by Beth Vrabel
“Do you think he’s ready for that?” Jocelyn and Max said at the same time. Same words, same time, very different sentences. Coming from Jocelyn, it sounded excited. Like, “Can you believe it? You’re going to win a trophy at a tournament!” From Max, it sounded like a death sentence. Like, “Can you believe it? You’re going to die at a tournament.”
Master Waters pointed to Max and then out at the mat. “You’re up, son,” he said, then called out another black belt’s name to go fight Max. Turning back to me, he said, “It’s in a week, Mr. Raymond. You’ll be facing dozens of martial artists from all over Virginia. We always bring home the hardware from tournaments.” He motioned to the trophies lining the gym as he walked backward toward the sparring matches. “Train hard.”
Jocelyn squealed and wrapped her arms around me in a hug. “That’s so awesome!” I stiffened, suddenly remembering how entirely sweaty and stinky I was. Jocelyn froze, suddenly remembering—I’m guessing—her boyfriend was just a few feet away. But even worse was when she pulled back. A second or two of electricity, invisible but everywhere, shot between us when our faces were only inches apart. It prickled up and down my arms. For a stupid second my face tilted even more toward hers. For a second I thought I was going to kiss her.
“Jocelyn!” Master Waters barked from back on the mat. “Get ready to fight!”
We both whipped around, just in time to see Max take a straight shot to the face, his eyes on us instead of his opponent.
Luckily the next day was Saturday, so I wouldn’t have to face Jocelyn or Max at school.
“Besides, nothing actually happened,” I told Alice as we FaceTimed. I was lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and pretty much hating myself. Alice nodded, her white-blonde hair swinging forward.
“Sure,” she said. “Nothing happened. We just spent twenty minutes dissecting each and every second of nothing.”
I sighed. “Fine. Something happened. But nothing really happened.”
“Sure.”
“Alice!”
“Ryder!”
There was a quick rap, rap, rap on my door. “Are you talking to a girl in there?” Gramps bellowed behind it.
“I’ll be out in a minute!” I yelled.
“Try to kiss on one girl one day, spend all morning talking to another the next,” Gramps grumped just loud enough for Alice to hear. Yeah, Gramps had been watching everything at Fight Night.
Alice laughed. “Looks like even Gramps saw nothing happen.”
“Look,” I snapped, “I didn’t actually kiss her. I didn’t do anything wrong, okay? So, we hugged. Friends hug all the time. I hugged you, like, every other hour when we were at Addison.”
“You are a hugger,” Alice admitted.
“Yeah, and Lucas never freaked out about it,” I pointed out.
“Well, he never actually saw it.” Alice’s lips quivered the way they always do when she knows she said something funny and is waiting to hear if you’ll go with it or not.
“That’s just wrong,” I said, but not able to keep from laughing. Lucas was born without eyes, so of course he never saw us hugging.
When the quiet after our laughter stretched too long, I asked, “How is Lucas, anyway? I never hear from him.”
Alice shifted a little. “We broke up, actually.”
“Oh.”
Alice shrugged. “We’re talking about you, remember?”
“But what happened?” I asked.
She shook her head. “We’re fine. Just didn’t work out. Lucas and I are younger than you. I mean, we’re thirteen. I’m pretty sure relationships are supposed to last a couple weeks at our age, tops. In fact, my brother rolls his eyes every time I even utter the word relationship.”
“Yeah,” I snorted. “Not like the mature, long-lasting relationships inherent in one-eyed, ginger fourteen-year-olds.”
“Shut up.” Alice sighed. “Quit doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Making yourself a joke.”
“Have you been talking to my quilting club?”
In the weeks following my quiltervention, Janet May, Madelyn, Jess, and Miss Singer had given up on getting me to dish on my inner feelings and had gone back to just handing me needles to thread. But Janet May shook her head at me a lot. And Miss Singer gave me a blank notebook like the one she carried around all the time—just in case I felt like writing stuff down. I actually had skipped the last few classes.
Alice ignored me. “I don’t know, Ryder.”
“What don’t you know?” I asked.
