Chapter Two
I stood, staring at her; which is not a good idea when your girlfriend is sitting right next to you. But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t care what this girl looked like. I didn’t care that her face was pretty much perfect; only that it was the face that pulled me out of the car that night.
“Winston, are you okay?” Lucy asked, looking up at me. It wasn’t exactly easy for me to stand up these days. So, the fact that I had done it so quickly probably worried her.
“That’s the girl,” I said, not taking my eyes off of her.
“The girl?” Lucy asked.
“The girl, the one from the accident. She’s the person who saved my life.”
I watched as she scanned the room. Her eyes flickered past me; no visible recognition in them. They rested right beyond me and then came back; green and blue orbs looking right at me.
After the accident, once I was all hospitalized and drugged up for the pain, I started rambling about the guy in the road and the girl who had saved me. Nobody took me seriously though. Maybe it was the beer on my breath, maybe it was the daiquiri on my jacket. Or maybe it was the fact that, when they found me, there was nobody at the scene. No dude in the road to blame my accident on, no beautiful girl with multicolored eyes to thank for saving me. They both seemed to have faded into nothing, explained away by my concussion.
“She’s not the girl. Now sit down,” Lucy said, reaching across the table and tugging at my shirt.
“How do you know she’s not the girl? She’s staring at me and everything,” I answered, swaying a little from Lucy pulling at me. I managed to keep my balance though.
“She’s not the girl because the girl doesn’t exist. Dr. Rivers said you probably pulled yourself out of the car, remember? That’s how you crushed your ankle. And she’s staring at you because you’re making a fool of yourself. That’s Ava Winters. I have gym with her. She moved here from Anchorage last week. She had been south of Toronto before that. So, unless you took a detour through Alaska the night you crashed your car, it wasn’t her,” Lucy stood now, reached across the table, and forcibly sat me down.
“Sorry,” she said, looking over at the girl I now knew to be Ava. “This is my boyfriend. He’s an idiot. It’s embarrassing for everybody.”
The girl gave a polite smile and walked away.
“Moron,” Lucy said, and smacked me in the head.
The rest of the day was a nonevent. Math bled into Geography, which bled into Literature, which led to an unauthorized nap in Science class. I had never been one to dwell on my accident. I didn’t have to, not when absent sports banners and the glares of former fair-weather friends kept all of it so fresh in my mind. But I could not stop thinking about this girl.
It didn’t help that she was everywhere; in the hallway when I ducked out of Study Hall, on the bleachers during Free Period, looking over a book in the library. Was it possible that I had imagined her? Had I actually saved myself that night? And, if I had-If I had created some girl out of thin air to act as my savior, what were the chances that a girl like that would actually exist, right down to the mismatched eyes.
“Alaska my ass,” I muttered as I limped by her in the library.
Roger gave me a ride home that afternoon and, though I really wanted to, I didn’t mention Ava. In fact, we didn’t talk much about anything. Every time I tried to start a conversation, he’d just wave me off. And when I asked if he was okay, he just said, “I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
Which was fair. I had tried really hard to mend the fences I tore down a few years ago with Roger and, for the most part, I think I did a pretty good job. But I had hurt him a lot, and when you’re hurt like that, I guess it can be hard for things to ever be exactly like they were again. So, whenever Roger would hit me with a line like that, I would try to give him space, which meant not pestering him about what exactly the ‘stuff’ that was on his mind consisted of. It was the least I could do.
“Try to feel better, dude” I said, getting out of the car; which took me, like six minutes. (Seriously, it’s embarrassing)
He didn’t answer, just nodded and drove away.
The house was in its usual shambles when I walked in. Though, because of the time of year, the shambles were Christmas themed. Micah was hiding behind the couch with that look in his eyes that told me the Nerf football in his hand was about to go careening toward my head.
