The Chance You Won't Return (15 page)

Near the stands, the Key Club had set up a card table with baked goods and hot chocolate and cider. I bought a cup of cider and stood beside the stands with it, sipping as I watched guys line up and run into each other.

“Alex!” I heard Theresa shout from overhead. When I looked up, she was leaning out of the stands. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

I wished she hadn’t shouted my name. Other people turned to look as well. It was like I was a spy for the other team. What did they think I’d do? Get a Mack truck and run over the whole defensive line?

“Come on. Sit up here,” Theresa said.

I climbed my way through the crowd to get to my friends, smelling alcohol from most kids I passed. With the surprisingly good season, people celebrated harder. My friends squeezed together to make room for me. Everyone else glared like I was bad luck, and I started to think that coming to the game wasn’t such a great idea. I hoped the players hadn’t noticed. Dealing with them was bad enough already.

“So,” I said, “are you having fun? Is it everything you dreamed it would be?”

Theresa rolled her eyes. “Oh, more.”

“Psh, whatever,” Josh said. “We got to see Nick Gillan get sacked. That was pretty satisfying.”

“Too bad I missed that one,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Maddie said. “It’s not even halftime yet. There are still plenty of chances for him to get his ass handed to him.”

Even without the possibility of Nick Gillan getting his face mangled, I liked the brutality of it all. After feeling so awkward and helpless at home and in the hospital, it was kind of nice to see people slam into each other and throw one another to the ground. If I’d been a guy, that’s what I would have signed up for. I even found myself cheering a few times. Theresa looked at me like I’d lost my mind — not such a stretch these days — but Josh and Maddie got into it, too.

By the second half, Franklin had scored two touchdowns, while we were still stuck at zero. The Franklin cheerleaders were mocking our players, and the Oak Ridge cheerleaders were making obnoxious rhymed comments back.

“Now, this is the Oak Ridge team I know,” Josh said. “No skills to back up their asshole behavior.”

“Might as well stick with what you’re good at,” Maddie said.

Behind me, I thought I heard someone say my name. I almost turned around, but then I heard it again: “It’s because Winchester’s here.” I sipped the rest of my cider, pretending I didn’t notice. The voice came again. “You’re killing us, Winchester!” I glanced over my shoulder to see a group of JV football players at the top of the stands, some jerk sophomore in the middle looking right at me. He had acne and a squarish head. I couldn’t remember his name.

“Fuck off. You didn’t even make the team,” Theresa said.

“Go drive away, Winchester,” the sophomore said. “Drive off a cliff.”

At that moment, if my dad had suggested that I homeschool myself so I could stay with Mom full-time, I would have taken him up on it. “I’m gonna go,” I told Theresa. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Theresa frowned. “Come on. Don’t listen to him.”

“It’s not just him.” I said, standing up. Behind me, the sophomore and his friends started hooting. “I don’t care. It’s fine. I should get home anyway.” Before Theresa could persuade me to stay, I shoved my way back through the crowd, down to the ground again. The sophomores applauded as I left.

I crumpled the empty cider cup and tossed it into the trash. One lousy moment — that was all I wanted. One moment that didn’t make me worry about anything, and some dumbass sophomore had to attack me. His parents were probably sane and knew his name. Couldn’t he go torture them and leave me alone?

I was bending down to tie my shoelace tighter, so I could run the whole way home again, when I heard footsteps behind me. It was Jim Wiley. He smiled, which made all my limbs soften. Then I remembered how frazzled I must have looked.

“Hey. I didn’t know you were into this kind of thing,” I said before he had the chance to ask me about why I was leaving.

“You either,” he said. “Will and Everett talked me into coming.”

“Same here,” I said. “Not your friends, I mean. My friends.” Shit. Couldn’t I talk right? I felt like every inch of me was an exposed nerve.

“Yeah.” He brushed his hand by his head, like he meant to push it through his hair but remembered too late that he’d cut most of it off. “You shouldn’t let those assholes get to you,” he said.

I tried to smile, but my face felt too tight. “Oh, right. I don’t care about them. I just didn’t feel like staying anymore.”

“That’s cool. Are you just headed home?”

