“It doesn’t seem fair to open my heart to a world that took Dad away from us. If anyone should’ve been able to live his purpose, it was him.”
Austin hugged me to his side, rested his chin over my head. “He did, Em.”
Cars rumbled across the bridge above us, minutes passing.
“We can’t avoid pain and loss,” he said. “Dad knew that, but he chose to keep playing anyway. Just like he wants us to do.”
“Now who sounds like Plato?” I said through a sniffle. A fusion of admiration and gratefulness closed in with my brother’s hug. “When did you become so wise?”
“When I had to start taking care of my baby sister.”
I shoved him off the sidewalk.
He laughed as he regained his balance and then jumped right back over the curb. He set his hand on my shoulder, all remnants of his joking put aside again. “Em, I just want to make sure you know you don’t have to stand on your own. If you don’t have the faith yet to believe it yourself, you can borrow mine until you do.”
A lump welled up in my throat, confiscating my ability to speak. The lights on the bridge shimmered in place of stars the same way he stood in place for Dad. I grabbed hold of his faith. And without fully understanding how, I sensed it was about to change everything.
chapter twenty-seven
Borders
Two months. How could we have been back at school for nearly two months already? The dates on the calendar disappeared along the hectic schedules driving us from one demand to the next.
I would’ve disappeared in the nonstop motion, too, without A. J.’s persistent friendship rescuing me each week. But even with his expert skills at making sure I didn’t stop engaging life, time felt stilted. Stagnant.
I pried open the living room window. Instead of a breeze, a restlessness swept over me. It didn’t make sense. Things were right on target with my internship. I’d been the exemplary employee, received noteworthy feedback. My performance review was in the bag. I should have been . . . relieved, happy even.
Jaycee scurried past, hightailing herself from room to room like the leader in some sort of in-house version of a Chinese fire drill. Obviously, I wasn’t the only stressed one. After spending the last month organizing her tutoring club’s idea to do an outreach in downtown Portland, Jaycee couldn’t have been more anxious to see all the hard work pay off.
“Um, Jae, you might want to slow down and save some stamina for this afternoon. Don’t kids usually require a lot of energy?” I pushed a kitchen chair out in time to intersect her whirlwind path.
She dropped into the chair and let out a deep sigh. “You’re right. It’ll all get done. It’s just that we have a real chance to build some bridges today. And if it’s not a success, I’ll—”
I tossed her a tangerine from the fruit bowl in the center of the table. “Stop worrying. You’re the queen of organizing. It’s one of your greatest strengths. Everything will be perfect.”
She dug into the fruit with her nails. “Thanks. For your support and for being willing to come with me on such short notice. Miriam hated having to cancel, but her boss wouldn’t give her today off. Poor thing. Working two jobs and going to school. I don’t know how she does it.”
Miriam must’ve needed that scholarship as much as I did. I spun my own tangerine in my hands. Maybe we were all just trying to get by. Thank goodness I’d found a paid internship this time around. “I’m glad I can help, but . . . you’re not going to make me dress up in a clown suit or anything, are you?”
A mischievous Trevor-look paraded across her face.
“Jaycee.”
“Relax. No dress up. Promise. You’ll be hanging out with the kids, escorting them to the different stations in the park. You’re gonna be amazed at how easy it is to love on these kiddos.” With a quick pat on my hand, she jetted from the table, leaving a collection of orange peels piled on her napkin.
“Jeez, Jae, did you chew before you wolfed that down?”
“No time,” she hollered from the bathroom.
She picked me up on her way out the door after her twentieth tornado whirl through the apartment. Not that I could blame her for being anxious. Elementary education wasn’t simply a degree. Just like this inner-city outreach wasn’t simply a bullet to add to her resume. She’d poured every ounce of her heart into the chance to impart hope to kids most people overlooked.
To share in even a glimpse of that kind of passionate drive, I might’ve considered wearing a clown suit.
Stretches of Interstate 5 passed under Jaycee’s Fiat, mile blocker after mile blocker. I rolled down my window and wave-rode the wind with my hand, thoughts swirling.
The night of the symphony replayed in my mind as it had so many times since I’d been back. “You can’t keep comparing your life to some expectation of the way you think things are supposed to be, or you’re gonna miss what Dad tried to teach us.”
Expectations. Maybe it was time to uncover the palette I’d locked away. Let the colors splash over the canvas, regardless of how it turned out. No outlines. No paint-by-numbers instructions or model to copy. Just the candid expression that happened outside walls. The kind that happened when you let go of expectations.
I sifted through a CD case Trevor left in the backseat, put one in the player, and bobbed my brows at Jaycee. “How about a little entertainment for the ride?”
“Michael Jackson?” she said once the beat dropped. “Only you, Em.”
“Yeah right. You and me, girl. We can start our own secret 80s music fan group.” I turned up the stereo and danced in my seat. “C’mon. You know you love it.” I swung an air microphone at her.
“Beat it, beat it.” She swung it back for the echo and shook her head. “What’s gotten in to you?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired of borders, I guess.”
