by Liz Fichera
But then one day, just like that, the stories had stopped. Like they’d never happened at all.
Mom wiped away a line of tears streaming down her cheek with the back of her hand. “I can’t promise I’ll be perfect.” She sat straighter, her nostrils flaring. “But I can promise that I will be better.”
I smiled, my chest filling with love for her, for my parents, my heart bursting with hope. Then I squeezed her hand. “It’s a start, Mom. That’s really all anybody can ask.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Dad’s eyelids flickered again.
And I’d have sworn I saw him smile, too.
Chapter 56
Ryan
AFTER GOLF PRACTICE ON WEDNESDAY, I raced home to call Fred.
She had told me yesterday that there was a chance her dad would be released from the hospital today. Even Mom was pleased with Mr. Oday’s progress, and Fred’s voice had sounded so happy and light that it had lifted my spirits, too. That’s why I figured tonight would be the best night to talk.
I sat on the edge of my bed with the cordless phone in one hand. I was alone in the house, but I closed the bedroom door anyway. I drew in several steadying breaths before I dialed the phone. This was turning out to be harder than I’d thought. My stomach kept churning and making noises like I hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Hi, Ryan,” Fred answered on the second ring, surprising me. Then I remembered my cell phone had caller ID.
“Hey, F-Fred,” I said, trying so hard to sound casual that I started to stutter. Unfortunately, Fred’s voice had a way of making me do that. Around her, I always talked a little faster than normal. It usually took a few sentences before I found my rhythm. I couldn’t be any less cool around her. “How’s your dad?”
“Better. We brought him home this afternoon. He’s sleeping.”
“I’m glad. Your mom must be pretty happy.”
“She is.”
“So you’re home now?”
“Yep.”
“Good.” No wonder we had such a clear phone connection. The cell-phone reception from the hospital was either bad or terrible, depending on where Fred was when I called.
“How was practice?” A door closed in the background. A screen squeaked.
“Good,” I said again, “but the coach is working us like we’re at boot camp or something. You’ve gotta get back to practice. Soon, Fred. Or he’s going to kill us, for sure.” And it was true. Coach Lannon had extended practice by thirty minutes and required everybody to blow through an extra bucket of practice balls, probably to make up for the huge void left by Fred. “Um, when do you think you’ll be back?” I tried for casual again.
“Tomorrow, maybe. Or Friday.”
“Will you be at the tournament tomorrow? It’s at Ahwatukee again.”
“Maybe. I mean, I hope so. But I won’t if my mom has to be back at work. Someone has to be here to watch my dad.” She paused. “Will you be there?”
My chest tightened. “Not sure.”
“Why?”
“I really should start packing. I’m supposed to leave for my uncle’s house this weekend.”
“Oh,” Fred said, her voice sounding smaller. “So, you’re really going through with it?” It came out more like a question.
“Yeah. I think it’ll be good.”
“For you?” Her tone was doubtful. “What about your parents?”
“I don’t think they’re crazy about it. My sister is kind of bummed. But it’s not forever.”
“How long?”
“Six months. Eight at the most.”
The line turned quiet.
“Fred?” I said. “Are you still there?”
“Why’d you really call me tonight, Ryan?” One of the dogs barked in the distance, and I figured she must be sitting outside.
“Where are you, exactly?” I stalled.
“Outside. Putting.”
“You’re practicing?”
“Have to. I haven’t touched a club in a week.”
The line went quiet again. I moved the phone away from my mouth so I could take a breath and gather up some nerve. Finally, I said, “There is something I wanted to tell you…”
“Yeah?” she prodded.
I heard a golf ball drop into a cup.
“Oh, no…” Fred said.
“Oh, no, what?”
“The phone is starting to beep in my ear. What do two beeps mean?”
“Ugh,” I muttered. “It means the phone is going dead.” Freakin’ phone battery!
“Humph.”
The phone started to beep again. This time I heard it on my end.
“I think the phone is about to die.” Fred’s voice faded in and out between beeps. “We’ll have to talk about this lat—” She didn’t finish.
The line bugged out.
Chapter 57
Fred
I TOSSED RYAN’S dead cell phone into my backpack.
“Great timing,” I muttered to the opened backpack like I expected it to answer back. I dropped to my bed and frowned at the ceiling. Sighing, I turned to look at the clock on my nightstand.
Seven o’clock.
“It’s not too late,” I reasoned. “If I hurry, I could be there by 7:30. Eight, at the latest.” That didn’t sound too bad. In fact, it sounded like a reasonable plan.
I popped off the bed.
I raced to the kitchen to find Mom. She was standing at the stove, stirring a copper pot of soup. Tomato, from the smell of it. The ladle clinked against the sides.
“Mom,” I said, out of breath. “Mind if I drive to Ryan’s?”
“Why? Isn’t it getting kind of late?” Mom looked at the stove clock.
“I won’t be gone long. I promise.”
“Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
I shook my head. “I need to return Ryan’s cell phone.”
“Why tonight?”
Because tomorrow might be too late. “He’s leaving for San Francisco and needs it before he goes.” Kind of true.
