CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I woke up with a start, having felt and heard myself mumbling the same words over and over…don’t look at me, please don’t look at me… It was my dad’s rolling head again, and it wasn’t nearly as bad if I could keep myself from seeing the part where he opened his eyes and looked at me. When I finally talked my subconscious into moving over and letting my conscious brain take over, my alarm was buzzing loudly right in my ear, and Jordan and Bentley were standing in my bedroom doorway, looking more than a little concerned.
I sat up in bed and felt my face flush. “I’m up. I’m fine,” I mumbled, sliding out of bed and jumping to my feet. Both of them stood there for a few seconds, then turned around and left after it was obvious that I wasn’t going to say anything else.
March 30
Mom and Dad,
I take back what I said before about not wanting you to answer my letters for fear of a concrete reason to believe in ghosts. At this point, seeing a ghost can’t be worse than these nightmares. So, please, please find a way tell me what happened the night of your accident?
Love, Karen
***
“I still can’t believe Olivia survived a whole week without Stacey’s boobs,” Blair said as we walked out of the locker room for morning workout.
Stacey had ended up going with Ellen to Australia for the junior meet and had just returned last night. Ellen was back in the gym this morning, sporting two new junior titles to go with her already flourishing gymnastics career. Nina Jones was all about winning on someone else’s turf.
Once Stevie, Blair, and I heard about Ellen’s big win, we’d all started counting down the days to Chicago, knowing Ellen’s giant head would crowd the gym once she got back. It wasn’t that she was egotistical, just young and hadn’t had a huge setback yet. I’d spent more than enough time not winning, so my ego had always stayed normal–sized.
“You guys won’t believe how weird the bars are in Aussie,” Ellen squealed. “It’s like you’re in a box. I was so freaked out during the podium training, but I totally nailed my set on the first day of competition.”
“Yeah, we heard you were a star,” Stevie said, raising an eyebrow for only me and Blair to see.
“Ellen!” Bentley called, waving her over from the lobby. A man and a woman stood beside him.
Ellen turned to us, grinning really big. “I’m getting interviewed for the St. Louis Chronicle!”
She bounced over to Bentley and Ellen’s mom entered the picture, immediately fussing with her hair and whispering things in her ear. My mind wandered to my own mother and missing her. If it had been me in this situation, my mom would have stood back, not saying much, but she would have put on something extra special and fixed her hair so people might mistake her for my sister instead of the woman who gave birth to me.
Bentley stayed with Ellen and the interviewers while the rest of us ran around the floor. Stacey had the day off to catch up on breastfeeding Olivia.
“How’s Jaren?” Blair asked. It was her favorite question these past few weeks. “Are you guys seriously still keeping up the ‘no touching in the house’ policy? Because I find that really hard to believe.”
“I’m a very disciplined person. But we can’t avoid accidental contact.”
Like yesterday, when I was pulling my laundry from the dryer and Jordan was tossing clothes into the washer and my hip kept bumping into his. Otherwise, we kept to our rules, and I hadn’t lied to Bentley about where I was going since the night we had claimed to be at the movies. There always seemed to be something we could do together—grocery shopping or picking up something at the mall, grabbing dinner after Jordan got done coaching and I got done with practice. Especially on days when Bentley wasn’t home until late. Last weekend we even watched a baseball game at Ellen’s house with her parents and younger brother and Blair and Stevie. Of course, there wasn’t any touching, but we hung out.
“We’re starting on vault today,” Bentley said when he and Ellen finally joined us midway through stretching.
I sat up straighter in my left leg splits and looked up at him. “How many Yurchenko doubles do I need today to work the two and a half on the regular mat?”
Bentley’s system was becoming so ingrained in me that I knew how to jump into the conversation and avoid the first couple steps of questioning where I asked him about working on the new skill and he’d go through the pros and cons, deciding on a number of the older, safer skills.
He stared at me for a long moment before answering. “Five clean doubles and then you can move on. Five clean ones in a row.”
I suppressed a groan and flashed him a judges smile. “Sounds good.”
By the time I got through my five required vaults in a row, Stevie had already nailed five of the much more difficult two and a half twisting vaults. In only a few weeks of working on them again, she was getting more height and more consistent landings, and I was behind because today was my first time not landing in the pit with mats stacked up.
