“Unless what?” Kyle asks in a panic. It’s clear he now realizes we’re in trouble here.
Steve pulls out a small disposable camera and circles to the front of the car. Kyle is anxious, fidgeting with whatever he can get his hands on. He whips his head toward me. “What the hell is he doing?”
Steve snaps a few photos of the damage, then walks back to us. “Unless this finds its way to the station. I’ve got a few legal binds I need to get myself out of. This might be my golden ticket.”
I don’t move, try to hold it together, to look like I’m not fazed, but I completely and totally want to bolt. Kyle doesn’t even hesitate. He pulls his Gucci wallet from his back pocket and counts what’s left. Steve’s eyes expand as the bills fly, fanning the three of us standing in this tiny circle of lies and deceit.
“Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty,” Kyle counts. “This is all I’ve got on me,” he says, laying the bills in Steve’s palm. Steve has wedged the wrench between his armpit and miniscule biceps while he gawks at the green in his hand. The look on his face shifts into something more sinister as Kyle backs away.
“This ain’t enough,” he says.
“What do you want?” Kyle asks, fear in his voice.
“What do you think your freedom is worth?”
Kyle looks to me, per the usual. I raise my eyes from the grimy floor and shake my head, silently beg him not to do this, not to dig this hole even deeper. He ignores my plea, also per the usual.
“I’ll withdraw my savings if you keep your mouth shut.”
“How much?”
“Five grand.”
Steve pulls the wrench from his arm and smiles. “Ain’t your dad like the real estate king of Clifton?”
Kyle swallows. I pinch the skin between my eyes, close them tight. I can’t watch this train wreck another second. Or in this case, two-car pileup. “We’re not struggling, if that’s what you mean,” he says.
When I open my eyes, Steve is looking at me, rubbing the front of his teeth with the tip of his slimy tongue. It only accentuates the gold and I’m suddenly thinking about the jewelry Ma sold to pay her doctor bills. He looks back to Kyle, whose knees are about to buckle completely. He holds the wall to keep steady. I’m planning my exit before we’re both dead. Only one door in, one door out. No one would hear us scream, no one would know to find us here. He pokes the wrench’s tip at Kyle’s chest. Kyle inhales sharply, closing his eyes as if he’s waiting for the blow.
Steve sighs. “If I remember right, when the cops busted me on that coke, you got nothin’ but some trash pickup. Bet Daddy and his fancy lawyers helped with that. I still smell the chipped paint from the inside of my prison cell. Five grand is … a start.”
“I have restrictions on my other accounts until I’m eighteen,” Kyle stutters. “I have a limit on withdrawals without permission.”
And for the first time since we’ve been here, the black in Steve’s eyes expands, and I know now we’re making a deal with the damn devil himself. “Find a way.”
I open my mouth to speak, but I’m empty. Most things in life don’t scare me, and any other time, I’d pop that wrench from his boney fingers and make a run for it, but there’s something about his intensity that’s made me frozen. Kyle’s not looking to me for approval this round, either.
“Fine.”
Steve holds his hand out for a shake, but Kyle falls back to the chair, probably so he doesn’t faint. “Finish the car. I’ll get you whatever you want.”
Sighing, I sit on the edge of my chair, too, and think of the boy. If Kyle had been driving a little slower, a little faster, if the kid had rolled a little slower, a little faster, we wouldn’t be here.
Kyle leans over and whispers in my ear. “I’m not giving him shit. Just play along.”
I angle my head up at this stupid idiot and decide right here, right now, this is over. I’m done.
No more Steve.
No more Kyle.
No more lies.
No matter what.
birdie
The doctors give up.
They say Benny’s a vegetable. Broccoli or a carrot or something in the ground. He’ll never make it, just take him off the machine, let him go, let him “be free.” The insurance company, greedy bastards, tells Dad we’re maxed out. They won’t pay if there’s no improvement, no hope. I toss between my unforgiving sheets all night. When I awaken, all those little broken hairs along my hairline are creased and bent into tiny curls from tears I must’ve cried through the night.
