Chapter One
If the last couple of days have taught me anything, it’s that time can be confusing. Beginnings, endings; they swirl around, meshing with each other until there’s no telling where something even starts. You can’t trust time; not when it melts away like butter; not when it drips and drags like molasses in January, not when it tells you one thing and does another, tricking you like some shady blackjack dealer in Vegas. But time is all we’ve got. It’s what our lives are made of.
So, for the sake of being linear, I’ll start in the middle; the day I saw her again, for the first time.
December 22nd, 2013
I limped to the bathroom, hobbling along like the useless bastard I was. There was something about mornings that made my ankle a million times worse, like having been still the entire night threw it into some sort of atrophy. It had been nine months, three surgeries, and fifty seven hours of physical therapy since the accident. Still, Dr. Rivers assured me that this surgery, this round of physical therapy, this month, would be the one that returned full use of my ankle to me. Color me pessimistic.
“Mr. Cobb, you’ve only done three minutes.” I heard the chirpy voice of Mrs. Angela Bumble behind me. She was the newest addition to St. Bartholomew’s Physical Rehabilitation Center, and bubblier than shaken up Mountain Dew. Seriously, she was Doris Day come again. You know, assuming Doris Day is dead or whatever. Still, she was new, unfamiliar with my tactics and, as such, completely out of her depth. Turning around, I saw her motioning toward the running, but decidedly empty treadmill.
“So?” I gave her my best ‘I don’t have time for this’ glare. She blinked a couple of times, obviously shaken. But she kept that ‘can do’ smile plastered across her face.
“You have twenty seven minutes left in your session,” she explained, and pointed to the poster on the wall. It was one of those ‘Hang in there, baby’ posters; the kind where the cat is dangling from a clothesline and obviously scared to death because, you know, how does a cat even get on a clothesline in the first place? It was facing east so that, when we were on the treadmill, we could look at it and get inspired. But all it did was make me wonder what the odds were that the cat was actually gonna manage to hang on. And, if he did, what would happen to him after that? I mean, he obviously had crap owners, or else he wouldn’t be in his unfortunate situation in the first place. In the end, I sorta just kept wishing I could trade it in for a TV.
“Look, I-“
I know it’s hard, Mr. Cobb,” she showcased a plucky smile that would have made the cat proud, assuming he hadn’t become a splatter on the pavement. “But you can do it. Discouragement is only discouraging to the weak. And you are not weak.”
“You should sew that onto a pillow or something,” I said, but regretted it as soon as I saw the flinch in Mrs. Bumble’s eyes. “Look,” I sighed. “You ever heard of the Trail of Tears?”
Mrs. Bumble nodded. “Well, that’s gonna be nothing compared to the trail I’ll leave on that treadmill if you don’t let me go to the bathroom.”
“J-just hurry back,” she stammered.
“I’ll do my best,” I said, pointing to my bum ankle. I was almost to the bathroom when I heard another voice; a decidedly less inept voice.
“Winston Cobb, I swear to our shared Lord that if you try to sneak out on your physical therapy again, I will find something you hold dear, and I will kill it.” The deep Southern twang of Anita Blakely, a heavyset woman with tight curled hair and dark skin sounded as she came waddling toward me. She had been with St. Bart’s since its namesake was “just a real nice man”. Which was to say; she was hip to my games.
“Anita, would I do that to you?” I feigned hurt.
“We both know the answer to that,” she said with a hand on her hip. “You got two minutes, Winston Cobb. I hope you didn’t have a big breakfast.”
Two minutes was not a fair compromise, since it took me forty five more seconds just to inch to the damn door. But, when I had closed it safely behind me, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Roger,” I said when he answered. “They’re on to me. We gotta go plan B.”
I didn’t like plan B, mostly because pulling a fire alarm and forcing a bunch of people who were going through physical therapy to march out in a single file line was sorta cruel. But Anita would be watching me like a hawk, and quick or stealthy getaways were not things that were on my menu at the moment. Besides, it was a nice day. They would enjoy the air.
Once Roger had pulled the alarm and convinced half the nursing staff and patients that they were going to die fiery deaths, I managed to sneak around the back of the building by the dumpsters, where Roger always picked me up.
“Hurry up dude. I do not want Anita screaming at me again,” Roger said, from the driver’s seat of his green, decidedly used, but very much paid for Honda Civic.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I said. “Don’t be such a baby.”
“She says hurtful things,” he muttered. I sort of collapsed into the shotgun seat, since climbing or even bending was an Olympian feat for me these days. Roger revved the engine and pulled away. The only way out of St. Bart’s was the way into it. So, that meant we had to speed by Anita, bubbly Mrs. Bumble, and the rest of the physically hobbled bunch to get to the exit.
