Paige stands in silence for a long while then she tries to smile, but it’s fake. I can tell because it doesn’t make her eyes sparkle like her real smiles do. “Sounds like a repetitive pattern you two have.”
“No, it’s . . . I guess it does seem like that.”
“I guess I don’t understand,” Paige says softly. “Why would you kiss her at all if you don’t like her?”
I’m not sure how to answer that without getting myself into serious trouble. I can’t very well just say the girl is hot as hell.
Paige waits for my reply and when I don’t give it, she says, “Maybe you do like her. Maybe below the memory loss you still have feelings for her. After all, she has been your girlfriend for years.”
No, I don’t still like her, and I want to tell Paige that with certainty, but then Tasha – naked, with her head thrown back – flashes in my mind again, and makes me wonder why that was the first memory to return to me, and why it’s the most common one I have.
“Paige, I don’t know what I don’t know. But I do know it’s not her I want to be with, it’s you.” I reach out and catch hold of her hand and she lets me keep it. “Come to football practice with me? Luc is playing.”
She fakes another smile, nods, and we walk hand in hand across the field. But she doesn’t say much, and after practice, when I ask her if she’s alright, she shrugs and says, “I just wonder what will happen to me when your memory of her returns.”
I study the caution in her eyes and know she has the right to feel it. “I . . .”
“I have to get home, Ryan. I’m late.”
“My mom will be here soon. She could give you a ride.”
“I’ll walk,” she tells me, then leans forward, gives me a light kiss on the cheek before leaving me.
I watch her walk away and when she’s made it about ten feet I call out, “Paige? She came to my house on Friday and even though I don’t remember being her boyfriend, I broke up with her.”
Paige turns around, gives me a genuine smile, sparkling eyes and all, then spins back around and keeps walking.
_____
Zane is being worse than his normal dick-of-a-self, on Wednesday. He harasses three underclassmen before school. Trips Conner in the hall on his way to second hour and kicks his text book into the crowd. He tells a teacher where to go, after third. Tells me to go F myself, before fourth. And gets in Scott’s face about something, before lunch, which causes a fierce shoving match between the two.
I sit with Paige and DeAnn at lunch, and again in art, and I don’t stay for practice because I have a doctor’s appointment. Third one since the locker room.
They take X-rays of my left leg and my doctor shakes his head when he looks at them. He tells me he wishes I hadn’t gotten hurt again. I tell him I wish the same thing, and then he starts talking to Mom about possibly needing to do another surgery. He keeps saying it would be minor, but I don’t want my leg cut open again.
I tell him this and he says if things aren’t looking better on my next X-ray, we don’t have much choice.
Mom asks if there’s anything we can do to avoid it and Doc says, “Treat it like it’s glass. Stay off it as much as possible, and when you are on it, take it easy. No sudden movements. No extra weight and absolutely no playing around.”
“Playing around? Unless you count kicking a pop bottle lid, I can’t ever remember doing that.”
“Is that a joke about your short memory?”
I smile and he smiles back, cuffs me lightly in the shoulder, then sobers up and says, “seriously, Ryan, that small fragment of bone above your knee is quite fragile right now. If you re-injure it before it has a chance to properly heal, you’ll be under the knife for sure, and I can guarantee it won’t be a minor surgery.”
Yes, I’m scared.
“Where’s Luc?” Dad asks, but not until he’s dropped into his seat at the kitchen table and realizes a place hasn’t even been set for my brother.
Mom answers, “I haven’t seen him since this morning, but he sent me a text while I was at the clinic with Ryan and said he was going to Jake’s.”
“So how did that go? What did the doctor say?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she tells him.
It’s late, at least for a school night, when Luc comes home. The house is dark and I’m sitting on the bottom step, listening to my parents arguing about me from their upstairs bedroom.
He enters through the front door, and if I hadn’t been staring right at it, I’d have never known it opened. He shuts it with just as much care to be silent and then starts toward the stairs. He’s limping. He’s hunched slightly too, as if he’s favoring his ribs. And when he’s close enough to the stairs to see me, he flinches.
“What the hell are you always sitting around in the dark for?” He wants to know and doesn’t use a very pleasant tone.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
“What’s their problem?” he nods upward toward our parent’s room.
I keep quiet so he can hear what’s being loudly said.
“The doctor said be very careful with it, Craig. I don’t think Ryan should be going to school for a while.”
“You’re going overboard again, Wendy. How many times has the guy said that? Be careful with the leg. Be careful with the leg. We know that, and Ry is careful with the leg, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have my son sitting around all day like a little china doll. He’s got a life to live.”
“Yes, but now that he’s been hurt again, all it’s going to take is him getting bumped in the hall and he’s headed straight for surgery. He’s my son too, Craig, and this isn’t funny.”
“Who’s laughing? I’m not laughing.” Dad shouts. “You think I want him going through another surgery? I don’t. But you can’t overprotect him. This is his senior year. He’s never going to get his credits and graduate with his class if he’s missing school all the time. He’s been out as much as he’s been in.”