I rise up, stretching my arms high overhead. The grim realization—my life will never be the same—sets in like a punch to the gut. Legs hanging off the edge of my bed, I rub my hand over the comforter’s creases, smooth them so they’re not bunched up and ruining the beautiful flower-sewn lines threaded throughout. Chomperz is sprawled out on the floor where one thick streak of sun shines through. “Hey,” I call out. He doesn’t even flick an ear, so I put on my glasses and check my phone to see a mass of texts.
VIOLET: YOUR HOROSCOPE SAYS TODAY IS A GOOD DAY FOR LETTING GO.
VIOLET: BUT I THINK IT MEANS LET GO OF THE NEGATIVITY, NOT BENNY.
VIOLET: BASICALLY HOLD ON TO BENNY AND LET GO OF EVERYTHING ELSE.
VIOLET: AND MAYBE THAT NERD TEE THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.
VIOLET: HOPE THE NEW JOB IS INSPIRATIONAL!!!
I hear clanging in the kitchen, so I put my phone away. As I throw on black leggings and a long, comfy sweater, a glimpse of my reflection catches me—a bag lady—in the dresser mirror. “Violet’s gonna have a field day with this outfit,” I say. “But I don’t care.” Chomperz looks up briefly then drifts back to sleep as if I’m not even here. Typical.
In the kitchen, Brynn pours herself a cup of freshly made coffee, black.
“What?!” she snaps when she sees me looking.
Sarge is asleep on the couch, snoring louder than the TV, which is set at 25 when the rest of the world listens at 12. It’s no wonder he has (selective) hearing loss.
“Nothing,” I say, choking down the thousand things I really want to say. “Need a ride to school?”
She takes a sip from the mug of steaming hot java, the mug that says #1 MOM, and grumbles as if she actually knows what a bad morning feels like. “No.” She stomps off to her room, slamming the door behind her. The sound startles Sarge awake. Hands fly through the air, legs swinging. He is now upright in the most patriotic of ways, seemingly trying to figure out where he is, what year we’re in, and more than likely, which platoon he’s in charge of.
“Mornin’,” he says with a gravelly voice. It’s the sound of no sleep. He lifts his glasses from the coffee table and plants them over his nose.
I force a slight grin, however much it hurts, and take a seat next to him. I lay my head on his shoulder to feel the warmth radiating from his boxy frame. He pats my arm in his usual way, pat pat pat, unsure of how tight to hold, how close to pull, how much to say. “There, there,” he says, not knowing which well my stray tears have sprung from. To be honest, I don’t either.
He sighs again. This time the words churn beneath his breath. “Things will work themselves out. I have faith.”
I look up at him, the sleep still lingering in my eyes, my lips still quivering the way they did all night. “Maybe they won’t.”
He pushes me back with a gentle nudge and tosses the old army blanket to the floor. “You know what Nan would tell you?”
I shake my head.
He swipes a tear from the corner of my eye. “It’s kismet. If things stayed the same, we’d never grow into the people we’re meant to be. There’s a plan bigger than we can understand, Birdie. Everything will fall into place as it should, however He”—Sarge points to the ceiling—“wants it to.”
I think on his words. “But it’s not about religion. It’s science. Like how single reactions happen as part of a larger series of reactions.”
I’ve confused him, but he smiles anyway. “Okay … if you want to thin
k of us as atoms and molecules, then yeah. Change will come, somehow, some way. It’s human nature. If you ain’t changing, you ain’t human.”
I want to frown, but the gleam in his eyes won’t let me. “You’re smarter than people give you credit for,” I tell him.
“So are you.” He smirks. We sit in silence for another moment before he nudges me off the couch with his elbow. “Go on, now. Don’t want to be late.”
“Fine.” I grab an apple, my camera, backpack, and keys. On my way out, I brush past the bare baby cypress that’s nestled in front of the big bay window where the collection of stray needles has mounted to an actual pile. The morning sun catches Brynn’s fingerprints that haven’t yet been wiped clean on the window pane. This tree looks lonelier than ever, each branch still naked and vulnerable. Hoping someone will notice. Hoping someone will be kind. The image grips me, forces me to my camera. I snap a few shots, sling my black lifeline over one shoulder and make my way to the car, where Brynn is quietly sitting in the backseat. No earbuds, no phone, just her. And I notice something I hadn’t before—she and I are kind of the same, naked and vulnerable, like the cypress. We are each hoping someone will notice, hoping someone will be kind. And maybe someone—maybe each of us—will offer the other the comfort we so desperately need right now.
