by Leigh Hutton
Sydney slammed her locker door shut and was just about to thread the lock through its metal hoop, when Clover raised one of her crutches and poked the rubber end at the back pocket of her jeans.
‘Hey!’ Sydney spun around. ‘Clove! Oh my God!’ She batted the crutch away and threw her arms around Clover’s neck.
‘How was Cali?’ Clover asked. ‘Was it good to spend time with your dad?’
‘Yeah, it really was. And the surfing was insane! I can’t believe I’ve never tried it before.’
‘I’m way too scared of sharks.’
Sydney shook her head, then laughed. ‘Those pics you put up on Facebook were crazy that place you stayed at was insane, and your ankle it looked so gross!’
‘I know, right?’ Clover pulled away and rested against the lockers to give her arms a break, then shook out her hands. ‘Florida was crazy; the race was massive. I still can’t believe how big it is down there. Just too bad it’s so hard to get on a factory team for the nationals, but, never mind … ’ Maybe I might find a ride at the World’s …
‘How does your ankle feel now?’
‘Oh, it hurts like a beatch! The doc said it was one of the more colourful ones he’s seen. But at least I got this pretty cast ’ She raised her right foot.
‘I can’t believe how good you look,’ Sydney said, staring into Clover’s smiling face. ‘When you said you’d crashed, I was expecting you to be all beat up.’
‘No reason to be upset,’ Clover said. ‘It’s gonna be healed in like six weeks, and I’ve figured out these crutches pretty good, might even get a walking cast soon. It doesn’t really matter that I’m off the bike; with this bloody terrible weather, all this snow, I couldn’t ride anyway. Besides, by the time it’s healed, it should be nice enough outside to get back on the bike and start training for the World Championships.’
‘The World’s! But, what about your dad’s proposition? And your ankle?’
‘Proposition, sopposition,’ Clover said with a laugh. ‘It’s okay, Dad’s a big softy. Once the Doc cleared me, he was totally cool. Dad can’t help himself, he’s just as much of a revhead as I am.’
‘Right.’
‘Don’t be worried. I’m tough.’ Clover glanced at her watch. ‘We’d better get a move on. Bell goes in like twenty-five minutes and I’ve got that much crap to catch up on, it’s insane. I only got like one assignment done while I was away, and isn’t that English one due tomorrow?’
‘Think so, but … ’
‘We’d better jet, I won’t have time to do it tonight, Mom and Dad have finally given me the go ahead to spend a few hours at Dallas’s after school. I think they’ve taken pity on me ’cos of my bung leg.’
Clover slid the crutches under her arms and hopped her way towards the table in front of the classroom where she and Sydney would be spending their first period.
‘C’mon, Syd,’ Clover said. ‘Keep up, girl!’ She shook her head and turned back to the table. ‘Hey, Little Miss Racing Star.’ Sydney tapped Clover on the shoulder. ‘I know you probably don’t wanna hear it, but I really need to talk to you about Sera.’
Regret and guilt pinched at Clover’s heart, as it did whenever Sera’s name was mentioned, which, when she thought about it, hadn’t been for quite some time. This was a good thing, Clover considered, as the topic of Sera was just too hard to tackle. She needed all her forward momentum. All her strength.
‘I’m really worried about her,’ Sydney continued. ‘She looks terrible. And yesterday I overheard Travis saying that Chris dumped her.’
‘Look Syd,’ Clover said in a rush. ‘You go ahead and worry about her, but Sera Gordon lost the privilege of my worry the day she stabbed her stiletto into my heart.’
You’re gonna have to forgive her, sooner or later.’
‘When Sera says sorry, I’ll consider it, like I’ve said before. Now, get that face back into those books.’
The Cash farmhouse was a cute, white-panelled place at the end of a long gravel driveway. Clover leant her crutches against Dallas’s desk, accepted his meaty forearm, and hopped on one foot, following him to his queen-sized bed.
