I go to Rubee’s checkout line. She’s not there. I head to express because sometimes she works there. But she’s not in the express line. So I go from line to line, checking each one for Rubee. She’s not there.
Maybe she hasn’t started her shift. I go to the coffee counter and order a coffee.
The girl behind the counter says, “Would you like that to go?”
I turn to see some empty seats at the tables. “No, I’ll have it here. So not in a paper cup. A regular cup. You know.”
“A mug?” She smiles.
A mug. I try to smile back. “Yes, a mug. That’s what I meant.”
She smiles at me as she makes it. I pay, but when I go to pick up the mug, my hand shakes so badly that I have to set it down. I slop coffee on the counter.
“Sorry,” I say.
The girl grabs a cloth and wipes up the spill. “It happens to me all the time.”
It doesn’t happen to me. Or it didn’t use to happen.
A line has formed behind me. The girl says, “Why don’t I put that in a paper cup? That way you can use a lid.”
That way I can get it to the table without pouring it on anyone. I say, “Sure.”
She pours the coffee into a paper cup and tops it up. “Careful,” she says. “It’s hot.”
The cup has a printed warning too, hot, hot, hot. Like I wouldn’t know coffee is hot. But when I pick up the cup, it feels too hot to hold and I set it back down. I say to the girl, “I need to talk to Rubee.”
She looks puzzled.
I say, “You know Rubee? She works here, on cash. Slim, with long dark hair? She always wears a bracelet with a red stone.”
The girl nods. “Sure, I know Rubee.” She studies my face, my crooked nose. “Weren’t you at Riley Park?”
I remember now. She came to the party with Rubee. I say, “No, that was...” I hesitate. “That was someone else.”
She says, “I heard some hockey player started the fight.”
I am tired, so tired. I lean on the counter. “I need to talk to Rubee.”
The girl says, “Rubee doesn’t work here anymore. She’s not answering her phone and she’s totally off-line. It’s like she’s disappeared.” The girl glances at the lineup of customers waiting behind me. She says, “Can I get you anything else?”
I can’t trust my hands not to shake. I leave the coffee on the counter.
Outside, I have to think for a minute about where I left my car. When I find it, someone has parked so close that I can’t open the driver’s side door. I have to climb in over the passenger seat—Darius’s seat. I bang the top of my head on the roof of the car and my hat falls off. I scramble for my hat. When I finally get behind the wheel, I’m in a sweat. I throw the car into reverse and tromp the gas. But the wheels are cranked and I rip into the side of the car next to me. At the sound of metal crunching, several people in the parking lot turn to look. I don’t care. I give the car more gas and scrape out of the stall. I flip the bird at the onlookers and peel out of the lot.
Chapter Eleven
In the garage at home, I pull my hockey bag out of the back of my car and unzip it. The smell is strong, familiar. It triggers a memory of locker rooms and the way it feels to suit up before a game. Sweat smells different before a game. It stinks of fear. I used to shower right before games and I would still stink. That’s how my gear smells.
I pull my jersey over my head. I feel stronger. My jersey, my pads, my helmet—they’re like armor. In my hockey gear, I feel like a warrior, like I’m someone else.
I grab a bucket from the side of the garage and turn it upside down as a seat. I kick off my runners and put on my skates.
The floor in the garage is gritty with dirt, and I try to keep my skate blades from touching the floor. The dirt will dull the blades. I bend over my skates and tighten the laces. I pull clean shoelace out of the eyelets.
My legs aren’t as big around as they were. My arms, too, are smaller than before. I’m not working out—I’m losing muscle.
My coach says not to worry about hockey, that I should focus on getting better. After the first couple of games that I missed, the coach brought me game tapes and sat and watched them with me. He tried to explain the new plays, but I couldn’t understand them. He doesn’t come anymore.
I hear a car pull up outside the garage. I stand and open the garage door. Officer Rex gets out of his cop car.
He points to my skates. “You’ll dull your blades.”