They were lined up like tin cans ready to be shot along the front yard. It was a good thing they moved my physical therapy out of United Methodist, or else I would never have been able to pull this off. I slid down in the seat as Roger rounded the corner; wincing as a spike of pain ran up my leg.
“You okay?” He asked.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Now just drive, and try not to act so guilty. You look like Pippi Longstocking after a hit and run.”
For all his attributes; I mean, it isn’t everybody who’d put the handicapped and elderly through a fire drill at 6 in the morning just to help you skip out on therapy; he still wasn’t much of a liar. This was the third time he had done this for the, the second time at St. Bart’s, and every time it was the same thing; clenched fists on the steering wheel, gritted teeth, flop sweat running off him in buckets. This dude really needed to chill.
“What if she recognizes me?” He asked.
“She’s seen you one time. She’s not gonna recognize you.”
“Roger Carpenter, you stop that car this instant!” Anita’s voice blared every bit as loud as the fire alarm had. Roger crumpled a little when he heard.
“Keep driving!” I told him from the floorboard.
“Roger Carpenter, I know that boy is in there with you. Now you stop that car. You hear me?”
Roger’s foot lifted from the gas pedal. “Roger. Keep driving Roger. Don’t stop Roger.” But he had a thing with authority figures. He couldn’t help it. He was the type of guy who’d find a way to make it stop raining if a grown up asked him to. I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. Literally.
I grabbed Roger’s foot and slammed it hard against the pedal. We took off like a rocket. The entire floorboard vibrated as we sped along.
“Dude stop!” Roger yelled. “Dude, seriously stop!” Roger rounded the corner, which let me know we were out of St. Bart’s, so I let go of his foot.
“The road to hell is a slippery one, Roger Carpenter. That boy’s gonna take you right down it,” Anita shouted from the front yard. “And here I am thinking you were smart.”
“So hurtful,” Roger muttered.
“Thanks dude,” I said, hoisting myself up onto the seat. Turning, I found Anita had become a yelling dot in the rearview. She would make me pay for this eventually. But not today.
“When do you have to be in school?” I asked, massaging my ankle.
“Not until twelve, and I knew you weren’t okay! Now I feel bad about busting you out.” He started shaking his head. Roger was a genius. Like, a literal genius. He had been taking college courses s
ince junior year. So now, while us mere mortals were six months away from graduating, Roger had horded enough credits so that he only had to do half days. Meanwhile, I had horded enough scar tissue so that my thrice weekly therapy sessions afforded me a ticket out of first period.
“You’re such a girl. I’m fine. Plus, I don’t have to be in school until ten. So, I’m super fine.” I was not. My ankle was rigid and hurt like a bitch. But I had been through this song and dance enough to know that a half hour on the treadmill wasn’t going to do anything but piss me off. Besides, I had much better ways to spend my time. “So, I was thinking,” I said, still making soothing circles across the throbbing pin cushion of my ankle.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Roger quipped.
“Har har,” I sneered. “But seriously, what’s a socially awkward genius and his awesome, but hobbled, cripple of a best friend to do with three entire hours to themselves.”
“World of Warcraft?” He smiled.
“World of Warcraft,” I answered.
Two and a half hours later, Roger and I had had slayed a group of wood nymphs in a way so needlessly vicious that I hesitate to speak of it at the moment. We were in his basement room; a sort of shrine to the geeky stuff that he, and to a lesser extent, I loved so much. It was huge, filled with Game of Thrones posters, vintage collectable bottles of Tru Blood, a Deadwood poster signed by both Timothy Olynphant and Ian Mcshane. Plus, and as someone who had to share a room with Micah; the world’s most annoyingly peppy eight year old, this was the most important part. He had it all to himself. I envied everything about that room; save, of course, the mountain of stairs you had to descend to actually get into it.
“Dude, it’s nine thirty,” Roger said, pounding at his control and thus sending a spike through the last of the ill-fated wood nymphs.
“So,” I said, pushing my space bar and making my Blood Ogre do something akin to ‘the Dougie’ over their corpses.
“So school,” he said, closing his laptop.
“I got thirty minutes,” I shrugged.
“Ten of which you’ll use to get to the car.”
“You’re no fun,” I said, pushing myself up. A stab of pain ran through my foot and up my right leg. I did my best not to acknowledge it, but that didn’t stop me from tumbling into Roger’s homemade (and life-size) Tardis replica.
“Dude,” Roger said and rushed over to help me.
“Don’t!” I yelled, and pushed myself back up, determined to steady myself by myself. “I can do it.” After a minute or so or pretty reliable standing, I let myself breath. “It’s your own fault. Where’d you get this stupid thing anyway?” I pointed to the shoddy blue pained Tardis.
“Danny and Ed helped me build it,” he explained.
“When? I don’t remember that?”
“You wouldn’t. It was two years ago,” he said quickly, and looked at the floor. Two years ago was sort of a sore spot for us which, for the record, I take total responsibility for. I was a douche, and Roger didn’t deserve to be treated the way I treated him.