Dallas lowered his arm, slowly, to allow her to rest on the hockey-themed duvet. He sat down next to her.
‘It’s so good to see you, babe,’ she said. ‘Sorry I’m such a gimp.’
‘If gimps are sexy.’ He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. ‘I’d say you definitely are one.’
Clover nuzzled into his T-shirt and breathed in deeply, revelling in his familiar scent. Just being in Dallas’s proximity warmed her from the inside out. She sighed, straight from her soul, and stroked her cheek along his chest, looking up into his face. His cool eyes had deepened, gone soft, inviting her in. She ran a hand along the line of his jaw. ‘I missed you so much.’
‘I hate it when you’re not here.’ He held her eyes and lowered his lips, keeping them hovering, forcing her body to beg for connection. She reached her lips to his, let them touch for just a second, but pulled away at ignition her back had arched, thrusting her against him.
Her hands shot up without instruction, ran the length of the muscles at the back of his neck and into his soft, clean hair. If it weren’t for the bandages across her palms, the feeling would have been perfect. Even as it was, the smoothness of his skin against her fingertips was making her nerve endings send bolts of lightning through her entire body.
Dallas grabbed her by the waist and swung her into his lap, having to lift her a little higher than normal, to get her cumbersome cast clear of his thighs. ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to get your birthday present organised.’
‘That’s cool! You’ve hardly been here, with all your games. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come and watch.’
‘Would you like your present now?’
‘Only if it’s … ’ She stopped herself from saying, ‘you’. If I say that, sitting here, on Dallas’s bed, how can I then say no to sleeping with him? Clover bit her bottom lip as her mind raced again and again around the problem she’d been facing since her first date with Dallas. The last thing she wanted was to lose him, and she didn’t want to seem frigid. But after New Year’s, something within her said it would be wrong to go there again.
‘Only if it’s a massage,’ she said, forcing her voice to cool off. She needed to tame it back. A lot.
She wriggled out of his hold and lay, belly down, on his bed.
‘Your wish is my command, birthday girl,’ Dallas said, slipping his hands up under her shirt and running them back and forth on the strong muscles of her back.
When his hands crept down beneath her jeans, Clover grabbed him by the wrists, and sat herself up.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go there again,’ she blurted. She buried her face in his chest. Dallas was still for a moment, and his disappointment stung at her heart.
‘Clover.’ Dallas saved her from her thoughts and sat up next to her on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s cool. I know the way it happened wasn’t the stuff dreams are made of.’
‘It isn’t just that, Dallas.’ She turned her head away, avoiding his eyes.
‘I get it. I think it’s cool that you stand up for what you believe in. I want you because you’re different that way. This isn’t just about that.’ He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her face within an inch of his. ‘I love you.’
She let herself hear the words one more time, before responding easily. ‘Me too.’
‘I missed you so much when you were away,’ he said, stroking his hand over her hair and down her back. ‘I hope you never go away from me again.’ He slipped a framed picture into her hands.
She stared at the image; a photo one of his teammates had taken of them beside the rink after a game, and found herself smiling at the memory. It was a present she loved. Would treasure, always.
Dallas took it from her and set it on his night side table.
She nuzzled back into him, then lifted her c
hin, and let her finger trace the outside of his ear. ‘I love these ears.’
Colour appeared on his cheeks, and she felt like squeezing him.
‘They look dumb,’ he said.
‘Don’t say that, they’re hot.’
He looked at her with his serious expression, his contented smile fading. ‘I’ve never told anyone this … ’
Finally, she thought, propping herself up on one elbow . Finally, he’s gonna open up about his mom … She wanted so badly to help, to ease his pain …
‘In Grade One,’ he said.
Yes, your mom took off with some guy from LA …
‘One of the kids called me Dumbo.’
‘No!’ And, NO! Why can’t you talk to me about her? I can feel that you want to. ‘Dallas,’ she said. ‘I thought you might want to talk about … ’
‘My name was Dumbo Dall for a while, actually, until I snapped and gave the dickhead a bloody nose. I never took any crap after that. And I never got any.’
