by Sunniva Dee
Is she for real? Since I met her, Nadine has shown utter lack of judgment when it comes to me.
“I’m society’s litter.” I squint to read her reaction. “There’s a reason why I didn’t answer your texts.”
“Which is...? You don’t like me the way I like you?”
“That’s not even worthy of an answer. We’re complete opposites, Nadine. You’re smart and gorgeous and good, and I’m not.”
“Whatever, Cugs.” She eases herself down on the bed beside me. Leaning sideways, her upper half is raised against the wall as she watches me.
“You shouldn’t have come. Who shows up without notice anyway?”
“I do.” She points at herself. “Because you didn’t reply to my messages and I had to find out how you were doing. You told me you were injured. That was the last thing I heard from you. Talk about cliffhanger.”
She tracks the bruise below my eye to the bridge of my nose with a finger. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You’re really smart.”
“Right, and you’re really funny because I’m an idiot. But, hey, I guess we haven’t hung out enough for you to realize that yet.”
“I’ve known how smart you are since we were eight.”
I twist my head carefully so I can meet her stare. “Is this because of your grandfather? If that’s it, you don’t expect much from people. You, girl, have a crazy cool life ahead of you, and you don’t want to be associated with me.” I close my eyes, because her touch feels a whole lot like relief.
“That’s good, right, that I have opportunities?” She’s focusing on my lead-up, not on my conclusion. “You have opportunities too. Tell me about after high school.”
“Oh great, let’s not go there. You should leave Newbark ASAP and forget me and this piece-of-crap, hole-in-the-wall town. Go ahead and return to South Beach. Get all the education and become the new CEO of Apple.”
“Nu-huh, I want to become a nurse. Tell me your biggest, wildest, coolest dream.”
For the heck of it, I dream again. Just for a moment, I do. “It’d be fun to play football and go to college. I’d study anything, but it would be crazy to become a lawyer.” Me, a football player. Me, a lawyer in a suit striding fast down the street with a suitcase full of case documents. “Anyway. My injuries put a stopper to those dreams.”
“They’ll heal, though.”
“Nadine, this is my senior year, and I’ve received offers from four great teams.”
“That’s awesome!”
“Yeah. Just, you’re supposed to choose a team, and I’ve held back on signing a letter of intent in hopes that I could do something remarkable and get on the Gators’ radar. Coach went to college with the head coach there, so whatever Coach sends him will be watched. But with this”—I gesture to my spine with a hand—“I just lost that chance.”
From her eyes, she’s not fully understanding what I’m saying. The lump in my throat grows, but hell if I’m crying in front of her. “Basically, Coach records our games, and if I pulled off some miraculous shit, he would send him a video, and he would watch it. Now that won’t happen, because I won’t be playing anymore this season.”
“Oh Cugs. What about the other teams? Hurry up and choose one.”
“I’ll talk with Coach about it.” I don’t tell her how I expect them to pull their offers once they find out.
“I bet you’ll get well sooner than you think.”
I fight my body into an upright position. Get out of bed and limp toward the window. Pain instantly shoot from my back and up my arm. “That’s the problem, not soon enough. Coach doesn’t put injured players on the field. By the time my fractured vertebrae, my shoulder, and my ankle are all healed, my last season in high school will practically be over.”
I hear her come up behind me. With my eyes closed, I work to get my despair under control. Before she can prod for more, I cut to the chase. My vocal cords feel raw when I say, “I won’t be leaving Newbark any time soon.”
“Bull. This is America. You can do anything you want. All you need is to fight for it.” Her chin shifts into the hollow between my shoulder blades. If she keeps being so sweet, the dam in my throat is going to burst. “You need to believe, Cugs. Free yourself. You’re the only one who can do that.”
I shake my head slowly. Privileged vibrates off her lips and against my shirt. What if ill-fated runs the other way?
“It’s not that easy.”
“How are your grades?”
“My grades?” Carefully, I turn to read her expression, and she draws back enough to meet my stare.
“You can’t go to practice at the moment, right, so you might as well concentrate on other things that can get you out of Newbark. Like your grades. So how are they?”
I grimace. “Good enough to keep me on the team.”
“Okay, cool, so now homework has to be your first priority. Football won’t be a distraction while you’re getting well, so—”
“What, are you a career counselor now?”
She doesn’t laugh. “You still need good grades, team or not. How many absences do you have?”
Nadine Paganelli coming to visit me all the way from South Beach and wanting to steer my life. It’s weird and sort of touching.
“Not sure.”
“Okay, you need to ask your school then, about that, and make sure you don’t lose out on too many days by being in bed. You don’t want to flunk and have to retake classes next year.”
I groan, the pain in my body suddenly exhausting. “I need a nap.”
“Are you going to school tomorrow? You don’t have a concussion or anything, do you?”
“No.” I heave a sigh. “Why do you care so much, Nadine?”
Her hand runs over my lower arm, but she lets go when she catches me looking. “I like projects.”
“Ha.” My voice sounds unused again. Slowly, I resituate myself on top of my sheets. “I’m not in the mood to be your project.”
She gives a playful frown. “Too bad. You need someone to take you on.”