The first attempt at the more difficult vault sent me into a giant dive forward roll because I’d been training it with four mats stacked on top of the pit and now I had way too much power. The Amanar vault (aka—the Yurchenko two and a half) was a blind landing. You couldn’t see the ground before hitting it like you could with my regular vault, the Yurchenko double full.
“Slow down that flip, Karen,” Bentley said. “Keep the height. The height is good.”
When I took my next turn, I knew I couldn’t over–rotate again or Bentley would send me back to doing drills. I needed to nail it, or at least make a different mistake. This time I came close to sticking but was just a tiny bit short of rotation. My feet slid out from under me and I ended up on my butt.
Bentley gave me a nod and said nothing, so I knew I was on the right track. Neither of us had brought up the subject of me competing this vault in Chicago, but he hadn’t been fighting me on it like he had with the other skills.
“I’m sticking the next one,” Stevie said while we both stood at the end of the runway, waiting for Blair to vault on the other runway. She had just been cleared to vault and tumble again, but Bentley wanted her to have a whole week of landing on mats in the pit before trying the hard competition landing mats.
“Me, too,” I said, staring straight ahead.
“My back’s a little sore. That’s why I haven’t gone for the stick yet.”
“Me, too.”
Stevie waited for Bentley to watch Blair’s Yurchenko double vault, then she took off. My eyes zoomed in on her from the run all the way to the medium–sized hop forward on her landing. I glanced down at the tape measure to make sure I was at eighty feet and I felt myself smiling at the floor. Stevie’s vault wasn’t quite a stick.
I can beat her.
I took off and had a great hurdle and an awesome block off the vault table, but had to take a big step slightly to the side which I knew would hurt my score a lot. The judges taped lines down the landing mat and took major points off if you stepped sideways outside of the tape.
“Very good, Karen,” Bentley said.
“I want to stick it,” I said more to myself than to him as I let out a frustrated groan.
“You don’t need to worry about sticking yet.”
Why? Because I’m never competing this vault? Because I’m not good enough to stick it? “Is there a technique to sticking? Like, if everything is in place and done correctly, what makes some people step and others not step? I’m tired of just trying to stick and then hoping it happens. It feels like I’m spinning one of those wheels in Vegas, leaving it to luck that I land on the right spot.”
Bentley surprised me by laughing. “Okay, I can tell you my secret.”
He had my full and undivided attention, though I was slightly wary of getting some philosophical lesson that I’d never be able to figure out. “So, what you have to do is relax just a little as your feet hit the mat—not that you don’t have to be tight, it’s the core strength that truly gets you a good landing on vault—but if you can focus on sinking that excess energy into the floor, it might help you.” Bentley pointed to the blue landing mat. “Lie down flat on your back, raise your arms above your head.” I did as he said and he knelt down beside me, sticking his hand under my lower back. “You know this exercise very well from all the handstand work, right?”
“The one where I try to get my lower back all the way flat to the floor,” I said.
“Exactly.” He removed his hand from under me. “Now close that gap and think about what you have to do to make that happen.”
“I’m using my stomach muscles,” I answered, not sure where this was going.
“Yes, but at the same time you have to release the air from your lungs to flatten your back, and exhaling is a relaxation technique. So, think about squeezing everything on the landing, but at the same time relaxing your body into the mat the same way you just used the strength of your abs to relax your lower back to the floor.”
I stood up and Bentley did the same. “Okay, it kind of makes sense…sort of.”
As I trotted down the runway, Ellen took off for her turn and Stevie followed. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and zeroed in on sinking my body into the floor. But on my next turn, everything went so fast and there were so many new things to think about that I landed with my lungs still full of air and took two giant steps forward.
Stevie’s hops got even smaller. But neither of us could stick the vault, and honestly, it wasn’t a vault most people expected you to stick, but I wanted it bad and so did she. Our little chats got shorter and shorter throughout the morning workout while we battled each other. I had Stevie beat by a ton on bars, but she still topped me in difficulty on beam and floor, now that she had almost all her skills back again.
Ellen was dragging a little, probably from jet lag and post–meet mental exhaustion, and Blair was so excited to be working on all four events now that she was in her own world. It was pretty much the Stevie and Karen show today.
