After Obsession (8 page)

“I guess I really am carrying someone to the nurse,” I say.

Aimee jumps in front of me and tries to clear people out of the way as we hurry through the hall, around a corner, and finally to the nurse’s station. The nurse isn’t in and has to be paged. Aimee and I stay with Courtney, who’s still unconscious. I find an icepack in a little refrigerator and put it over the bump after Aimee cleans away the blood. The bleeding has almost stopped by now.

“The halls are going to look like something out of a horror movie,” Aimee says. “She was bleeding so bad. Oh man, poor Court.”

“Head wounds are the worst for that,” I say. “She probably has a concussion. Where is that nurse?”

“She’s behind you.” It isn’t Aimee. Aimee is looking at me and covering her mouth.

“Hi, Mrs. Higgins,” she says, looking past my shoulder. I turn around to see a short lady with tidy brown hair and a serious face.

“My cousin’s hurt. She fell and busted her head open.”

Mrs. Higgins pushes past me, lifts the icepack, and looks at the wound.

“She’ll need stitches,” she says. She looks to Aimee and says, “Hold this on her head while I call her mom.”

Mrs. Higgins calls Aunt Lisa at work. The conversation is brief. Aunt Lisa tells the nurse to call the ambulance, but she’s on her way, too. Mrs. Higgins hangs up and looks at us. “You two go on to class.”

We leave the nurse’s station, but don’t make it to class. A tall, sunburned man with a gray beard is waiting for us. I swear he looks like a bear. His arms are thick and I can only think he must have been a lumberjack at some point.

“Who’s your friend, Miss Avery?” he asks. No, he demands the answer.

“Alan,” she says. “He’s new.”

“What’s your name, young man?” His eyes are blue and steely.

“Alan Parson,” I say.

“Come with me. Both of you.” He turns around and walks away. He walks in kind of a bowlegged fashion, those thick arms swinging at his sides. He takes us to a corner office and motions us into a couple of padded leather chairs while he goes around and sits behind a cluttered desk. His office walls are covered in pictures of buffalo and University of Colorado pennants. He glares at us. “Aimee, have you ever been in my office before?”

“No,” she says. A carved nameplate tells me we’re facing John Everson, vice principal.

“This young man comes to school and in his first week you’re both in my office for skipping class,” he says. “That doesn’t say much for him.”

“It was my fault, Mr. Everson,” Aimee says. “I’ve been super worried about Courtney after … you know. They’re cousins. And I thought he might be able to help but I didn’t want to talk about it in front of her or in class or at lunch when everybody could hear. I’m babbling. I’m sorry. I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

He nods for her to go on.

“And I just thought it would be better if we snuck away for a second and the only place I could think of going was outside and Alan was so nice. He just did it because he’s kind like that. And now Court’s all hurt anyway.” Her voice breaks a little bit.

His icy blue eyes flick to me and I nod. “Yes, sir. Courtney Tucker is my cousin. She’s with the nurse now.”

“She wasn’t with the nurse when you snuck out of school, though,” he says.

We’re both quiet for a moment; then Aimee says, “No, but we could tell she’s sick. Ever since her dad, you know, she’s been acting really strange.”

“I see,” he says, then focuses more fully on me. “You’re the kid that beat Blake Stanley yesterday in cross-country.”

“Yeah.”

“From where? Oklahoma, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. OKC. Does everyone know about me and Blake?”

“This is a small school, Mr. Parson.” His beard splits in a grin for a moment, then he suppresses it. Maybe he’s not always the hard-ass he acts like. “Somebody outrunning Blake is a big deal. You’re the one who got worked up because we don’t have football.”

“Yeah. Man, does
everyone
know
everything
around here?”

“Get used to it,” Everson says. “I used to play football.”

“Colorado?” I guess.

“That’s right,” he says.

“I planned to go to OU.”

“Ah, the Sooners,” he says, and shakes his head. “We used to play them back when it was the Big Eight conference.”

“I know,” I say. I consider saying something about how Oklahoma was always whipping Colorado, but the sound of sirens saves me from doing anything that stupid.

“You two get to class,” Everson says. “I don’t want to see you back in here. Understand?”

At lunch, I sit alone because it just seems like the right thing to do. Aimee sits with Hayley and Eric while Blake hangs out with the cross-country guys. Halfway through, someone plops a note written on a napkin in front of my face.

