Shatter Point

by Jeff Altabef

  I can’t explain this to Mom now, especially because I’m pissed, so I take the easy way out. “I’m the only one with Native American blood in the whole place. It’s impossible for me to fit in. I didn’t want to move here in the first place and leave my old school. Bartens sucks. Home schooling would be better.”

  She rolls her eyes in that annoying dismissive way she does that drives me crazy. “We moved two years ago, and you’re not the only one with Indian blood at Bartens. Besides, it’s a much better school than your last one. There were too many undesirables at your last school.”

  Undesirables is Mom’s code word for my friends.

  “You just need to become more involved. Why don’t you play lacrosse? You’re a terrific lacrosse player. The school team could certainly use you.”

  “You don’t get it! I’d be the crazy half-blood Indian girl playing lacrosse. They’d never let me hear the end of it. You don’t understand how hard it is for me over there. Everybody is so... white and rich.”

  Mom’s face softens. Her skin loses a little of its angry red hue, returning to her natural copper color and her brown eyes widen. Under normal circumstances, her eyes are large and beautiful, but when she gets all motherly and widens them, they take over her face until it’s impossible not to become lost in the rich, coffee colored swirls. I’ll never be as beautiful as she is. My nose is longish and pointy, and my eyes aren’t nearly as wide as hers.

  “How many Native American partners do you think there are at Dormit and Will?”

  I turn my back on her. It’s so annoying when she gets like this—all factual and logical and right.

  She’s trying to trap me, but I won’t fall for it, so I return to my best argument with my back still turned to her. “Why can’t you trust me? I’m old enough to be on my own for two days. I don’t need Sicheii doing his weird stuff around here.” Panic strikes. I spin in a tight circle and lean against the table with both hands. “He’s not going to pick me up at school, is he?” Air sticks in my throat.

  “No, Jules, he’ll just be at the house. None of your friends at school will even know he’s here.” She manages a weak smile.

  I can breathe again. “I don’t have any friends at Bartens except Katie.” I look away, my head hung low.

  “What about Tiffany and Ashley and what’s her name?”

  My jaw drops. Could it be that she hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said over the past two years? “Do you mean Morgan?”

  “Yes, that’s her name. They seem nice.”

  She must be kidding. Bartens teams up each new student with a mentor. In my case, by some cosmic stroke of bad luck, they choose Morgan—the super popular, Barbie look alike, head cheerleader with a giant trust fund who wants plastic surgery on her perfectly fine nose for her sixteenth birthday. She invited me to a party during my first month at school where she made it clear that I wasn’t her kind of girl. To her, Native Americans had no place at Bartens.

  No one spoke to me at that party except Katie, which put her on the outs with the popular crowd almost immediately. But that wasn’t the worst part. The party had a Native American theme, including a viewing of Pocahontas in the giant-sized media room. Pocahontas! I hate that movie. It’s the white man’s version of the perfect hot Native American girl.

  I stayed all night and even choked down some of the tepee shaped cake they wheeled in on a cart with “welcome” written across it. They weren’t going to get the satisfaction of running me off, even if that was the longest night of my life.

  “Mom, those girls are like a pack of super mean spoiled sharks. They’re the last girls I’d be friends with.” How could she be so clueless? Besides, it might sound lame, but I was looking forward to two days of freedom. I didn’t have any particular plans except for catching up on a few television shows and maybe having Troy over.

  Mom’s lips purse in that way she does when she feels sorry for me, and then a horn honks from the driveway. “I’m sure you can find other girls who would make better friends at the school. You just need to be more outgoing.” She checks the clock on the wall. It’s 6:15, and she sighs. “I’ve got to go. We’ll come up with a strategy about Bartens when I come home.”

  She loves strategy sessions. They never work.

  She bends down to kiss me, but I strategically step back out of reach, and she scowls at me instead. “Do what your grandfather says. Be respectful.” She walks to the front door where her Tumi carry on bag waits.

  “I’ll call you later.” She opens the door. “Love you.”

  She waits for me to say I love her back, but I’m still angry and won’t do it. She shuts the door, strolls down the walkway, and slips into the silver sedan that waits for her without looking back. The sun is out, and the day promises to be steamy. As the car motors away, my anger increases in intensity.

  I’m old enough to take care of myself! Sicheii will be a disaster. He doesn’t need to watch after me.

  The edge of my iPhone digs into my leg. I’m dressed in the Bartens uniform—blue slacks and a white collared shirt with the stupid logo on the chest, which only makes me angrier. I reach into my pocket, remove my phone, and speed-dial Troy.

  By the time the phone rings twice, I’m about to hang up when a sleepy voice answers, “Hey.”

  I hesitate, but there’s no backing out now. “Want to cut today? It’s too sunny to go to school.”

  “It’s six in the morning.”

  “Pick me up in two hours. We can go to Slippery River and hang out.”

  Troy hates school so he’ll be happy to spend the day at the river.

  “Okay, I’ll pick you up,” he says, his voice still gravelly.

  I hang up and stuff my phone back into my pocket. I’ve never cut school before and instantly regret my decision. Still, she should have trusted me. She forced me to do it. I stomp my right foot and pain stabs my heel.

  It’s a searing pain in the shape of a small star.

  Troy sees the world in black and white. Sometimes his certainty makes me jealous. My world seems filled with grays—some dark and others light, but rarely any certainty.