On the field, the marching band took its place, along with the color guard. Over a loudspeaker, someone — it sounded like Simon Kelly, obnoxious honor student — said they were playing “I Feel Good” by James Brown. Horns blared and everyone cheered. Drums buzzed like the engine of a plane.

I’d just gotten out of my house; I didn’t want to head back now, but what else was there? My friends were still here, clapping for Caroline Lavale as she swung a maroon flag around the field. In town, there were just useless little gift stores and restaurants, nowhere I’d want to hang out alone. Even hiding in the movie theater was out — the Cineplex was out by the strip malls, too far to walk. And, of course, I didn’t have a car.

“What’s with you, Jim?” I said suddenly. “We weren’t friends before this year. Why are you teaching me how to drive, anyway? It’s kind of hopeless, right?”

His eyebrows rose, and he looked like he wasn’t sure if he should apologize or back away and let me rant by myself. “No, you’re doing okay —”

“I’m like this freak who can’t drive and messes up the football field. Why are you hanging out with me, anyway? What is it, pity? I’ve got enough of that, thanks, so I don’t need you to do me any great favors.”

“It’s not pity,” Jim said, a little harsher, like I’d offended him. “I like hanging out with you.”

“Because we both broke stuff with cars?” A little voice in the back of my head kept screaming at me to just shut up already. Did I want to alienate the one guy who was actually being nice to me? The one guy who made me forget the current mess that was my life? But the anger fizzing in my veins kept me going. Dimly, I wondered if this was what it was like for Mom — a glimmer of logic overwhelmed by the sharp and buzzing frustration. And instead of stopping, I took a step toward Jim so we were almost touching. “Before this year, you never even said hello to me, and now you’re giving me driving lessons and standing up for me in Spanish class. What’s your deal?”

He didn’t move away from me. Instead, he seemed to get closer. My heart pounded.

“Remember that time in the woods, when you saw me trying to graffiti the rock?” he asked. “You liked it. You said it looked kind of like a phoenix, which was really cool, and nobody else in this school would’ve gotten that, not even my friends.”

I stopped. Inside, the buzzing frustration started to dim. I was glad I hadn’t listened to Mom and decided to cut through the woods that day.

“In case you missed it,” Jim said, “most of the people in our school suck. So it’s nice when somebody comes along that you can just talk to and not feel weird around. Especially after driving into a house. So if you want to get mad at me some more, go ahead, but you wanted to know, and that’s my deal.”

For a second, I just stared at Jim. I still felt a kind of buzzing, but it was different now. On the field, the marching band started playing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and they were a little off the beat. The cheerleaders were encouraging the people in the stands to clap.

And I before I knew it, I was kissing Jim Wiley.

Before now, most of my kissing experience consisted of spin the bottle and being cornered by guys at parties. I didn’t even really know what I was doing when I started kissing Jim. I hadn’t exactly thought past that point, but then he started kissing me back and we were pressed together and his arms were around me, and I never wanted to stop kissing him. Suddenly everything was charged. I felt like all the atoms in my body were spinning and zipping through space.

Spinning and zipping were exactly what I was looking for.

The football game was over and most cars had disappeared from the parking lot by the time Jim and I stopped kissing. For the last hour or two, we’d been lying on a grassy hill behind the library, well hidden from everyone at the game. When car horns started blaring in the distance, I looked up.

“Does that mean we won?” I asked.

Jim kissed my neck. “I don’t think they know the difference.”

I tried not to giggle and mostly failed. “Either way, best football game ever.”

In a way, the whole day felt unreal. A couple of weeks ago, I’d barely spoken to Jim before, and now I knew that he smelled like peppermint shampoo and had sensitive ears. I didn’t feel awkward or inhibited with Jim at all; everything felt really right. All I had to think about was how kissing left me kind of dizzy and breathless and how he knew how good it felt to be touched on the small of the back. And he was just the right height so we could lie down next to each other and match almost perfectly. Overhead, stars were just becoming visible. Everything smelled like peppermint and grass and burning leaves. I wanted to stay there forever.

“Why didn’t we do this sooner?” I asked.

We kissed and didn’t break apart for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Because I had to win you over with my driving skills first.”

“That’s exactly what won me over.”

