Jumping Off Swings (5 page)

“What was wrong with you out there? You cost us two goals!”

I turn away from him and throw my stuff together.

“Hey, what’s your problem, man?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Not here.”

“Yeah, here. What’s up with you?”

The other guys wait for a fight like vultures. Only Dave seems uncomfortable. The three of us have known each other forever, and we’ve never gotten in each other’s faces. Never.

“I said not here.” I turn away from him and grab my bag.

“Party at my house this weekend,” Kyle says, walking over to Josh.

“Cool,” says Dave.

“Gonna hook up with Ellie again, Josh?” Ben asks.

“Nah,” Josh says quietly.

Dave looks toward me. “Cay?”

“Screw you,” I say.

“What the hell? What did I say?”

I grab my stuff and push past them and head out to the parking lot. I’m halfway to my car when Josh catches up.

“Hey!”

I don’t turn around.

He steps in front of me and blocks my way. “What’s your problem?”

His chest is in my face.

“What happened to you?” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“You and Ellie? Come on, Josh. You’re not like those assholes. Why do you have to talk about her like she’s a piece of meat?”

“What? I don’t! I just — c’mon, Cay. You know it’s just bullshit. Those guys have been on my case for months.”

“So you screw Ellie just so you can get those guys off your back?”

“
No!
That’s not what I meant.”

“What
did
you mean, then?”

“I don’t know! God, Cay. What do you care?”

I shake my head. “Just forget it.”

“No way! You started this.”

“Fine, then tell me what
really
happened with Ellie.”

“You know what happened.”

“Not the details. I mean, what happened between you two?”

He sighs. “Nothing. We did it. That’s all.”

“That’s
all
?”

He looks around to make sure no one can hear. “Yeah. I mean, maybe it wasn’t as great as I let on, all right? It was my first time. Why do you care so much, anyway?”

“We’ve known Ellie since, like, first grade, you know? The way you guys talk about her . . . it’s not cool.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “I don’t mean it. I just can’t tell them what it was really like.”

“Why not?”

“Because it
sucked
? I dunno. I was clueless. As soon as it was over, I took off.”

“Damn, Josh. What the hell?”

“I know I’m a shit, OK? What else do you want? I screwed up.”

His eyes are glassy, like he might actually cry.

“Nothing,” I say. “Forget it. Just — shut up about her from now on, all right?”

“Yeah, man. OK.”

“You want a ride?”

He heads to the passenger side of my car without answering and gets in.

We drive toward his house without talking. Josh turns up the stereo and pretends to be into the music, but he seems nervous to me. Like he’s thinking about what happened that night. Like he can’t get it out of his mind.

I
MARK ANOTHER BLACK DOT
on my calendar. A speck on the white square that only I would notice. Twenty-eight days from the last day it should have come. Three months in a row. I touch the dot with my finger. It smudges on the glossy calendar paper and onto my fingertip.

Downstairs, my mother is making breakfast. The dishes clink softly. She’s humming, as if everything is fine.

I start downstairs, but the smell of scrambled eggs sends me rushing to the bathroom. There isn’t much to throw up. My mouth tastes sour after, and the smell makes me retch again. But there’s nothing left inside me. I splash cold water on my face and bury it in a washcloth.

Corinne said she would go with me to buy a test. To be sure. But I told her I am sure. She said she’ll help me find a place to go to take care of it. That we can take a bus to the city if we have to. She says her sister will help us. Ava knows what to do. And she thinks Josh will pay. But I don’t want Ava to know. I don’t want Josh to know. No one can know.

I brush my teeth and go back to my room. I shut the door. Shut out the smells and my mother’s happy breakfast noises as she gets ready to fill us up on scrambled eggs and whole-wheat toast with jam. All our lives, she’s tried to stuff us with her goodness. So why have I always felt so empty?

Way back in my underwear drawer, I reach for them. The white cotton panties I wore that first time. I carefully unfold them, like a flower opening up. But inside is the dried-up blood that proved it was my first time. It looks brownish now, and ugly. Not like a flower at all. I refold them and push them back to their hiding spot.

I don’t know why I have to look. I don’t know why I keep them.

“Breakfast! You’ll be late if you all don’t get down here now!” my mom half sings, like an orange-juice-commercial mom.

My brother’s heavy footsteps thud down the carpeted stairs. My father mutters something about college behind him. His steps are quiet and careful in his dress shoes.

“Won’t have anyone to cook for you next year,” he jokes to my brother. He’s so proud, or maybe just relieved, that Luke is applying to colleges. Luke probably rolls his eyes when my father isn’t looking. He’s probably stoned already. I think I smelled his sweet smoke when I woke up. The smell my parents are too naïve to know is not incense. Luke thinks it’s funny, how clueless they are.

I wait in my room, afraid that if I open my door the kitchen smell will be stronger and I’ll be sick again. Just hang on, I tell myself. It will be over soon. Corinne will help me.