“Oh,” Mom said, pulling her chin back. “But it is late, Fred. And that’s a long drive.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said quickly.
Mom inhaled, considering this.
I sucked in a breath, waiting. My whole life hinged on one simple answer. I could barely hold myself together.
“Okay, then…”
Breathing returned.
“But there and back,” she said. “That’s all. Don’t stay too long.”
“I won’t, Mom.” I skipped across the floor and kissed Mom’s soft cheek.
*
I parked the van alongside the curb in front of the Berengers’ house. This time I didn’t worry about parking halfway down the block where the streetlights ended.
Every light was on inside Ryan’s house, and it had to be the cheeriest looking one I’d ever seen.
With his cell phone clutched in my hand, I climbed out of the van and practically floated up the circular flagstone path to the front door. I pushed my hair behind my ears and adjusted my favorite blue sweater over my jeans. My heart raced faster than it should have, and I drew back a steadying breath. Then I rang the bell.
“I’ll get it!” said a muffled voice on the other side of the enormous door.
I smiled. Riley.
The door opened to the brightness of the chandelier hanging in the foyer. I squinted into the light.
“Oh,” said a surprised voice.
Wrong on all counts. Definitely not Riley.
“It’s you,” said the voice.
I blinked a couple of times. “Gwyneth?”
“Yes?” Gwyneth said it like she had every right to be inside Ryan’s house beneath the birthday chandelier, and I most certainly did not.
My heart thudded to a complete stop. Gwyneth was still wearing her pom outfit, a short purple pleated wool skirt number with a cream sweater. The curlicue letters LB covered her chest. I looked past the waves of her blond hair. “Is Ryan here?”
<
br /> Gwyneth leaned against the door. “Yes,” she said. “This is his house.” She blinked wide. “But he’s taking a shower.” Her lips pursed.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly nauseated. There was something about Gwyneth Riordan that always made me feel less than a lump of dirt.
She adjusted her weight so that she balanced on the ball of her perfectly small right foot. And she stared back at me like I was insane. “Is that it? Oh?”
I exhaled and fought the urge not to run. “Could you just tell him I stopped by to deliver his phone?” I held it out to her in my now-clammy hand. Five minutes ago I couldn’t wait to see him. Now I wanted nothing more to do with Ryan’s phone or his plastic girlfriend.
One of Gwyneth’s thin blond eyebrows arched. “Of course.” She stared at the cell phone like it carried a disease. Finally, she plucked it from my hand with two fingers.
“Thanks,” I said, turning. I couldn’t wait to be out of this neighborhood with its stale, thick air. I should have never come. For once, I should have listened to Mom. She had been one thousand percent right.
“Wait,” Gwyneth said.
I stopped, midstep.
“Just some 411.” She paused for a deep inhale, like she was about to reveal something ridiculously obvious and important. “Look, we’re all real sorry about your father—”
“Don’t mention my father,” I interrupted her. I didn’t want Gwyneth to have the slightest thought about Dad in her blond brain. I certainly didn’t need her phony pity.
But Gwyneth was hardly concerned with what I wanted. “You know, this little infatuation you have with my boyfriend needs to stop. It’s become quite annoying. For everybody. I’m surprised Ryan hasn’t said something already.” Her head nodded behind her. “Am I getting through?”
I licked my now-dry lips and tasted the last of my lip gloss. “Totally,” I said, careful to keep my voice from cracking.
And then I turned toward the van, not even flinching when the front door rocked shut behind me.
Chapter 58
Ryan
“HOW’D YOU GET IN HERE?”
I trotted down the staircase in bare feet, a bath towel draped across my bare shoulders and a shoe box underneath my arm.
The sight of Gwyneth made me groan inside, but she smiled anyway. “The usual way,” she said, blinking innocently. Too innocently. “The side gate was open.”
“Yeah, but what are you doing here?” I’d told her last week that I didn’t want to go out anymore. It had felt good to finally make it official.
“Why do you think?” Her smile faded. “I came to see you. To talk.” Then her smile returned and I felt uneasy all over again. “Your parents are out back. Your dad’s even cooking barbecue. What drugs are you feeding them?” She snorted quietly. “They even invited me to dinner.”
I doubted that.
I wasn’t about to tell Gwyneth that my parents were doing better lately. We all were. My eyes dropped to her hands. “How’d you get my cell phone?”
Her eyes narrowed at the box under my arm. “What are you doing carrying women’s golf shoes?”
I ignored her. “My phone?”
Gwyneth’s eyes fluttered. “Oh,” she said, as if she just remembered something. “That Indian girl just dropped it by. What’s her name?” She snapped her fingers, trying to recall.
“Fred?” I said through clenched teeth.
“She asked me to give you this.” She extended her hand. “I invited her in, but she couldn’t stay.”
“Fred was here?” My voice turned louder. I didn’t reach for the phone. “When?”
She shrugged like it was no big deal. “A little while ago.”
I stepped around her and reached for the door. I pulled it open and walked outside. In the distance, I heard an engine chugging down the end of the street. “Shit!” I slapped the door.