Suddenly the voices coming from the football game sounded closer. Jim and I broke apart just as a group of freshmen stumbled around the corner. “Oops,” one of them slurred, and they giggled but kept walking.

We sat up, brushing grass off ourselves. Suddenly it felt a lot colder and I shivered a little. “What time is it, anyway?” I asked. Jim pulled out his cell to check. It was later than I’d expected. Way later than I should have been out. “I should get back,” I told Jim.

“You sure?” he said. “Will McNamee texted me. People are going over to his place if you want to come.”

I didn’t know if I wanted to share Jim with anyone yet. Instead of saying so, I claimed that my parents would probably be waiting up, since I hadn’t told anyone I was going out. “You should go, though. We’ll get together later.”

Jim reached toward me and pulled a blade of grass from my hair. “Just so you don’t get in trouble,” he said, and kissed me again.

By the time I got home, most of the lights in the house were off, including the one in Mom and Dad’s room. I wondered what Katy had told Dad.

Jackson, who was at the door when I opened it, trotted back to his pillow bed in the living room. I padded slowly into the kitchen, my sneakers squeaking against the tile floor. Mom was at the kitchen sink, gazing out over the darkness of the backyard. For a moment, I hoped she had given up the Amelia Earhart stuff and was just Mom again, even if Mom would yell at me for being out late and not letting anyone know where I was. Then I noticed she had a dozen index cards in her hands and that she was whispering to herself. “. . .
aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationships of women with the creations of science . . .”

When I hit a creaky spot on the floor, she glanced up. “Hello there,” she said, smiling. It wasn’t Mom. “Just going over my lecture notes.”

“Hey,” I said. I backed away, thinking I’d leave her to whatever she thought she had to be doing, but my stomach rumbled. The hot cider had been a while ago. And Mom seemed pretty distracted anyway, so I looked in the refrigerator and found a slice of leftover pizza.

“Did they order out?” I asked. Even though Dad had said we were supposed to remind her of real-life stuff, I wasn’t sure where that line blurred.

“Oh, yes. They got Italian. Lovely country.”

I didn’t bother heating up the pizza. At first I considered taking it to my room, but I knew Katy would object — she had a thing about crumbs — and I didn’t want to run into Dad in case he was still awake. Instead, I sat at the table. “Have you been there?” I said. I wasn’t supposed to ask these kinds of questions, but with the rest of the house dark and quiet, it felt like Mom and I were just talking, like we sometimes did when neither of us could sleep. Even if she wouldn’t talk to me like she was my mother, I thought it would be better than not talking to her at all.

Her smile was beatific. “I’ve been all over Europe. After my solo flight.”

“Did you like it there?” I took a bite of pizza.

“Well, it was very exciting. Lots of talking to the press, that kind of thing. When I came back to New York, there was a ticker-tape parade. But mostly I just wanted to be flying. G.P. says that’s all a part of it, the media side, but it’s not quite the same, is it?”

“No, I guess not.” I’d never been in a plane before. When we went to Florida for vacation a few years ago, we drove the whole way. Maybe it would be exciting — the sudden lift and push backward into your seat, seeing the ground disappear below, rising through the clouds and into the sky.

“So I kissed this guy tonight,” I told her. “He’s teaching me how to drive.”

Mom’s face fell a little. She leaned forward, resting her hand on top of mine. “Now, I know attention can be nice, but don’t let romance stand in the way of your career. I told George about that before I agreed to marry him — he’d have to let me go if I wasn’t happy after a year.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know. And Jim and I aren’t getting married or anything. I don’t even know what we’re doing. It was just nice.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Really nice.”

She gave my hand a squeeze. “You’ll make the right decision. And look how it’s worked out for George and me so far.”

I thought about Dad, upstairs, probably already asleep because he’d be working tomorrow and because he was exhausted. “You love him, though, right? Even though you said that he’d have to let you go if you asked him to. That was just in case. You’re not still thinking about leaving him?”

Sighing, she drummed her fingernails against the back of my hand. “He pushes me — it’s just so much sometimes. The tours, the lectures, everything. It’s good for me, I know. But it’s quieter in the air.” She laughed. “Not with the engines, but a different kind of quiet. I suppose that’s alone enough for now.”