Slide (10 page)

L
ong after Rollins drops me off, I sit on the swing on our front porch. I don’t want to go inside. The house is so empty. So silent. I don’t want to be alone with my memory of Sophie’s death. I don’t want to risk falling asleep and having to face her accusations again. Outside, the wind keeps me awake. That, and the caffeine pills.

I shake some more into my hand, pop them into my mouth, and crunch them into powder.

A breeze blows through the large oak tree, coaxing even more leaves to fall. Down the street, a movement catches my eye. A tall boy with a cobalt sweatshirt and blond hair is making his way toward me on a skateboard. As he gets closer, I see that it’s Zane Huxley. And he’s looking in my direction. My stomach does a little somersault.

He coasts to a stop in front of my house, flips up his skateboard, and takes a few steps toward the porch. “Hey,” he says, an unmistakable look of pleasure crossing his face.

I nod at him, swallowing the caffeine powder so I can speak. “Hey. Enjoying your afternoon off from school?”

“Yeah. Did you go to the funeral?”

“Yeah. It was . . . unfathomable,” I say, unable to find a more fitting word for the funeral of a teenager. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

I feel dumb and want to take back the question. It sounds like I don’t want him here, when I do. I want someone to talk to. Someone who didn’t know Sophie, someone who doesn’t know about me and my narcolepsy and how messed up everything is.

Luckily, he just laughs. “Good to see you, too. We live over on Arbor Lane, at the end of the street.”

“The blue one with the picket fence? That’s been for sale forever.”

An awkward silence passes between us. I try to think of something funny or clever or
anything
to say. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts anymore.

Another gust of wind rips through the yard, sending a chill through me. I shiver.

“Hey, do you want to come in? I could make some coffee or something.”

“Sure. Little chilly outside.”

I get up and open the door, and he props up his skate-board outside and follows me into the house. In the kitchen, he pulls out a stool and sits with his elbows on the counter. I whisk two coffee mugs—one from the University of Iowa and one that says “Bestest Dad in the World”—out of the cupboard and set them between us. He’s quiet as I make the coffee, and it reminds me of sitting in the bathroom of the funeral home, giving Amber the time to put herself back together.

I fill each mug with steaming black liquid. In the refrigerator, I find half a gallon of skimmed milk. I dump some in my cup and then spoon in some sugar. After stirring it for a few seconds, I take a sip.

Over the rim of my cup, I watch Zane stirring some milk into his coffee with his finger. I can’t believe he’s here, in my kitchen. It’s almost enough to make me forget about the murder, about the way Sophie’s mouth was slightly open, a trickle of blood escaping it. Almost.

Zane winks at me. “You look cute in pigtails.”

“Thanks,” I say, braving a smile.

His eyes are so deep and blue, I could get lost in them.

An hour later, I’m sprawled on the couch, clutching my coffee, and Zane is lazily sipping his own drink only inches away. I can see his knee through a large rip in his jeans. The hair on his legs is fine and blond, just like the hair on his head. I fight the urge to reach over and stroke it.

“So you used to live in Iowa City?” I try to make my voice sound sexy and throaty, but it actually comes out kind of squeaky.

“Yeah. I was born here. Moved to Chicago when I was little. Mom wanted to come back. No offense, but I’m not a big fan of Iowa.” He smiles apologetically. His teeth are so white. Light blond stubble covers his square jaw. I want to feel it against my cheek, my lips. My proximity to him seems to have narrowed my focus, and all I can see is his face.

“Not many people are,” I reply.

Zane picks up a picture of me, my sister, and my dad.

“What does your dad do?” He gestures to the photo.

“He’s a pediatric surgeon,” I say. “Today he’s operating on some kid who was born with his bowels on the outside.”

Zane shakes his head. “That’s pretty impressive. I mean, your dad’s job, not the baby with the guts on the outside.”

“I know,” I say, a hint of bitterness in my words.

“How about your mom?” We both look down at the picture in his hands, at the space where a mother should be, but isn’t.

I’m a little surprised he’d be so bold to ask such a question when it’s clear my mom is either dead or off somewhere else, leading a life that doesn’t include me, but I remember him on his first day, telling me that his father was dead. It feels like a natural course for our conversation.

“Pancreatic cancer. She died when I was eleven.”

He nods, as though I’ve confirmed what he’d suspected. “That’s gotta be rough on a kid.”