“He can do the work here. It’s not forever, just until the leg is healed and the danger has passed.”
Luc says nothing, just steps around me and with stabs of pain evident in his breath, he hikes the stairs to his room.
And me? I sit there realizing both of my parents have valid points, and that there’s a side of me that wants my dad to win this battle, while the other side hopes my mom does.
They keep arguing and I finally go to bed. I’m sure Lucas isn’t enjoying having to listen to it right down the hall from him, but then, he’s the one that did this to me, so I say it serves his ass right.
TWENTY-FIVE
It feels like a Saturday. I sense the late morning before I even open my eyes. And when I do open them, I immediately glance at the clock on my night stand. 10:07 AM. I collapse back down into my pillow and stare at the ceiling. I guess Mom won. No school.
I don’t know how to feel about this. Since I can’t walk very far anymore, and since I have no car or license, school is the only place I get to see Paige. I could care less about all the other bullshit that goes on there.
I lie in bed and rub at the scars on my chest and abdomen, then move lower to rub something else. And that’s what I’m doing when Mom busts through my bedroom door, unannounced, and embarrasses the bloody hell out of me. I want to shrivel up and die when she looks at the position of my hand under the sheet, then at my face.
“Damn, Mom, can’t you knock?” I choke out.
She ignores me and starts talking about her plans for the day. Maybe living in a house full of guys, she’s used to this sort of behavior. But, still!
“. . . I’ve got myself scheduled until I was supposed to pick you up from practice, and now I can’t change anything,” she’s saying.
“Do you have to? I’m a big boy. I don’t need you here.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s Luc. He’s sick today. He’s still in bed.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure he knows how to aim for the toilet when he pukes.”
“I hate to leave him, Ry. I wish I could rearrange my schedule, but she’s counting on me to help her and it’s very important that I do.”
I don’t know who “she” is because I was too preoccupied trying to jump start my heart after being caught in a private moment, and I’m not about to ask Mom to repeat. I just want her gone so I can stop feeling like such a loser.
“Well, I can’t go up to him, but if he’ll come down and sleep on the couch I can help him. Just go do what you need to do, Mom.”
“Really? You’d do that for me?”
“Yeah. Go.”
“Okay. Thank you. Call or text me if things get bad.” She comes toward me to kiss me like she always does, but I shake my head.
“Please don’t. Not today.”
She glances back at the place my hand used to be, then smiles with her own embarrassment. “Right. Sorry.”
“Go away, please.”
“Going. Bye.”
Luc is in the kitchen making himself breakfast when I come out of my room dressed from the shower.
“Mom said you’re sick,” I say and take a seat at the kitchen table.
“Yeah.” He moves from the fridge to the stove with a package of bacon, pulls off a few strips and slaps them down in a pan. They start to sizzle right away.
“You don’t look sick.”
“So?”
“You don’t act sick.”
“So?”
“Cook me some bacon.”
“No.”
“You still have a limp.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re twins.”
“Sucked getting up the stairs last night – sore – didn’t it?”
“Do you ever shut up, Ryan?”
“Sometimes.”
“Can now be one of those times?”
“No, and don’t ask again.”
“Damn.”
I rise from my seat, pull open the fridge, grab a carton of eggs, and move to the stove with them. I get out a fresh pan and set it on the burner across from the one he’s using. I turn it on, then pick up an egg and crack the shell on the edge of the counter. Luc is expecting me to put it in my own pan, but I don’t. I separate the shell and let the slimy yoke and white fall right on top of his bacon.
“What the hell?” he cries out.
“I was just helping you get breakfast. I told Mom I’d help you today. Oh, you don’t like eggs, huh?” I say calmly. He glares at me like he wants to take me down again and I chuckle. “If I didn’t get such a rise out of you, I wouldn’t do it.” I hit him in the chest and laugh again, then reach for the bacon and, in the other skillet, lay down as many pieces as he started with.
I cook both pans of food and he stands by the sink with his arms folded and lets me.
“Get us some plates,” I say as the food nears perfection, and he does. He lays them on the counter beside me then moves for the loaf of bread.
“Toast?” he sort of mutters as he undoes the twist tie.
“Sure.”
He drops four slices into the toaster and butters them when they pop. Then he turns and I hand him the plate with egg incased bacon. He rolls his eyes, I smile, and he drops two toasts on each plate then snatches the bacon only one out of my other hand.
“So, why did you stay home?” I say as we both sit down at the table.
“To make you ask questions.”
“Direct hit.” I lift a hand to give him a high five, and he leaves me hanging, like I knew he would.
He picks his bacon up and stacks it on the butter side of one toast – places the other slice on top and takes a bite. “You just never going back, or what?” he asks as he chews.
“To school? I don’t know,” I shrug. “I’ve come to realize a lot of my choices are made for me and I’m just kind of along for the ride. Go get me a fork.”
“No.”
So I follow his lead and make an egg, bacon sandwich and take my first bite. “Hum, needs mayo.”