“Don’t get involved with her,” it reads.

It’s so melodramatic. I crumple it up and throw it away, then put my ear buds in and rock out, all alone in my own little world. Aimee catches my eye and waves. I can’t help it. I wave back.

Coach Treat has heard about the friction on her team. Her hair’s pulled back in a high ponytail and she’s wearing shorts despite the cold. Her legs are pale enough to glow in the dark.

“Same course as yesterday,” Coach calls. “Seven miles. Line up! Alan, you stay with me.”

Coach Treat runs alongside me, taking long, easy strides. She’s good at this. Her upper body seems to glide, while I bounce up and down, my feet pounding the pavement much harder than hers.

“You’re fast, Alan, but not steady,” she says. “Cross-country is about endurance. You’ll wear yourself out if you don’t learn to be lighter. You’re losing energy every time you stomp the ground. Take longer strides. Keep your torso straight up and down. Nobody’s going to tackle you. You don’t have to lean over a goal line.”

I try taking her advice, but it feels like I’m trying to gallop. For a school without football, these people seem to know a lot about it.

“One thing at a time, Alan. Focus on keeping your torso straight,” she says.

I try it. It messes with my stride, but I keep it up.

“That’s it,” she says. “Head straight above your waist. Focus on keeping that posture most of the run. If it’s close at the end, then you can lean into it and smoke the competition.”

We run. She doesn’t let me cut loose at the end, instead making me keep pace with her while the other boys race past us. “Focus on posture,” she reminds me.

At the field house, I change and leave the building first. Second team is just coming in, Blake in the lead. I feel his eyes on me. I glare back at him as he begins slowing. Coach Treat materializes beside me like a pale ghost. Blake pounds past us, but I hear him.

“Mine,” he says as if it’s a puff of hard breath.

•
9
•

AIMEE

The whole day feels wrong, like people’s emotions are all tangled into some sort of dark wires, yanking on each other, pulling against one another. At practice Coach notices my limp right away. When I’m in my shorts there’s a pretty obvious bruise running all the way down my leg.

“You’re not practicing, Avery,” she says. “You’re benched.”

Even though it’s pretty cold, I sit on the grass instead of the bench. It’s that hard-core rebel in me, I guess. Hayley comes over right before drills and says, “Blake is out of control, Aim.”

“I know.”

“Look at your leg.”

“Pretty, isn’t it? Sort of a Barney the purple dinosaur look?”

“It’s not funny, Aimee.”

“I know. I know it isn’t.”

“Not everyone’s on his side, you know? What he did was wrong. Even if you slept with that Alan guy, it would still be wrong.”

“We haven’t even kissed. We don’t like each other that way!” The moment I say it, I realize that’s a lie.

“Right.” She lifts an eyebrow.

“I mean it,” I mumble, and feel guilty for even thinking about Alan. Instead I start remembering all the sweet songs Blake made for me, all the times he’d get mad at other guys treating girls like possessions. How could he change so much? Maybe Courtney was right.

“HAYLEY! GET YOUR TUCHUS OVER HERE!” Coach yells way more harshly than she normally would.

Hayley rolls her eyes and runs off.

I watch. They’re doing pressure passing drills and it basically sucks to be stuck here doing nothing. My hands cover my face. My body sits on the ground. I just exist.

Even though I try not to think about him because I’ve only just broken up with Blake … this whole thing with Alan? It’s so weird. When we talk there’s this funky connection thing going on and when he touches me, it’s like the cliché of sparks and electricity. That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it? Something good in this world of bad? I can’t believe Courtney mentioned the River Man. I’ve been trying for years not to think about him.

When I was around seven, I dreamed of this tiny airplane all broken in the woods with fire all around it in little bursts. In my dream, everything was the opposite of supersized; things were mini-sized, like toy sets. There was a man in a blue jumpsuit standing at the edge of the road. He looked lost. He lifted his hand to me, and I tried to take it.

That was the first dream I had that came true.

I tried to tell my mother about it during breakfast in the kitchen. She liked to hear about my dreams. If she could have had an automatic feed into my brain so that she could know everything I was thinking, she would have done it.

“There was a blue man,” I said.

“Sweetie, don’t talk with your mouth full.” She smiled to make it not so much of a scold.