“That’s not something you wanna do,” I warned and threw my book bag on the coffee table. He took the advice and instead settled for his second favorite toy; my old cane. I used that damn thing for three entire months after I was released from the hospital the first time. It was better than a wheelchair, but I hated the looks people would give me. It’s like everybody you meet expects you to have this really sad story (which I guess I sort of did), and then then ask you a bunch of questions, expecting you to share it with them (I would rather pull out my eye with a pair of pliers).
I named it Renee, cause I’m that type of dork and cause it helped me walk like, walk away… like the song.
Nobody ever got it.
Anyway, I should have probably still been using Renee, given that my last surgery had only been three weeks ago. But even though she helped me out, Renee wasn’t exactly sexy. And I had been through enough. If I was gonna limp around for the rest of my life, I wasn’t going to look like an old man doing it. Besides, Micah seemed to really enjoy her.
He went rushing for the Christmas tree, swiping at it with Renee’s broad top.
“Santa has binoculars!” Mom yelled as she walked into the living room. Micah had always been like a carbon copy of her; same white blond hair, same long angular features. But where Micah’s expression was usually wild and carefree, Mom’s face was usually painted with a more worried look. “Binoculars!”
Micah froze, holding Renee inches away from Mom’s Christmas tree, which looked like it had seen better days.
“He looks at you with binoculars and he sees everything you do,” she added.
“But what if you’re in the bathroom?” Micah asked.
“Give me the cane!” She said, and pulled it away from him. “Go play with something soft.”
Micah trotted off and Mom came closer, holding Renee out toward me. “What the hell, Winston?”
“What?” I asked, and took the cane. “You know I hate this thing, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll-“
“Not the cane.” She looked tired. Her hair was all frazzled and messy like she had been running her hands through it. “Again, Son?”
“Again?”
“Anita Blakely called. She said you staged a fire to get out of therapy this morning.” She shook her head in that way moms do when they can’t think of a word that is awful or big enough to let you know how much you’ve disappointed them. “Why would you do that? She could press charges.”
Given that the better part of my day was spent staring at a girl who, up until this morning, I wasn’t even sure existed, I had totally forgotten about what happened at St. Bart’s.
“She’s not gonna press charges,” I said. “She’s just being dramatic. I-“
“I don’t want to hear it, Winston.” She held her hands out. “Your father’s in the kitchen. He wants to see you.”
Okay, so that wasn’t good.
“Dad is here? Why is he not at work?” My heart jumped.
“Because I called him,” she answered, folding her arms over her chest.
“And why would you do that? You can’t stand him.” There was frantic nature to my voice that someone who didn’t know how ruggedly masculine and unflinchingly brave in every imaginable situation I was might have interpreted as fear.
Okay, I was scared to death.
“That’s not true,” she sighed. “I can stand him. I mean, what’s going on between us-“
&n
bsp; “I don’t care about your stupid divorce,” I cut in. “I care about you bringing him into stuff that is our business.”
“I don’t know what to do with you, Winston. Maybe he does.”
“Mom, I-“
She wasn’t listening anymore. She turned away from me and walked into the kitchen. Reluctantly, I followed behind her, marching like one of those blindfolded dudes inching toward a firing squad. I leaned heavy on Renee. Maybe if he saw me limping, he’d feel sorry for me. Maybe he’d remember that his son was all broken and he wouldn’t go so hard on me.
“That goddamn cane!” Was the first thing he yelled.
So, that was a bad idea.
“Maybe you wouldn’t need that damn thing so much if you’d actually do what the doctor told you to!” If Micah was a copy of my mom, than I was just as much my dad’s doppelganger. We had the same sandy hair, though his was greying at the sides, the same rounded face, though his had gotten a bit rounder in the last few years, and the same horrific posture, even before I had to use a cane to get around.
“Dad, I-“
“I am NOT done!” Though, the thing about me that Mom always said reminded me most of Dad had nothing to do with the way we looked, and everything to do with our stubbornness. “Do you have any idea how much I pay for you to go to that therapy?”