I had always loved basketball; ever since I was a kid. There was something about the flow of it. It’s like the basket was this constant. It always stayed the same. And all the others players, the way they moved, the things they did; they were the variables. And I had to navigate my way through all these changing variables to get to the one place that I knew would be constant. I know it sounds like a math geek’s guide to basketball, but it was really beautiful to me; sorta like coming home.
It had always just been a hobby for me, but when I started high school Coach Abernathy caught me on the courts one day and convinced me to try out for the team. Turned out I was actually pretty good; good enough to start. I made friends with a couple of guys on the team and, if you’ve ever seen that old movie Can’t Buy Me Love, then you know that once one cool person thinks you’re cool, they sort of all do.
And the thing is, it’s not like I intended to leave Roger by the wayside. We had been friends since we were both in utero. But my new friends, my cool friends, they had a pretty sweet deal. There were these parties. They had actual girls with actual breasts who would actually let me touch them. And given that, until that point, the only boobs I had ever seen came courtesy of Al Gore’s wondrous internet invention, Roger didn’t stand much of a chance.
I won two state championships during freshman and sophomore year, and saw Roger maybe three times during that entire period. And even when I did see him, we didn’t have much to talk about. The quiet ease of our friendship had melted away. But, after the accident, he was there for me, one of the only people who was actually there for me; quiet ease or not.
“It looks pretty cool,” I conceded, running my hand across the blue painted box. “Now, unless you have any other interdimensional transportation vehicles for me to crash into, let’s get out of here.”
“It doesn’t travel interdimensionally,” Roger grinned, running a hand through his shaggy blond hair. “Well, not just interdimensionally.”
I ended up at school fifteen minutes late, which was still an hour and forty five minutes early for Roger. So he decided to hit up Starbuck’s and meet me after lunch. I waved him on and limped my hobbled ass up the steps of Herbert Hoover High. So. Many. Steps.
Thankfully, since I was late, the halls were empty when I entered. The last thing I needed was to wade through a sea of my former friends. The banners hung above me though, dangling like ghosts overhead reminding me of everything that had happened.
“Hebert Hoover High Wolverines: State Champions 2011 & 2012”
There was not one for last year though. Probably wouldn’t be one for this year either, and everyone knew who’s fault that was. It was April of last year. I had just dropped Katie Parker, my girlfriend at the time, off at her house. Well, I guess you could call her my girlfriend. Our dates consisted of her texting her friends for two hours, fooling around in the backseat of my mom’s Nissan for fifteen minutes, and her blowing kisses to me from the stands at all my games; during which time she would tell everyone who would listen how in love we were and how we were going to buck the trend of high school sweethearts and spend the rest of our lives together. Needless to say, kisses weren’t the only thing that stopped getting blown after that night.
We had just left a rager at Jeff Deluca’s, one of those parties where the cops who the neighbors called to break things up decide to stick around a have a few drinks instead. It was around one in the morning, but it was Saturday and my parents were used to it. So, no big deal.
I had had one beer. It’s important that you know it was just one beer. I was rounding the curve on Abercorn when I saw a man standing in the dead center of the road. I swerved to miss him, but it had been raining and the roads were wet. I remember the car flipping three times before I blacked out.
The next thing I knew, there was a fire. My leg was throbbing and I was being pulled across the ground. I was hazy and wet. I would later find out that Katie’s drink, a fruity little daiquiri thing that she left in the rider’s side cup holder, had spilled all over me. I looked up from the flames and saw a girl. It was still raining, but she was dry somehow. She looked down at me as she drug me across the pavement away from the car. She had long ink black hair, the sort of pale porcelain skin that you only see in really old paintings, and eyes that would have been bright and distinct even if they weren’t two different colors.
Brown and green smiled from above me as she said, “It’s okay Winston. Come on.”
“Are you an angel?” I asked. Which I know is very cheesy and exactly what you’d expect to hear someone in my situation say at that moment. It probably would have made more sense if I’d have asked her name, or better yet, how she knew mine. But what can I say? I’m a slave to the expected.
She balked, a little surprised that I was awake. She looked forward, to someone or something I couldn’t see, nodded quic
kly, and said, “I’m so proud of you.” Then she kissed me.
After that, I passed out again.
When I trudged my way into second period chemistry, Mr. Axel had a beaker in each hand and was explaining something about the way “reactions can be spontaneous and oftentimes unwanted”. Judging from the reaction I got from my classmates when they saw me, he couldn’t have been more right. For the better part of a year I had been the drunk who got my ankle crushed and ruined their chances at extended basketball glory. Never mind that it was just one beer and that, contrary to what was all over my clothes, I don’t drink fruity daiquiri things. Katie, my new cool friends, none of them cared.