By the time eleven o’clock came around and we were sent to do cooldown stretches on the floor, I could hardly move. I collapsed onto the carpet, closing my eyes and pretending to do visualization exercises when really I was about thirty seconds from falling asleep and couldn’t even manage so much as a mental vault, let alone any stretching. I felt my conscious thoughts slipping out of reach when something hard landed right on my stomach.
My eyes opened halfway as my mental response caught up with my body’s physical reaction. Through my blurred vision, I saw a round brown object rolling off my body, and before I could take a second to process it, I screamed.
Loud.
I heard Stevie, Ellen, and Blair gasp nearby, and when I scrambled to my feet, a little girl with brown pigtails, maybe three or four years old, stood a few feet away clutching a basketball, her chubby arms barely able to wrap all the way around it. My heart was flying and I could hardly breathe. The shock of going from nearly asleep to scared as hell was too much for my body to handle.
The girl’s lip started trembling, and then a full–out wail erupted from that tiny mouth, filling the silence that had suddenly fallen on the gym. I clutched my chest as a woman rushed over from the lobby, snatching up the little girl in her arms and throwing a glare in my direction. I looked over at my teammates, who sat with their eyes wide, mouths hanging open.
Gymnasts don’t scream like that. Ever.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Bentley near the front desk, watching me carefully. I drew in a deep breath and then headed for the locker room, avoiding the stares from all the preschool parents.
I was yanking my stuff from my locker as fast as possible when Blair appeared behind me.
“Karen, what’s going on?”
New beads of sweat had begun to form on my forehead and my chest felt so tight. “If I tell you, can I leave without talking about it? I really need some air.”
She nodded.
I squeezed my eyes shut, spewing out the words as fast as possible. “I have nightmares. Lots of them. My parents are broken into pieces, body parts everywhere, and I keep seeing my decapitated dad’s head rolling toward me and just a minute ago I thought…” Breathe in, breathe out. “God, this sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, but in my head it’s so real.”
She put her hands on my arms, holding me in place. “Look at me, Karen.”
I opened my eyes and tried to breathe.
Her fingers tightened around my arms. “You can get through this. I know you can. It’s like a mental block. Break it down and figure it out, okay?”
I was hit with about twenty percent relief hearing her speak my language. “Thanks, Blair.”
She released me and I snuck out of the locker room and through the front doors of the gym before anyone else could stop and chat. I began to feel more and more resolve as I drove home, already forming a plan for the afternoon. I needed something. I needed information.
Some of their accident story had been public, but I couldn’t find the details on the Internet, and at the time it had happened, I hadn’t let myself hear or see any of it. I hadn’t thought it’d help at first. But Grandma had put the obituaries in my old room, which meant they might be in those boxes Jordan had put away in the garage.
I practically ran through the front door, tossed my stuff onto the couch, and made myself a turkey pita sandwich before heading to the garage. There were boxes everywhere, and since Grandma had hired movers to move my room here, I couldn’t tell my boxes from what was already here.
I spent a couple hours digging through my old items—pictures and trophies and birthday cards and ribbons and scrapbooks—all while taking trips to the kitchen to grab a banana or another bottle of water. Eventually, I opened a giant box that had three thick photo albums, all the same shade of gray–blue. Curiosity took over; this was either something of Bentley’s or something of my parents’. Both options intrigued me.
After removing the first album, I opened it up and scanned the pages. They were full of pictures starring a girl with white–blond hair and a toddler boy with sandy blond hair. The girl looked about seven or eight, maybe.
Eloise and Jordan.
The first several pages were filled with fall leaves and Halloween costumes. An entire row of little Jordan dressed as a giant pumpkin. My gaze stopped on a photo of a woman holding Jordan, dark blond hair just like his and an identical nose. She looked so young and pretty and tall. She might even have been taller than Bentley. It occurred to me right then that I’d never asked Jordan his mom’s name.
“He hated that costume.”
I jumped, gasping and clutching my chest when I heard Bentley’s voice, and saw his feet firmly planted right behind me. I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut, the album still stretched across my lap.
Coach Bentley crouched down beside me and eventually sat down on the floor. “He wasn’t a tortured child, I promise. He just hated that costume. That’s why he’s crying in nearly every picture.”