“I think you started off liking Jocelyn, but you really started liking her when you saw she was with Max. You had, like, a problem with him from the moment you met him.”
I shook my head. “He did immediately call me a freak.”
Alice tilted her head in agreement. “Right, but don’t you think part of why you like Jocelyn is because it bothers Max?”
“I’ve got to go,” I said abruptly. And it wasn’t just because I didn’t want to admit that maybe Alice was right. I really did have to leave. Gramps was dragging me to a fundraiser for Logan’s community project—the center he wanted to create for people in mourning.
“No, don’t go like that,” Alice said, pulling the phone in closer. Her eyes fluttered like lightning bugs. “I’m not trying to upset you. I just think you’ve got to figure out what your problem with Max is and how much of that is why you’re so into Jocelyn.”
“You’re reading way too much into this. What could I possibly have against Max? He’s the freaking hometown hero. The most decent, all-around greatest guy who ever went to Papuaville Middle School. Everybody loves Max Waters.”
“Sounds a lot like how Ryder Raymond was at Addison.” Alice cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, what could possibly be your problem?”
Rap, rap, rap. Gramps drummed on the door again. “Come on, Richie Ryder! We’ve got to get going.”
“Sorry, Alice,” I said. “I really do have to go. Gramps wants me to go with him to a fundraiser for a Grief Center this guy Logan is trying to start.” I realized my voice was way too chipper for the topic.
“Ryder!” she called, but I pretended not to hear as I pressed the end button.
Chapter Seventeen
Maybe calling the event a fundraiser was a bit of a stretch.
Really, it was just a hot dog and lemonade stand outside of the Home Depot being run by a bunch of Boy Scouts with handmade posters. The quilting club was represented, too, with Janet May and Madelyn selling squares with the Papuaville Guinea Pigs stitched onto them for five bucks a pop. Janet May’s guinea pigs had their tiny paws clasped in prayer on her squares.
“Hey,” I said to the girls.
Madelyn rolled her eyes at me. Janet May crossed her arms. “We’ve missed you the last few quilting clubs, Richie Ryder.”
“I’ve been checking out other experientials,” I said.
“Or avoiding us.”
I busied myself checking out the squares. Madelyn’s was easy to pick out. It was just a guinea pig skull with flower eye sockets. I chuckled and almost said something about it being a bit dark for a grief center fundraiser—or maybe about her personal style really beginning to blossom—but I bit it back. Janet May buried the square under the others when I dropped it, and Madelyn looked away.
The squares were displayed next to Logan’s laptop, which ran a loop of a PowerPoint display featuring quotes from the people he interviewed, followed by a plea for contributions.
I missed most of the quotes since I had to stand awkwardly close to the screen to read them. A little voice in my head whispered that I had to get a lot closer than I should’ve—than I used to—but I told that voice to shut its fool mouth. When I made out a picture of Gramps next to the yard horse, I leaned in to read his quote. “Well, I keep her memory alive. I dress up the (yard) horse, you see …” HELP AREA WIDOWS AND WIDOWERS FIND SAFE, HEALTHY OUTLETS FOR THEIR GRIEF.
“Taken a bit out of context,” Gram
ps said around a mouthful of hot dog.
I shrugged, remembering how the yard horse currently was decked out with a flowery umbrella and a basket filled with gardening tools. “How soon until you can get this center off the ground, Logan?” I asked.
Ever since the whole caught-in-my-underwear moment, Logan has had trouble directly addressing me. He sort of gazed over my head and said, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to open an actual center, as in it being its own building. But I’m hoping we can start having group meetings by the end of the year.”
“That’s awesome!” came an incredibly earnest voice to my right.
I swiveled my head to confirm what I already knew. Yep, the one person I had been hoping to avoid for the rest of my life—or at very least the weekend—was standing there. Lash Boy himself. He loosely held hands with the person I simultaneously couldn’t wait to see and also wanted to avoid forever.
“Hey, Jocelyn,” I muttered, realizing too late I probably should’ve said hi to Max first. You know, because nothing happened with Jocelyn the day before.
“Hey,” she said softly, her cheeks flushing.
