What You Left Behind

by Jessica Verdi

  “We send our bills every two weeks. Payment is due within five days.” She waves a hand, gesturing that we should bring Hope over to join the chaos.

  The 6 Weeks–1 Year section is actually the calmest. The kids aren’t old enough to be fighting or playing with each other much, so there’s just a lot of crying and sitting around and stuff. But there’re a lot of kids here—at least twenty—and there’re only two teachers or whatever you call them.

  I feel Mom tense beside me, but she keeps a smile on her face and introduces us to one of the teachers. In a matter of seconds, she’s handing over Hope and we’re waving good-bye, and then we’re out in the hallway.

  Mom and I look at each other as the door swings closed and the noise from the day care is somewhat dimmed.

  What just happened?

  And why does it feel weird?

  Mom’s eyes get watery, and she swallows a couple of times to keep her emotions in check.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She sniffles and shrugs. “That was harder than I thought it would be.”

  Sort of, yeah, for me too. But that’s stupid. I’ve left Hope with my mom and Alan a zillion times. This isn’t any different, except now I have to pay for it. I get to go back to school and go back to normal, and Hope gets to be around other babies and do, I don’t know, baby stuff. So what’s the fucking problem?

  “You okay?” she asks, and I realize I’m staring off into nowhere.

  I’m fine. It’s all fine. But I can’t seem to find the words, so I nod.

  Mom puts her arm around my shoulder as we walk back to the car.

  • • •

  School.

  Friends. Lunch. Homeroom. Report cards.

  It’s all back.

  The first clue that the normal world is still spinning—and that it now actually expects me to get back on board—is how everyone comes up to me like I’m their long-lost brother or something.

  “Ryden, omigod, hi!”

  “What’s up, Brooks?”

  “State champions fifth year in a row, man! Eastbay is going down!”

  “How was your summer?! I went to France—it was amaaaazing.”

  I guess, unlike that day at the lake, because I don’t have Hope with me, they’ve forgotten about her. Or maybe they’re avoiding the subject on purpose. I smile and laugh and hug and fist-bump everyone, like life’s totally great.

  No one mentions Meg. I guess it makes sense. She stopped school in November of last year, so everyone’s used to seeing me without her. I wish I were used to seeing me without her.

  My locker is the second sign that nothing has changed in the Bizarro World that is Downey High School. I don’t even know which one is mine until we’re given our assignments in homeroom, but clearly someone got the memo before I did, because my locker is decorated. It’s covered in Puma blue and white, with a paper soccer ball with a giant #1 painted on it and lots and lots of streamers and silver glitter. I look down the hall—there are a few other lockers that look like mine, all belonging to my fellow varsity soccer team members. Clearly whoever went to the trouble to find out my locker assignment and get here early to decorate it hasn’t heard that I’m benched for Friday’s game.

  I don’t have any books yet, and though it’s almost fall, it’s not really cold enough outside for a coat, so I don’t have anything to put in the locker. So I just close it and go to AP English.

  And there she is. Meg Reynolds, dark hair all wild and flowing around her shoulders and down her back, pale face resting on her pale arm sprawled across the desk, vigorously scribbling in a notebook. She looks up and gives me the brightest, most beautiful smile in the whole world. I stop dead in my tracks. The memory is so real, so vivid, I have to fight to get air. And then I blink.

  She’s gone. All that’s left is an empty desk with the class syllabus sitting on it. There are plenty of other seats, but I sit there.

  Shoshanna walks into class just as the bell rings, so I’m saved from having to talk to her, but she keeps throwing me grins throughout the period.

  As soon as the class ends, I hear, “Ryden!” Shoshanna throws her arms around me and keeps the hug going way too long. I try to pull back twice, but she just holds on tighter.

  Finally she lets me go, and we exit the classroom together to find Dave waiting for Sho in the hall. I give him a fist bump. “What’s up, guys?”

  Shoshanna’s still beaming at me. “What did you think of your locker? Did you love it?”

  “Um, yeah. That was you?”

  “Yup.” She claps her hands excitedly. “You’re my player!”

  Oh God, no. There’s this tradition at Downey where the varsity cheerleaders are each assigned a soccer player during the fall and a basketball player during the spring. All season, the cheerleader wears his number, cheers his name during the roll-call cheers, brings him cookies and little gifts and stuff on game days, and on and on and on. Last year, this girl named Madelyne Binder was my cheerleader. She moved away a few weeks into the season—I think her mom lost her job or something—and I was cheerleaderless. But I had Meg, so I didn’t care. Now it seems I have Shoshanna. At least in this one way. I know she means well, but I really don’t have the energy for this.

  “Shouldn’t Dave be your player, since you guys are together now?” I ask.

  “That’s what I said!” Dave replies. “But Sho insisted that you’re the team’s star, and she won’t accept anyone less than the best as her player.” He laughs as he says this, like, Isn’t she so cute? so I guess he doesn’t care that his girlfriend basically told him he’s a shitty player and not good enough for her. Well, whatever.

  “The locker was great,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “There’s more where that came from, mister!” Shoshanna giggles, and she and Dave continue on to their next class.