I held my breath as Bentley reached across me and removed the second album from the box. “You might like this one.”
I leaned closer, examining the spread of pictures of Bentley in his Team USA apparel. In one photo he held a tiny blond toddler girl with stick–straight pigtails coming out of the sides of her head. “That was my last competition. World Championships in France. We had Eloise pretty young.” He laughed under his breath. “It was a little unexpected, so money was tight while I was still training and Anna was at Juilliard.”
Anna. So that’s her name.
He flipped through more photos of himself smiling with his teammates. “Her parents bought tickets to France for Anna and Eloise as a graduation gift. That was the only competition they got to travel to until I started coaching.”
“But didn’t you—”
“Tear my bicep during a training session in France?” Bentley finished, flashing me a tiny smile, maybe so I wouldn’t think he was upset with me for bringing it up. “Yes, I did. That was the end of my career.”
“Did you have surgery in France?”
He shook his head, flipping through some more pages. “They packed my arm in ice and put me on a plane to London. We stayed with Anna’s family for a few weeks, and she was offered a part with the London Symphony and I was offered a coaching job with the British men’s junior national team. Eloise grew up in the gym with a bunch of sweaty boys. She learned swear words before proper English. Symphony rehearsals weren’t exactly the best place for a little one, so Eloise and I were coworkers early on.”
Maybe that’s why he never seems to mind that Stacey’s got Olivia with her at every practice.
“And what happened when Jordan came along?” I asked. “Did you raise him in the gym, too?”
Bentley laughed again. “Jordan was the one we planned. Anna did everything in advance, from putting Jordan’s name on every early admissions list for preschool to college funds and interviewing nannies, to picking the best month to conceive.” Bentley coughed and cleared his throat. I could feel my face heating and I hoped we weren’t going to get into any conception details today. Preferably never. “Anyway, she just knew we were going to have a boy. Everything in his room was blue and green before the end of the first trimester.”
There was nothing shaky or emotional about Bentley’s storytelling and recollection of the past. His tone was identical to the one he used in the gym every day, but I could see the ghosts swarming him like he hadn’t spoken about these two people for a very long time, not to mention his parents being gone, too.
“Green and blue, huh?”
Bentley and I turned around quickly and saw Jordan leaning against the door, arms folded across his chest, his school tie still knotted perfectly like he’d just walked through the door. His eyes stormed with something I hadn’t seen on Jordan before…anger? Maybe rage?
Bentley got to his feet and I stayed on the floor, the first album still on my lap.
“I seem to recall a conversation a couple months ago…” Jordan walked closer to his dad, his arms dropping to his sides, hands balling into fists and then opening again. He was pissed. Really pissed. “Where you told me that you would have my head—literally—if you caught me looking through those albums or messing with any of your stuff.”
Bentley rubbed his hands over his face and then looked at Jordan. “I thought it would be easier for both of us, with you living at home again. I know how you used to spend so much time looking at those pictures—”
“When I was a bad, trouble–making kid, right?”
This was like a horrible train wreck, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away. And both Bentley and Jordan were blocking my way to the door. I was stuck here witnessing this domestic battle.
“That’s what you think, isn’t it?” Jordan challenged. “You think looking at pictures of my dead mom and my dead sister are going to make me fall apart and…and what? Rob a bank? Do drugs?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Bentley snapped.
“You’re going to hold me accountable for stuff I did when I was f*cking thirteen? And you were such a loving, devoted father…I don’t see how I could have gone to the dark side.”
Oh boy…I need out of here. Now.
Bentley folded his arms across his chest, his face set and tense, but he didn’t move. He was going to let Jordan finish speaking or throwing his teenage tantrum.
Jordan closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he was using some anger management technique. This was not the sweet, lighthearted Jordan I knew.
“You know what really kills me,” Jordan said, anger and emotion spilling from his voice. “You’ve got all those memories locked up, and I’ve accepted that maybe you just can’t fill in the blanks for me, and then you go and tell Karen stuff I’ve never heard you talk about before.”
Bentley’s face turned from stiff to sympathetic. “Jordan, listen—”
“Maybe you don’t want to remember them, but I do.” He turned around and strode toward the door. “I’ll be at Tony’s.”