“Uh, nothing. Your insurance pays for it.” Instantly, I could tell I had made a mistake.
“Don’t you sass me, boy. Don’t sass me.” His eyes, brown like mine, threatened to bulge right out of his head.
“How does one sass a person anyway?” I asked. I could not stop myself.
He turned to me, his face changing from angry to that total calm thing that is so much scarier. “Sit. Down.”
Calm comes before storms. So, I knew better than to mess with calm. I might have been stubborn, but I wasn’t stupid. Silently, I sat at the kitchen table, laying Renee on the floor beside me.
“And who works for that insurance, Winston? Who pays the deductible?” He asked, pacing around me.
“You do,” I answered.
“That’s right,” he said. “You know how hard I work, don’t you, Winston?”
I nodded.
“And you know how tight things are around here right now. That doesn’t come as a surprise to you, does it?”
I looked at the kitchen table. It was covered it scattered pieces of newspaper; coupon pages. On the counter behind it say Mom’s laptop, the one she used to work from home as a call care center rep for a travel agency. I thought about making some sarcastic comment, about telling Dad that the only reason we were going through any of this was because he couldn’t keep it in his pants and now everybody was suffering.
I mean, it wasn’t like we were ever rich. There was never a time when I couldn’t remember worrying about how things were going to get paid. But this; now, we had descended into ‘Oliver Twist getting turned down for a second helping of gruel’ poor.
Still, I thought better of it. He was still in that eerie calm voice, and it wasn’t like I was doing much to contribute around here. In fact, if anything, I was the cause of most of it. Medical bills, co-pays, deductibles; all so I could maybe play basketball again one day, all so I could maybe run.
But none of it mattered. I wasn’t going to play basketball again. Ever. I wasn’t going to run. I wasn’t even going to walk right. And the quicker they realized that, the quicker they could stop shoveling their money into the incinerator that was greater health care.
But I didn’t say any of that. I just nodded again. “I know there’s no money,” I finally said.
“Then why-“
“Because it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because I’m never gonna be like I was again.”
“Not if you don’t work at it,” he said.
“Not ever!” I snapped. Standing, I received the same glare that Lucy had given me in the cafeteria. “Don’t you get it? It’s all gone. There’s no basketball. There’s no scholarship. There’s no time to get any of it back. Half my goddamn ankle is made of metal. It’s over.”
“Don’t you use that language in this house!” Dad screamed, his nostrils flared.
“It’s not your house anymore!” I said, matching his tone.
“Stop this right now!” Turning to Mom, I saw that her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“Then you shouldn’t have called him,” I said, gesturing to Dad. Tears welled up behind my eyes, burning in response to Mom’s reaction. She had been through so much; done so much for me.
“She called me because you’re out of control,” he said, his voice calmer, but not the scary calm from before. “I don’t get it, Son. You had so much going for you. Everybody loved you. Scouts from all over the country were flying in to watch you play. They were going to give you a full ride; pay for everything. And you threw it all away to get drunk.”
“I wasn’t drunk!” I yelled.
But like always, he wasn’t listening. He just powered through. “And now you won’t even try to fix things. You won’t even help yourself.”
I leaned down and picked up Renee. I wasn’t standing for anymore of this and, if I was going to get out of here before they could stop me, I was going to need the old girl’s help.
“There is no fixing things, and the only person you’re trying to help if you.” I turned and, with Renee’s help, started walking away. “But don’t worry, I’m letting you off the hook. I’ll pay for college myself. I’ll get a job or something. Or maybe I won’t even go at all. Either way, you’re officially absolved of all responsibility.”
“Winston, that’s not what he meant,” Mom said from behind me.
“The hell it isn’t,” I muttered and walked out the kitchen door. Micah surprised me in the living room, nailing me in the jewels with a Jake and the Neverland Pirates dodgeball; a Christmas present he had convinced Mom to let him open early.