She doesn’t meet my eyes in the rearview mirror when I slip inside, so I let her be. Instead I sneak peeks at her once we’re on the road. She’s unusually sullen. I want to ask if she’s okay, but the words won’t form behind my tongue. I don’t want to ruin the absolutely perfect silence where we’re not drowning in sorrow or bickering like children. We’re just … here.
I drop her off near the middle school because she’s never allowed any of us to pull up in the drop-off spaces that are actually meant for dropping off. It’s, like, so embarrassing, she’d say every time, slumping farther into the seat. But today, as I put the car in Park about a half block away, she finally looks up at me in the mirror with her big, droopy eyes that are just like Dad’s, and I feel like she wants to say something. She hesitates, though, as our eyes lock. In the stillness of this silence, we are speaking, we are civil. And it’s just too weird. I’d much rather fight right now so as not to break down completely. It seems she feels the same.
After a few moments, I spin around in an attempt to nitpick something stupid, but as I do, she flings the back door wide open, jumps to the curb, and walks away from me, from this. She looks over her shoulder once, something else she’s never done, and I wonder what’s going through her weird little head. I linger in her shadow until it fades beyond the large middle school doors, melting into all the other weird little heads that will gather to be weird together.
As I drive to my school, only a few blocks away, my thoughts drift back to the night Benny was hit. Over and over, I see myself unhinging the stroller, propping it up against the garage door. If the grand plan Sarge talks about really exists, the series of steps I was inevitably going to take were written before I was born and this choice was out of my hands. But it’s something I can’t wrap my brain around. I believe in free will, not prewritten. This is on me. Maybe if I hadn’t kept the stupid scholarship thing to myself and snuck out, I could have changed the grand plan—changed the reaction—and there would have been no collision in the first place.
The thoughts consume me so deeply that I don’t see the green light change to red.
My foot is on the gas, my eyes on the road, but I’m not here, in this car, in this world. I don’t see the red SUV coming at me until it swerves out of my way with a screech and a loud honk. I slam on the brakes, heart beating out of my rib cage, and suddenly, I’m here—back in this car, in this world. I feel the gas pedal and see the road and the others around me who’ve just witnessed a near accident, and I’m gasping for air like there isn’t enough left in the entire universe, and now I see—this must be how the person felt when they hit Benny. Paralyzed with fear, confused as the out-of-body haze melts away and life becomes crystal clear. Just now, I could’ve hit that car, caused another domino to fall. I could’ve been the one to put some kid in the hospital. I could’ve ruined someone else’s life. When I think of it like that, it’s hard to reconcile being angry with the person responsible for Benny. It could literally happen to anyone—including me.
When I finally get to school, Violet is waiting at my locker clutching her books. She catches me before I’m halfway down the hallway, wrapping her arms snug around me. A few of her soft tendrils make their way into my mouth, and I gag.
“Did you get my texts?” she asks.
“Yeah. I’m letting go,” I say. “Well, trying.”
This makes her happy. She releases me from her grip, locks her arm in mine, and pulls me to my locker. “So, last night, at eleven eleven, I lit a candle and wished for a miracle. There was an INTENSE Scorpio moon that was basically purging all the sadness out of me, so I know it’s going to purge from you, too. You just have to believe.”
Her big, brown eyes sparkle at me through a thick stroke of purple eyeliner as she pumps her fist in the air.
I smile. “You are the BEST friend I could ever ask for.”
“I know,” she says just as the Aceys pass. Fat Stac(k) is MIA, and a new Acey is in her place near the back—Lacey—who seems confused as to why she’s part of the group. In fact, I’m pretty sure her name is Laney Hodge and they’ve just renamed her Lacey to keep their group consistently shallow. Laney tells them she has to get to class, and that her name is not Lacey, but they shush her, pulling her along with complete disregard to our actual reality.