‘So, you were a bruiser. Even as a little dude.’
‘I bet you gave those Canadian boys hell.’
Clover laughed uneasily. He was right. She’d been much more comfortable at her elementary school there, and had played pranks like the best of them. ‘Hey, Dallas?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why don’t you ever talk about your mom?’
‘Nothin’ to say.’
‘There is though … you saw her at Christmas, and you never told me how it went.’
‘Crap.’
‘I just think it’d help to talk about it.’
‘You can’t help, Clover. She left me. She’s a bitch, and there’s nothing more to say.’
‘I’m sorry for bringing it up.’
‘It’s fine, you’re just, you’re too nice.’ He lay back on his pillow and pulled her under his arm. She snuggled into him, a perfect fit. ‘You’re such a Canadian.’
‘And that’s a good thing, right?’
‘’Course it is … Clover?’
She kept her ear against his chest, listening enjoying the feeling of belonging with him, and then he asked a question that thoroughly surprised her. ‘Where do you think we go when we die?’
She blinked a few times and felt herself smile. This would be a much deeper conversation than they’d ever had. It might not be her ideal topic, but it was much more interesting than gossip about Silvertown High and its goings on.
‘Well,’ she said, pondering the question. She’d considered it from time to time, but never got anywhere. Thinking about ‘The End’ made her feel similar to being faced with a problem in maths class. As if she was trying to stretch her mind over an object of unimaginable size.
God. Heaven. Hell. She envied people who were sure in their beliefs. She just couldn’t be sure, not in something she wasn’t able to see or touch. She did have the whole God thing explained to her once, however, by a girl she used to know, a motocrosser from California, who lived in Denver with her family for a summer when Clover first started racing.
Charlotte had told Clover all about the Bible one afternoon, as they took a break from riding laps.
The girls had stopped on the side of the track, and taken off their helmets, watching as the other bikes flew by. Then Charlotte told her a story. Clover couldn’t remember the exact words, but knew it was about God and heaven. And she remembered how the story had made her feel. A feeling she had never before experienced like light was erupting from the horizon, from the city, from within her. Everything was so clear, as if she could finally see beyond her narrow world for the very first time. It was a feeling she’d wanted to chase, follow, and experience again and again.
When she told Charlotte how she felt, the girl replied, ‘That’s Faith, Clover. What you’re feeling is Faith.’
At that point, the wind picked up black rainclouds were moving in, and fast. The girls pulled their helmets back on and started up their bikes. Charlotte took off for her semi-truck, to help her brothers load, but Clover wanted to do more riding, and got two more laps in before the storm.
Charlotte and Clover never discussed religion again, and at the end of the summer, the girl and her family moved back to California. Clover never saw her again.
Clover wished she remembered the story now, so she could share it with Dallas. Maybe even feel Faith again. But all she recalled was how the rain had felt on her face as it had started to fall, when she was finishing her last lap. She’d nailed the twenty-five metre step-up jump that lap had never had the guts to try it before. Something had given her the balls to try she’d just held her bike pinned, in fourth gear, and launched off the lip. Landing it was the sweetest feeling. At that moment, she loved everything about being where she was feeling the rain, the wind at her face, the speed of her bike, the sensation at takeoff and landing of the jump. She had wanted to do it again and again. It had given her a reason for being alive, a meaning to her life.
Come to think of it, the feeling was a lot like Faith.
Clover let out a short breath, and looked up at Dallas. ‘I don’t know where we go,’ she said. ‘But I sure as heck hope, wherever it is, that I get to ride my dirt bike.’
Dallas sat still for a moment, before disappointment clouded over his face.
‘And you’ll get to score goals, too. I’m sure of that.’
‘I was thinking something a little different,’ he said.
She tilted her head to the side.
‘I was thinking that, when that happens, after it, I guess I sorta feel like we’ll find each other again. That’s what happens with soul mates, right?’
