by Kara Bietz
I felt a tiny pinch of guilt, watching Ms. Vance open her front door to Officer Kapinski. The shame on her face was visible even as the sun dipped below the horizon and started to turn the world purple.
Camille whispered to me the next day in fourth period, “Elijah got suspended. For a month.”
I tried to look shocked. I tried to look sorry.
All I felt was numb and confused.
And now he’s in my house, and I still can’t decide what I’m supposed to feel. There were things we shared three years ago, before he broke the window. Things that can’t be erased by a monthlong suspension and a three-year move to Houston. But he still left me. Without an explanation and without saying goodbye.
I throw my English homework on the floor. There’s no way I’m going to be able to concentrate on anything else tonight. My head is filled with Elijah.
I find Birdie in the living room, a stretch of quilting across her lap and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. The TV is on, but the volume is turned way down, as some late-night talk show host in a fancy suit delivers his monologue.
I sit down next to Birdie on the couch and let my head fall back. The burning in my ribs has mostly dulled to a slight buzz now. Maybe there will be a bruise there tomorrow.
“How was practice?” she asks, her voice quiet as she works the needle in and out of her squares at a dizzying pace.
“Fine.”
“Now, Julian, let’s not be like that,” she says. “The good book says to love thy neighbor.”
I try not to roll my eyes, because even though she’s not looking right at me, I’m convinced Birdie can hear things like that.
“The good book says thou shalt not do a lot of things that Elijah Vance has done,” I mumble.
“Listen, I know you’re upset,” she says.
“Upset? I’m not upset,” I say.
“Now, Julian…” That’s twice she’s “Now, Julian-ed” me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Birdie lets out a long, low sigh. “Pastor Ernie told me about the Vances’ situation last weekend. I told him I would get in touch with Ms. Vance and see if we couldn’t work something out. Robin wanted Elijah to start school at Crenshaw right away instead of waiting until they were ready to move back. She was in a bind, Julian. We’ve got the room. I wasn’t going to turn my back on a family in need.”
“But three years ago—”
“That boy has more than done his penance for that now. And that’s the last I want to hear about it. Yes?” Birdie’s tone goes firm.
“Yes, ma’am.” I know when I’m about to get “Now, Julian-ed” again.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, the muffled canned laughter from the TV the only noise in the room. “Where has he been for the past three years?” I ask.
Birdie shakes her head next to me. “Elijah will tell you in his own good time.”
I wonder what Birdie would think if she knew I was the one who got Elijah in trouble in the first place. Even though we were friends. Even though at some point we were probably on our way to being much more than friends, right before he broke that window.
“He left without even saying goodbye to me,” I say, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. I don’t want to admit that even three years without him can’t dull the hurt I feel now when I see him. As painful as it was the day I realized he was gone.
“He’ll only be living with us for a short time. Maybe it’ll do Elijah some good to spend time with you again,” she says, her face softening into a smile. She squeezes my shoulder. “You’re a good boy, Julian.”
I grab a bottle of water from the fridge, shake a couple of ibuprofen into my mouth, and head back to my room. I take a long look at the guest room door. No light shines from underneath, so I’m guessing Elijah has gone to sleep.
I crawl into bed and pull the blanket up to my ears.
· six ·
ELIJAH
I’ve got bats in my stomach when I wake up on Tuesday morning. Maybe worse than bats. Maybe barn owls or vultures.
Ms. Birdie puts a plate of pancakes in front of me with fresh fruit on the side. “Going to need a little energy for your first day back,” she says. “This isn’t an everyday breakfast, but I thought you could use a little comfort food this morning.” She winks.
“Thanks,” I mumble, trying to swallow a bite or two.
“You’ve got nothing to be nervous about, you know,” she says, sitting down across from me. “That old Coach Marcus is going to let you on the team. Don’t let him fill your head with that ‘unofficial tryout’ business. You’re tougher than a pine knot, Elijah.”
“I haven’t played in three years,” I admit to her, dragging a piece of pancake through the warm syrup. “Coley and Frankie needed me at home.”
“I firmly believe football is like riding a bike. Once you lace those pads up, you’re going to be fine. Muscle memory. Don’t you get yourself all worked up before you even get your cleats in the grass. You’ll be okay,” she says, rubbing her palm across my back.
“What about Julian?” I ask. “Does he know?”
“Not yet,” she says.
I’m about to protest when she suddenly stands up from her kitchen stool, cutting me off. “And speak of the devil! Good morning, sunshine.” She laughs.
Julian grunts from where he stands by the doorway and grabs a protein shake from the refrigerator before heading back down the hallway toward the bathroom.
“He’s about as friendly as a porcupine in the mornings.” Ms. Birdie smiles at me when he disappears. “But don’t you worry about him. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to have you back on the team. You can tell him on your walk to school.”
Twenty minutes later, Camille Robles is waiting for us at the end of the driveway, and I still haven’t told Julian.
“Elijah Vance,” she says, running up to me and wrapping her arms around my neck. “Oh my GOD. We all thought you were dead! Or in prison!”
