by Tess Oliver
“I said subtle, you know, like your bumblebee car over there.”
“Let’s go, Frank,” Lawson said from second base. “It’s getting hot out here.”
Frankenstein glowered my direction and then pitched the ball to Pete, who popped it up and ran full speed to first base, all the while trying hard not to smile at his triumph.
I picked up the bat. Frankie boy and I had a nice staring contest for a second. Then he whizzed it my way at what was an impressive speed for a clunky plastic ball. I flung the bat and sent the thing wiffling over the back fence. It plunked off the Camaro. I shrugged at Frank as I tossed aside the bat. Sugar ran and Pete followed. I jogged around to each rubber mat while Lawson complained loudly as he walked to the gate to retrieve the ball.
As I reached the home mat, Sugar threw her arms around my neck. I grabbed her to me. Her long legs swung around as I turned her in a circle. I stopped and released her. Frank watched the whole little celebration with dismay. I was gloating in my head, and feeling like the fucking cocksure asshole I was. As I looked at Sugar, her smile faded. She looked from me to Frank and back again. She looked hurt. I’d just had Sugar in my arms, even if it was only for a few seconds, it was still a huge deal. I rarely allowed myself any physical contact with her. It was a pleasure, a drug of sorts that I had to deny myself. I’d had her in my arms, the girl who had basically replaced and surpassed any other addiction I’d ever had, and I was so fucking busy wondering if I was pissing off the idiot with the wiffle ball, I hadn’t even taken the time to enjoy it. Sometimes my own stupidity astounded me. And now Sugar, the only person who truly mattered to me, was upset. She turned and walked as far away as she could get from me, the biggest fucking ignoramus in the world.
Three innings into the riveting game, the atmosphere had started to feel more like warm milk than air, and enthusiasm was wilting quickly. Frankenstein had, of course, knocked it out of the yard too. It had even bounced off his Camaro like mine, but this time, the ball couldn’t be found. Or at least that’s what Lawson claimed. We were all thankful and quick to call the game off. The staff won nine to five. Sugar had spent the entire hour ignoring me. Twice, I’d caught her peeking my direction, but she quickly looked away.
Nurses and ward assistants were called back into work. Our team scurried in behind them, claiming extreme thirst and heat exhaustion. Sugar and I picked up the mats. The rubber had gotten so hot, it felt sticky. She hadn’t said a word. The hurt expression on her face was far worse than any harsh words she could have doled out.
“Sugar, look, I’m an asshole,” I said to her as we walked toward the building.
“Uh huh.” She dropped the mats next to the door, and I placed mine on top. The girl had the cold shoulder thing down to an art, but I was hot and sweaty and I’d come out to play the stupid game for her.
I reached for her wrist, but she pulled it away. She might as well have yanked away a chunk of my heart.
“L-l-look.” I stopped and swallowed hard. Get the fucking words out, Tommy, or shut the hell up before you make a bigger ass of yourself. “You know my anger problem. I didn’t like the way the guy was looking at you.” I put my arms out. “There, I’m laying it out there, Sugar. I’m an arrogant menace just like everyone keeps telling me, and I’m dealing with a lot of shit, and it makes me an asshole and—” Her blues eyes glossed with tears and I stopped.
She shook her head. “We’re all in here for that, for dealing with a lot of shit— me, Jayleen, Pete. Why the hell else would we be here? So we can play a comical baseball game with a plastic bat?”
“I know your mom wasn’t exactly a stellar mom, but I’ve got some ugly stuff—”
“Are you seriously trying to one up me on ugly stuff?” Her tears spilled and I swallowed again, not to stop the stutter but the ache in my throat. “Shit, Tommy, do you really think that’s all I had to deal with, a mom who didn’t bake cookies or read me bedtime stories?” She shook her head and reached for the door.
“Sugar,” I said once more, hoping she’d turn back and let me dig my way out of the hole I’d just fallen into, but she disappeared inside.