I chewed my English muffin and swallowed real fast. “And there was a little plane in the woods, but it was broken in half like Benji’s toy plane that he dropped off his high chair, but it wasn’t a toy. And there were lots of fire bushes all around.” I got back to my muffin. My belly felt too liquid from so much apple juice.

My mom nodded. “Anything else?” I shook my head. “Well, that’s an interesting dream,” she said, which is what she always said. “I wonder what that means.”

Later, she came out of the shower wrapped up in a white bathrobe. Her hair dripped onto the floor, making little drip noises, a sort of splat as the drops hit the ground. She smelled like her lilac soap. She crouched down, adjusted her robe, and then put both her hands on my shoulders and said, “Sometimes I see a man, too.”

“Really?”

Her hands felt good on my shoulders, like they were holding me to the ground. She nodded. “On the river.”

“On a boat?”

“No.” Her lip quivered and steadied. “Just … just standing there.”

She brushed some dirt off my shoulder and started to stand up, but I didn’t want her to go. I blurted, “What does the River Man do?”

She froze in place. “Calls me. He calls me. He wants my soul, and then once he gets it, he’ll feed on it; he’ll be so powerful, baby. He’ll leave the river and walk into town and everything … everything will be gone.”

Alan brings me home, and it’s a ten-minute ride of awkwardness. We talk about Courtney. Neither of us mentions Blake. I thank him and scoot into the house as quickly as possible.

At dinner I want to tell Dad about Alan and Courtney, but I can’t because Benji’s yammering away about Cheetos and baseball and Gramps dating some woman named Doris, which is where he is now, and how disgusting girls are. I try not to be annoyed at Benji because I know he’s just psyched that Dad’s actually having dinner with us and not working late, but it’s hard.

“How do they run with those … those things on their chest?” Benji moves his hands and totally inappropriately shows what he’s talking about.

“Benji!” Dad acts horrified, but his eyes are laughing.

“You call them breasts, Benji,” I say really slowly. I poke my fork in his direction. He scoops up some spaghetti.

“Well, they’re disgusting,” he announces, then shoves way too much spaghetti into his mouth. It dangles out.

“You’re disgusting,” I say. He shakes his head back and forth so the spaghetti flaps all around, flinging this way and that. “At least we don’t have penises and scrota. That’s what’s really disgusting.”

“Aimee!” Dad scolds.

“What? Like ‘penis’ is a bad word?”

“I was more worried about scrota,” he says, and takes a sip of his wine. His eyes sparkle like he’s not really mad.

“It’s the plural of scrotum,” I explain in a teacher voice.

“I know what it is,” he says.

Benji’s just looking at us, figuring things out. It takes him a minute to compute. Finally, he asks, “Is that the health class word for balls?”

We all crack up. My father almost snarfs wine out his nose, but he eventually manages to nod.

Benji starts chanting, “Scrota. Scrota. Scrota.” We giggle for a good minute, but Benji’s in fourth-grader overdrive and he can’t stop it, he just keeps going. “Scrota. Scrota. Scrota.”

My father has had it. “Benjamin. That’s enough.” Benji keeps chanting and Dad has to use his authority-figure voice. “Benjamin. I said no more.”

He stops. He sulks. He stabs his spaghetti and twirls it around like a madman before saying, “Why not? It’s not a bad word. It’s not like the f-word or something.”

“Any word is a bad word when chanted incessantly at the table,” Dad says. He looks to me for help. I can’t really give him any.

“It’s a pretty weird word,” I say.

Benji pushes his plate away, sad faced, feeling betrayed or something. “Can I be excused?”

My father and I look at each other like one of us should be the parental figure but neither actually wants to be. I scrape my fork around the plate. My dad sips his wine. Footsteps whisper across the floor upstairs.

Benji’s back straightens up and his voice perks out, “What’s that?”

My father holds his glass in midair. My fork stops by some clumped spaghetti. Dad puts the glass down slowly while Benji stands up. “It sounds like footsteps.”

He races out of the dining room, smashing past the bookcase. A tea candle drops off and spins across the floor. Dad barrels after him. “Benji!”

His chair bumps up the Oriental rug, but I don’t fix it. I just get up, too, rushing up the stairs into the hall. Benji’s hopping in place, looking around. Dread fills my throat.

“I heard footsteps!” he bubbles out. “There’s nobody up here. You guys heard it too, right? You heard the footsteps? And it smells. It smells like vanilla!”