  A few periods later, I’m making my way to the cafeteria when I’m hit with another hallucination. Meg’s smiling face flickers in and out of view through the gaps in the passing stream of students. Unlike the last hallucination, this one doesn’t bring me to a halt. Instead, I pick up speed and push past arms and shoulders and backpacks, desperate to get close to her. I blink once, twice, but she doesn’t disappear this time.

  “Meg,” I whisper through my clogged throat.

  Meg’s eleventh-grade class photo, blown up to the size of a thirty-two-inch flat screen and framed in light-colored wood, hangs on the wall. She’s not a hallucination. But she’s not real either.

  Under the photo is a plaque that reads, Megan Elizabeth Reynolds. In our hearts forever.

  I want to claw the stupid plaque with its stupid message down with my bare hands. I would too, if it weren’t screwed into the cinder block. In our hearts forever. On this wall forever.

  They think they knew her. They think they’ll miss her. They think they’re mourning her.

  They know nothing.

  I see Alan at lunch. He’s sitting with a few people I don’t recognize. When Meg was in school, I sat with her and Alan most days. But it was just us then. Whoever these other friends of Alan’s are, they must be new.

  I carry my tray over. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “You see the picture?”

  He nods. “I thought it was nice.”

  “Nice. Yeah,” I say.

  “You wanna sit?” He slides down, making room for me.

  I look across the cafeteria toward where Dave and Shoshanna and Matt Boyd and a bunch of the other guys from the team are sitting. Dave’s shotgunning a Dr Pepper, and everyone’s cheering him on. He breaks away from the empty can, face red, and gives Shoshanna a sloppy, wet Dr Pepper kiss.

  I look back at Alan and his quiet group of nerds. With the exception of Alan, everyone here is staring at me like I’ve got a dick growing out the side of my head.

 
I don’t know what the hell to do. I don’t feel like sitting with a bunch of people I don’t know, who I surely don’t have anything in common with, but I also don’t feel like I belong at that other table either. They’d take me back no question, but that’s not the problem. It would require a massive effort on my part to try to blend in. I’m so tired. I don’t care about arm wrestling tournaments or betting Dave a dollar that he wouldn’t eat his fries if they were smothered in a mayo, Tabasco, pickle juice, and A.1. concoction.

  But I’m not gonna sit by myself either.

  “I think I’ll go sit with them,” I tell Alan, nodding over to the soccer table. At least I know them. “See you later?”

  Alan nods. “You bringing Hope by after school?”

  “I have to pick her up at day care. But then I’ll bring her to your house, yeah.”

  “I can pick her up if you want,” Alan says, shrugging.

  “Dude. Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “That would be fucking amazing. Then I wouldn’t be late to practice. I’ll text you the address of the place.”

  “Cool.”

  Oh shit, wait. “I’ll need to switch her car seat to your car somehow. Maybe I can do that now—give me your keys.”

  “No need. I have a car seat in my car already.”

  I blink. “You do?”

  “My mom got it when Hope first started coming over. So we can go to the park and stuff.”

  I shake my head, amazed. “I owe you one, Alan.”

  “Ryden, you owe me about a billion.”

  • • •

  I’m in the locker room changing for practice when my phone rings. It’s Alan.

  “They won’t let me take Hope home,” he says when I pick up. “Something about me not being on an approved list.”

  Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. “Put the lady on, I’ll talk to her.”

  The woman from the front desk comes on the line. “This is Sonya.”

  “Yeah, hi, this is Ryden Brooks. Hope’s father?” A few of the guys in the locker room pause what they’re doing and look my way. I duck behind my open locker door and lower my voice.

  “Yes, Mr. Brooks.”

  “Listen, you can send Hope home with Alan Kang. He’s her babysitter. It’s fine.”

  “Mr. Brooks, we can’t do that. You need to come in and add Mr. Kang to the approved pickup list and sign the form.”

  “I will, tomorrow. But can you just send her home with him today? Just this once? I’m telling you it’s okay.”

  “I understand, but I still can’t do that. We need to have it in writing, for legal reasons.”

  I kick the row of lockers, and the clang reverberates throughout the room. “I was in this morning filling out all your paperwork and there was nothing about an approved pickup list.”

  “You have to ask for that separately.”

  I can’t deal with this woman. “Can my mother pick her up?”

  I hear the clack of Sonya’s typing, and a second later, she comes back on the line. “Is your mother Deanna Brooks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, she’s fine. She’s listed as an emergency contact.”

  I exhale. “Thanks.” I hang up and call Mom. She doesn’t answer the house phone. Her music in her office is probably too loud. I try her cell. Four rings and then voice mail. I redial. Same. Fuck.

  Five minutes and countless calls later, I still have no idea where my mother is.

  The guys are all leaving the locker room and on their way to the field.

  “You coming, Brooks?” Andrew, one of our fullbacks, asks, filling his water bottle at the fountain and screwing the lid back on.

  “Yeah. In a minute,” I say. He gives me a wary look but shrugs and leaves.

  I rest my forehead against the cool metal of the lockers and try to think. Hope can’t stay there until I’m done with practice. If I don’t get her before three, I’ll be charged extra. And I don’t have anything extra to give.