Chapter 7
I gave the secret clubhouse knock, but Julian didn’t answer. Half past noon meant Julian was on the wall. As I popped my head in, I realized that whenever I was feeling down or off, especially when Sugar was upset with me, I needed to talk to Julian. Even if he didn’t say much in return or was absorbed in something and only half listening to me, I liked talking to the guy. It seemed unlikely that we would ever have been friends on the outside, but this place had thrown us together and it was good. At least it was good for me.
Like Spiderman clinging to the side of a building, Julian was stretched out on the tiny rocks covering his wall. For some unexplained reason, Julian was always more communicative when he was climbing. I wasn’t sure if it was because some of his meds had worn off by then or if the intense physical act of climbing just freed some of his natural personality.
“Hey, Jules, do you mind if I come in?”
“That’s fine.”
I sat in his chair and watched him figure out his next move. His hands were covered in chalk, and his feet, wrapped in his special rock climbing shoes, curled around the colorful protrusions. He was five feet off the ground, but in his mind, he could have been plastered on the side of a mountain. It was tough, what he was doing. I wasn’t sure I’d have the patience for it. Hell, who was I kidding? My patience was as thin as cotton gauze.
“I’m an idiot. Sugar is mad at me again.”
He moved his hand over to the next rock. “You know what they say,” he said with a grunt of concentration, “we always hurt the ones we love.”
“Whoever started that quote was an ass. Just dooms us all to failure.” I slumped back against the chair. “Is it that obvious, Jules?”
It took him a second to respond. “Is what that obvious?”
“That I love her. That I love Sugar.”
He moved his foot up to a new rock and steadied himself on it. “Tommy, the birds in the garden fountain know you love Sugar.”
I smiled. Humor and sarcasm were rare from Julian. He was a different man on the rocks. Maybe, deep down, he knew this was what he should be doing. He didn’t need the drugs and the therapy. He needed to be crawling up the side of a mountain, defying death and proving to everyone that he was a fucking badass and not just some uber-genius, too cerebral to have any real connection to other humans. Or, maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.
He moved slowly, strategically, along the wall, closer to the end where he could chalk up new numbers and get nearer to the summit of his imaginary mountain. “How was the game?” he asked.
“You were right. There’s something off with that new guy.”
He lost his footing for a brief second, and I wasn’t sure if it was related to the topic or not. I was going with yes. “I don’t know why my father is being so obstinate about it. But he doesn’t belong here. That is clear.”
“Like I said, Jules, I’ve got your back. And you’ve got mine too, right?” I was always playing the protector part, keeping an eye on Julian and Sugar, but the truth was, I needed them just as much. Maybe even more.
“That’s right, Tommy. What did you do to anger Sugar this time?”
I laughed at the words ‘this time’, but, unfortunately, they were appropriate. “Don’t know, Jules. I just always manage to step in it when I’m talking to her. Either my words gets stuck and I stutter like a fool, or the words come out making me an even bigger fool. Don’t know which scenario is worse. Never had problems talking to a girl before.”
“I have the opposite problem.” He reached the last rock and stepped off the wall. “I have always had trouble talking to girls, but I’m completely comfortable talking to Sugar.” He shook his hands out. White dust puffed up around h
is fingers. He reached for the small hand towel he’d hung on a hook at the end of the rocks. He wiped his face. The climb had put color in his complexion and with the sweat, he just looked like any guy who might be hanging out in a gym or sitting on a barstool with a mug of beer. But he wasn’t.
I leaned back on the chair. “Why do you think that is?”
He hung the towel up and motioned me out of his computer chair. He flipped open his laptop and relaxed back to catch his breath as he waited for it to boot up. He stared at the monitor, ready to get lost in his computer world. The computer was almost more of a drug than anything. It sucked his attention back in, and his communication skills usually waned as soon as something of interest got caught up in those constantly churning gears in his head. But he wasn’t gone yet. No trance yet. He looked at me. “Because Sugar’s not like any other girl we’ve met. That’s why, Tommy.”