I cross my arms over my chest and turn the hall light on. I force my throat to swallow.

“Did you hear it, Dad?” Benji keeps going, eyes big. My dad nods. “I think we’re haunted!” Benji paces back and forth down the hall. He stomps to make footstep sounds. “It sounds like someone walking, like a woman.”

I whisper out all my hope. “Like Mom?”

“Your mother is not haunting our house.” Dad says it like an edict, like a judgment. “Aimee, why do you fill his head with this nonsense? What’s wrong with you?”

I gasp, can’t even think of what to say because I’m so shocked that my dad is talking this way to me. He never acts so mean.

Benji’s eyes go big. “Then what was the noise?”

Dad waves his hand in the air. His eyes look to the left like he’ll find the answer there. “The house settling.”

Benji rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Right. Gramps thinks Mom is haunting us, too. Did you know that?”

He stomps off to his room and slams the door.

“Benjamin Avery! We do not slam doors in this house!” Dad yells after him, but his voice is defeated. He turns and goes back downstairs to the kitchen. I trail after him and we return to our places at the table.

“Dad—” I think about those footsteps, Courtney, Alan, and my dreams, and change direction. “Do you know anything about the man in the river?”

He stands up, giraffe-leg strides across the wide wood floor planks to the kitchen counter, and grabs a bottle of Glenfiddich. Scotch. He’s switched to scotch, which means he’s stressed. “What?”

I push my piece of garlic bread around my plate in a great big circle. “Mom saw him before she died.”

“This is not a discussion that I’m going to have with you, Aimee.”

“Why not?”

He pours his scotch into one of his special glasses that rounds out like a pregnant woman and has a pattern etched into the glass. His hands are steady, like mine. He could be a surgeon slicing into people with hands like that. He could paint.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

He swirls his glass. “Because I can’t.” He takes a sip. His Adam’s apple moves down and up with the swallow and release. Something inside me burns hot and hard, the way I know scotch burns hot and hard when you swallow it. Some sort of vital organ falls into itself, lost, lost, fire, burning into itself.

“Please, Dad …”

His voice comes out flat and dull. “Your mother lost a baby. She was very early on in her pregnancy and it … well, it pushed her over the edge, Aimee. She became obsessed with protecting you and Benji from some delusion she had. She’d stay up all night and say she heard footsteps, like you, only they were heavy, and there were scratching mice noises. She said she smelled dead things, not vanilla.”

“I don’t say that,” I blurt out.

“No. But you are hearing footsteps.”

“So is everyone!”

“The house was settling.” He rubs his hands across his closed eyes. “She twisted things so they were frightening. She was crying out for attention just like you.”

“Dad! It wasn’t even me. It was Benji!” I push my chair away from the table. This day could not get worse. Courtney is sick. Blake and I broke up. According to my dreams, someone is in danger and I have no idea how to help. I had an awkward ride with Alan, and now this? This? He’s comparing me to my mother. My voice is wood-plank hard because I am
not
crazy and I am
not
the only one who heard footsteps and it’s unfair.

“Fine, then. You clean up. I made dinner.” My feet take me away from the table.

“Aimee …”

“Dad?” The word comes out before I can stop it.

He swirls the amber liquid in his glass again. He is so tall and strong looking. Why is he acting so weak? “Don’t make Benji think your mother is here.”

“It was Gramps.”

“I will talk to him, too.”

“We aren’t going to be Mom, Dad. We aren’t her. You aren’t going to lose us, too.”

“Don’t go there, Aimee.”

My hands turn into fists but I nod. I will let him believe what he wants to believe, what he needs to believe. Even though my heart is heavy fire burning, I cross those wood planks of our kitchen floor and lift myself up on my toes. I kiss his cheek. I will pretend I do not need a dad to save me. I will pretend to be normal. He is weak. He can’t help it. He is more like Blake than Alan. I think the whole world is more like Blake than Alan.

“I love you, you know,” I whisper, because I do. I do love him, no matter what.

“You, too,” he says, and that’s when I notice the knife on the stove.

It’s the big serrated-edge knife I used to slice the garlic bread. I point my finger at it, but my hand is not like my hand. It shakes.

He turns to see what’s got my attention. His free hand wraps around my waist. He pulls me close. His words are more a curse than a prayer. “Holy God.”

The knife, the foot-long bread knife, is standing up on its tip, perfectly balanced and slowly spinning around.