“Ow, dude!” I said, keeling over. I could hear Mom and Dad yelling at each other from inside the kitchen; which was a nice throwback to all our other Christmases if you ask me.
I scooped Mom’s keys up from where they always sat on the living room counter. “I gotta get out of here, little guy,” I said, ruffling Micah’s hair. Mom would be out in a second. She never left Micah alone for longer than two minutes unless he was sleeping, even in the house. And I wanted to be gone by the time she was.
I limped outside to Mom’s car, with Renee helping me along. A dull ache sounded up through my leg as I got inside. No sooner had I cranked the car up that Mom came running out.
She’d tell me that I couldn’t drive, that I had just had surgery or, worst of all; that I needed to stick around and smooth things over with Dad. I wasn’t interested in any of that, so I put the car in reverse and squealed out of there before she had a chance to say anything.
Halfway down Abercorn, it occurred to me that Mom was probably right. I had driven maybe three times since the accident and totally wasn’t used to doing it with the wrong foot. I was hobbling worse behind the wheel than I did on foot; jerking my way from start to stop with all the grace someone might expect from a person whose last driving exploit ended in life altering tragedy. Still, I hadn’t run off the road yet and, if I did, at least this time there wouldn’t be alcohol on my breath.
My phone lit up. ‘Mom calling.’ Nope. I sent her to voicemail. Seconds later: ‘Mom calling.’ again. I tapped the phone and answered. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just needed to go.”
“You should not be driving,” she said. Her voice was smaller than I figured, until I realized that what I was hearing was just how tired she was. “Pull over. Let me come get you.”
Instantly, I felt guilty. And not just any kind of guilty. It was that special guilty reserved for the greatest of fools; the people who continuously and without me
rit let down a parent who has done everything they could in a situation that would suck no matter how hard you worked to fix it.
“It’s okay. I’m just going to Roger’s. It’s the next street over. I’m almost there.” I bit my lip. “And Mom, I really am sorry.”
“It’s okay. We’ll talk about when you get home. And Winston, call me when you get there, okay?”
“I will,” I promised, and hung up.
Okay. I did not lie to my Mom. I would not do that. Okay, obviously I would do that, but I didn’t this time. What happened next was absolutely not my fault. I told her the truth. I was going to Rogers, and it was just the next road over. But the thing I had decided to leave out, the thing I purposely didn’t tell my mother was that the ‘next road over’ way, was not the way I was going to go to Roger’s house.
Like I said, I had only driven three times since the night of the accident, and I had never, not even once, been back to where it happened. It was crazy. Abercorn was literally a mile and a half from my house. That corner, the corner where that man either was or was not standing, was two minutes away from my front door. It was the easiest way to the interstate and you got to see Mrs. Schaffer’s crazy shaped and intricately designed hedges as you passed. (My favorite was the dog balancing a ball on his nose) But Mom wouldn’t go that way, Roger wouldn’t go that way, and Lucy… forget it. She wouldn’t even consider it. It was like there was some kind of darkness on that road; like my grave was supposed to be there and they were afraid that, if I ever went back, it would correct its error and suck me up.
But I knew better. That grave had sucked me up; part of me anyway. I didn’t know how I was going to get that part back, but I did know that I never would if I kept being scared of some stretch of road. I would get over it, or it would own me. I would go to it, or I would never leave it. Simple as that.
My hand was actually shaking as I turned left on Abercorn.
It’s just a road. I said that over and over again in my head. It’s just a curve. It doesn’t have any power over you.
And the thing was, as stupid as it sounds, that actually calmed me down. I turned the radio on. Loud. ‘I’m Still Standing’, that old song by Elton John blasted through the speakers.
“That’s a little spot on,” I said to myself and flipped the channel. I settled on The Killers. I say settled because- Yeah, it’s the Killers. But somehow I managed to get lost in the music. Before I knew it, I was halfway down Abercorn; smiling like the pathetic loser I was when I passed by Mrs. Schaffer’s yard.