He must agree, because he doesn’t disagree, but he doesn’t get up to get any, and neither do I.
“Who’s the girl you were with the other night?” I ask.
“No one you know.”
“Isn’t that a given?” I tap my head with my index finger.
“Even if you did remember, you wouldn’t know her. She doesn’t go to our school.”
“Which school does she go to?”
“You just want to know all this shit so you can use it to get me in trouble.”
“I might spend the rest of my senior year on bed rest because of you. Believe me; if I want to get you in trouble, I’ve already got all I need.”
This has to have made sense to him, but he doesn’t say anything else so I add, “Besides, you rubber neck everything that happens to me, don’t you think you owe me a little info about you?”
When I’m done speaking he mutters two words that I don’t hear.
“What?”
He looks at me with a bit if a scowl, lowers his eyes and mutters the words again. “Valley Crest.”
“Valley Crest? She goes to Valley? She’s our rival? Damn, Dude, Dad’s really going to kill you.” I cry out with a laugh. “No wonder you didn’t want to participate in the pep assembly. You knew you were going to have to beat her mascot with a stick.”
His eyes shoot up and before he can kill me dead on the spot, I hold up my hands, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”
He shakes his head and takes another bite of his breakfast and I chuckle under my breath for a moment longer. When I finally stop, I shrug. “Who cares where she goes to school?”
“Like you said – Dad.”
“He’s not really that judgmental is he?” Luc gives me a, you’re kidding right, look and I say, “Maybe he is. So, how long has she been your little secret?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He gets up and moves to the fridge for OJ and while his back is still to me, he speaks. “I spent most of the summer at Jake’s, because all you guys were at the hospital. She’s best friends with her cousin who lives a few houses down from Jake.”
“She got a name?”
He hesitates and I say, “Was I that big of an asshole – really – that you have to guard everything?”
He turns and makes eye contact with me, but it’s not bold or harsh. It’s kind of melancholy, actually. “Pretty much,” he says.
“Well, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I don’t like that old me any more than you do.”
“Kami.”
“Kami? That’s her name?”
He nods discreetly then turns to the cabinet for a glass.
“Grab me one.”
He does, and brings them, and the orange juice, back to the table. He has sat down and poured his own glass before he says, “It was easy at first. I could see her there, or invite her here, because no one was ever home. But I don’t get to see her much, now.”
“I think I’m about to know the feeling. If they keep me out of school, I’ll never get to see Paige.”
We sit in silence and I wonder if the kid knows how much he says without saying a word. He gives away so many feelings with his eyes. This is something I’ve noticed since the first day I got home. Right now he seems sad.
“I think you should take a stand,” I tell him. “Pretend you’re not ‘the strongest, best equipped male, who gets all the breeding rights.’ Forget that you have a moral obligation to the planet to ‘pick a female that can help ensure your dominant genes get passed on,’ and bring her home.”
“He’ll kick her out like he did Paige, and then I’ll have to listen to that speech again.”
“Do you think he honestly believes that shit? Like in the depths of his heart?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I think Mom does too.”
“Oh, shit,” I groan painfully. “Don’t remind me of her.”
Luc passes me a, what the hell, look and I shake my head and confess. “She walked in on me whacking it this morning.”
His eyes light up just before he lets out a whole hearted laugh that almost kills him. “She walked in on you?” he asks, barely able to breathe. “Were you all out there and everything?”
“No! Thank God, no. Under the sheet, but still.”
“Your face is so red right now,” he continues to laugh.
“Well, it’s mortifying even to think about. Apparently, it’s never happened to you, or you’d get it.”
“I lock the door before I do that shit.”
“I’ll have to remember that next time.” I roll my eyes, but it’s good to hear him laugh and know I made it happen. Feels satisfying.
“I walked in on Dad doing it once.”
“No way.” I lean forward for the details.
“I was like ten. He was making weird noises and I thought something was wrong so I opened his bedroom door.”
“Oh, Lucas, no. Never walk in on a man making weird noises.”
“Where were you six years ago with that advice? He didn’t even have a sheet – just standing there in all his glory.”
“Ewww!” Now I’m laughing too.
“I’ve often thought about seeking counseling.”
“Hell yeah.” I laugh until it hurts, then say, “So Dad beats it, huh? I guess having an equally equipped woman still doesn’t mean you’re going to get laid whenever you want.”
“I guess not. Why did you kick Tasha to the curb? I mean, I know why I would have, but you’re different than me. You like that kind of girl.”
“I do? Or did? It’s past tense, Bro. And I don’t know why I did. It just didn’t feel right to be with her.” I don’t necessarily want to talk about her so I pour myself some juice, drink down half the glass then ask, “How come you haven’t told Dad you’re playing on the team?”
His eyes harden and I can tell, instantly, that he wants to talk about that a lot less than I want to talk about Tasha. He rises from the table, scoops up his plate, drops it in the sink and leaves the kitchen with his slight limp.
“Something I said?” I ask myself.
Page texts me at lunch. U in the hospital?
Erased Page 20