Chapter 8
One time, when I was seven, I’d had a terrible toothache, and my mom had to drag me to the dentist’s office kicking and screaming. I didn’t want anyone poking and prodding a tooth that already hurt like hell. As I walked down the hall to the group meeting room, I wished I was seven again. Being taken to the dentist was still more inviting than going to group.
After the game, Sugar hadn’t talked to me for the rest of the day. This morning, I’d sat alone in a corner, like the most unpopular kid in school, picking at my breakfast. Sugar had chatted and laughed with the other members of our team, reminiscing about yesterday’s game as if it had been even the slightest bit entertaining. All my life, I’d been a pro at doing asshole stuff, but in all that time, I’d never learned how to undo the shit. ‘People don’t forget, Thomas’, my mom had constantly reminded me. She was the only person I let call me Thomas. I figured she’d picked the name, she might as well be able to use it. Of course, she probably had little choice. Thomas was what everyone called my father. But she called him Honey. I guess that’s why I didn’t mind it so much when she called me Thomas. She was right too. People didn’t forget. It seemed I always remembered the shitty stuff my dad said a lot more than the good stuff. But then the good stuff was always backhanded, like the compliment about my football abilities, the one good thing.
I walked into the meeting room. Sugar was talking to Jayleen, and Harold was on the other side of her. There were no empty chairs near her. To make things worse, there was no pink box on the table and I had to sit next to Pete. Sugar didn’t make eye contact with me and kept up her conversation with Jayleen. Not completely sure what they could possibly have in common other than being in this place.
Dr. Kirkendall walked in with her colorful clipboard and shimmering ear. She flashed me a smile and sat down. She had a picture book under her arm, and I wondered if she was going to read to us to make up for those of us whose parents didn’t tell bedtime stories. My older sister, Katherine, had occasionally sat in my room to read me a story, but I wasn’t a great listener unless she was reading me a scary book. As far as I was concerned, those were the only cool stories, even though some of them gave me nightmares. Still better than knights and princesses and wizards, at least in my eight year old opinion. Nowadays, a fairy tale happy ending didn’t seem so boring after all.
“Afternoon, everyone. So glad you all came to group today.” Another wink my way. I was piling up the fucking brownie points. “Hope you don’t mind but I forgot the notepads. I think we can do a group without them.” She lifted up the book she’d carried in. “How many of you have read or heard of this book?” I recognized the book. It was about a kid who had some really sucky day, and the whole book told about it. Everyone raised their hands like little kids responding to the teacher. I held back a laugh. “Tommy? Have you? If everyone has heard the book then I don’t need to take the time to read it.”
My hand shot up. “I’ve heard it.”
She smiled again, but this time it was more out of annoyance. She slipped the book under her clipboard. “Great, since we all know about Alexander’s very bad, terrible day, I thought we’d tell some of our own stories about a particularly bad day in our life. Is there something someone would like to share with group? No judgment, of course.”
I cleared my throat. “Seems like I’ve heard that promise somewhere before.”
“You’re right, Tommy. In the last session, I broke one of my biggest rules, and I will not do it again. Doctor’s honor.”
Mandy raised her hand. The girl did love center stage, a place that I planned to stay off of today. While Mandy began her terrible day story, I slipped a glance over at Sugar. Her long lashes shaded her cheeks as she stared down at the ground. I couldn’t tell if she was just making sure to avoid me or if she was deep in thought. Her bottom lip pushed out slightly, a clue that she was thinking about something and it wasn’t a happy something. I’d memorized so many of her facial expressions, I had them catalogued in my brain. This was sadness.
To the side of me, I could hear Mandy whining about losing out on a movie part to an actress who was clearly too fat for the part. She was definitely one of those weight obsessed people. She finished her little story, or at least I thought she had. I wasn’t listening because I kept looking across the group at Sugar. Something was going on with her.
Mandy finished and sat back, pleased with her little tale of horror. Dr. Kirkendall glanced around the group. It seemed no one was too keen on this idea. “Anyone else have a story about a bad day?”
