Wait, the elementary school had let out? Damn, how long had I been out there?
I stood up suddenly. “I have to go home,” I said. I didn’t want to go home, but I couldn’t exactly stay there all night. My mom would have the FBI out scouting the streets for me. Besides, my skin was starting to feel too tight for my body, like it was being stretched across my bones and all I wanted to do was claw myself out. “Thanks for, um, talking to me, I guess.”
I couldn’t hear anything but the pounding in my ears as I turned and started to walk down the sidewalk. I got all of ten steps away before I realized I had no idea where I was.
I turned back around and found myself staring at Kellen’s chest. I hadn’t even heard him get up and follow me.
“I don’t know how to get home from here,” I whispered.
Kellen’s body was inches from mine. I felt breathless and slightly nauseous, like my stomach might drop out of my butt any second. I didn’t know why I was feeling this way. Maybe I’d gotten the flu. Maybe I’d eaten some bad tacos at lunch.
“Fortunately, you are looking at someone who has spent the past two years biking around this entire county,” he said. “I know bikes are kind of beneath you, but would you like a ride home?”
I could hear the smile in his voice and, sure enough, when I finally looked up he was grinning at me. I couldn’t take my eyes off his smile and I found myself wondering how he got that chip in his tooth. Another small part of me wondered why I cared, but it was a part that was getting smaller and smaller by the minute.
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah, thanks.”
Kellen grabbed my hand and lead me back to his bike and, surprisingly, I didn’t pull away. I let Kellen lead me forward as I stared at our hands, meshed together like puzzle pieces. I could feel my skin start to relax a little. How did he do that?
Kellen got on the bike and I stood on the pegs sticking out of the back wheel, resting my hands on his shoulders. I felt my body tense when the bike started moving and a million thoughts ran through my brain.
I don’t trust this glorified toy.
What if I fall off?
These pegs aren’t sturdy.
What if the pegs break?
I’m not very sturdy.
What if a car drives by and the force knocks me to the ground and I get run over?
These thoughts were all I had. Until I heard the sound of Kellen laugh, and then everything changed. The bike felt stronger. The wind no longer seemed so threatening. It actually felt good against my cheeks. I felt less afraid. I felt stronger.
I wasn’t sure how one sound – one laugh – could cause such a huge shift in the world, but I swore it did.
I thought about what I told Kellen earlier and I thought about what he said. I realized he was right. It really had been simpler than I’d thought. That first step had been hard – opening up to someone and being vulnerable. It had felt like I’d been taking a step out of a slab of cement. It had felt almost impossible. But I did it. I did it and now I was standing on the back of a bike as a boy that I barely knew brought me home, and all I felt was this incredible sensation of freedom. I had been carrying that secret with me for a long time, keeping it caged up and locked away, but now that it was out I felt somehow lighter. I felt free.
I’d never told anyone that story before, not even Dr. M.
But, hey, I’d also never ridden on the back of somebody’s pedal-powered bike before.
Not until today.
As Kellen rode down the street I heard a sound I almost didn’t recognize. It was another laugh, a different laugh.
It was my laugh.
I had forgotten how good laughter felt.
Chapter 15
A Single Breath
A single word
A single breath
Can make it all better
Take all the pain away
A heavy heart
Becomes light as a feather
A shattered soul
Pieces itself back together
A girl, scarred and bruised
Begins to heal
A single word
A single breath
Can open the sky
Can awaken the flowers
Can unearth fields of green
A single word
A single breath
Can reveal to a girl, scarred and bruised
A world she’s been too afraid to see
“So what’s your name?” I asked as we rounded the corner on Kellen’s bike.
“My name? You know my name,” Kellen said, confused.
“No, I mean your last name. I have a thing about riding on bikes with boys and not knowing their whole name.”
Being this curious was unusual for me, but I couldn’t help it.
“The name is Kellen Oliver Jordan.”
“Oliver?” I asked.
“Don’t make fun of my name.”
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s just not your typical middle name. Is it a family name?”
“Yeah,” Kellen said, laughing. “If my grandfather was a cartoon cat.”
“What?”
“Oliver and Company is one of my mom’s favorite movies. She named me after the cat.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, completely serious.
“Glad you approve,” he replied, mimicking what I’d said to him when we first met and he complimented my name. “Anyways, I’m nineteen years old and enjoy long walks on the beach, romantic dinners, and – ”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
“Really,” Kellen said, laughing. “Is there any other serious info you need? My student ID? Social security number? Cereal preference?”
“Well, now that you mention it, favorite cereal is kind of a deal breaker.”
“Frosted Flakes,” Kellen said. “Because – ”
“Don’t say it.”
“They’re gr-r-reat!”
“Pull over,” I said, but then laughed. “So you’re nineteen?”
“Yeah, I had to repeat a year because of all the time I missed when I was in rehab getting my shit together.”