I shrug. “Not like I’m skating any time soon.”
He leans on the side of my car. He runs his hand along the crumpled metal. “Doing a little modification, are you?”
“I ran into a pole.”
“Oh yeah.” He looks at me. “At Safeway.”
He knows. One of the onlookers must have got my plate. I say, “So what? The moron parked too close.”
“Maybe. He got in without hitting you.”
“How do you know? Maybe he hit me.” I gesture to the damaged door panels on my car. “Maybe he did all this.”
“I looked at his car. I talked to people. You hit him.”
“This seems pretty small, you chasing a little fender bender. Don’t you have a murder investigation?”
He nods. “So you were at Safeway. Looking for Rubee?”
“She doesn’t work there anymore.”
“I could have saved you the trip.”
“I didn’t start the fight. It happened like I told you. They jumped us from the back.”
“The boyfriend is gone. Some family emergency.”
My head is starting to pound. “What about the other two?”
“We don’t have positive identification of any of them, Corbin. For what it’s worth, his buddies say that if there was a fight, they weren’t there. But if they were there, they were only defending themselves. No one says anything about steel bars. If you believe them, it was just a few punches.”
“Obviously I don’t believe them.”
“I talked to a few other people, like your hockey coach.” He pauses. “And the school.”
I groan. “I’ve been in a few fights. Who hasn’t?”
“Like with Jason?”
“Did he call that a fight? I barely touched him.”
Officer Rex sighs. “It’s bad what happened to you and Darius. But if you’re fighting yourself, you’re fighting the wrong guy.”
“What, now you’re a shrink?”
He ignores me. “I want you to leave Rubee alone.”
“Why should I? It was her boyfriend. She must have told him where we were.”
“He might have followed her.”
“Whatever. She knows he did it. Why isn’t she saying anything?”
He looks at his shoes. “I mean it, Corbin. Leave her alone.”
“You’re protecting her, just like you’re protecting that bastard boyfriend. What about Darius? Who’s on his side? What about me?”
“This might be a new concept for you, Corbin, but this is not about you. It’s about getting to the truth. Sometimes it’s not a straight path to the truth. Sometimes we get it right and the courts let him walk. Sometimes we don’t have enough to make a charge and the guy walks. Sometimes everyone knows the guy is guilty as hell and he still walks because someone did something stupid.”
A tow truck rumbles up to the curb.
Officer Rex says, “I’m impounding your car.”
“Because I scratched a car in a parking lot?”
“And your license is suspended until further notice.”
Blood pounds into my temples. Before I can speak, he says, “You’re not safe to drive, Corbin. If you don’t hit another car, you’ll drive yourself off the road.”
I kick my skate blade into the side of my car. “I guess I’m under house arrest.”
“Stop fighting this, Corbin.”
“Did you impound his car? Rubee’s boyfriend’s car?” An image returns to me of the parking lot at Riley Park. It’s nighttime. A car sl
ews around in the gravel. Darius said the boyfriend drove a nice car. I say to Officer Rex, “What does he drive?”
Officer Rex says, “Maybe you can tell me.”
I struggle to bring the memory into focus. “Dual exhaust. A sedan.”
His eyes light up. “What color?”
“Gray.” No, that’s just the color of the memory. “I don’t know. Something light. It’s new, maybe an Acura.”
He pulls out his notebook. “Where did you see it?”
“In the parking lot. That night.”
“What about a plate? Did you get a plate number?”
In my memory I can’t even see the plate. I’m not sure I even saw the car. “No.”
He says, “You didn’t see a plate? What about one number? Did you see even one number?”
“No!”
“That’s okay,” he says. “Maybe your memory will come back.”
Sometimes memory doesn’t come back.
“You’re doing great. But, Corbin,” he says, “you’ve got your pads on top of your jersey.”
I look down. Sure enough, I’ve put stuff on in the wrong order.
He walks out to meet the tow-truck driver.