Violet snickers. “What are the odds of another Acey in the group?”
“About as good as that miracle you wished for. Poor Fat Stac(k). The intense Scorpio moon must’ve purged her.”
* * *
When I pull into the rink’s parking lot after school, I apply a thin layer of the strawberry lip gloss I never use in an attempt to appear more put together, then I comb my fingers through my hair and try to look happy. Vinny, the owner, said he wouldn’t be here today but that everything I need to get started is inside. Through the rusted metal doors, I nervously fumble inside to a small counter that hangs lopsided off the wall.
“Hello?” I say, ringing the little bell. Ding ding ding.
A boy backs into the room, midconversation with someone else. “Make sure you’re pushing the Lysol all the way into the skate, Dave,” he says. “Or everyone’s foot fungus will get together and procreate. Let’s preach germ abstinence. Get that shit in there—deep. Yeah, I know—that’s what she said. Beat you to it.” He spins around to face me. His beautiful brown skin pales as he makes eye contact. “Hey.”
A draft crawls up my spine. “I know you.”
He squints, looks me over, but it’s obvious my presence has him startled. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
I inch my head beneath the small window to pinch the sleeve of his shirt where the holes are. “You were wearing this when we met, actually.”
He swallows, kicks his feet around. With a blush and trickle of sweat, he loses eye contact. “Oh, right. The, um, party last weekend.”
There’s an uncomfortably long silence as I stand under the vent’s draft.
“What are you doing here?” he mumbles.
“Vinny hired me.”
He coughs or grunts or something I can’t make out. “Why would you apply here? It’s literally the worst option in the mid-Indiana region.”
“You’re here.”
“Only because Bill Gates wasn’t hiring.”
“Yeah, well, same.”
His eyes find mine. “You can put your shit back here, I guess.”
“Awesome.” I push through another set of metal doors and walk around to the office.
He keeps his back to me as he speaks. His silky dark locks shine under the sizzling lights. “Throw it anywhere. Doesn’t matter. It’s all one giant Dumpster fire.”
I lay my purse between piles of papers and c
ross my hands in front of me. The room is silent except for the vague sounds of Christmas music streaming from the computer’s speakers. I clear my throat and study the disheveled layout. Files are unevenly stacked across every inch of counter space while coffee mug stains saturate the sparse, open laminate. The old carpet is worn and frayed, dirty footprints soaked through. It sort of resembles my brain this past week which makes me feel eerily at home here.
He’s quiet, too quiet, not like at the party. He falls into one of two chairs and drags his glare up to mine. It’s intense. He’s not looking away. Not to check the door or behind me, or down the front of my shirt like some boys do. He’s, like, inside my brain. Big, honey-glazed stare, coming right at me like an arrow. “Tell me, Couch Girl,” he says.
“Couch Girl?” I interrupt.
“Yeah, that’s what I named you at the party.”
“Kind of demeaning, but whatever. Continue.” I like it almost immediately.
“What are the odds of us running into each other again?”
I run the numbers. “Based on the assumption you are, in fact, in town longer than one night, unlike what you said at the party,” I sneer, “take the odds of us meeting once, multiply by the odds of meeting again, and,” I grab a pencil, shove him out of the way and scribble on a blank Post-it.
7.47467%. “Boom.”
His jaw falls open, but the corner of his mouth is slightly turned up. “Hot damn! Wasn’t expecting a real answer there. I was thinking you’d say something about fate or destiny or some shit.”
“You don’t know me.”
His half smile fills out. “Yeah, I see that.”
At a small knock on the door, the boy spins around in his chair, his eyes still on the paper between his hands. “Dave, this is New Girl. New Girl, Dave.” The man is older. Like Dad’s-age older. His eyes are kind—something I notice about people because I think you can tell a lot about a person through their eyes. The boy’s eyes are kind, too, but I wouldn’t dare tell him so. The man steps forward and holds out a hand for me to shake while balancing a pair of skates in the other.
The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash Page 12
