air in the room seems to move right through the walls and as far away from me as possible. Slapping both hands over my mouth, tears spill over my eyelids.
He gnaws at the inside of his cheek, and it takes him a while to speak. “She passed five weeks after his birth.”
“B–b–but….” The tears come faster, gushing out of me while my chest takes the brunt of the news. “He came all this way.”
I’m in Reggie's arms, my head on his shoulder and tears on his collar before my next breath leaves my lips.
I cry for Simon.
I cry for Allison.
And I cry for Rumor, who lost his mother before he ever had her.
“What happened?” I speak into the cotton on his chest. “Was it an accident?”
He pulls away from me, cupping my damp cheeks and ignoring his own. “No, kiddo. I don’t think it was.”
20
A Crease & A Kiss
Rumor
There is a crease on her forehead.
I want to lean forward and brush my lips against it.
It made its appearance five days ago when she came home from work, sans a lost treasure. I thought maybe her disappointment was cause of the crease. But as time ticked by, the crease deepened. And with it came friends–– pale lips, dull eyes, fake smiles, and forced laughs.
I hate that stupid crease.
“Are you having any luck?” I ask her, and I know it’s a stupid question. She’s having zero luck writing her paper because in order to be successful she’d actually have to write the damn thing.
Her pencil hasn’t moved once from where it’s positioned loosely in her hand. She hasn’t even summoned the energy to scrawl her name in the top right corner.
“Hm?” She tilts her head slightly, offering me her ear. I don’t get her eyes though. No. Those stay cemented on Mo’s steel door and the patch of rust that lingers there, adjacent to her Big Joe.
“Your paper, Ace.” I try again, tapping my finger on the edge of her notebook. Any hope it would jostle her out of her stupor fizzles when she doesn’t even twitch.
I’m ready to rip my hair out.
Since the moment I met her in this exact spot, Alma has lived every day with abundant vigor. So much so, it would spill out of her and transfer to me. I took it willingly, submerging myself in her smiles and laughs until I heard nothing but tiny violins. Her energy was contagious.
The thing about energy is that it’s not deceptive, and the energy I’m getting from my girl right now is flat.
And now I’m worried I selfishly took too much from her.
“Alma?” Fighting against the sudden mass in my windpipe, I hijack her hand and slip my fingers through hers. “Are we cool?”
Translation: Have I overstayed my welcome?
“Wait. What?” Looking down at our hands, she gives mine a squeeze. Her muscles tremor and the reaction must bring her back to the here and now because she finally—finally— lifts her head. The earthy forest that’s routinely in her eyes is subdued and murky, the after effects of a storm I didn’t realize she’d withstood.
“Why wouldn’t we be cool?” she asks, her features twisted and laced in confusion. As if it doesn’t register with her that she spent the last thirty minutes giving all her attention to a rust patch no bigger than my fist.
“You seem a little withdrawn.”
“Withdrawn?” She tests the word, and the curl of her lip tells me she doesn’t like it. “How so?”
“Well, Ace, you’ve been pretty quiet the last week or so.”
Her chin dips, and I come face to face with that damn crease. When it deepens, I battle against the urge to use my lips to smooth it out.
“Have I upset you somehow? Do you, uhm, need me to leave? Give you some space?”
I hold my breath. The wait for her answer feels like an eternity when in reality, it’s less than a second.
“No!” Her head snaps up, eyes wide with ardor. “Rumor, of course not.”
Her free hand comes to rest on my neck, and I’m positive she can feel my overactive pulse. Soft fingers pepper the hair above my ears before she flattens her hand against the side of my head. I lean into her touch.
I breathe again.
“Have I done something to make you feel that way? I love having you here.”
Did she say love?
“Alma.” I find my words. “You’ve just sort of been out of it the last few days. Like you’re here but not really. If Charlevoix were to start reciting Shakespearean quotes, I’m not sure you’d even notice.”
The smile she gives me is the polite, stoic one she gives customers at the motel. Her hand falls from my face. “I suppose that wouldn’t be too farfetched. I wouldn’t put it past Jackson to put headphones with audiobooks over her ears.”
She tries to drop her head again but I catch it lightly with the side of my hook, searching her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I guess I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
Talk to me, baby.
“The future, mostly. I don’t know.”
“The future?” I drop my arm from her chin, using it to wrap around her waist, tugging her forward. Her Big Joe slides across the steel ground, wrinkling the blanket I’m sitting on. “Are you having second thoughts about social working? You can change your mind, ya know?”
“I know. It’s not that.” The hair tickling her cheek is blown away from her skin with the pucker of her lips. It’s much longer now than it was two months ago. The peak of her bangs is past her eye now, and she picks a few stray pieces from her eyelashes. “It’s just the future in general.” She tells me with a huff. “There are so many unknown variables. It’s starting to petrify me, Rumor. I can’t sleep.” There’s a void in her eyes. Darkness taking over. And that petrifies me. “I don’t like not knowing everything is going to be okay.”
“Baby, what wouldn’t be okay?”
A beat goes by. One. Two. Three.