I peer into my coffee cup. “It was. I mean, it still is. It doesn’t help that my dad is gone all the time. I’ve pretty much become my sister’s parent. He didn’t even come home to help take care of her when we found out about Sophie’s death.”

He makes a sympathetic noise. “I know what you mean. My mom hasn’t really been herself in years. Ever since my father died, she’s been living in her own little world.”

“So how old were you when your father died?”

“He killed himself when I was three.” The matter-of-fact way he says it shocks me into silence.

“It’s cool,” Zane says, as if to reassure me that there’s no right response to that news. “I don’t really remember him. I was too young. I’ve got this picture of us, though—of him and me. He was pushing me on the swing. And he’s smiling really big with his mouth, but you can see in his eyes—he’s not happy. He did it about a month after that picture was taken.”

Oh god. I wish I could undo this conversation, go back to the dreamy, wispy cloud I was floating on only moments before.

My shyness has been torn away by the revelations that passed between us. I reach out and take his hand, lace my fingers into the spaces between his. His hand grasps mine.

He sets his cup down and turns his head toward me. His breath is sweet despite the coffee, but it’s laced with something else—something like sorrow. He presses his lips to my mouth.

Here’s the thing about the kiss. It’s full of everything I’ve been missing for so long. Connection. Understanding. Warmth. And it rushes through me so fast, I feel like I’m drowning. I can’t breathe. Without thinking, I push him away. His eyes fill with hurt.

Immediately, I regret it. I open my mouth to apologize, but he’s already standing up.

“I’ve gotta go.”

He’s gone before I can protest. I melt onto the couch, gasping, realizing I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to rewind time and return to that kiss. And it scares me. The fact that something so beautiful and tenuous is within my grasp terrifies me because I know that, at some point, I will just end up losing it.

Hours later, I flip through the channels, trying to find something interesting enough to keep me awake until Mattie gets home. I should go upstairs and find my caffeine pills, but I feel stuck, like I’ve been glued to the couch. It would take way too much energy to climb the stairs. No, I’ll just sit here and watch TV and wait.

Hoarders
? No.

Full House
? No.

The Real World
? NO.

I settle on the Science Channel. There’s some program about how the world is going to end soon, and it kind of cheers me up because then at least I won’t be sliced to bits by Sophie’s killer. The show’s narrator has such a soothing voice. I find myself succumbing to the sleep I’ve been staving off for so long. Finally, I just give in.

And promptly slide.

Black leather. The vibrations of a running engine travel up my legs and into my spine. I recognize the unmistakable mixture of gasoline and orange shampoo.

Scotch.

But I don’t think I’m
inside
Scotch. No. Whoever I’ve become is sitting in the passenger seat, rubbing her earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. When I realize the girl is missing an earring, I put two and two together. Amber. The damn earring I picked up in the bathroom must have poked through my jeans and touched my thigh.

When Amber turns her head, I see Scotch staring out the windshield into nothingness. The view stretches on for miles and miles. Angled roofs and shedding trees and glowing streetlights. I’ve been here before, to Lookout Peak. Rollins and I came here the one and only time I smoked pot. We were a total cliché, lying on the hood of his car, staring at the stars and wondering if there was something, anything else out there in the big, starry sky.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Scotch says.

It seems I’ve come into the middle of a conversation.

“It was just the one time. We used protection.” Desperation tinges Scotch’s voice, and I’m sure he’s talking about the pregnancy. “The baby probably wasn’t even mine. Samantha said she saw Sophie riding around with Mr. Golden after school. Who knows how many guys she was sleeping with?”

Finally, Amber speaks. “When did you find out about the pregnancy?”

“Last week. Before . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence, just takes a swig from a bottle he’s been holding between his knees.

Fresh tears spill down Amber’s cheeks. I wonder how she ended up here, in Scotch’s car, parked at Lookout Peak. Did she run into him after the funeral? Did he ask her if she wanted to go for a ride? My guess is they were two comets traveling at high velocities when they came crashing together—Scotch drunk, and Amber needing someone to just be with her.

“Do you think that’s why she did it?” Amber asks.

Scotch beats his hand on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. At first, she talked about taking care of it, going somewhere. But then she said she didn’t know if she could go through with it. She just should’ve gotten rid of it.”

I wish I could climb into his brain and pick apart his thoughts. When Sophie told him about the pregnancy, did he panic? Did he insist she get an abortion? Did she refuse?