Chapter Twelve
Just one number. I sit with my math book open in front of me. Numbers float on the page. One number? I can’t remember even one number from that license plate. I strain to focus on the math problem. The numbers swim. With a sigh, I snap the book closed.
The house is quiet. The clock over the stove ticks, marking seconds. Then the minute hand clicks. Seconds to minutes. Minutes to hours. How many hours until my dad gets home? How many more hours watching him watching me. Are you working out, Corbin? Are you trying? If you try, you can play again. Then my life is worth living again.
How many hours in a lifetime? How many in Darius’s lifetime?
I pick up the phone. I don’t have to remember the numbers—my fingers find them. I punch Darius’s cell number.
His mother answers.
“Corbin?”
She sounds old.
My stomach turns upside down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think his phone would be on. The other times I called, it wasn’t on.”
I can hear her breathing. She says, “Corbin, you know, don’t you? You know that Darius is gone.”
Gone. He’s dead. I say, “Yes, of course I know. I’m sorry.”
“You were close. This must be hard for you.”
This throws me. Like, how could she say this about me when she must be dying inside?
I say, “Are you doing okay?” She just buried her son. How could she be okay? I say, “I mean, if there’s anything I can do...”
I hear her take a breath. “Sometimes I turn on his phone so I can hear his message.”
“I know. I just want to hear his voice.”
She says, “I can see who he talked to, right? And his text messages. It’s like a record. It’s like I can live a little more with him.” She starts to cry.
I say, “I’m sorry. I won’t call again.”
“No,” she says, “it’s all right. You’re not the only one who calls. Sometimes people haven’t heard and I have to tell them, but other times it’s his friends. Girls, mostly. We’re all just looking for some way to have him back.”
I say, “There’s a girl, Rubee. Does she call?”
“Rubee? I don’t think so.”
“Did she call him the night he...” I don’t want to use the word “died.” I say, “...the night it happened?”
“No. Officer Rex asked me the same thing.” She excuses herself and I hear the sound of her blowing her nose. She continues, “You have to stay strong, Corbin. For Darius. You can’t lose yourself too.”
“I’m not.”
She says, “We want him back, but we can’t have him back. One of these days I’ll wake up and I’ll know that he’s gone, but right now I open my eyes and I’m happy for a second—until I remember.”
“I’m sorry.” How many times can I tell her I’m sorry?
She says, “Come and see me sometime if you want. See your friends. Just live, Corbin.” She hangs up.
Chapter Thirteen
Snow falls in the afternoon, slanted on the wind. My bike tires crunch in the snow as I pedal to Riley Park. I have to get off and walk around the corners because the tires have no traction in the snow. I didn’t bother to find gloves, and my hands are cold. Snow soaks through my runners.
At Riley Park, the parking lot is crisscrossed with tire tracks. There are a few cars in the lot, dog walkers maybe, but I don’t see anyone around. I drop my bike by the side of the path and walk into the park.
At the fire pit, the pile of flowers is covered with fresh snow. I can make out the shape of the teddy bear. I get why people leave the flowers. But I’d leave them where Darius was most alive. I think back to the night when Darius and I jumped from the cliffs. That’s where he’s most alive, in that moment, suspended in time. Beside the pile, not covered in snow, I see a bundle of red and white roses. I pick up the roses.
On the frozen river, the wind riffs new snow across the blue-white skin of ice. Around me, the cliffs are somber, like they’re waiting. I gaze up at the gap, imagining how it looked when Darius and I appeared out of the trees, our legs windmilling to clear the trees, so close to each other that we could touch. That’s where I need to leave the flowers— right where we plunged into the river. That was the moment before everything changed. That was when the river was just ours. I head out onto the ice.
Here, in the open, the wind stings my eyes. Snow prickles against my face and my bare hands. My feet are wet. Wind whistles in my ears.
I stand and let the wind fill me. I imagine it brings the sound of Darius’s voice, his laugh. The wind rings my head and my hair stands on end. In the wind, my eyes water and I let the tears stream, imagining the water that night we jumped—the night that everything changed.