Her bottom lip starts to shake, and I feel like I’ve been shot in the chest at the sight of it.
“When I was a kid, my parents used to ask Lenox and me what we wanted to be when we grew up. Lenox always said she wanted to be a cowgirl. Me? I wanted to be happy.”
“Happy?”
“Happy. It’s an odd answer for a kid but it was the only one that made sense to me. A spectacular life for me would be one where I laughed every day. Where a smile was more frequent than a frown and there were lots of lost treasures to save. Beyond happiness, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.”
“Are you saying you don’t want to be happy anymore?”
“No, I do. I just...” She bites at her lips, eyes cast downward. “I’m saying that I want other people to be happy more, and it sort of kills me I’m not in control of it.”
This. Girl.
The multitude of her authenticity astounds me. She is genuine. She is kind. She is considerate.
She is everything a person should be, and how lucky am I to have been saved by her?
“You’re kind of magnificent, Ace.” I pull our joined hands to my chest, closer to the pounding heart. “You’re going to be one hell of a social worker.”
Her lips curve. It’s slight. Not a full smile, but progress. “You think so?”
“Ace, I’ve never been more positive about anything in my life. Your consideration for others isn’t artificial. It’s real. You were made for this job.”
“Thank you.” Her words hold nothing but sincerity. When she rests her hand on my thigh, her thumb moving slowly across the denim there, my breaths become stilted. “You’ll be amazing at computer science or whatever you choose to do.”
“I sure hope so.” I didn’t believe that yesterday, but now, with her hand in mine and her eyes coming back to life, I believe.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been ignoring you these past few days. My brain
sort of feels like that one time I forgot to take the plastic wrap off a microwavable brownie.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Gooey and slightly flaming.”
My laughter is sudden and low. The sound seems to medicate her. I watch with warmth in my chest as her cheeks pink with a giggle.
“You’re crazy, Ace.”
“But the good kind though, right?”
Leaning forward, we’re an inch apart. So close I can feel her breath on the tip of my nose. “You’re the best kind of goddamn crazy there is. There’s nobody like you.”
“You say that like you’ve met everybody there is. Like you’re certain.”
“I am. Don’t need to meet billions of people to know you’re one of a kind. You, Alma Underwood, broke down my walls with your smile faster than anybody with a hammer could’ve. First night I met you I was showing you my nub, giving you hints about my mom and letting you slather green paint between my toes.”
The pressure on my thigh increases. “I’m happy you chose green. That it’s your favorite color. Nobody ever chooses it, and I like that you stand out. It’s the first pair my eyes go to. It seems fitting.”
“Confession? Green isn’t my favorite color. Or, it didn’t use to be. It is now.”
Her nose wrinkles. “You didn’t choose forest green because it’s been your favorite color for all of eternity?”
“Nah, Ace.” Slowly pulling my hand from hers, I run my thumb just below her eyelid. “I chose it because it matched your eyes. Eyes I wasn’t afraid to let see me.”
Her breath catches.
“I didn’t understand what they were doing to me then. I do now.”
“What were they doing?”
“Healing.”
The silence that follows my admission isn’t awkward at all but rather the most soothing moment of my life. It’s a comfort I found only with myself, but I know now it’s better to share it with her.
The look in her eyes is almost my undoing. It isn’t just stars I see. It’s the rebirth of a galaxy, lit up and glowing right in front of my eyes. Just for me.
The effect it has on me is sweeping. I almost can’t breathe. The tiny violins are deafening, and I swear I feel pieces of my soul leave my body and find more peace with her.
I don’t know what this feeling is. It’s terrifying and thrilling all at once. My stomach has bottomed out and my hands are clammy, but I can’t stop smiling.
And I think, maybe, I’m in love with her.
“Rumor? Can I ask you something?”
“Ace, you can ask me anything.”
She smiles and holy shit it’s a real one.
“Why do you call me Ace? Is it because my name starts with A?”
As much as the truth is going to reveal, I don’t even think about lying to her.
“A few months ago, life dealt me a really shitty hand. I shuffled that damn deck for weeks. I came up empty.” I palm her cheek gently, caressing the soft skin with my callused fingertips. “One day, in this very spot, I looked at my hand and right there on the very top was an ace.”
Her hand falls over mine, eyes wondrous and wandering through the meaning of my words. The light in her returns, luminescent and dazzling. “I’m your ace.”
“You’re my ace.” Stretching upward, I breathe in her scent and press my lips to her forehead. Finally. “I’ve been winning ever since.”
21
Curveball
Alma
When I was in the fifth grade, I tried my hand at softball. I enjoyed it up until the last game of the season. I was standing at home base, nervous hands wrapped tightly around my bat, eyes on the pitcher.
I remember watching her chest expand when she took a labored breath, expelling her nerves. I remember the slap her glove made when it smacked her thigh and she wound up her pitch. I remember the bright yellow ball as it sailed toward me and the bob of my bat as I got ready to swing.
That’s when everything went wrong.
Instead of flying across the plate, the ball curved and smacked me right in the mouth.
