Sat., Feb. 4th—Brooklyn
We ride around town
for an hour
and then he stops at a park
a few blocks from his house.
He doesn’t say anything.
He just goes to the swing,
sits down, and starts pumping.
I take a seat next to him.
We don’t talk.
We just swing.
There is comfort
in the act of swinging.
True,
unexpected
comfort.
“You want to jump?” he asks.
“See who can go the farthest?”
I shake my head.
“I just want to swing,” I say.
And so we do.
Sat., Feb. 4th—Nico
Swinging is safe.
There’s nothing to fear, unlike jumping.
Taking that leap requires courage.
So we quietly swing, like she wants.
I understand wanting that.
Needing that.
When she’s had enough, she slows down
and simply steps off.
As we walk back to our bikes
she stops and stands there,
looking up at the sky,
big, puffy clouds floating by.
“It feels like I’ve lost so much,” she says softly.
“What have I got left?”
I grab her arm and pull, just enough to get her walking.
“Me, Brooklyn.
You’ve got me.”
Sat., Feb. 4th—Brooklyn
As we walk,
I tell him, “My mom loves clouds.
When I was little,
we’d lay in the backyard,
watching the clouds float by.
We’d shout out the shapes we saw.
A cat,
a tree,
a dinosaur.
One time I said,
‘I see the sun!’
She reached over and covered my eyes.
‘Don’t look at the sun, Brooklyn.
It can blind you!’
I didn’t mean the real sun.
I meant a sun made of clouds.
When I explained it to her,
we laughed until we cried.”
We stand at our bikes
and he smiles.
“Isn’t it funny,” he says,
“how easily things can be misunderstood?”
I nod.
“You know that plastic snake you gave me?
It kind of freaked me out.”
I laugh. “It did?”
“Not like that.
I mean, the note and the gift bag.
I didn’t know—”
“What?” I say.
But then, I get it.
He thought it meant something.
Something more.
“Oh. Oh! Well, I mean, it was just,
you know, a funny gift.
To say thank you.
Really. That’s all.”
He starts getting on his bike.
“I know. It was sweet.”
And as we ride off,
I try to figure out if he meant
it freaked him out in a good way
or freaked him out in a bad way.
That’s pretty much
what I think about
all the way home.
Sat., Feb. 4th—Nico
It was just a funny gift.
A funny gift?
Well, what did I want her to say?
I don’t know.
Wait.
Maybe I do.
Oh, no.
Do I?
And if I wanted her to say that,
well, that means the unthinkable.
And the unthinkable is pretty much
a totally impossible situation.
Isn’t it?
Sun., Feb. 5th—Brooklyn
Confusion
fills me up.
Like thick, ugly goo,
it fills my head,
my heart,
my stomach,
until I feel sick.
Do I feel that way?
Did I want the silly gift
to mean something more?
Am I disappointed that
it might have done the opposite
of what I wanted it to do?
Yes.
Yes.
Oh my God.
Yes.
Sun., Feb. 5th—Nico
We’re running
this morning,
through the neighborhood
so she doesn’t get too used to track running,
which is different from street running.
“Isn’t running all the same?” she asks.
“That’s like me asking you if art is all the same.
Which it’s not, right?”
She nods.
“Some people draw flowers,” I continue.
“And some people draw cartoons,” she says.
And then it’s my turn to simply nod.
Lucca brought us together.
So why do I feel annoyed
when it feels like he’s right here
in between us?
Sun., Feb. 5th—Brooklyn
I think bringing up
Lucca’s art made Nico
feel uncomfortable,
like wearing a wool sweater
without a shirt underneath.
So I change the subject
and ask him about “the zone.”
I’ve always wondered
what runners mean
when they say they hit “the zone.”
He tells me
it’s this place you find
when you’re running
where everything feels right.
Where your breathing,
your stride,
your temperature,
everything feels good,
maybe even better than good,
and when you get there,
to this place,
you feel like you could go forever.
“Is that why runners keep running?” I ask.
“Pretty much,” he says.
“You wait, Brooklyn.
One of these days you’ll find it.
And then you’ll be hooked.”
As I stop to walk
to catch my breath,
it’s hard to imagine
ever finding the zone.
But then,
a year ago,
it was hard to imagine
ever getting out of bed.
And now look at me.
Sun., Feb. 5th—Nico
After we run,
I talk her into breakfast.
It’s Sunday, so we have time.
We go to Pop’s favorite place,
The Whistle Stop Café near the train station.
She orders coffee, eggs and toast.
I order pancakes with a side of hash browns.
All around us,
black and white photos of trains
and people going places.
She asks where I’d go
if I could hop a train and ride somewhere.
I say Washington, D.C.
for the monuments and museums.
She says Maine
for faraway fun in the snow.
I tell her I thought she might say Vegas
to see her mom and brothers.
“You miss them?” I ask.
A simple question.
She nods.
Sips her coffee.
Looks out the window.
Then she turns and starts talking
and for the next fifteen minutes,
pausing only when our food comes,
she gives me anything but
a simple answer.
Sun., Feb. 5th—Brooklyn
As we leave,
I start to say,
thanks for the ni
ce time.
Thanks for being easy
to talk to.
Thanks for working out with me
and giving me the
confidence I need.
I start to say a lot of things.
But in the end,
all I say is,
“See you tomorrow.”
Sun., Feb. 5th—Nico
I’m listening
to the new Killers CD
doing homework
when Goodnight, Travel Well
comes on.