Bentley let out a breath and stormed after Jordan. I figured I could sneak upstairs, but only made it to the landing before their yelling stopped me.
“Don’t f*cking touch me!” Jordan said.
I glanced down for a second and saw Jordan shove his dad back. I held my breath, waiting for somebody to throw a punch. Did relatives do that? But that was the end of their fight. Jordan walked out the door and slammed it hard. Then Bentley stomped through the house, heading out the back and slamming that door.
I let out a breath and felt my hands and legs shaking. Then I went into my room and shut the door before I could get caught in the middle of more of their drama if they returned anytime soon. I had seen the tension, of course I’d seen it, but I had had no idea how bad it was.
And poor Jordan. He must hate me. I thought back to everything he’d said to me over the past few months, and it wasn’t just his mom and his sister he wanted to learn about. It was his dad, too. That awkward day at the store when we had shopped for tampons, he’d looked so nervous before he finally asked me what his dad was like.
And Bentley, he probably ached inside every time he thought about Jordan being here without his mom and sister and grandparents. If it hurt for me to think about, I couldn’t imagine what it did to Bentley. No wonder he didn’t like to talk about them with Jordan. Talking to me about them was different. I was a neutral party, because I didn’t know the people he’d lost.
But Jordan needed him, and it was Bentley’s job to figure out how to connect with his son. He’s the adult. Jordan’s the kid. In the gym, coaching us girls, Bentley always got that right. Why couldn’t he get it right with his own kid?
It didn’t help that they both appeared to be extremely stubborn.
March 30
Jordan,
We haven’t done the thing where you’re upset and I’m supposed to help you through it, so please tell me what to do? Should I call you? Should I leave you alone? I really wish I knew. And I’m afraid that you’re mad at me. I should have shut the album and not messed with it. I’m sorry.
Love, Karen
***
“God, I love tumbling!” Blair said after practice while we were in the locker room.
I started to respond to her, but my phone rang and Jordan’s name came up on the screen. I had eventually gotten brave and tried to call him right before practice, but he hadn’t answered, and I’d been distracted and worried ever since.
“Hey,” I said right away. “Are you okay?”
“Karen, it’s Tony,” Tony said, his voice muffled like he was trying not to let anyone listen in. “We got a problem…”
My eyes darted around the locker room, resting on Stevie, who seemed to be paying close attention. “What happened? Where’s Jordan?” I whispered.
“Everything okay?” Blair mouthed after tossing her bag over her shoulder.
I nodded and waved her away, knowing her mom was probably waiting, and I didn’t want her involved in this family feud.
“He’s okay,” Tony said. “We’re at the hospital. In the emergency room. He’s a little drunk. Kind of high, too. And bloody.”
“Tony!”
“Do NOT tell his dad, Karen,” Tony said. “Swear to me.”
“I swear.”
“Can you grab some clean clothes from his house and that big wad of cash in the green shoebox in the bottom of his closet and then come to the Barnes emergency room?”
“Okay, yeah, I can do that.” I shut the phone, tossed it into my bag, and scrambled to get my shoes and coat on.
“What happened to Jordan?” Stevie whispered, though we appeared to be alone.
“Apparently he’s drunk, high, and bleeding in the emergency room without money.” I shook my head, hardly able to believe this story myself. “He had a really big fight with Bentley earlier today.”
Stevie’s eyes were huge. “Not about you guys, right?”
“No.” I looked at her, trying to decide what to tell her. “Just family stuff.”
“I’ll go with you, okay?”
I felt like hugging her, I was so relieved to not have to do this alone. “Thank you.”
I drove, so Bentley wouldn’t worry if he saw my car still in the parking lot. It took us a full forty–five minutes to get Jordan’s clothes and money and get to the hospital. Tony was standing near the doors, pacing back and forth. He sighed with relief when he saw us. “Just don’t say anything about the weed. I don’t think anyone has guessed.”
I shook off his words and followed behind him. “What is bleeding, Tony? You can’t just say he’s bleeding and then—”
“His head. He cut his head.”
“On what?” Stevie asked.
“My neighbor’s metal swing set,” Tony said, as if this was normal. Maybe it was, given the sledding incident.