“Nice of you to volunteer,” I mutter, which causes her to grin.
“When did you last remove the back brace and wash up?”
“And there she goes from career counselor to nurse.”
“Answer me,” she says, all pushy.
“And the nurse becomes mom.”
“Ah shut up. I can smell you.” Her forehead wrinkles with suspicion. “You’ve seen a doctor, right, for that?” Her stare floats to my back.
“Yeah, I did.” I chuckle. “Eventually.”
“Let me help you off with the shirt, then you can tell me where the bathroom is, and I’ll get soap and water.”
Nadine stands, ready to act on her impulse, while I shake my head. The last thing I need is a hot girl dealing with my sweaty armpits.
My phone dings. I clench my stomach muscles in an attempt to sit up, but Nadine hands me the phone first. Facebook message from Paislee again.
“You don’t look happy?”
“It’s my sister. She keeps texting me.”
“Lucky.” As she says it, I realize that I don’t know much about Nadine’s family. Rich—check. Adored by her parents and her late grandpa—check.
“Do you have any siblings?”
“No, I wasn’t even supposed to be born. My mother’s plan was to keep her figure intact, but then she ended up pregnant. Once the deed was done though, she didn’t look back. I love my parents, don’t get me wrong, but they’d never planned to do the family thing, so they made sure to not repeat the mistake. I actually think a tubal was involved.” A breath that could be a laugh gusts from her. “Anyway, I’d love to have a sister or a brother.”
“I would too.”
“But you have one?”
“Not the r
ight kind.” I want to shrug to show her it’s no big deal. I catch myself in time; my shoulder would probably disintegrate.
“Well, in that case, you need to enjoy the one you have.”
“And there she goes from mom to sage. Lord have mercy.”
It’s wild how quickly the responses came. I reached out, and one after the other, the coaches who had sent me offers countered them with rejections.
—We’re looking into another direction for this recruiting class.
—We have received a commitment from a player at your position.
I even received a counter-voicemail from the assistant coach of one team, in which he coolly cut all potential ties to his school.
None of this came as a surprise, but it didn’t stop the spiral of darkness from pulling me back under. The difference is that I’m not allowed to stay under. Between Bear and Nadine, I haven’t been left alone for a single evening lately.
It’s been a week, now, since my last opportunity dissipated. My back feels better. I can walk around without the brace, and my shoulder has healed too. Nadine thinks I have a lot to be thankful for. She thinks a lot of things. The girl has opinions, that’s for sure.
My sister keeps messaging me on Facebook. I have nothing to say to her—the past is too muddy to stir up. I can’t just jump in and be all, ’Sup Sis? when Mom and she gave up on me so easily. But it’s different with Keyon.
I’ve started watching MMA on TV, and I tell myself it’s the reason why my friends and I suddenly frequent local fight nights in Southern Florida. Truth be told, we only attend the ones where Keyon’s fight gym, Alliance Cage Warriors, is represented, and each time I feel more compelled to introduce myself.
It’s good for me and bad for Nadine. She quickly caught onto my new fight night addiction and nurtures it relentlessly. The girl has become a pro fight-night scout, always locating them first and knowing when Keyon is on.
She meets us there. She sits next to me during the fights, ooh-ing over particularly bloody encounters. The venues always have narrow seats that are so close together I lean my arm over her backrest and let her sink in against me.
These nights are a break from reality. As the first fight explodes, Nadine is there, warm against my side. I try not to kiss her, and sometimes I manage. But when she turns to me, eyes wide with shock, and there is no space between us, I press our lips together and force myself to not open her mouth with mine.
Keyon fights tonight! she types now. Margit Village, 8 p.m., at the Civic Center! Are we going?
I rub the smile off my face at her use of “we.” I know she wouldn’t go without me. It makes me feel guilty and happy at once.
Yes, but you shouldn’t come with me.
Yeah, yeah. I’m too good for you. Get over it.
My smile returns. I let it stay.
Food first? I register too late that my suggestion sounds like a real date.
YES!
Oh no. All capitals. I can’t take it back now.
Where do you want to go???
Three question marks.
Where can you be seen with a “shopper?” I’m not trying to be funny. It’s my attempt at reminding her.
We can do— She mentions steakhouses and P.F. Chang’s and all sorts of places I’ve never been. For one, I can’t pay for all that. Second, I don’t want to pay, because that would be a date.
Burgers. McDonald’s?
You want burgers
Of course I notice her lack of punctuation. She’s not excited. It’s better that way. Yes, somewhere close to the fight.
Okay. Astraburger. They have the best burgers in Florida.
No exclamation points.
I could tease her like I do, throw out a few smartass comments, ask how she knows since she can’t possibly have tried all the burger places in Florida. But the muscles in my leg ignite at her lack of enthusiasm. I stand and press my toes against the wall, stretching my calf until it doesn’t hurt anymore.
It would be nice to make her happy. I’d like to do that and not simultaneously feel like I’m leading her down the wrong road.
Okay. My treat. That was my gut talking. It’s the least I can do though if we’re down to a burger joint. It won’t be much of a date anyway.