“Ellie, you’re late! Hurry up!”

I can’t imagine what she’d do if she knew just how late I was. That I have shattered her good-girl dreams for me.

I’m not angry. I’m disappointed,
I can hear her say if she found out. We don’t get angry in this house. Especially not my mom.

And that is so much worse.

So all I can do is scream into my pillow at night so no one can hear. I pound my fists into the soft down as hard as I can.

I take one more deep breath, wipe my face again, and walk downstairs, as if nothing is wrong. Just me running late.

I
T’S RAINING; IT’S POURING.
T
HE OLD MAN IS SNORING.

I hear my own kid voice in my head as I listen to him out there, sleeping on the living-room couch. Again.

He says the winter depresses him. No one gets their car detailed in the winter, so he has to get by working extra hours on the regular fix-it tune-up stuff, which I know makes him feel like a loser because it’s not “artistic” like the painting stuff is. And really he probably is daydreaming about getting “real” music gigs instead of playing in a men’s club to a bunch of guys trying to escape from their wives or their lives or whatever.

One time, when my dad and mom were actually going out someplace together, my dad came into my room and asked me to check to see if I could smell any gas or grease on him. With the amount of Old English he’d slapped on, I don’t think anyone would have known if he’d stepped in dog shit, which would have been a funny thing to say to him, if he hadn’t looked so nervous.

My mom doesn’t help, getting her nurse’s degree and making my dad feel dumb. Not that she did it on purpose, but I think he feels like now she’s better than him. Sometimes I catch him scowling at the bookshelf he made for all of her nursing books. When he finished, he was so proud of how it came out. But my mom shook it a little to test how sturdy it was. Then she said she hoped it could hold all her heavy books. I saw my dad kind of sag when she said that.

The snores stop, and he coughs a few times. The couch creaks. Then the snores start up again, quiet at first, then loud and steady. Rosie’s collar jingles as she resettles on the couch next to him.

I have to get out of here.

I grab my coat and head for the door, but just as I get there, the phone rings. I grab it before my dad can wake up.

“Stud-man! We’re on our way over.” Dave’s voice is crackly on his crappy cell phone. I swear he got it out of a cereal box.

“Your old man got any beer lying around?”

“Is the pope Catholic?”

“Be there in five.”

I head back to my room and throw my coat on the bed. So much for escaping.

When Dave and Caleb get here, they don’t bother to knock. As soon as I hear the front door creak open, I head out to meet them and warn them to be quiet. They creep through the living room past my dad. Dave points at my dad and pretends to guzzle a drink. He elbows Caleb and covers his mouth to keep from laughing. But Caleb looks away and pretends he doesn’t notice.

I jerk my head toward the kitchen, and they follow without talking. Rosie lifts her head from the foot of the couch and sniffs the air. Her tail thumps a few times. Then she puts her head back down on my dad’s feet. She never leaves his side, especially when the old man’s catching z’s. My dad used to joke that Rosie was more loyal to him than my mom, but he stopped saying that when it started to seem true.

In the kitchen I get us each a Bud, and we head to my room.

Dave dumps himself on my bed and of course sticks those damn shoes of his right near my pillow. I know he thinks this is funny. I swat them off and motion for him to shove over so I can sit at that end. Caleb slides the chair out from my desk and sits there like he’s gonna interview us or something. We don’t start talking until we’ve had a few chugs each.

“Something bugging you, man?” I say to Dave. “You’ve got about five new volcanoes going there.” Whenever he’s stressed out he gets these huge zits, which, being Dave, he can’t help picking.

He takes another drink. “Nothing. The ’rents are fighting again as usual. I wish my mom would just kick the bastard out.” He plays with the tab on the can until it falls off.

Dave’s dad can be a pretty big asshole, it’s true. Mike’s been known to use Dave’s mom as a punching bag. He’s given Dave some pretty bad bruises, too.

I don’t really know what to say, since basically I agree, but what can I do?

Caleb just stares out the window. He’s probably thinking about his own dad. That guy’s been MIA practically Caleb’s whole life.

I take a long drink from my beer and try to think of a way to change the subject.

Dave shrugs and drinks, too. Then Caleb starts chugging and all three of us finish our beers. We wipe our mouths with the back of our hands at the same time.

Dave lets out a huge belch and turns to Caleb. “So, what’s up with you and that bitch Corinne?” he asks.

That wasn’t exactly the subject I would’ve picked.

Caleb looks surprised, as if we haven’t noticed those two talking in the halls all the time. “We’re just friends,” he says, squeezing his empty can. “And she’s not a bitch.”

Dave nods at me. “They’re hooking up.”

“We are not!” Caleb says, kinda loud.

I motion for him to tone it down so he doesn’t wake up the old man.

“Well, we’re not,” he says. “We’re just friends.”

“That mean you’re still into Ellie?”

“What?”
Caleb’s face is bright red.

“You’re into Ellie?” I ask.

“No!” Caleb glares at Dave.