Even if I did manage to slide into Scotch, I wouldn’t be able to read his thoughts. That’s not the way sliding works. I’d only see the world from his perspective, and that is
not
an attractive possibility for me.

Amber crosses her arms over her stomach and rocks back and forth.

“It would have ruined my plans. It would have ruined my life.”

Scotch takes another pull off the bottle and then shakes his head like it burns going down. He leans toward Amber and starts to nuzzle her neck. She exhales, a cross between a sigh and a moan. When his hand slithers into her lap, I realize where this is going. Memories come rushing back, and instead of being inside the cramped front seat of a Mustang, I’m lying on a bench in the boys’ locker room. As Scotch touches Amber, I feel sick, like I’m witnessing exactly what he did to me that night. It is so, so messed up.

Amber’s body responds to Scotch’s caresses, and she leans toward him. I’m no longer worried for her safety. I’m worried about my own sanity. If I stay here while they do this, I will surely go insane. Slowly, I feel myself slipping away.

Relief rushes through me when I realize I’m back in my own living room. My heart is thumping hard inside my rib cage, and the memories of the homecoming dance last year are rattling my brain. Instead of the program about the impending apocalypse, there’s a show about the mating ritual of the baboon. I grab the remote and turn the television off, shuddering.

I take the steps two at a time, unable to get to my room fast enough. Unable to get to my
pills
fast enough. I snatch up my backpack and thrust my hand inside, searching for the familiar curve of the bottle. The childproof top comes off with a twist, and then the white ovals are in my palm, and then they are in my mouth. I swallow them without water, without hesitation.

Only when I feel them sliding down my throat does my heart slow down to a normal rhythm. I vow not to let my guard down again. When my body sinks into the looseness of sleep, I leave myself unprotected. I’d rather not sleep at all than be sucked into the presence of would-be rapists. Of killers.

All that night, I lie on my bed and watch old episodes of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
on Netflix. I imagine myself with a stake, chasing after a shadowy figure in a mask carrying a knife wet with Sophie’s blood. I tackle him to the ground and rip away the material obscuring his face. It is Scotch. I raise the stake high and plunge it deep into his chest. He disintegrates like dust and is swallowed up by the earth.

I
n the morning, I take an eternity-long shower, trying to scrub away any remaining bit of Scotch with my vanilla body wash. I’d probably stand here all day, letting the warm water cascade over my body, if my sister didn’t scream at me to hurry the hell up. I wrap myself in a frayed brown towel and open the door.

“It’s about freaking time,” she says. I ignore her and go into my room, pull on some faded jeans and a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, and wrangle a comb through the pink mop on my head, uttering a chain of obscenities. Before me, in the mirror, a girl stares at me with circles under her eyes.

In the kitchen, I find a note from my father:
Early meeting. See you tonight.
I have to admit, I’m a little relieved to miss him. He’d notice the circles and demand to know if I’ve been taking my Provigil like a good little narcoleptic, and I’m not sure I’d have the strength to lie.

I’m grabbing a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart and stuffing it into my bag when, through the kitchen window, I see Samantha pull up. Mattie rushes in, grabs a mottled banana, and bolts out, yelling something about being late for practice. Tires squeal as Samantha pulls away.

If I’m going to walk, I’d better hurry up, too. I grab my purple coat from the coat-tree in the front hall and wiggle into it before hurrying out the door.

In my driveway, Zane leans against a white Grand Am. His blond hair is all over the place, and he looks like he hasn’t slept.

“Hi,” I say, suddenly self-conscious about my appearance. I wish I’d spent some time putting on makeup. At least some concealer to cover the darkness under my eyes.

“Hey. I thought you might need a ride. You don’t have a car, right?” His gaze sweeps the driveway.

“No.” I plod down the driveway toward him. “I mean, no, I don’t have a car. So a ride would be really nice. Thanks.”

He holds the door for me and then circles around to the driver’s side. My feet brush against crumpled Big Gulp cups and Snickers wrappers. When he turns the key in the ignition, a Nirvana song nearly pops my eardrums. He spins the knob to the left until the song blasts at a more acceptable level.

“Sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I blurt out, then clamp my hand over my mouth.
Idiot.

“For what?” He looks bewildered.

“For pushing you away. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

He stares into his lap. “Well, I shouldn’t have kissed you. We barely know each other.” He backs out of my driveway, pausing to glance both ways before pulling into the street.