“I have one.” Sugar’s voice sounded so lost, so different, I hadn’t even realized it was her at first.
Dr. Kirkendall seemed to finally notice what I, with my untrained eye, had already seen. Sugar raised her hand to push a strand of hair behind her ear. That was when I saw that her fingers were trembling. I looked over at Kirkendall. I wanted her to move on to the next person. It was making my own stomach knot up, seeing Sugar like this, shaky, upset, not herself.
The rest of the group sat still as statues, waiting.
“If you would like to share, then please go ahead, Sugar,” Kirkendall prodded. She loved to prod. There must have been a fucking class in psych school that taught prodding because the woman was skilled at it.
Sugar’s throat moved as she swallowed. She still hadn’t looked at me, almost as if she couldn’t see me sitting there across from her, begging her silently not to do this. My asshole behavior had made me invisible. But I saw her, every flicker of sadness in her blue eyes, every nervous bite of her lip. I saw it all.
“When I was seven,” she paused, “I had a terrible day.”
A laugh nearly burst from my mouth. She was bullshitting. She was doing this because of our argument yesterday. She was going to make some dramatic bunch of garbage up to get back at me. Then despair filled her expression, a flood of emotion that knocked the breath from me.
“If you’d like to wait, Sugar, and talk to me about this in our private session—”
Sugar shook her head. “No, I’m all right.” Her thin shoulders lifted and fell as she took a deep breath. “It was a Saturday. My neighbor Kate and I were best friends. We hung out a lot. I had a little plastic playhouse in the backyard. She’d brought her little sister, Megan, with her. We were going to have a tea party in the playhouse.” Her lashes dropped down again. “Megan was four. She was this little three foot bundle of giggles.” She paused, and the room was silent. Even the walls were listening. “She loved this one doll of mine so much, sometimes she would take it home to babysit. Then Megan would bring her back and tell me all the naughty things my doll had done while she was watching her.” A small laugh fell from her soft, sad lips. “We’d gone into the playhouse for the tea party. As I picked up the teapot, a spider crawled out.” She smiled weakly. “Of course, we ran back out. The tea party was cancelled. So we started playing out on the grass.” Sugar’s blue eyes flickered my direction for a second. The only sound in the room was the occasional clicking of Ja
yleen biting her nails.
For a long moment, it seemed that Sugar was transported back to that Saturday with her friends and the spider and the cancelled tea party. She looked down at her hands. “I had this toy, a pretend lawnmower. It would make a popping sound when you rolled it across the ground. It was one of those toys that you get when you’re a toddler, but that you don’t have the heart to throw away. My grandmother had given it to me, although I had been too little to remember. It was made of wood. ‘The sturdiest toys are made of wood and they last forever’ my grandmother had said one day when she saw me playing with it.” Her voice wavered, and that glow that always swirled around her, that glow that maybe only I could see but it was there. It was always there. But it had dimmed now. Her shoulders looked smaller as she shrank down some in the chair. I wanted to walk over, pull her into my arms and take her out of this stupid room.
“Sugar, are you doing all right?” Kirkendall asked.
Sugar nodded. She drifted off into her own thoughts before continuing. “I was always spinning, or twirling or somersaulting. My mom used to tell me I made her tired just watching me. Kate was on my swing and Megan,” a sob slipped out as she said the little girl’s name.
I was sitting there with a group of people watching her tell the story, but it was as if no one else was in the room but us, as if someone had put a frame around Sugar, blocking out everything else. All I could see was Sugar, the girl who made me dizzy without even spinning, sitting there pouring her heart out.
“I’m not even sure why I did it. I picked up the mower and started twirling around and around. The faster I went, the heavier the toy felt at the end of my fingers.” A tear spilled down Sugar’s cheek. I clenched every muscle in my body to stop the ache I was feeling. It was as if I was feeling everything she’d felt on that horrible day. Kirkendall glanced my direction and then wrote something down. I had no idea why the hell she would focus on me when Sugar’s heart was breaking right in front of her. In front of me.
