Soul Fire (5 page)

Her dark eyes traveled over my legs. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. Wasn’t your fault.”

Her head flew up and her eyes caught mine. I’d scared her somehow. “Hey, it’s not as bad as it looks. Least, I don’t think it is. My doctors say I should be able to walk again. The operations have gone well.” I didn’t add how much I missed hockey and the overwhelming emptiness I felt every time I thought about it. Deep down inside I held onto the hope that I would play again.

“Do you stay in bed all the time?” she asked timidly.

“Yeah, it’s a bummer.” What was it about her soft voice? “Her name badge read ‘VOLUNTEER’. “ You look kind of young to volunteer in a hospital.”

“Just do it the odd Saturday. Take magazines around to the patients or help out in the therapy pool.”

“Really? The therapy pool? They tell me that I’ll be going there when the casts finally come off. Got any sports magazines?”

She found one and handed it to me. Our fingers touched momentarily and a tingling sensation shot up my arm. Our eyes met, and I wondered if she had felt it too, but then she glanced away. She was an unusual girl, I thought, volunteering at the hospital. Not many do that. Most are into themselves, their hair, their makeup, their clothes. This girl wore heavy face makeup, although her skin was fair. On second thought, it was kind of pinky.

“So, how will you go to school?” she asked timidly.

“My mother arranged a private tutor. Apparently, she’s going to plague me six days a week. We’ll do the home schooling, or rather the hospital schooling thing until I can go back to class.”

She wiped her eyes delicately and I hoped she wasn’t crying. “What school do you go to?” I asked.

She hesitated. “Er, I’m home schooled too.”

“Really? You like it?”

“Mnm-n.” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “You get many visitors?” she asked, changing the subject.

“A few. Guys from the team. Friends from school. My best buddy, Mole—“

She smiled for the first time and it set me back. Wow, her whole face lit up. She was gorgeous. “Mole?” she asked.

“Yeah. He’s always digging around in books and routing things up on the computer in the middle of the night. He’s nocturnal, I think. Comes up with the weirdest stuff, so he got nicknamed, Mole.”

She laughed aloud, her voice ringing with sweet clarity. The pure joy in her laughter filled the barren room. I smiled for the first time in a long time.

“Will you be in the hospital long?” she asked, her eyes traveling down my legs.

“Depends how you define
long
. For me, one day is too long. I’m not good at being a patient, I’m no good at being in bed, and I’m lousy at laying still.”

Here eyes were glued to me as she backed away. I’d scared her for sure this time. “Hey, sorry. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“It’s okay,” she said and fled.

I propelled my body through the water like a missile seeking destruction.

Six weeks had passed since the accident and I no longer knew myself. I was a stranger who had done something unforgivable, who had caused great pain and suffering to another human being. I had single-handedly ruined a life. I had destroyed the career and future of one of the best young hockey players we’d ever had in our state. How was I supposed to live with that!

I drove myself past exhaustion to beat my best time, which I made only yesterday. Reaching the edge of the pool, I grabbed the waterproof timer from the pool deck. Yes! Two seconds faster. A shoe appeared in front of my nose.

“You ever coming out of there? We were supposed to be at Gina’s a half hour ago.” Celeste was waving a towel at me.

In a single move, I pulled myself onto the pool deck and stood facing her. She had a rosy glow, her long fair hair still damp from the shower. I yanked the towel out of her hand and threw it around my shoulders. Whipping off the swim cap and goggles, I strode to the change room. “You go on ahead,” I snapped. “I’m going to change and go home.”

“Are you kidding? It’s our pizza night.”

I shrugged, pushing the locker room door open with my shoulder. “My headache is back.”

Celeste was quiet, seemingly deep in thought as she sat on the locker room bench, watching me shower and dress. Finally, she said, “I don’t think so.”

I threw on my sweater. “Excuse me?”