I want to say the kiss wasn’t a mistake. I want to tell him I enjoyed it. I want to tell him I like him so much it terrifies me. Instead, I say, “So, you’re into Nirvana?”

“Oh, yeah. Kurt Cobain is, like, my idol.”

“Except for the whole killing himself thing, right?”

I mean it to be a joke, but then I remember about his father.

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” My voice trails off.

We’re both quiet for the five minutes it takes to get to school. Kurt Cobain carries on the conversation for us.

We make it to English about thirty seconds before the bell rings. There’s something odd about the room. I realize what’s strange—Mrs. Winger is standing at the front of the room, smiling at everyone, ready to start the day, rather than huddled in front of her computer playing solitaire.

She’s excited about something. She squawks and waves her flabby arms as she explains our assignment. She feels we’re in need of some healing after our heartbreaking loss. We need to talk about our feelings, get it all out, some hippy-dippy bullshit. We’ll do it anonymously. She passes out green sheets of paper, each one with a code word written at the top. Mine is
yellow
. I sneak a look at my neighbors’ papers.
Purple
.
Black
.

Really working herself up, Mrs. Winger babbles on about the importance of expressing ourselves. She wants us to write what we’re feeling now, right this minute. She wants us to pour ourselves out onto the page. Mike Jones raises his hand and asks if “tired” counts as a feeling. She gives him her patented death stare and then continues with her ridiculous monologue.

After we’ve purged our thoughts and emotions, Mrs. Winger will collect the pages and mix them up. Then she’ll randomly pass out the papers, and we’ll each write a heartfelt, kind, human response. She has the code words, she warns, so don’t even think about writing something mean. She crouches down by Zane’s desk, and I hear her tell him that since he’s new and didn’t know Sophie, he can write about whatever strikes him.

She puts on some classical “writing” music and settles behind her desk, firing up her computer—probably to get some solid solitaire time in—and puts up her feet. We all quietly stare at our papers for a while. Finally, one by one, my classmates bend over their desks and start writing. Zane writes a word, then pauses, writes another. Samantha is hunched over her desk, scribbling furiously.

I’m the last one to begin. My pencil feels strange and hard and it kind of hurts to hold on to. I realize it’s because I’m squeezing it so tightly. What do I have to say about Sophie? What am I feeling?

Sophie was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.

I pause. It seems wrong to just leave it at
nice
.
Nice
is what you say when a stranger asks about your weekend and you don’t really want to go into it.
Nice
is the weather. It means nothing. Nothing at all.

What do I really have to say about Sophie?

I chew on my eraser. This
is
anonymous, after all. I flip over my pencil and rub out the part about her being nice.

Sophie was a beautiful person, inside and out, but everyone treated her like crap. The girls she called friends only accepted her when she was skinny. The guy she liked screwed her over. There is more to Sophie’s death than you’ll ever know.

Before I can write more, Mrs. Winger is at the front of the room, announcing, “Time’s up! Fold your papers and turn them in!” I press my paper neatly in half and pass it forward. Once Mrs. Winger has collected all the papers, she shuffles them and then weaves her way among the desks, giving them to new people.

She flips a paper onto my desk. I don’t touch it.

When she’s finished, she gestures for us to unfold the papers. “Read and respond,” she says. “Really connect with each other.”

Teachers are so lame. They think they can make us bare our souls through some stupid activity in class. If social boundaries can keep a jock from saying
what’s up
to a nerd in the hallway, does she really think in one period she can make us best friends like the kids in
The Breakfast Club
? I roll my eyes and unfold my paper.

There’s this girl. And I’m pretty sure I like her. I mean, I know I do, but the thing is I don’t know how to tell her. I don’t really know the protocol for this sort of thing. So yeah. I guess that’s all. If you have some advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

I steal a look at Zane. It has to be his. No one else was told to just write about whatever. Is it vain to think he could be writing about me? I remember how his lips felt on mine, so warm and sudden. I wish I could go back to that moment, go with the flow, not ruin it.

“Two-minute warning!” Mrs. Winger is already dancing around, trying to hurry us. Shit. What to say?

Quickly, I jot down,
Tell her she’s so pretty it kills you a little.

Then I refold the piece of paper and push it into Mrs. Winger’s waiting hands. She collects the rest of the papers and then starts unfolding them and handing them back according to the code words at the top. I watch Zane open his. He smiles.