She faced me, blinked, then waved out her window to the cars beside us. “Aye! Aye! Aye! I got my best friend back!”
“Really?” I pulled her in before we wrecked. “Okay, I’m not tired of all borders.”
“Some things aren’t meant to have borders,” she countered.
Like friendship.
Instead of miles, the next twenty minutes passed in laughter and shower-worthy covers of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits—moments to add to my stockpile of college memories.
The city park greeted us with the aroma of cotton candy and the sound of high-pitched giggles buzzing from one station to the next.
Jaycee pointed to the corner, where tall college students dressed up in clown costumes were busy forming shapes out of long, skinny balloons. “I spared you.”
“I owe you one.” I zipped my coat up to my chin as we headed onto the field.
“Miss Jaycee, you made it.” An older gentleman wearing a brown beret and square glasses gave her a side hug.
“Sorry we’re a little late,” she said. “We hit some traffic. Oh, Trey, I want you to meet my roommate, Emma Matthews.”
He shook my hand with both of his. “Miss Emma, thanks so much for coming out. You could be doing a lot of things with your Saturday, but I promise these kids are worth your time.”
Jaycee dug through her bag and unburied a clipboard. “Trey helped me put this shindig together. He runs a non-profit center in downtown Portland.”
He shimmied a business card from his wallet and handed it to me. “We’re always looking for an extra pair of hands. Come by any time. We’d love to have you.”
“Thanks.” I turned the card over. Portland Center: Making an Impact a Life at a Time.
Jaycee flipped through some pages on her clipboard. “Em, we’re expecting at least fifty kids today. So, take your pick and—”
“Actually,” Trey said, “I think she already has an admirer.”
A little boy, no more than five years old, stood beside my leg, peering up with round, brown eyes that were much too big for his slender face.
I squatted down to his level. “Hey, little guy, what’s your name?
”
He buried his chin against the tattered collar of a Capitan America sweatshirt. “Michael.”
“Hi, Michael, my name’s Miss Emma. Do you want to go with me over to the face painting station?”
He nodded with the speed of a cotton candy-fueled sugar rush, fine blonde hair waving all about.
“All right, let’s go.” I took his hand. Thank goodness he picked me out instead of leaving me to choose one among all of them.
“Have fun,” Trey called from behind us.
A red-haired girl with a butterfly drawn on her cheek swirled a skinny paintbrush in a Dixie cup of water as we approached.
“Hi” —I squinted at her handwritten nametag— “Julie. This is Michael.”
“Hey there, little man. What would you like me to draw for you?” she asked in the same animated tone that all the adults were using.
He shrugged and twisted the rubber tip of his worn sneaker in the dirt.
“Hmm.” She scrunched her lips to one side, hand on her chin. “How about a lion?”
Two pronounced dimples bookended a precious smile of missing teeth beaming at her.
A lion it was—complete with a pink nose and whiskers. I admired the finished artwork but didn’t have the heart to tell him he could have passed for a kitten. “Ferocious,” I said. “Where to next?”
Michael spun in a circle to survey the playground for our next destination. He waved toward the opposite side of the park. “There!”
I shielded the sunlight with my hand until a small band set up in the corner came into view. “You want to check out some music?”
Arm swinging, he rocked an impressive air guitar move.
“Look at you. Okay, music it is.” I knelt down to him again. “How about a piggyback ride?”
He jumped with more exuberance about that one thing than I’d experienced for myself all month. On my back, he hugged my neck as if I were his long-time babysitter rather than a stranger.
A stinging sensation prickled behind my eyes without any warning. Did these children lack love and attention so much that the simplest show of interest in them was all it took to make a difference?
The park closed in on me from every angle. Run down, broken, abandoned—a picture of the bleak conditions the children in this neighborhood faced every day.
The memory of Riley’s words from that time we spray painted together made the tears even harder to suppress. “Most people see an abandoned, useless corner of the city. Same way they see the kids in this neighborhood. Even the way some of them see themselves. But here, something changes.”
Were some of the kids here the same ones whose artwork had impacted me that day?
Michael flapped his arms with gusto. “Let’s fly. Let’s fly.”
I batted away the sudden rise of emotion, tucked my arms under his legs, and sprang from the ground in takeoff. We zigzagged across the crowded field on a turbulent flight that ended in one final hop. “Thank you for riding Air Emma,” I said in my best flight attendant impersonation. He slid off, and I stayed bent over with my hands on my thighs to catch my breath.
Michael tugged my pant leg. “I think someone wants to talk to you.”
“Emma?”
One word.
One voice.
One look.
Everything else faded except a sound I knew by heart.
“Riley? W . . . what are you doing here?” My voice faltered under the same riptide pulling my equilibrium off balance.
“My buddy Steve asked me for a favor. Said his guitar player bailed on him last minute.” He looked away, kneaded the back of his neck. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
Didn’t want to see me here, from the looks of it. Had he missed me at all?
“Riley, show time,” a guy yelled from the stage.
“That’s my cue.” Head down, he lingered a second longer. “It’s good to see you, Emma.”
Still without meeting my eyes, he jogged backward, turned, and mounted the stage.