“I think it’s something else.” Celeste reached into her pack and pulled out a single page from the sports section of the Sunday Seattle Times. She pointed to a headline:
NHL Hopeful Sidelined by Skier and
a photo of Justin Ledger scoring a goal. Next to his photo was last year’s high school picture of me. Fear swelled my stomach. I had seen that page of the paper sitting open on our kitchen table before coming to the pool. The headline had left me paralyzed with horror, my brain refusing to compute the ramifications of that condemning headline. The sight of it now made me physically ill. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

I snatched the paper from her, ripping it. “Give me that!” I crumpled the newspaper angrily. “I thought you were my friend,” I spit out.

“Stop it, Ashla! Just stop!” Celeste jumped up and whirled on me. “I keep telling myself it’s the head injury and you’ll be your old self soon. But
soon
isn’t happening and I’m sick of hanging out with some moody, dark, depressed person I don’t know anymore.”

“So don’t!” I drove my feet into my Nikes. Then, I balled up the newspaper and crammed it into my pack. “Just screw off, like everyone else.”

Celeste threw her hands on her hips. “I mean, can you blame them? Really?”

I straightened up slowly and looked at my lifelong friend. I couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t part of my life. Her family lived right next door, and our moms had put us together to play as infants. We did daycare, preschool, kindergarten, and public school together. We lived at each other’s homes without giving it a thought. She was a sister to me. I loved her, I realized, the same way I would have if she had been born into our family. I collapsed onto the bench. “No, I can’t blame them. And I wouldn’t blame you either.”

Celeste dropped down beside me, putting her arm around me. “Hey,” she said softly, “we’ve been besties forever. Maybe everyone else is avoiding you, but I’ll always be there, you know that, Ashla.”

Would she? Would she still be there tomorrow, or next week, or whenever the eye of this storm finally hit. The truth was, that I, Ashla Cameron, hadn’t destroyed just anybody’s life, I’d chosen Seattle’s high profile young hockey great who once had fame and fortune in his future. Now, thanks to me, he had to live in a world of pain, with the possibility of never walking normally again, his hopes for a once-bright future gone.

Would Celeste want to stand by someone who’d done that? How could she even look at me? I could barely look at myself.

Six weeks of worry, fear, and dread had finally culminated into the monster rearing its ugly head. What would happen to me? To my parents? Would there be charges or a lawsuit? I’d overheard my parents whispering these possibilities. Now these ramifications loomed dark and ominous. Overwhelmed by a dismal future, I dropped my head into my hands.

Celeste said, “You haven’t been the same since the accident. I know you blame yourself.” She tucked a stray strand of damp hair behind her ear. “It’s a terrible thing to be found responsible for injuring another person.” She paused, “It’s almost impossible to live with that.”

I mumbled through my fingers, “So, what do I do? Do I go on with my everyday life like nothing happened? Do I go to school each morning like nothing’s changed? Do I hit the pool or the rink, practice, race, and compete like everything is the same as it was before? Do I hang out with my friends and pretend they don’t whisper behind my back? Not freaking likely. There’s no way I can live with this! No way.”

“Me neither.”

I looked up at Celeste, surprised. “What do you mean,
me neither
? You don’t have to figure out how you’re going to survive something like this. You’re the girl who goes to church three times a week; the girl who never, ever does anything wrong; the girl who volunteers at the mission every Christmas while the rest of us sneak rum and eggnog. You are Miss Pristine. You have no idea what this is like, Celeste. You can’t even imagine what it feels like to be responsible for something as bad as this.”

There was a deep silence in the empty locker room. Then, Celeste said, “Yes, I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do,” she paused, “and I can.” She hesitated, her voice cracking, “We’re close like sisters, Ashla, but even sisters don’t know everything about each other.”

I stared at her for a long time. “What are you saying?”

Celeste wouldn’t look at me. “Some day I’ll tell you, but not right now.” Her cornflower eyes finally found mine. They were haunted as she whispered, “Trust me. I’ve been where you are. I’ll stand by you, Ashla . . . no matter what. Just do what you have to do.”

“I’m going to sue those people ta hell an’ back!” my dad’s face was purple with rage as he glared down at my mother. “Of all the ignorant, irresponsible . . .” He bent over to get his breath before continuing: “Their girl took our son’s legs, destroyed his career, and ruined his life. Hell, he’ll be lucky if he ever walks again—”

“Calm down, Ned. We can talk about this sensibly,” My mother’s smoky voice quivered with anxiety.