She places my paper in front of me. I skim past my original note and read the response:
Uh, I think you’re reading too much into this. Girl had problems. She took the easy way out. Done.
I glance around the room. Samantha is watching me carefully. I slowly crumple the piece of paper, holding her gaze the whole time. She looks away.

The bell rings. Zane pauses by my desk, waiting for me to gather my things. On the way out the door, I toss the paper into the garbage can. Zane says something about Mrs. Winger literally having wings when she waves her arms around, and I’m laughing as we turn the corner and enter the hallway.

I catch sight of Rollins, halfway down the hall, heading in our direction, probably to meet up with me. He blinks when he sees me with Zane, and looks a little hurt. I try to smile and wave, but he ducks into a bathroom. My hand flutters uselessly down by my side.

Everyone stares as I walk down the hall with Zane. It’s probably partly because Zane is the New Kid, and there’s always a bit of a mystery shrouding the New Kid, but mostly it’s because he is smoking hot. I savor the look of jealousy I get when we pass by a bunch of freshman girls.

Zane stops at the drinking fountain to fill his green Nalgene bottle, and I wait, shifting my books from one hip to the other. The hallway hollows out by the second, people rushing to class before the bell rings.

“What do you have next?” I ask when he straightens.

“Government with Carson. Guess I could use a nap.”

Mr. Carson has to be over a hundred years old. He’s been teaching here since our school opened in the 1950s. His idea of a lesson plan is ordering you to copy five pages of messily scrawled notes from the overhead, lulling you into a nearly comatose state, and then scaring you to death by hacking up a lung into a purple hanky right when you least expect it. Every year, people place bets on whether this’ll be his last.

“Oh, come on. His class is
scintillating
.” I stress the cheap SAT vocabulary word, and Zane laughs. The sound heats me up.

All morning, I’ve been imagining Zane’s lips pressed to mine, like the image of us kissing is superimposed on reality. We’re just standing here in the hallway chatting, but in my head our limbs are wrapped around each other, our bodies doing the talking.

The bell rings, threatening reality. I want to escape into an alternate universe, one where I get to make out with Zane beneath the bleachers instead of wondering who killed Sophie Jacobs. Suddenly I understand the presence of that condom wrapper I saw under the bleachers last week. It was evidence of someone breaking away from the homework and lockers and lunch ladies—someone fleeing a world that lets a girl disappear and doesn’t ask questions.

“Do you want to skip?” I ask, and the question is so out of nowhere it even surprises
me
.

“And go where?”

“I know a place.”

Zane smiles. He doesn’t know that
he
is my refuge, the place I will go to escape.

It’s colder this week. The wind whooshes beneath the bleachers, cutting through the thin material of my T-shirt. I should have thought out this plan better, brought my coat or something. But then Zane shrugs out of one side of his oversized corduroy coat, offering to let me share it with him, and I think everything is perfect.

“So this is your place?” He looks around him, taking it all in. The candy bar wrappers. The cigarette butts. The mounds of dead leaves.

“It’s not much,” I say. “But yeah. It’s where I go.”

Zane nods. “It’s got a certain . . . mystique to it.”

Mystique.
Just the word to describe a place where you can see but can’t be seen, where you hear the things you don’t want to know. Just then, I realize why I’m so comfortable under the bleachers. Me lurking down here, it’s just like me sliding. I am a witness. Never a participant.

“Something on your mind?” Zane asks, bumping into me playfully.

There is actually something on my mind. I keep replaying the conversation I heard between Scotch and Amber. The thing he’d said about ruining his plans—would he go so far as to kill Sophie if she didn’t get an abortion? Is that too far-fetched?

I feel like I need a new perspective. I could tell Zane the basics without revealing my secret. Maybe he’ll have some insight.

“Okay, you know the girl who died? Sophie?”

Zane nods.

“Well, this officer came to our house, asking my sister questions about Sophie’s state of mind. He happened to mention Sophie was pregnant when she died.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Anyway . . . I think I might know who the father was. You know Scotch Becker?”

Zane groans. “Who could forget a guy named Scotch? He’s the charming fellow who suggested I come out after football. He said I seemed cool enough to get some of his castoffs.”

I pause, the statement hitting a little close to home. “Gross. Okay, so the day Sophie died, I overheard Scotch telling one of his friends that he slept with Sophie.”

Zane stares straight ahead. “That just . . . sucks.”