Dark.
Eerie.
Sad.
The room gets cold.
The light on my desk flickers.
He’s here.
He loved The Killers.
I sit there, knowing he’s listening too.
I close my eyes,
remembering,
wanting it to be different,
hating the world cause it’s not.
When the last note fades,
the room warms up,
and the light brightens.
He’s gone.
Goodnight, Lucca.
Travel well.
Sun., Feb. 5th—Brooklyn
It’s late
and I can’t fall asleep.
I go downstairs
to get a snack,
where I find Daddy
in his bathrobe,
his head in his hands
at the kitchen table.
When I ask what’s wrong
all he can say is,
“I miss them.”
He stands up,
hugs me,
and lets out a sob.
Clearly I’m not the only one
in the house
battling demons.
Mon., Feb. 6th—Nico
I’m sound asleep
when I hear a ring.
I pick my pants off the floor
and pull out my phone.
1:09 a.m.
Brooklyn says she can’t sleep.
Her dad misses her brothers.
She misses them too.
Silence.
I rub my eyes trying to get
what she’s saying and why she’s saying it
at one o’clock in the morning.
“Sing me a lullaby,” she says.
I laugh.
“Please, Nico. I think it will help.”
“Help what?” I ask. “To upset you even more?”
Silence.
“You could never upset me,” she says softly.
“Please?”
So I take a deep breath,
and start to sing,
making it up as I go along,
to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
“In the quiet of the night,
Brooklyn baby tucked in tight.
Close your eyes, everything’s all right.
Dreams will take you to the light.
Like a star, you’re lovely and bright.
So sleep baby girl, sleep all night.”
I thought she’d laugh,
tell me I’m horrible,
and a singer is the last thing I should be.
Instead she says, “That is the best song ever.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Thanks, Nico,” she says. “I think I can sleep now.”
“Sweet dreams, Brooklyn.”
“From your lips to God’s ears, Nico.”
After we hang up,
I lie there for hours
hoping at least one of us
is sleeping.
Mon., Feb. 6th—Brooklyn
When I wake up
I whisper prayers of thanks.
Thank you for a night free of ghosts and nightmares.
Thank you for another day of living.
Thank you for a race that gives me purpose.
Thank you for a lullaby last night.
Thank you for the boy who sang it.
I think he called me lovely in the song.
Did he?
Yeah, he did.
And I feel my heart
do a dance of joy
at the thought.
Mon., Feb. 6th—Nico
While we run
this morning,
I talk to her about the race,
and how transitions can be hard.
Getting out of the water,
getting ready for the bike.
Getting off the bike,
getting ready for the run.
I tell her, keep your transitions simple.
Don’t sweat them too much.
Most mistakes in transition happen
because people are in too much of a hurry
and do stupid stuff.
I tell her that eventually
we’ll need to practice transitions.
We’ll need to swim and then bike.
We’ll need to bike and then run.
She looks at me.
“I can do this, right?”
I smile and grab her arm.
“Absolutely.”
“You’re always so confident,” she says.
If only she knew the truth . . .
Mon., Feb. 6th—Brooklyn
Kyra’s sitting with Tyler
at lunch, smiling and laughing.
I sit at a table with some other girls,
leaving the lovebirds alone because
that’s what they want,
even if she’d never tell me that.
As I eat,
I notice Audrey in line.
Another girl comes up to her,
talks to her,
and Audrey pretends to listen
but by the look on her face,
you can tell she’s a million miles away.
How many days was I like that?
Pretending to listen, but not hearing a word?
Pretending to care when I hated it all?
Pretending to live when I was dying inside?
Too many to count,
that’s how many.
Mon., Feb. 6th—Nico
I’m packing up my books
for homework when I see something
in the corner of my locker.
Something that wasn’t there Friday.
I pull out A Cry for Help.
And just as I do, Brooklyn walks up.
“Are we swimming or riding tomorrow?” she asks.
She sees the book.
“What’s that? You reading it for Language Arts or something?”
She takes it out of my hand.
Opens it.
Has he written anything in it?
Torn any of the pages in a weird, ghostly way?
I take it back before she has a chance to see if he has.
“Nah. Someone loaned it to me. Thought I might like it.”
“What’s it about?” she asks.
I shrug. “I have no idea.
So, about tomorrow.”
She walks out with me,
the whole time I’m thinking,
what else can I do, Lucca?
What else am I supposed to do?
Tues., Feb. 7th—Brooklyn
The worst night yet.
Another nightmare
in a graveyard,
being chased
past the headstones
only to wake up
to find the light I’d left on
now turned off.
With the awful smell in the room,
of dirt and death
combined with a coldness in the air,
I wondered if I was Jonah,
swallowed whole by a whale.
I reached for the lamp,
but before I switched it on,
I saw him there,
floating in the corner,
ever-so-slightly glowing,
a dark red aura around him.
I sat there, frozen,
until he let out a moan of words
so deep
,
so frightening,
so dark,
it made me run from my room,
down to the kitchen,
where I turned on all the lights
and started grabbing pans
from the cupboard,
thinking I’d make hot cocoa,
but secretly hoping the loud noise
would scare ghostly Gabe away.
Now, my shaky hands
grab the milk from the fridge
as I remember his words.
You can’t run forever.
Tues., Feb. 7th—Nico
She calls me
Chasing Brooklyn Page 12