That’s it? That’s all he’s going to say after all this time? My body felt like liquid lead sinking into the ground.
“Miss Emma, it’s starting. It’s starting.” Michael gripped my pant leg again and ushered me toward an empty seat in front of the wooden stage.
The back of my jeans met the cool folding chair in time for Michael to climb onto my lap. The elevated speakers pulsed with the first strum on the electric guitar. A mosh pit of kids up front erupted in a cheer for more. The drummer tapped his sticks together three times, and an explosion of music rippled across the field.
Riley didn’t look at me while he played, not even once. The row of metal chairs vibrated with the bass’s rhythm, the movement urging my body not to give in to the numbness taking over.
I started to get up, but Michael bounced in my lap with a grin that stole my heart. How could I abandon that adorable lion face? I wrapped my arms around him and the tiny flicker of hope and joy he represented, afraid it’d burn out completely if I let it go.
I forced my attention onto him instead of the band, but questions kept wriggling through every barrier with memories from the night Riley left. Memories from a chapter I thought I’d closed. I’d let him go. Moved on. Hadn’t I? It shouldn’t still hurt this much.
Clashing cymbals and amp feedback ended the band’s set. Riley’s gaze flickered to me for the briefest second, and I knew it wasn’t over. Not for me. I transferred Michael to the seat beside us. “I’ll be right back.”
Knelt by the stage, Riley lowered his head again when he saw me approaching. I stopped a few feet away. He snapped his guitar case brackets shut but didn’t face me even after I said hello.
I buried my frayed cuffs under my fingers. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” he said in a monotone response I couldn’t make fit his voice.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
Riley rose to his feet and shifted his gaze toward me. I searched his eyes, frantic to find what I remembered. But instead of windows, I found walls. Impenetrable blue walls staring through me. I wanted to yell at him—shake him—anything to make him look at me the way he used to.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I have to go.” Guitar case in hand, he turned and left me standing there, watching him walk away.
Again.
Michael stood on his chair, his precious face intersecting my line of sight to Riley’s back.
I had to let it go. For him. The short walk wasn’t long enough to mask the pain, but for Michael, I’d pretend it was. “Did you enjoy the music?”
Another energetic nod followed little fingers grasping mine, and I held on to the only thing keeping my glued-together heart from re-shattering right there on the playground.
Jaycee bumped into us. She rubbed Michael’s head. “Hey, you two. Having fun?”
His leap in the air answered for both of us.
“Awesome.” She brandished one of her teacher poses—head angled, arms crossed. “You’re going to come back next time, right?”
He shrugged. “You gonna have cotton candy again?”
Jaycee’s pinched lips couldn’t hold back her laugh. “You bet.”
The streetlights flicked on. “Jae, how do I connect him with his parents?”
Her blank stare motioned me over to the side out of Michael’s hearing. “This isn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood where parents come at dusk to pick up their kids.”
I had to be missing something. “They’re just children.”
She grabbed my shoulders, scooted me a little farther away, and shielded Michael behind us. “Children who hardly have parents. At least, not the kind you and I think of when we use the word. These kids fend for themselves on the streets most of the time. Michael will walk to his house with some friends.”
I peeked around her toward Michael’s little five-year-old frame. One leg crossed over the other, he stood there, unaware of the risks he faced and the odds against him. The park started to press in a
gain. And right then, I knew. My heart was spoken for.
My knees hit the ground, and my arms locked around him in a hug I didn’t want to release. “You take care of yourself, Michael. If anybody messes with you on your way home, you give them your best, most ferocious lion roar, okay?”
He threw his hands in the air and roared, and my heart broke a little more.
But maybe having a broken heart was part of finding purpose.
With Michael’s lion face fixed in my mind, I stared out the car window on the way home. Images blended together like watercolors fanned across an unending canvas. “I wonder if Michael has anyone to take care of him.”
“So, that’s what has you so deep in thought?” Jaycee said. “I thought maybe it was—”
“I can’t.” I stopped her before she said Riley’s name. “I can’t think about him.”
“Ok-ay.” She dragged out the word in two dramatic syllables.
After my peek into that vault this afternoon, the door to that part of my heart had to stay locked. No questions. There was only one thing from today I could risk investing my thoughts in.
“Do you think kids like Michael have a chance of ever getting out of that neighborhood?”
“Honestly?” Jaycee said. “I think they get stuck there. Like some kind of generational cycle of poverty. They don’t know any other future.”
There had to be a way to break that cycle. My gaze didn’t stray from the window. “Do you think Trey’d consider turning a volunteer position at the Center into an internship?”
My mid-term performance review from Edwards Jones should be enough to sustain my scholarship. I could talk to the dean about finishing the second half of my internship at a different site.
“Are you kidding? He’d be thrilled to work with you. Especially with your training in business. He’s always looking for ways to equip the high schoolers with life skills. It’d be perfect . . . except you already have an internship.”
A secure one, maybe, but not the right one. Not one I was passionate about. Sure, I liked business. But to use my training to do something that called to my heart? I’d given up dreaming for that possibility altogether.
Eyes Unveiled Page 20