I screamed.
Dropping my bat, I bent at the waist, holding my hands to my mouth. Blood seeped between the cracks of my little fingers and hit the dirt below me in steady drips.
Leaping over the fence, my dad sprinted across the field, arms stretched and eyes ready to inspect the damage.
The tears on my face were monstrous, soaking the collar of my shirt while I wailed and begged my dad to count and make sure all my teeth were still in my head.
They were. But I never played a game of softball again.
You could say I was scared. Or maybe I was just pissed that softball wasn’t actually played with a soft ball.
Nevertheless, I’ve been free of curveballs since. I stopped looking for them to hit me because where would they come from?
Life.
That’s where.
Standing in that lobby, poised in front of an old man, I got hit with my second curveball. And it was so much worse than the first time.
“Hey, do you want to stop for dinner?”
“Hm?” My eyes are weighted when I pull them from the windshield. Turning my head, I look at Lenox perched behind the steering wheel. The movement feels colossal. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you wanted to stop for dinner.”
A yawn tears out of me. “Sure.”
Lenox slows at a stop sign. Peering into her rearview mirror, she seems satisfied finding the absence of any headlights creeping up behind us. She throws the car in park. “Alright, what gives?”
“What?”
Her upper body spins, giving me as much attention as the restrictive seatbelt will allow. “You’ve been a zombie for almost a week. I haven’t heard you talk about one lost treasure, haven’t seen you with your notebook, Rumor said he finds you staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping in the middle of the night. Are you sick?”
My chest hurts this time, and if I could open myself up, I bet I’d find it bleeding the same way my mouth was.
The pain is significantly higher and even after eight days, it hasn’t lightened. I know it’s because it wasn’t a ten-year-old girl with muscles the size of green beans behind the plate. It was life that hit me.
And there’s nothing more forceful.
Reaching across the console, Lenox presses her balmy hand to my cheek. “Your skin looks like old dishwater.”
“Rumor said the same thing.”
“In those words? I highly doubt that. That guy is obsessed with you.”
The butterflies I would typically feel with her words are drowned out by the recurring ache. “He said I looked like I was sleeping through life.”
“Well, I don’t disagree. You’re starting to sweat. What the hell is wrong with you, A? And don’t you dare say nothing.”
“Curveball.”
“Curveball? What is that supposed to mean?”
Headlights light up the old Toyota we’re in. I look over my shoulder, spotting a truck rolling to a stop behind us. “You should drive.”
“They can wait.”
Beep!
“Actually, it doesn’t sound like they can, Len.”
“Oh for the love of––" Her seatbelt disengages with an aggressive punch of her thumb. The bottom of her shoe makes contact with the door and it flings open. “Go around!”
“Lenox.” I slide down into my seat. “Oh my God.”
Half her body exits the car, one hand braced on the door handle and the other on the headrest of her seat, she shouts into the afternoon air. “My sister is having a teenage crisis! She may be pregnant with a homeless man’s child. Show some respect!”
I throw my hands over my face, the skin beneath my fingers heating. A noncommittal laugh escapes my lips.
Tires squeal and the truck weaves, leaving Lenox satisfied as she slams the door shut and pushes the lock down with her finger. “So, do we have ourselves a Lenox Jr. on the way or what?”
I fi
nd her in my peripheral vision. “Lenox Jr? What if it’s a boy?”
“Lenox is a unisex name.”
I snicker, a rare smile creeping up my face. “I’m not pregnant.”
“Duh.” Her seatbelt is refastened with a click. “Can you imagine what Shepherd would do to Rumor?”
A shiver runs through me.
“Dad would totally get over it and try to build that kid a crib from scratch. But Shep?”
“Oh, he’d kill him,” I say, propping my foot on the dash. “And why was teenage pregnancy the first thing that came to mind? Rumor isn’t even my boyfriend.”
The skepticism on her face is vivid. “Are you sure about that?”
No.
Checking her mirrors, she starts driving again. “My twintuition is giving me major lovey-dovey vibes. You like him, don’t you?”
I’d give up all my treasures just to keep one. Him.
“He kissed me.”
“Hold up!” The car groans when she hits the breaks suddenly. The force of the jerk has my forehead making contact with my kneecap.
“Shit! Lenox, what the crap? I think you just gave me a concussion.”
“Screw the concussion. Did you just say he kissed you? Was tongue involved? Did he get handsy? Did you do the Princess Diaries leg pop?”
“It was on the forehead.”
“The forehead?”
It doesn’t sound like much, but wow it was everything. The second his tender lips floated across my skin tentatively, I stopped thinking about how I was supposed to break his heart and let him capture mine instead. If I would’ve been standing, my leg would’ve been popping, right before my knees gave out at his words that followed.
I’ve been winning ever since.
“You’re telling me Rumor kissed you, basically claiming you as his girl, and you’re still walking around like you did when George was killed off Grey’s Anatomy?”
The car starts rolling again and I drop my knee, keeping both feet planted firmly on the floor for what I have to tell her next. “I found Rumor’s mom.”