“Mr. Cobb,” Mr. Axel said, without looking at me.
“Sorry. Physical therapy ran long,” I explained. “You know, crappy foot and all.”
“Take your seat,” he said, and got back to his lecture. I did as he said, making my way to the near back of the room. The looks I got, the looks I always got, were a mix of disgust and pity. Katie, for her part, didn’t look at me at all. It didn’t surprise me. She hadn’t acknowledged me even a little in months. I guess once you’ve had somebody’s tongue in your ear it gets hard to go back to small talk.
I plopped down in my seat, smiling as I felt a familiar finger on my shoulder. Right after I got out of the hospital the first time, it was a bad time to be me. None of my new friends would talk to me in school, I had alienated Roger, and I didn’t even have basketball anymore. I had lost the constant hoop, and was left with a bunch of crappy variables. I was sitting in school one day, thinking about how the only thing that hurt worse than my ankle was my damn heart, when this awesome, adorable, mousy girl who I had been sitting in front of the entire year and hadn’t even taken the time to learn her name, tapped me on the shoulder and told me everything was going to be okay. Just out of the blue. Just like that, she leaned up and whispered into my ear. “Sometimes who we think we are isn’t who we turn out to be.”
We had been dating for six months.
Oh, and her name was Lucy.
“What do you want?” I grinned, spinning around as gracefully as a kid with three hunks of metal in his ankle could.
“Physical therapy?” She asked, and pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. “I wonder what the wood nymphs of Algeron Hill have to say about that.”
“You know me too well,” I said.
“That’s what I keep telling everybody,” she smiled.
“I love you,” I told her.
“Turn around Romeo,” she grinned. “You’re already way behind and I will not date someone who flunks chemistry. The whole thing is just too rife with implied innuendo.”
“Yes ma’am,” I chuckled and turned back around.
Lunch consisted of soggy tacos, some sketchy orange rice, and half of Lucy’s pimento cheese sandwich. We were halfway through a conversation about what sort of breakfast foods best describe us. Eggs Benedict for her (cause she was all calm and savory) and Coco Puffs for me (the reasoning there should be obvious), when Roger came in.
He had what history told me was probably a mocha Frappuccino with extra whipped cream and three shots of espresso in one hand and his cell phone pressed against his ear with the other.
“Are you sure?” He asked, walking toward me. His eyebrows were all crinkled and his face held an expression that said even if the person on the other end of the line was sure, he certainly wasn’t. “You’re sure?” He repeated, and then he stopped short. His body tensed up and he stood up straighter than I had ever seen him. “No sir, I understand. No, I wasn’t trying to- Yes sir. Right away.”
He ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. Lucy had been facing me (lucky girl, I know) and hadn’t seen what Roger was just doing. So, when he crossed into her line of sight, she asked, “What sort of breakfast food best describes you?”
“Watermelon,” he said without hesitating.
“Why watermelon?” She asked.
“Why not?” He shrugged, took a sip of Frappuccino, and plopped down on the seat beside me.
“Who was on the phone?” I asked.
“What? Oh, that was one of my college professors. I tanked an exam and I wanted to take it over. But it wasn’t to be.” He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it propped up in soft blond tufts.
“You tanked an exam?” I asked. I reached across the table, grabbing for the other half of Lucy’s sandwich.
“Not my proudest moment,” he answered, and looked down at his watch.
I looked up at Lucy, asking for permission. “Just take it,” she shook her head. “You’re such a child.”
“True,” I answered through a mouthful of sandwich. “I thought that’s why you loved me though.”
“It’s either that or the raw sex appeal,” she answered, wiping a hunk of cheese from my lips.
“Watermelon,” Roger said again. I turned to him. He had the same goofy grin from a couple minutes ago. He looked pretty much the same except that his hair was now pushed down flat.
“What?” Dude we’re passed that,” I answered. “And watermelon was a pretty crappy answer anyway. I wouldn’t relive it if I were you.”
Lucy looked at him, brushing dark bangs out her adorably large gray eyes. “You okay?” Her mom was a nurse and her grandma had been a nurse too, so she was always on the lookout for early signs of whatever or easy to miss symptoms of who knows what.
“I’m fine,” he shook his head. “Too much caffeine,” he pointed to his drink. “You know, it’s just-“
He stopped what he was saying. His eyes went wide for a second, his face went pale. Following his glance, I saw why. One of the top ten best looking girls in the entirety of plant Earth; top three if you don’t count models or Megan Fox, had just walked into the cafeteria. I was going to, as I always did when a cute girl walked by, turn and make conversation with Lucy. You know, so she wouldn’t think I was being a douche or anything. But, as I took this girl in, I realized I couldn’t turn away. And it wasn’t cause of how hot she was.
I knew her. This girl, with her ink black hair, with her old world porcelain skin, with her brown and green gaze, this was the girl who had saved my life.