I hear my name, and then I laugh because I’ve imagined Darius, calling me. I know he can’t, but if he could call me, it would be here, at Riley Park, under the cliffs that we jumped. I loosen the roses from their wrapping.
This is where we jumped. We hit the water right here. I look down and see the water under the ice. Maybe the river froze that night, and if we could, we’d find our shapes still there, in the ice.
Again the wind howls my name. I fling the roses into the wind.
Water surges to my ankles, so cold I gasp. I look down to see roses floating on the water. The ice gives way under my feet.
Chapter Fourteen
For a second I scramble, trying to find ice instead of water, running on a backward treadmill as the ice slithers away. First I slip to my waist, and I can still feel ice with my hands. I dig my fingers against the hard surface, willing the ice to hold. But it doesn’t. I hear it groan, then crack. There’s nothing to grab but water, cold water, so cold that it hurts. The weight of my clothing pulls me down. Water crawls over my head. The river consumes me.
I have no breath. My lungs shrink and stick to themselves, useless. The cold is like metal. I feel metal in my blood, threading up the back of my neck into my skull. It feels like the cold could lift my skull. I close my eyes against the pain.
My runners are weights on my feet. My jeans are like steel plates. My coat flaps like steel wings, and everything, my runners, my jeans, my coat, everything drags me down. With a furious kick, I stop my downward plunge. With another kick, I feel air again on the top of my head. I throw my head back, clearing my nose and mouth in time to pull one breath into my lungs, and then I’m under the water again.
With the other foot, I peel one runner off my heel and shake my foot free. I feel the toe of my sock wafting loose. I manage to pry off the other runner. I kick, hard. Again, I’m able to breathe. Wind blows the water over my head.
I fumble with my coat zipper. My fingers are stiff, already frozen, but I get the zipper partway down. I shrug the coat off my shoulders, and for a second I’m trappe
d in the sleeves. The oxygen is long gone from my lungs. Frantic, I rip one arm out of the coat sleeve, then the other, and claw for the surface.
I take two breaths. I scream. One more breath and roses swirl around my head. I grab for the ice but it breaks under my arms. My coat is still around my waist, like a weight belt. As I struggle to pull myself onto the ice, my legs and body pull me under it. Under my hands, the ice breaks away in shattered panes. Shards jab me in the face. My teeth chatter so hard that I am afraid I will bite my tongue. The wind freezes my hair into spikes. Then water closes over my head and flattens my hair to my skull. My eyelashes are ice, then water, then ice.
Underwater, my heart beats in my ears. I open my mouth to scream, and cold water fills me. I gain the surface again and cough, wanting only to breathe.
I need to break the ice until it won’t break under my weight. Then, maybe, I can climb out. But the ice keeps breaking. I’m getting too weak. My arms and legs grow rigid in the cold. I’m tired, so tired.
I hear my name. Water pours into my ears. My teeth stop chattering. It’s quiet. I tip my head back. Around me, roses turn. I slip under the water.
Chapter Fifteen
In the ring of roses above me, I see her face. Rubee. Her hands reach down into the water. I see the red stone at her wrist, back and forth, floating across her wrist. If I reach up, I could grab her hands. I could pull her down under the water and she would die here too.
But I won’t. Anger leeches out of me and I’m empty.
I see her mouth my name. She’s calling me.
I’m not cold anymore. I feel warm, as if the water is the same temperature as my body.
Rubee’s dark hair floats on the water with the roses. Her hands flash like fish. I feel her fingers on my head, and then they are gone.
If I kicked, if I tried, maybe I could breathe just once more.
My legs are powerless against the weight of water. But I try. I imagine I am water and that my legs are water too.
Do I hear her? Is she screaming my name?
Rubee’s face is water. Behind her, the sky is white. Around her face, her hair is dark waves in the water.
Riley Park Page 4