  I have no choice. I have to go.

  I shoot Alan a quick text that I’ll meet him at the day care, grab my keys, and start to run, still in my cleats and shin guards. When I get to my car, the clock on the dashboard says two fifteen p.m. Practice is starting now. And I’m on my way out of the parking lot. Coach is gonna have my ass.

  Alan’s waiting outside the day care building, leaning against a brick column with a sign that says No loitering.

  “Why are you out here?” I ask.

  “They made me leave. Said people without kids aren’t allowed in there. I think they thought I was some sort of creeper or something.”

  I sigh. “Be right back.”

  There’s a line at the metal detectors, and the security people don’t seem to be in any rush, chatting with each person who comes through. My heart is pounding, every second feeling like an hour. Finally I cut to the front of the line and say, “Sorry, I’m in a rush. I have to pick up my kid.”

  The middle-aged woman at the front of the line with ’80s hair—you know, the kind with the bangs that are hair sprayed to look like they’re flying in every possible direction—stares at me, appalled. She takes in my soccer gear and my long hair and my sweaty face and looks like she’s trying to decide if she feels bad for me, “poor teenage dad, what a shame,” or if she wants to tell me to go to the end of the line and wait my turn like everyone else, that it’s not her problem I have a baby at seventeen.

  “She’s sick,” I add. “Really sick.” I toss my keys in the bin and go through the metal detector before anyone can stop me.

  I sprint down the halls, sliding a little in my cleats, and finally reach the day care.

  “Ryden Brooks, Hope’s dad,” I call out to Sonya as I bypass the front desk and head directly to the baby area. Hope’s in a crib, crying. No one’s paying attention to her. The two teachers are busy changing and feeding other babies. Goddammit. I lift my baby from her crib, hold her securely to my chest, grab her bag, and leave without saying anything to the teachers. No time.

  I only stop to fill out the form that says Alan can pick up Hope from now on, and then I’m on my way again, though I have to take it a little slower on my way out of the building—can’t go sliding in my cleats with a baby in my arms. I retrieve my keys from where I left them at the security station and meet Alan outside.

  “She’s crying,” Alan says.

  “No shit, man.”

  “Does she need to be changed?”

  “Probably.” I hold Hope toward him. “Do you mind taking care of it? I really need to get back to practice.”

  Alan’s mouth presses into a hard line for about a second, but he looks at Hope and starts making those idiotic smiley faces people do at babies and takes her into his arms. “No problem. See you after practice.”

  By the time I make it to the soccer field, it’s close to three o’clock. I’m forty-fucking-five minutes late. Again.

  This time no one even looks at me when I arrive. That’s worse than them all staring, because it means they’re getting used to me being unreliable. I’m so not that guy, I want to shout at them. I’m the guy who puts in extra time at practice, who gets there early and stays late. I’m the guy who runs five miles on Saturday morning even when we don’t have practice. I’m the guy who’s pulled a W in every single game played for the past two years, the guy with the lowest goals allowed average Downey High School has ever seen, the guy who’s ranked in the top five high school goalies in the country, for Christ’s sake. I’m the guy who’s going pro.

  Coach calls me over to the sidelines. His voice is pretty level, considering, but I already know this is going to be bad.

  “I’m so sorry, Coach,” I begin. “I had an emergency. It won’t happen again.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Ryden.”

  Ryden? He never ca
lls me Ryden. He always calls me Brooks.

  “I mean it this time. There was a problem at the day care—”

  Coach O’Toole nods, still watching the drills out on the field. “I have kids too, Ryden. Four of them. And their mother and I are divorced. I know what it’s like. There’re times when they’re with me that I just don’t know how to handle them. Someone’s always sick or getting her period or needs to be picked up from somewhere or needs help with some science project or decides she’s a vegan and won’t eat anything I’ve made for dinner. I know, Ryden. I get it.”

  Why the hell is he telling me all of this?

  “Lots of people get it. Anyone with kids gets it. Being a parent is the hardest thing in the world.” He claps a hand on my shoulder and finally turns to looks at me. “But the world is full of single parents, and we all have jobs to do, apart from being parents. And my job is to get this team another state championship and keep producing players who go on to play D-One. And your job is to be part of the team and do what’s expected of you, what’s expected of everyone here. And if you can’t do that, I understand…but then you’re off the team. I can’t hold you to a different set of rules than everyone else.”

  My heart stops dead in my chest. I shake my head fiercely, trying to find the magic words that will turn this conversation back around. “I know. You’re absolutely right. I know I’ve been undependable, but I’ve finally got it figured out. I swear. Give me one more chance, Coach, please. I won’t let you down again. Please.” I know I’m begging, but I don’t give a shit. I’ll get down on my hands and knees and kiss his sneakers if it would make him change his mind. I can’t get kicked off the team.

  Coach considers me a minute, arms crossed, chewing on a huge wad of gum.

  “Please,” I say again.

  Finally his shoulders relax a little. “One more chance. If you are even one minute late to a practice or game from here on out, that’s it.”

  I nod like crazy. “Yes, of course. I understand.”

  “And you’re still benched Friday.”

  “Got it.”