Jordan was sitting sideways on a hospital bed, his feet dangling off the edge. His white shirt was half untucked and had a mix of dirt and blood splattered all over it. His khaki pants were pretty roughed up, too. A whole strip of dried blood ran down the side of his face.
I slowed down when I saw him, not sure if he was mad at me or not. Then as soon as he looked up and saw the three of us, I blurted out those exact words. “Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?” His words slurred together a little.
“Oh God, he is drunk,” I mumbled.
Tony rocked back on his heels. “Yep.”
Stevie lifted her purse and smacked Tony with it. “I thought you were his friend! What the hell were you doing while he was drinking—”
Tony clapped a hand over Stevie’s mouth. “Keep your voice down. He didn’t drive and I stayed sober. He’s allowed to let off steam every once in a while.”
I ignored them and moved closer to Jordan and stood on tiptoes to examine his head. He had a giant gash several inches above his ear.
The doctor shuffled into the room then, and I scooted to Jordan’s other side.
“Okay, Mr. Jordan Bentley…” The doctor whistled under his breath. “I’m going to give you two choices, given your blood alcohol level and the fact that you’re only seventeen. We can call a parent or we can call the police.”
I took his hand and squeezed it. “Jordan…?”
He stared at the wall in front of us, then finally said with a heavy sigh, “Call my dad.”
“I’ll do it.” Stevie whipped out her phone and headed for the hall.
The doctor seemed satisfied with this answer and started poking at Jordan’s cut. Eventually he squeezed water over it. “This is a big one, probably sixteen or seventeen stitches I’d guess. Want to tell me how it happened?”
Tony held up his phone. “I got a video!”
I must have channeled the ghost of my lawyer father right then, because I grabbed Tony’s hand, the one with the phone, and leaned close to whisper, “Delete that video, now.”
“Never mind,” Tony said.
Jordan looked up at the doctor and forced a grin. “Just a minor backyard accident.”
I watched the doctor pull out a giant needle and I squeezed Jordan’s hand tighter. He gave me a weary smile but didn’t even flinch. Probably because he was drunk. “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” he said. “I’m proving my dad’s theory right. A hundred bucks says he tells me that within five minutes of his arrival.”
“You were right to be mad, Jordan,” I said. “He’s shutting you out, and it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I just wanted to drink a little, calm myself down, and then I was going to let it go, head back home and tell him I’m sorry and to forget about it.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure why it set me off. Maybe because talking about parent issues is our thing. Me and you. And then he was telling you stuff…”
“How long were you listening?”
“A while.” He looked at me again, his face weary. “I’m sorry. I’m not really like this. If I hadn’t nearly bled to death, I would have just slept it off and come home after school tomorrow and you’d never know the difference.”
I leaned forward and hugged him around the waist, pressing my face into his shirt. “I know what you’re like—”
“Oh God,” Tony moaned.
I let go of Jordan and turned around to look at Tony. He was swaying back and forth, color draining from his face.
“Dude?” Jordan said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“That’s a big f*cking needle,” Tony managed to say.
The doctor barely glanced over at us. “You’d better have him sit down before he passes out.”
Me? Tony could crush me with one leg. He blinked rapidly, like he was trying to hold on to consciousness. I grabbed a metal chair and slid it under him and poked him in the chest with one finger. That was all it took to make him fall into the seat.
“Have him put his head between his knees,” the doctor said.
I pressed on the back of Tony’s neck until his upper body slumped over. “I don’t feel so good,” he moaned.
All I could think to do was pat his back awkwardly. Fifteen minutes later, after Jordan was good and numbed up in preparation for the stitches he needed, Stevie returned with Bentley behind her. He stomped right in and scanned the room, taking everything in.
“Mr. Bentley?” the doctor asked. “Your son is going to be just fine. A few stitches and he’ll be good as new. We see this kind of shenanigans all the time. Nothing to worry about, unless it happens again, of course.”
Bentley’s eyes zoomed in on Jordan’s left arm, and he moved closer and picked it up.
“Ow!” Jordan said. “Shit!”
Bentley yanked up his sleeve and I immediately slapped my hands over my eyes. “Oh my God,” I said into my fingers.
The doctor jumped back. “Whoa! Well, I can safely say that’s dislocated.”