“Piss on that! I’m calling our lawyer, Susan, whether y’all like it or not. The ski resort confirmed that the run was open when Justin went down. Ski patrol actually talked to him. They posted the closure afterward. That girl should never have skied that dang run. If she’d used any kind of good sense, Justin would be on the ice right now. There’s no excuse for her kind of ignorance. She’s at fault and I’m going to make her family pay.”

Hoping to remain unseen, I backed the wheelchair quietly from the kitchen annex and worked my way back toward my room. My father’s angry voice followed, every word penetrating the walls and very likely the entire neighborhood, even with vast distances between the estate-sized properties.

I turned into my bedroom, closed the door, soaked up the new-found silence, and unclenched my jaw. The knot in my stomach softened and my collie, Bones, came out from under the desk. Never a brave dog, he was first to take cover at the sound of yelling. He nuzzled my hand, so I gave him a reassuring pat. “Hey. It’s not so bad. Well, I mean, it’s been worse, Boy. Much worse.”

I was troubled by my father’s threat to sue the Cameron family. Somehow, I had to prevent that, as I knew that I was equally at fault for what happened. Instead of trying to be some kind of hero and catch the girl hurtling off the jump, I could have moved out of the way. Each time I tried to explain that to my dad, he flew into a rage. Like a locomotive roaring full tilt through a tunnel, nothing could change his viewpoint or objective once he set himself a course.

While I was in the hospital, Mole had ferreted up information on the Cameron family. We were stunned to learn Ashla Cameron and I were both on the mountain that day as part of the school ski trip, which meant we attended the same school. I racked my brain trying to remember who she was, but I simply could not. How could I have missed seeing this beauty?

Unfortunately, hard times had befallen her family in recent months. Mole had learned that Ashla’s father, an engineer, had lost his job at a local engineering firm and had taken two low wage jobs, so the last thing he needed was a frivolous lawsuit. Money doesn’t heal bones and our family certainly had enough wealth without creating more chaos.

My thoughts drifted back to Ashla. The name fit the copper-haired beauty of my recurring dreams. When the going got tough, it was her gorgeous face that looked down on me. She had not only saved my life that day on the mountain, something everyone seemed to have forgotten, the lingering memory of her had carried me through the agony of recovery, through Father’s rages, Mother’s drunken stupors, and the never-ending pain.

I felt ostracized, like someone who’d lost his place in the world. I missed the team, the game, and the camaraderie that came with it. But through everything I had held onto her image . . . the tilt of her head, the way the light had played on the explosion of copper hair, those sparkling green eyes, and the sound of her sweet voice promising me life. She had saved me that day and since then, it had been her image that had lifted me through the bad times and made life tolerable. There was no way I’d let my father hurt her or her family. I had to find a way to stop him.

I looked down at the casts on my legs. The surgeon had inserted titanium rods, numerous screws and bolts, and then pieced the bones back together Humpty Dumpty style. When the wounds had healed enough, they put on casts that went to my waist and I was shimmied into traction.

After weeks in the hospital, being home and mobile by wheelchair should have been an improvement, but my parents were a living, screaming nightmare. They now shouted at each other endlessly. I caught Mother sneaking afternoon wine. Father often stayed late at his downtown investment firm. When my parents ended up anywhere near each other, it was hell, plain and simple.

Nobody watched hockey games anymore. It was simply too painful.The sport was ingrained into all three of us. My parents introduced me to hockey before I could walk by buying me a stick, puck, and net. By three, they had me on skates and into regular skating lessons. A year later, they enrolled me in what I jokingly think back on as
The Infants’ League
. Over the years, I developed a gift for getting the puck into the net at the least likely moment, and for that I’d been rewarded with ongoing press and publicity. Another Gretzky, they said. Hockey had become the sole purpose of this family’s collective life.

Now, we were dealing with a cavernous void and nothing to fill it. All hopes and dreams are gone. Vaporized, in a split second. Many days I cling to sanity with a slippery grip. I actually look forward to the daily visit from the tutor. I study in earnest for the first time in my life, losing myself in subjects I’d never before thought interesting. Science in particular.