Bam! Electricity shot from nowhere in this crystal-blue-sky day, sizzling between us as we stared too long at each other. Man, her eyes were a liquid caramel brown. Her mouth, apple red.
I shook my head and stepped back. Too late, I held out a fist for Max to bump. His eyes flicked between us. He bumped my fist and turned back to Logan. I turned, too, deliberately putting Jocelyn on my blind side.
Unfortunately, that also put me face to face with Janet May. “Richie Ryder, what are you doing?” Her voice dripped with disappointment.
“Whatever, Janet May,” I hissed. “You don’t know anything about me, remember?”
She shook her head. “When you’re not making stupid jokes you can be really mean. Or maybe just stupid.” She sighed. “We really do miss you at quilting club, though.”
“I miss you, too, Janet May.”
Gramps and I were each downing our second hot dogs when the fight began. At first, it wasn’t too obvious. Just a conversation that slowly got louder and louder at the outskirts of the small crowd around Logan’s stand. It was to my right, so I wasn’t really paying attention to it. But when I heard, “Max, I don’t want to talk about this!” all but screamed by Jocelyn, I turned around.
Max and Jocelyn faced off, Logan in between them, a few feet from where we gathered. All around us, voices snuffed out. Janet May glared at me like whatever they were fighting about had to do with me. I put up my hands like, “Hey, I’m all the way over here!”
Still, against better judgment, I edged a little closer.
“I’m just saying it’s a great idea!” Max said, his voice quieter now. “Think of all the people we could help!”
“Will you stop already?” Jocelyn hissed. “I’m so sick of your nonstop gotta-help-everyone-all-the-time crap!”
“Crap?” Max reared back like she had slapped him. “You and me, we’ve got so much to be grateful for. We—I mean, I need to pay it forward, okay?”
“Enough already! Just shut up, Max!” Jocelyn’s face was scary red. She pulled on her sleeves with her fingertips and crossed her arms. She was too far away for me to see, but based on how her voice shook I was pretty sure she either was crying or was about to start.
Logan stepped backward, unwittingly opening up the little circle to include me, since I was lurking just behind them. “I-I really don’t want to get involved with this,” he said.
Max threw out an arm to him. “Just tell her, Logan. Tell her how easy it was to get this project started.”
Logan cleared his throat. “It wasn’t too much work, I guess.”
“And what did you just say seemed to help people the most?” Max prompted.
Reluctantly, like the words were soaked in lemon juice, Logan uttered, “Talking about their pain. The therapists and the grieving people I spoke with said talking about the experiences helped them deal with them the most.”
Logan turned slightly and glanced at Gramps. When he saw the old man was zeroed in on our conversation, he quickly looked away. “Once they talk about it, they can move on. Until then, they’re sort of stuck there.”
“Yeah, but what if they like where they are?” Gramps muttered.
“Think about it,” Max said, his voice pleading. He stepped a little closer to Jocelyn, who sidestepped. Again making me part of the circle. “We could, I don’t know, go into elementary schools. Talk about fire safety. With our history, we could really impact the community. Make a difference.” He bit his lip, then went on. “Think about it, taking what happened to Jacob and—”
“No!” Jocelyn yelped. She put her hands over her ears like a little child.
“Come on, Jocelyn. It’s been years. He’d want us to keep other kids from going through what we—”
“Shut up!”
Without thinking, I put my hand on Jocelyn’s shoulder. “Listen, maybe you guys should talk about this another time,” I said quietly.
Max rounded on me. “She’s never going to talk about it. Ever.”
I felt a shudder roll through Jocelyn. “I’m so sorry to deprive you of another freaking cause, Max!” she roared.
Max’s face whitened. “What are you talking about?”
Around us, people stopped in their tracks and stared. A little quieter but just as shaky, Jocelyn said, “When are you going to stop trying to save people? When? You’re never going to make up for it! He’s still going to be dead!”
Max shook his head, his face as white as Alice’s. “That’s not—I’m not trying—”
I felt my fingers squeeze Jocelyn’s birdlike shoulder. Max reached out for her, too, but Jocelyn stepped away, so that her back was inches from my chest.