Ooh! She added a clown.
I clenched, preparing myself for the curve ahead. It doesn’t own you. You own you, I thought, along with a bunch of other Hallmark crap that I thought might help. My hands got sweaty and started to slide across the steering wheel, which didn’t help the piss poor job I was doing of driving. Still, it was broad daylight, not raining, and I was going at a conservative seven miles per hour. So I figured I’d be fine.
I’m not sure what I thought I was going to see when I rounded that corner. Was there going to be some gruesome reenactment of what happened? Would there be a flowery memorial to my ankle, complete with a cutout cardboard cross and ‘before’ x-ray of my ankle to commemorate the good times? Would that man, the one part of me was still sure existed, be standing on the side of the road again to confirm my suspicions?
Whatever I thought I was going to see, it was nothing compared to what was actually waiting for me around that awful bend.
A car, green like the one I crashed in, was pulled over alongside the road. Its flashers were on and the hood was up. A weird feeling crept up over me. A car, just like my mom’s, on the side of the road at the exact minute that I had decided to face my fears, however ill-conceived they were?
I inched forward, coasting at about five miles per hour. There were feet sticking out from under the car. Someone was under there, tinkering with whatever had gone wrong. Should I pull over? You could fit everything I knew about cars in a shoebox and still have room for the sneakers, but what if this was some old lady? What if it was somebody’s grandma stuck out here all alone?
I looked at the feet for clues. White sneakers, very nondescript. I decided not to stop. Whoever it was would be fine. Everybody had Triple A, right?
But no. If I did this, If I sped away (I was up to nine miles per hour at this point) and leave this ‘whoever’ to fend for themselves, then the curve would own me. It would have changed me into a person who was so afraid of it that he went against his own instincts. Nope. That was not gonna happen. Winston Cobb wasn’t going out like that, no sir; not after everything I had been through. Besides, it was just a curve. What’s the worst that could happen?
I pulled off the road, settling behind the green car. It would take me longer than a normal person to get out and I didn’t want the owner of the nondescript sneakers to freak out, so I opened the door and said, “Is everything okay? I’m here to help.”
No answer. I grabbed Renee and dug her into the pebbly dirt on the side of the road. Putting my weight on her, I hoisted myself up and out of the car. “Sir, Ma’am, whoever, are you okay? I’m here to-“
I was totally going to say help, but the pebbly dirt on the side of the road caught Renee and she snapped in the middle. I went winding. My leg felt like it was on fire as I bended backward, twisting my ankle up, and slammed against the road. It was official. Abercorn hated me.
“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. Something had bent. Something had torn inside my foot. I could feel it. Pieces of Renee lay beside pieces on me on the road that had almost taken my life not even a year ago. Neither of us were able to move.
The nondescript sneakers sprung to life. I watched them move from under the car. I couldn’t tell who their owner was, as they came trotting fast toward me.
“I was going to help you,” I said, as the sneakers neared me. “I see now that that sounds ironic.” My leg felt worse than it ever had, save for the night of the accident. In fact, the whole thing was like the accident come again. I was on the same road, looking at the same sky, with the same leg throbbing like a bitch.
“Fate’s a twisty mistress,” the nondescript sneakers sidled up beside me. It was a girl’s voice; a voice that, though not recognizable, was familiar-like a tickle in the back of my mind.
“I think fate hates me,” I said, trying to lean forward.
“No, no,” the girl said, and knelt down. “Just try to lay back. Don’t try to move. She spun around in front of me. Leaning over, I caught my first glimpse of her face. Well, first glimpse was a little misleading. I had seen this girl before; in the cafeteria, in the library, on this very road on the worst night of my life.
My face went white and my blood chilled as I realized whose green and brown eyes I was looking at. It was Ava, just like before, just like that night.
Before I could speak, she smiled, looking down at me. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine. I’ve done this sort of thing before.”