“Excuse me?”
“Rehab is just a fancy name for the place where you get your shit together,” Kellen said matter-of-factly.
“Good to know,” I said. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, but only if I get to ask you one too.”
“Okay, how’d you get that chip in your tooth?”
“You noticed the chip,” he said. I could hear the amusement in his voice – practically see the grin on his face.
“I… well…” My face felt hot. “Imperfections are what stand out,” I said, trying not to sound flustered.
“Imperfections make for really good stories too,” Kellen said with that same amused tone. “I chipped my tooth when I rode my bike into a pole.”
“How did you..?” I started, but then I remembered that Kellen introduced himself to me by riding into a trashcan.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Kellen said, “but I have a legitimate excuse. I was bringing food to the homeless shelter I volunteer at and I had a little too much in my hand and, well, bam.”
“Bam?”
“I imagine that’s the sound it made when my tooth collided with the metal,”
“I see. So you volunteer at a homeless shelter?”
“I try to whenever I can. I work at a small bookstore and I help my mom at her preschool sometimes, so I don’t get over there as much as I’d like to.”
“What an underachiever,” I said sarcastically, thinking that a productive day for me was surviving school and taking a nap when I got home. “Oh, I forgot to give you my address. It’s 45 Carrier Street.”
“I know exactly where that is,” Kellen said.
“You do?”
Was bike boy, Kellen Oliver Jordan a creepy stalker?
“I told you,” he said. “I know this county inside and out. For example, there’s this twenty-four
hour bowling alley on Polk Street, you know, on the other side of town. Have you heard of it?”
“I’m not really a bowler.”
And I couldn’t imagine what the purpose was for a twenty-four hour bowling alley.
“Twenty-three Polk Street. You make a right on 60th Ave and drive past Mickey’s Waffle House until you get to Cranston Street. You take a left there and then Polk is a little farther on your right,” Kellen said, rattling off the address.
Nope, not a creepy stalker. Just a complete weirdo.
“Anyways,” he continued. “I rode there around one in the morning one time because my little brother woke up from a nightmare and the only thing that could ease his mind was a stack of chocolate chip waffles.”
“The twenty-four hour bowling alley sells waffles?”
“No, Mickey’s Waffle House is also open twenty-four hours and he sells the waffles. Keep up, Carson.”
This county was more nocturnal than I had thought.
“So, where does the bowling alley fit into this?”
“Well, after we had the waffles we were both wide awake, so I rode around and that’s when we found the bowling alley. We ended up playing until five in the morning.”
“How old is your brother?”
“Eight. He was seven at the time.”
“You kept your seven-year-old brother out until five in the morning?”
“Hey, it would have been crueler to bring him home to my mom all hyped up on chocolate and syrup.”
I laughed. “What’s his name?”
“Anthony. But he only goes by Tony. He’ll actually ignore anyone that tries to call him Anthony.”
I liked Tony the munchkin-human already.
“I connect with Tony on a spiritual level,” I said. “My actual name is Juliet. Juliet Carson Reynolds, but I will literally kick you in the shins if you call me Juliet.”
“I will never call you Juliet,” Kellen said.
“Good.”
“I sort of need my shins operating at full capacity to ride.”
I rolled my eyes, not that Kellen could see. “So what’s your question, Mr. Comedian.”
“I’m saving mine.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence and I thought about how even though Kellen Jordan was a weirdo, I didn’t mind spending time with him.
When we finally got to my house, Kellen insisted on walking me up to the door.
“I think I can make it in without getting lost,” I said. “I’ve been doing it for years.”
“You never know what could happen,” he said. “There could be a hungry bear or a rabid squirrel.”
So together we took the excruciatingly long walk that apparently required an escort.
“Wow, we made it without running into any squirrels,” I said when we reached the door.
“We got very lucky,” he said. Kellen put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out. “I found this on the sidewalk after I got out of therapy the day we met,” he said. “Is it yours?”
So Kellen Oliver Jordan wasn’t a creepy stalker, but he did seem to be a napkin thief.
“That's mine,” I said as I snatched my napkin away from him. I had to have dropped it when I saw a random guy on a bicycle riding straight towards me the other day. I could feel my muscles tensing back up, switching back to defensive mode.
“I thought it might be yours.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why? Because I just have that depressed girl look to me?”
“No, because you have a poetic look to you.”
This caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure what to say and suddenly my throat felt like it had been brushed with glue. “You read it,” I said quietly. It was more of a statement than a question.
“I did,” Kellen said. “I didn’t mean to violate your privacy or anything, I just – ”
“You just what?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I saw a napkin. I picked it up. It had writing on it, so I read it. I didn’t know where it came from or who it belonged to, but I didn’t want just to leave it there on the sidewalk. That seemed, I don’t know, disrespectful.”