“I know he’s gone,” Max whispered. “I just think if any good could come from it …” he took a deep breath, “… then it might make sense …”
Jocelyn shook her head. “Shut up,” she whispered, her eyes clenched shut.
“Jocelyn, you’re going to have to deal with it someday. Why not like this?”
“No,” I found myself saying. All right, shouting. But those words: going to have to deal with it. They rattled around my head. “No, she doesn’t have to.” I stepped around Jocelyn so I was just in front of her. “If she doesn’t want to talk about it, she doesn’t have to.”
Max’s hands curled into fists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And you know what? I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea what Jocelyn was dealing with. I never met her brother. I certainly hadn’t been there right before he died, as Max had been. I didn’t know what it was like to lose a friend. Lose a brother. But I did know what it was like to have person after person question the way you deal with things. Pushing you to feel things—feel pain, anger, grief—when the truth is, it was just as easy, even easier, to push those feelings away. Yeah, you had to forget about what life was like before. But sometimes that made today a whole heck of a lot easier.
“Just, just,” Max said, standing on his toes to look over me at Jocelyn. His voice was thick with passion and pain and so much earnestness. “Just let yourself remember. Do you remember, Jocelyn? What it was like before?”
“Stop,” Jocelyn whispered. Standing there, with Jocelyn vibrating with pain just behind me, everything I pushed aside started to boil in me, too. I couldn’t let that happen. Not to either of us.
I punched Max Waters in the face.
The wet, brittle sound of Max Waters’s nose squashing under my fist echoed in my head for hours.
“You saw it,” I said to Gramps on the way home. “His hands were fisted. He was going to punch me. I just did it first.”
Gramps didn’t speak. Didn’t look at me, either.
We got home and Gramps stomped inside. He let the screen door slam shut before I was able to come in. I’m not sure if that meant I wasn’t allowed in or if it was just him being angry. Either way, I couldn’t enter. N
ot into the dark little house where the squelching sound of Max’s nose would bounce around even louder.
I sat down next to the yard horse and worked on breathing in and out. Any second now, Max Waters was going to show up and pummel me into pieces. Or worse, Max Waters and his dad would come here and pummel me to pieces. Or worst yet, Master Waters was going to kick me out of Waters Martial Arts. I knew the policy—anyone who fought outside of self-defense was immediately up for expulsion. (And my mind snagged a bit on the idea that he could literally kick me out of the studio.)
I closed my eyes and lay flat on the grass. Another failed coping attempt of Mom and Dad’s after getting Artie was meditation. One thing I remember was the instructor—this gray-haired woman who smelled like oranges and seemed more like a grandma than a spiritual adviser—told me to lie on my back and picture my spine fusing with the planet. Try to feel the Earth rotate with me going along for the ride. It was supposed to center me or something.
I tried that now, lying there on my back, eyes closed, and breathing in and out. I almost did it—almost blissed out for a moment and lost the squelching echo. Then something landed with a thud on my chest and I knew my time on Earth was over. Max Waters was about to stomp me to death.
I opened my eyes (fine, eye) and saw not Max Waters’s foot but the General, curled up on my stomach. Maybe she was trying to suffocate me. Since death was imminent, I risked petting her. The General began to purr, as though she too could sense I wasn’t long for this world.
My cellphone buzzed in my back pocket. Huh. It seemed a hastily written goodbye-forever text (Hey Dad, I punched a black belt kid and broke his nose. This is probably the last you’ll hear from me. Thanks for being an okay dad. Over and out.) was what it took to finally get the man to pick up his phone.
I let the call go to voicemail and closed my eyes.
Sure enough, a minute later I felt another buzz. That would be Mom.
A minute after that, Gramps’s home phone rang. Distantly, I heard him huff, “Your dang son’s gone batty, that’s what’s going on. Punched a kid for no good reason.” Careful not to disturb the General, I fished out my phone. I plugged in my headphones and turned on my sad music soundtrack. I didn’t realize I was singing along until Jocelyn yanked out one earbud and said, “That’s your plan? Find a river to skate away on?” She stepped forward so her shadow went over me.