TWENTY-THREE
Every year, when the snow started to melt, it was as if Clover’s birthday, Christmas and Easter hit all at the same time. Winter began giving way to spring, thawing the ground, luring her WR250F out of the heated garage and onto the tracks out in the forest.
This year, however, the feeling was a long way off. Spring, teased Clover for the month of March and most of April, warming enough to melt the snow, but cooling right back down, freezing the ground solid, and dumping more of the white stuff. Clover was beginning to think she would never ride her bike again. The ice was much too unstable and thin for ice racing and the ground too hard to ride with rubber tyres. She was seriously considering up and moving to Cali when, late in April, the ice on the pond finally broke up in spectacular, booming fashion, giving way to true spring.
Keeping a promise to her sister to finally go for a trail ride on the horses kept her off her bike until the afternoon, when she and Ernie got out to do some laps on the practice track he’d cut in, around their pond, up the hill, and back down to the house. The loop wasn’t longer than a few minutes, but Clover was thrilled to ride it, all the same.
It felt incredible to be back on the bike.
Next day she was off on a road trip with Ernie, to watch Dallas at one of his exhibition games. His team had just missed out on a league win, finishing third in the finals their best result in years.
As un-cool as it was having to travel to the game with her father, Clover’s misery from her forced chaperone only lasted until they entered Cheyenne, where it was replaced by excitement to see Dallas and watch his game.
When she and Ernie arrived at the wooden lodge-style hotel, where the team was staying, it reminded her so much of Florida, that Clover had to remind herself she wasn’t here to compete herself. She felt a bit disappointed, but quickly forgot as Dallas and his team filed into the lobby from upstairs, gleaming with energy and anticipation for their games, pumped and primed like boxers before a big fight.
Any pleasant feelings quickly evaporated, however, when they went down to Cheyenne for the first time that season in game one.
Dallas’s mood went especially foul when he emerged that evening and joined her, Ernie and his dad, Dale, in the restaurant of the hotel. Ernie and Dale had hit it off well, but Dale didn’t talk much to Clover. And then Dallas arrived sullen, his face frozen in a scowl.
Clover was frustrated that Dallas was so upset. After all, it wasn’t his fault the team lost. He seemed to be blaming himself entirely. According to everyone Clover had overheard, Dallas played really well. He even managed two solid goal attempts, and afterwards, was approached by a few scouts.
Next time Clover would see Dallas would be in his hotel room later that evening. Ernie let her go see him, but only for a half hour, before they drove home.
Dallas’s roommate took off for the service station to get some ice creams, leaving her and Dallas with a small window of time together.
The hotel room was equally divided between neat order and haphazard mess, with hockey gear, clothes and drink bottles strewn over one half of the room, but similar items placed neatly and folded on the table beside the bed Dallas was lying on. The TV was on, but muted: players skating around a familiar looking rink she assumed a game from the tourney.
Dallas didn’t object when Clover switched the TV off. He really didn’t object when she stripped him of his jacket, flipped him onto his stomach, and got to work massaging his tense neck and back muscles. She kneaded, sliding up and down his back, for a good five minutes before she dared speak.
‘You played well today,’ she said hopefully.
‘If by well you mean missing two goals,’ he mumbled into the duvet. ‘Then, yeah, I’m a real champ.’
‘Come on, Dallas, you’ve gotta try and be positive you’re the one who told me that we’re in control of our own feelings!’ She slipped her hand down over his mouth when he went to interject.
This made him laugh, then he shook his head, as if to dispel his negative thoughts, pushed her off, sat up, and pulled her into his arms. ‘Thanks,’ he said, attempting a smile. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I promise I’ll try to be a bit, sunnier.’
‘That’s totally cool.’ She ran a hand through his still-damp hair. ‘I understand what it feels like, believe me. Down in Florida, I could have let that track beat me, the broken ankle turn me away from racing forever, but you can’t let setbacks like this keep you down.’