I looked down at the napkin. The words running across the fabric were a little smudged, but there were no grease stains or ketchup splotches or anything like that. Kellen had been about as respectful as you could be with a disposable napkin.
“I didn’t know it was yours,” Kellen continued, “but then I talked to you in the office that second time and you said something that reminded me of the napkin. You said something about the word sorry and how people can’t just say they’re sorry, but they actually have to do something to fix what they’re sorry for.”
“Of course, the way you worded it was much better than that,” he added with a smile. “And when you said it I heard your voice reading what was written on the napkin and I knew it had to be yours. You’ve got this style, Carson. The way you talk and the way you write, it’s so raw and honest. Some people’s words are just words, but your words are more. They’re stories.”
I honestly didn’t know what to say. For years I had been convinced that people couldn’t hear anything when I spoke, that they just stopped listening when they saw me open my mouth because they just didn’t care. But here was this boy, this boy that I hardly knew, and he was saying he not only heard words from my mouth, but stories too. I didn’t know how to respond.
So naturally I said the first defensive thing that popped into my head.
“So let me guess, you're going to ask me why I'm so cynical? Why my writing is so depressing?” I asked.
Kellen shook his head and his eyebrows scrunched together. He looked genuinely confused.
“No, why would I do that? You wrote what you felt at that moment. Who am I to judge how you felt?”
“Maybe you should be my therapist,” I mumbled.
Kellen laughed. “Dr. Windemere means well,” he said. “She just takes some getting used to.”
I wondered how many more sessions it would take before I got used to Dr. M, being that I still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that her name wasn’t really Dr. M.
I wanted to ask Kellen something, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why it mattered. I tried to stuff the question down my throat. I tried to lasso it up with my intestines so it couldn’t escape, but the damn thing wriggled free and the next thing I knew I felt the question tap dance across my lips.
“So what did you think?” I asked. “What did you think of my writing?”
Kellen paused for a minute and looked into my eyes.
He hated it.
He hated it. He hated it. He hated it.
“I'm not going to say I liked it –”
Yep, he hated it.
“ – because that would be like saying I liked your pain. I mean, when someone tells you they have cancer, you don't say 'congratulations' do you?”
“No,” I said.
“I don't like your pain, but I can appreciate the beauty of what you wrote,” Kellen added. “It's sad, but the honesty of it is beautiful. Like with what you said about being sorry.”
I felt a little flutter in my chest, which made me kind of want to bash my head through the front window. I never cared if I had anyone’s approval, so why all of a sudden did it make me happy to get approval from Kellen?
“My mom found this in my room,” I said as I held up the napkin. “She gave it to the therapist. She doesn’t understand why I wrote what I wrote.”
“It’s hard to understand what someone says if you can’t relate to it, and it's hard to relate to it if you haven't stood where they've stood,” Kellen said.
“Are you saying you've stood where I'm standing?” I asked.
“No,” Kellen said. “I'm not going to disrespect your feelings by saying they're generic like that. I'm just saying I can relate to what you wrote, so maybe at one time I stood somewhere similar to where you are.”
I thought about that and the more I thought about it, the less alone I felt. The more I
thought about it, the more I realized how alone I had actually been feeling.
“You know, you have a style to you too,” I said.
“Really?” Kellen asked, a grin spreading across his face. “And what kind of style is that?”
“You have a sort of fortune cookie meets life coach thing going on,” I said.
“Ugh,” he groaned. “I hate life coaches. You can’t ‘coach’ someone at life. I mean think about it, you’re still going through life yourself. That would be like a person calling themselves a basketball coach when they’re still learning how to dribble.”
“You like basketball?” I asked.
“Like basketball? No, I like peanut butter sandwiches. I love basketball,” he said.
I smiled, but I could feel a sadness starting to pull at me. I tried to shake it off.
“But you hate life coaches?”
“With a passion,” he said.
“And here I thought I was potentially talking to the nicest person on the planet,” I said.
Kellen grinned. “We all have our flaws.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I held up the napkin.
“So, what, is this like my glass slipper? Do you think I’m Cinderella or something?”
Kellen shook his head. “No, you’re not Cinderella at all. You don’t need a prince to save you. You’re more of a kickass warrior princess, like Mulan.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re quite knowledgeable about Disney princesses.”
“Hey now,” he said. “Mulan is a quality movie about breaking stereotypes and beating the bad guys with skill and badassery. Plus, my mom has a preschool. Knowing every Disney princess is a requirement for volunteering there.”
“Hmmmm.” I looked down at my napkin again and noticed something I hadn’t before. There was a fresh line of ink across the bottom right corner.
“Subtlety is not your thing,” I said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kellen said with a grin.
I held up the napkin and pointed at the seven digit phone number scribbled across the bottom.
“Like I said,” Kellen smiled as he began backing away, “we all have our flaws.”
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