I try really hard not to roll my eyes. I heard the whispers from some of the people in Meridien right after I was suspended. Loudmouths who made comments about me eventually sharing a cell with my father and making bets on how long it would take before I did something bad enough to be shipped up to Huntsville just like him. It was the cruelest of the cruel remarks we endured in the few weeks between my suspension and when we left Meridien. For some reason, I don’t think Camille realizes just how much it stings, and I almost forgive her for it. Is that me getting numb to it? Or just forgetting how nasty things got right before we left?
“Uh… not dead. Or, uh… or the other thing,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush. I haven’t seen Camille in years, but she doesn’t seem to have changed much. Same giant curly hair. Same long, skinny frame.
“Let me look at you!” she says, holding my arm up like she’s checking under the hood of a car. “That hair! I’m loving it!” She touches the top of my head and ruffles it a little bit.
“Camille, knock it off,” Julian says.
I try to throw him a thank you glance, but he’s not looking at me. The apples of his cheeks are pink.
“So, where have you been all these years?” Camille says, adjusting her backpack and falling in step between Julian and me.
“Uh… well,” I mumble.
“Out with it,” she says, knocking me with her elbow.
“We were in Houston,” I say, biting the inside of my lip and hoping she doesn’t ask any more questions.
“Oh, I have people in Houston,” she says, launching into a long description of aunts, uncles, and cousins twice removed.
I’m glad Camille is so good at filling the silence, because Julian hasn’t said two words to me since last night when he showed me the guest room. He did wait for me this morning before heading out to walk to school, but when I said good morning, he just kind of smirked.
As we get closer to the school, the football field is the first thing I see. A tiny nugget of happiness breaks open in my chest
when I see the yards and yards of green grass and the bright yellow goalposts at each end of the field. I can’t wait to get back out there.
“And my cousin Annie’s family moved to Sugar Land when I was just a baby. Right after that hurricane.” Camille is still talking about people she knows in Houston. “My mom says she tried to convince her to come here, but Annie says there’s no way she’s going to live near the ocean anymore. And who can blame her, really? All that water nearly swallowed up her house, and my mom wants her to live right on the shore again? Shit,” Camille says, sucking her teeth. “For a college professor who is supposed to be smart, sometimes my mom makes zero sense.” Camille’s mother has been teaching women’s and gender studies at Coastal Texas Community College our whole lives. Her dad is the middle school Spanish teacher. It’s only because of him that I know how to properly say “No hablo español muy bien.” I can also ask directions to a library if I ever find myself lost in Puerto Rico. ¿Dónde está la biblioteca? It’s only because of Camille that our entire third-grade class knew all the good Spanish swears. Camille would charge us twenty-five cents per swear lesson. Honestly, half of my third-grade class could have taught us those swears, but Camille was the first to suggest it and then monetize it. By the time she got caught at the end of the school year, the whole third grade at Meridien Elementary School already had a full repertoire. When she finally did get caught, our teacher, Mrs. Bowles, told Camille she had a real keen eye for business. Third grade with Mrs. Bowles was probably the last time I liked school. Or felt like maybe I was kind of good at it sometimes. It wasn’t that I didn’t try. It was more like trouble found me a lot of the time. Around the end of eighth grade, though, it was pretty obvious that I was going to have to try a little harder. Smiling my way out of things wasn’t going to work in high school, and I knew football would be the first thing I’d lose if I screwed up.
I wouldn’t exactly say I’m about to be sick as we approach the front steps of the school, but I can’t rule out the possibility that I will lose that stack of Ms. Birdie’s pancakes, either. I leave Camille and Julian standing on the front steps as I enter the building, barely able to mumble a goodbye as I turn and pull open the door. Camille waves and practically shouts that she’ll see me later, but Julian simply stares after me.
I stand just inside the front entrance, throngs of kids passing by. A few of them bump into me like I’m not even there, but I can’t move yet. I concentrate on breathing and try to remember how to get to the guidance counselor’s office from here. Pointing my feet in the right direction, I join the fray and keep my head down.
“You new?” a boy with scruffy facial hair says to me right outside the guidance office.
“Not exactly,” I say, searching my head for the right words to explain exactly what I am.
“Oh, jeez. Vance?” The kid sticks out his hand for me to shake. “Connors!” He points to his chest.
“Nate? Hey, man… it’s good to see you,” I smile. Nate Connors and Julian and I started playing football together when we were seven years old.
“I didn’t know you were coming back. What are you doing here?”
I shrug. “Shit, I don’t know.”
Connors laughs. “You find me if you need anything, all right? Hey, you coming back to the team?”
“I’ve got an unofficial tryout with Coach Marcus this afternoon,” I tell him as the bell overhead rings, and he backs away from the office toward his first-period class.
“Excellent!” He pumps his fist above his head and takes off jogging the rest of the way down the long hall.
Excellent. Let’s hope I get the same reception from Julian when he finds out I’ll be at football practice this afternoon.
I get a pretty good schedule from my guidance counselor, Ms. Woods, plus a ton of unsolicited advice about keeping my head on straight and staying out of trouble. She throws in a few jabs about the football team, too. I remember she was always in the front row of the bleachers for every single game, face paint on her cheeks and her bright blue pom-poms in her lap.