“Yeah, it is,” Bentley snapped. “Glad you gave him a thorough examination.”
Tony started to raise his head. “What’s going on?”
I uncovered my face and pressed a hand on Tony’s back again. “Keep your head down for a while. Trust me.”
The doctor dropped his tools into the plastic bin and backed up toward the door. “I’ll get someone from orthopedics.”
“Get a plastic surgeon, too,” Bentley said. “I’m not letting an intern stitch up my kid’s head.”
This guy’s an intern? How could he tell?
Stevie and I were both too curious to not get a closer look at Jordan’s deformed arm. Bentley ran his fingers along Jordan’s forearm and then his face scrunched up in concentration. Before anyone realized what he was doing, he grasped Jordan’s upper arm and yanked his wrist at the same time.
“Jesus Christ!” Jordan practically leapt off the bed, then he flipped his hand over and opened and closed it several times. “Damn…that’s much better.”
“Better now than when you’re sobered up.” Bentley rolled Jordan’s sleeve up the rest of the way. Then he backed away, allowing Stevie and me to move in closer.
“It’s straight again,” Stevie said, picking up his hand. “How did you do that, Coach?”
“My elbow used to pop out of place all the time. Something with the bone or the cartilage. My daughter’s elbow did the same thing, and I taught myself how to fix it after a few trips to the emergency room. Genetics, I guess. Six hundred dollars in the emergency room practically broke the bank for us. Then they’d send an intern in for about twenty seconds and bill us for it.”
My eyes locked with Jordan’s. He was as surprised as I was that Bentley had just mentioned his sister so casually.
“Can you do shoulders, too?” Stevie asked.
“Haven’t tried.” Bentley gave her a tiny smile. “We’ll give Jordan a couple more drinks and maybe he’ll dislocate something else.”
“Can I look now?” Tony said. “I’m getting a headache.”
Bentley gave Tony a pat on the back. “All clear. Why don’t you take off?” He turned to me and Stevie. “You girls should head home, too. I’m sure it’ll be a while before we can get a plastic surgeon in here and get those stitches taken care of.”
“Oh God,” Tony groaned. “Sorry, Jordy, I’m so out of here.”
I glanced at Jordan, who looked like the last thing he wanted was to be left here with his dad, but I didn’t really have a choice. Plus, Bentley was obviously doing a better job with this emergency room thing than we were. We would have taken Jordan home with a funky elbow.
“Well, that was educational,” Stevie said when we got back in the car.
“Yeah, totally.”
“Think he’s going to be in a lot of trouble?” Stevie asked.
“I don’t know. Jordan looked worried, but I think he just doesn’t want to disappoint his dad. He’d probably never admit that, though.”
Stevie laughed. “Probably not.”
When I got into bed later, Bentley and Jordan were still gone. I fell asleep with my light on and a book in my hand and woke up when I felt someone sliding the paperback out from under me.
“Jordan,” I whispered. He had clean clothes on and was dirt–free and smelled like his aftershave. “Are you okay?”
He lifted his left arm, revealing a removable splint. “Yeah, gotta wear this for a couple weeks.” He squatted down in front of the bed and pushed my hair off my face. Then he broke our very important rules and kissed my cheek. “Just this once.”
I reached up and touched his head, where the cut had been. “Did you get a plastic surgeon?”
He smiled. “I did. And now my scalp won’t be ugly.”
“That’s very important.”
His hand moved through my hair. “What did I miss in the life of Karen Campbell while I was at school and then crazy drunk?”
“I did a bunch of Amanar vaults, but Stevie’s were better. I scared a little girl by screaming at her when I thought her basketball was my dad’s head rolling around in the gym and probably a whole bunch of preschool parents have now announced my insanity on Twitter. I haven’t checked today. That drama led me to go looking for obituaries in the garage, and then you know the rest.”
“A day in the life of an elite athlete,” Jordan said. “I’m skipping school tomorrow. Want to go somewhere after practice?”
“If you can help me with my Catcher in the Rye essay? I kind of slacked on my schoolwork today.”
“I can do that.” He walked toward the door and flipped the light off. “Night, Karen.”
“Night, Jordan.”
I sighed to myself after he walked away. I wished I could tell if he was really okay or just pretending to be because he thought I had too much to deal with already.