  Both of his parents are Native American, and he looks the part with caramel skin and long, straight, raven-colored hair twisted in a braid that falls past his shoulder blades. He has never cut his hair. One time, I waved a pair of scissors at him and threatened to lop off his braid. He got angry. He believes long hair is a sign of power and spiritual strength. He’ll never let anyone touch his.

  Even though he knows the password to enter our gated community, the security guard calls to confirm he’s a wanted guest. He’ll be pissed. He takes slights like that worse than I do, so I wait for him on the edge of the driveway and worry our day will start off on a bad note.

  I hear his bike, a 1980 Honda CX motorcycle painted in the original royal blue, before it rolls into view. He found it at a junkyard and worked on it for six months until he got it back on the road. Now the bike runs better than it did when new, but it’s loud. He likes it that way.

  He pulls the bike three quarters of the way up my driveway, and the tires stick to the hot pavement. He kicks down the kickstand, pulls off his helmet, and slides from the seat. Faded blue jeans cling to his legs and an extra-large, plain white t-shirt fits tightly against his chest and shoulders. Troy is big. He doesn’t have a sculpted physique like you’d find on workout shows, but muscles grow on his body like powdered sugar accumulates on funnel cake.

  “Outstanding security guard you’ve got. Does he treat all your guests the same way, or only the brown ones?” Fire blazes behind his eyes.

  I smirk in hopes of dousing the flames. “Only the ugly ones with loud bikes.” Troy is definitely not ugly, and he knows it. His chiseled jaw and deep set, almond colored eyes give him a pensive expression, as if he’s really listening. Girls love him.

  “Right.” His tone is chilly, but the edges of his lips turn up and form the beginning of a smile so I know we’re out of the woods.

 
My neighbor, Mrs. Jones, pulls back her living room curtains and stares at us through her front window. She’s the neighborhood gossip and one nasty drunk. She’s probably fifty years old, but looks like a hundred. Too many drinks and too much sun have sucked the joy and life from her. Rumor has it she was Miss Arizona twenty-eight years ago. It’s hard to see her in the pictures on the web, but it’s possible. I had hoped to sneak out without her knowing, but Troy’s bike is too loud and she has a sixth sense for snooping.

  She wasn’t happy when we moved in—a single mother, and even worse, a single Native American mother and her teenaged daughter. But for the last two years, we’ve given her nothing to gossip about. Now a sharp guilt pang stabs me in the ribs. She’ll tell everyone about her truant teenaged neighbor and her wild looking friend. She’ll say she knew we were no good all along, that we were trouble, that our kind can’t be trusted.

  I shouldn’t care what she does, but heat flushes my cheeks anyway.

  Troy follows my eyes and glances at Mrs. Jones. Her stare deepens into a glare. She clutches a phone in her right hand and a glass that’s probably filled with something a lot stronger than orange juice in the other.

  He blows her a kiss, and she flips him the bird.

  Troy smiles. “I like her. She’s a nasty shriveled up person, but at least you know where you stand. There’s no phony garbage with her.”

  “Great.”

  “So what gives? It’s not like you to skip school.”

  I manage my best shrug with a backpack strapped on my shoulders. “My mom is out of town, so why not have some fun? Why waste such a great day by going to Bartens?”

  “What’s the rest of the story, Jules? You told me last week that your mom was going away for a few days. We could have made plans then and avoided the early morning wake-up call.” He shoots me a knowing look. This is the problem with best friends. Even though we don’t hang out as often as we used to, he still knows me better than anyone else. “What happened?”

  I sigh. “Mom’s got my grandfather staying with me for a few days. She should trust me.” I hope to escape with a half-truth. He doesn’t need to know about my problems at school. He’ll take them poorly. He’ll say I should be proud of my roots and tell the others to piss off. He might even stop by Bartens with some of our other Native American friends just to make a point. He could be like that sometimes—full of surprises, a little dangerous.

  “Right,” he says in a tone of voice that tells me he doesn’t really believe me. “I don’t understand what the problem is. Your grandfather is cool, way cooler than mine.”

  “Let’s roll.” I step past Troy and toward the bike. “Slippery River is calling us.”

  He tosses me his heavy all black behemoth of a helmet with a plastic face shield.

  I catch it, but keep it at arm’s length. “Where’s the other helmet? I’ll use that one.” I wrinkle my nose at the odor. Troy’s spare helmet is small and light and doesn’t have a face guard or the sweaty smell.

  “The chin strap snapped on that one.” He smiles. “I need to fix it. This is all I’ve got.”

  “You wear it.” I shove the monster in his direction. “You’re the one who’s driving.”

  He jumps on the bike and melts into the seat. “The way I see it, your grandfather will kill me if anything happens to you anyway. At least one of us will survive if we crash.” He starts the bike with a kick. The engine roars as he revs it with a sly grin on his face and a glance at Mrs. Jones. “Put it on or we can hang out here all day with your neighbor gawking at us. It’s your choice.” He beams a smile at me.

  A tickle climbs up my back. Sometimes his smile does that to me. I reluctantly strap on the helmet and hop on the back of the bike.

  Troy blows Mrs. Jones another kiss and glides us out of the driveway. We leave the gated community behind and travel in the opposite direction of Bartens. I love the rush that comes with riding Troy’s bike, so my arms wrap around his waist and a smile slowly sneaks on my face.

  Anything is possible on a day like this one.

  ---End of Special Sneak Preview of Wind Catcher by Jeff Altabef and Erynn Altabef---

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