“See if you can help them out on that left-side defense.” Ms. Woods scowls at me as I leave her office.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answer, holding my paper schedule in my hand and trying to remember which way to turn to get to the English classrooms.
Most of my first day back at Crenshaw goes exactly the same as the morning. I shuffle my way through the hallways, looking down, trying to remember how to navigate the labyrinth of classrooms. A handful of kids recognize me and smile. Another handful of kids recognize me and scowl. Mostly I’m ignored, which is perfectly fine with me. The less attention I draw to myself, the better.
A lot of my classrooms overlook the big expanse of green grass behind the school, and I find myself just staring at it and then my watch, counting down the hours and then minutes before I’m back on the field. It has been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve held a football or dug my cleats into the grass.
“Why don’t you try out for the team here?” Frankie asked me one summer afternoon before tenth grade. She was rocking back and forth, holding a three-month-old Coley up on her shoulder in our cramped apartment.
“I don’t really miss it,” I lied, watching the way my niece’s curls already framed her tiny little face as she fussed against the crook of her mother’s neck. I knew that playing football again was going to take up every second of my free time. And there was no way I was going to leave Frankie to care for Coley all by herself. Ma was always so exhausted when she got home from work that Frankie tried not to ask her to help out with Coley too much. Frankie was alone with the baby all day long while she finished high school online. Helping out with Coley, feeding her, and playing with her when I got home from school was the least I could do. There was no way I could tell Frankie that. She would have felt guilty and tried to force me to try out for the team anyway.
The truth was that I missed football every day. Just like I missed Julian every day. When Coach Marcus decided a monthlong suspension was what I needed after I broke the window to his office, Ma started packing up the house. Frankie was the only person who ever knew why I was trying to break into the coach’s office. I sometimes wonder if Coach Marcus would’ve suspended me if he’d known I was trying to steal the car wash money for Frankie and the baby.
I know it was Julian who tip-lined me. He was standing right behind me after I broke the window. I have no idea if he knows that I know it was him. He asked me flat out as we stood there if I was breaking in to steal the car wash money we had just locked up in Coach Marcus’s desk. As much as I wanted to deny it, I was like a deer in headlights. I couldn’t lie to him; instead, I just pathetically nodded my head when he asked. Frankie had already started hiding her growing belly from her bad-news boyfriend, Ty, and the rest of Meridien, under long T-shirts and leggings.
“We need a fresh start. Your uncle Jacob has gotten me a job in Houston,” Ma told us as she put together the moving boxes.
I started to protest.
“I don’t want to hear another word about it, Elijah. Frankie needs to raise her baby away from that boyfriend and Meridien. This town doesn’t seem to be doing you any favors, either.” She handed me a suitcase and told me to start packing.
One day, we just left. Five AM disappearance. Like we were never here to begin with. That morning, I watched Julian’s front door, willing him to wake up and see us leaving. Watch us pack everything we owned into a small U-Haul and my mother’s minivan and drive away.
“Just go knock on his window,” Frankie said, loading another box into the back of Ma’s minivan.
I didn’t, though. I couldn’t.
I thought about Julian all the way to Houston. I thought about him when we unpacked our things in the shitty efficiency apartment Uncle Jacob found for us after we lived with him for two weeks. I thought about Julian when we moved into a slightly bigger apartment a few months later, Frankie’s expanding belly knocking things off the shelves. I thought abou
t him when Frankie got too big to tie her own shoes, and I definitely thought about him when Coley was born, a mess of dark curls and a cry that could peel paint from the walls. I honestly just couldn’t stop thinking about him while we were away.
On the bus to Meridien just yesterday, I thought about Julian again. What it would feel like to put cleats on and play with him again. In Houston, football would have meant getting onto the field without him. But now that I finally have the chance to suit up with him again? All I feel is sick to my stomach.
· seven ·
JULIAN
I spend the day on the lookout for Elijah. I’m so focused on knowing where he is at all times, I’m barely paying attention in class. He hasn’t shown up to any of my classes by lunchtime, and all that’s left are US history and football.
At lunch, all anyone can talk about is Elijah.
“I heard he was in prison, just like his dad,” a girl whispers, scooping a heap of syrupy fruit cocktail onto her lunch tray. I roll my eyes. That “Elijah ended up in prison” theory made the rounds when he never returned from his suspension, and it’s just as stupid now as it was then. Maybe even more so.
“He’s in my physics class. He sat in the back and never even took out a pencil,” another guy says when I pass his table.
“I can’t believe Ms. Jackson is letting him stay at her house.”
“I can’t believe they’re letting him back on the football team.”
“Wait, what?” I stop short at a table full of marching band kids. Camille’s drum major ex-boyfriend, Evan, is holding court in the middle of the percussion section. I’ve always thought Evan was a giant ass, and I’m very glad Camille finally came to the same conclusion last year.
“Yeah, I heard Coach Marcus in the hallway this morning. Something about everyone deserving a second chance, blah blah blah,” Evan tells me. “Everyone better hide their wallets,” he says to his friends. They all reward his smart-ass comment with hearty laughter.
“Are you sure you heard that?” I ask him.