“You can say that again,” Gwyneth said, hanging on my arm. Her touch felt oppressive. “At least I know why you haven’t been returning my calls.”
I shrugged off her arm and closed the door. Then I snatched my cell phone out of her hand.
She stepped back, her mouth open.
“Jeez, Gwyneth.” I could barely look at her. I could barely stand to breathe the same air. “I can’t believe you.” Like Seth, it was as if she had turned into a different person, someone unrecognizable. Had she always been so cruel, and I’d only just started to recognize it?
“Believe what?”
“What’d you tell her?”
“Who?”
“Fred!” I yelled.
She lifted her palms. Her eyes hardened. “Nothing.”
“Sure,” I said as I brushed toward her to the kitchen. “That’s what I thought.”
Chapter 59
Fred
I LEFT RYAN’S neighborhood and began the long, desolate stretch down Pecos Road toward the freeway.
A few cars passed me, so I accelerated, thinking that going faster could stamp out the image of Gwyneth’s perfect face and her perfect white pom shoes—her perfect white everything—at Ryan’s front door. I felt like an idiot for caring.
I rolled down the window, grateful for fresh air. I inhaled greedy gulps of it as the wind whipped my hair around my face.
But then I smelled something sharp. Really putrid.
Smoke.
“Oh, no,” I moaned. I pulled myself closer to the steering wheel, batting the hair from my eyes. Silvery wisps floated into the sky from somewhere near the front of the hood.
“I do not believe this,” I said, just as the thin wisps morphed into billowy clouds.
Not good.
The engine began to cough and sputter. My eyes dropped to the dashboard. An angry orange light blinked back at me. I had no choice but to pull over.
I coasted on fumes to the side of the road, my foot pumping the brake pedal, till the pavement ended and the dirt began. Finally, the van bounced its way to a stop, coughing and sputtering.
I shut off the engine, but the van continued to sputter and hiss, loud at first and then softer, till all that was left were wispy circles of silvery smoke that floated into the night sky.
My nose wrinkled from the smell as I tried to remember what Dad had told me about smoke. Did blue smoke mean motor oil? Or gas? Either way, smoke couldn’t be good.
I slapped the steering wheel, cursing my bad luck and going over my options.
I was stranded on the darkest stretch of Pecos Road without a phone. Mom would be frantic. So not good.
I’d have to wait till the engine cooled to try driving the van again, and even then it might not start. And there was absolutely no way I was walking back to Ryan’s house to beg for help. I’d rather walk through a rattlesnake pit in my bare feet.
I threaded my car keys through my fingers and opened the door. I locked it, not that it mattered. Who’d be desperate enough to steal the thing?
Then I spotted the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.
I held a breath, wondering whether to pull out my thumb and flag it down. If I were on the Rez, I wouldn’t hesitate. But this wasn’t home.
I stood off to the side of the road, in front of the van, waiting.
Except the car didn’t pass.
It flashed its lights and began to slow.
Instantly, my heart started to race as I squinted into the yellow beams. The air suddenly turned colder. I wrapped my arms across my chest.
The car pulled over behind my van, its headlights stinging my eyes. I pressed one hand above my forehead to cut the glare, but it didn’t help much. I heard a door slam and then the approach of footsteps in the gravelly dirt.
“Fred?” said a voice.
“Oh, god,” I said as my head began to spin.
It was my worst nightmare on replay.
“I thought I heard your ride drive through the neighborhood again.”
My throat thickened. It felt impossible to speak. This can’t be happening.
“Lost?” Seth said
when I couldn’t answer.
My fingers tightened around my keys. Sharp tips pressed against my palm.
Seth walked closer to where I could see him. He wore his baseball cap backward. His face was even paler in the glow of his headlights. “Car trouble?” His eyes widened with mock innocence.
What is his problem?
My eyes darted across the road, wondering where I should take my chances. I figured it was about twenty-five yards down the embankment to the barbed wire. If I concentrated, I could probably beat him to the wire, but then I’d have to leap over it and hope I could make it. And I could, if I had had a running start.
“Still having trouble answering simple questions, Fred?” His car keys jingled. He spun the key ring around his finger until he stood only an arm’s length away.
I stepped back deeper into the gravel. “Look, Seth,” I said, irritated that my voice had already begun to shake. “I know I’ve made you angry, and I’m sorry. I really am. But this is getting out of control.” I took another careful step back. My foot crunched over more loose gravel.
But he matched my step. His throaty laughter crackled in the darkness. “You have no idea.”
“Do you really want my spot on the golf team? Is that it?”
He didn’t answer, but the sky turned eerily silent as I waited for his answer.
“Because I’ll tell Coach Lannon tomorrow that I’m off the team and you should have your old spot back. Will that make you happy? Then will you leave me alone?”
Seth smacked his lips together. “Too late for that.”
He reached for my shoulder, each of his five fingers pressing down, but I shrugged off his hand.
Then the engine of another car revved down the road.
Seth turned toward the headlights, shielding his eyes against the glare with his arm, and I found my chance.