Do you remember the cotton candy episode when you were four?
The Facebook message from Paislee lights up my car on the way to Astraburger. Her message is long. I need to read it immediately, so I get off at the first exit.
You brought cotton candy onto the Ferris wheel and dropped it over the railing. Mom saw it from below and ran off to get you another one because she knew you’d be crying, you brat. :-)
When we got off, you didn’t see her and cried even harder! Then she came with the new cotton candy, and you were so happy you wanted to share it with her. Mom doesn’t like cotton candy, but she ate it with you anyway. That thing was ginormous. You threw up, and Mom felt so sick she was green, lol!
Do people remember things that far back in time? I don’t usually, but now I have flashbacks.
Cotton candy. A sudden sense of sadness as I stare down steel beams that rotate with us. Paislee and Dad are there with me. Loss, overwhelming and painful, restricting my chest and making me cry. Mom isn’t there when we get off the Ferris wheel, not waiting like she said she would. But then, everything is all right. Mom appears, holding the biggest cotton candy I’ve ever seen, and it’s blue.
I turn up the radio and dip my face into my hands. “Blood in the Cut” by K. Flay plays, and it works, works for me as I growl my confusion into my palms. I grab at my hair. How can this be the mom from my father’s stories?
My thirteenth birthday didn’t fall on a weekend or a day off. Dad and I didn’t dress in black and leave on a shopping spree. No, I spent it hanging with my best friends at the prefab.
When they left, my father poured me a shot of whiskey, added hot milk and cinnamon, and said that it would make me wind down after the excitement. I’d fall asleep early, he said, so I could hit school in the morning without being tired. Dad was already a few glasses in and had started on his stories from Rigita.
“You were a newborn when I took full custody of you. Margaret was young and had the option to nurse you. All she would have needed to do was to go on hormones. It would have helped her produce breast milk so that she could feed you, but she decided not to. Margaret didn’t want to make that effort, see?”
I acted like I had something in my eye. I plucked at it, hiding behind my glass of whiskey-milk while I tried to figure out how to respond.
“Truths can be sad sometimes, son. Sure, she took you in, but if she loved you as much as Paislee, don’t you think she would have nursed you like she did her? You became a bottle child.”
Bottle child.
Bottled milk. Boob milk. It didn’t mean much to me. At thirteen, I found the topic of his story odd. I was no expert, but I could have sworn I’d heard of other reasons for mothers not to nurse than the lack of love.
It doesn’t matter though. She still gave up on me, and suddenly I realize what hurts the most about the departure from Rigita. A wild stab hits my chest over the way Mom embraced Paislee, squeezing her tight as if she were okay with watching me leave in Dad’s car. Mom kept the kid she loved.
I barge out of the wreck. Stop at the edge of a ditch. Hunching over, I dig my hands into my hair and roar out my turmoil. I stay there for a while, until the noise in me subsides. Then I climb back into the car and continue toward Nadine.
“What did you call this again?”
“A burger palace.”
“No, you didn’t! You called it a burger place. That’s very different to a palace. Anyway, you’re paying for your own fancy burger,” I joke—about the paying, not the fancy. It’s crazy fancy. They’ve got valet parking I can’t afford, so I parked down the street, way be
yond the stone columns that reach up to a roof that’s lit with lanterns.
“Are you sure this isn’t the burger version of P.F. Chang’s?”
“Could be the sister, right?”
“Twin sister, but American, not Chinese.”
Nadine doesn’t look like she’s heading to a Friday fight night. She’s wearing a long skirt that moves around her hips when she walks, and she’s not wearing flat shoes the way she usually does. Crap, she’s definitely wearing high heels.
I tug at my long shorts and semi-formal button-up. Am I over-dressed or under-dressed? We match color-wise at least, in white and blue. “Cream,” she tells me when I mention it. “Cream and cobalt.” I hike my shoulders up in a whatever-you-say.
She seems to enjoy my agreement, because her cheeks go pink when she smiles. “That was filthy luck, huh?”
“Very filthy. Oh so filthy.”
She giggles and covers her mouth as the hostess leads us to our table.
“Would you like mustard with that?” I ask a half hour later, holding the bottle upside down above her plate like I’m a kick-ass waiter. I lift my chin and scrunch my mouth small with snobbiness.
When she’s too busy laughing, I take it upon myself to make a smiley-face next to her burger. It doesn’t touch the fries, because who wants mustard on their fries.
They have awesome illumination in this place. Low overhead lights mix with the flickering candles on the tables, and it makes me not want to look away from her eyes. A “burger place” with candles. Ha.
“I like you,” she says once she’s done.
“I like you.” I gravitate over the table. I don’t think it’s the lighting that makes her—
“Beautiful. You’re crazy beautiful, Nadine, you know that?”
Her breath is a gasp, and our noses meet, causing my eyes to close.
“Ooh, photo op! You guys have a phone?”
We startle apart and look up to find a bus boy beaming with his hands clenched in front of him. Nadine reacts before I do. She tosses him her phone. He catches it mid-air and gestures for us to reassume our positions. Nadine is all business, crooking a finger at me, so I obey with a whatever-shrug.
