“It happens,” I replied, spotting my dad and Opal just outside the front entrance. “Mclean? ” he called out, impatient. “Let’s go.”
Deb immediately picked up her pace, following orders like a good soldier. As I fell in behind her, I glanced down at the discharge papers, with Sandy’s loopy script spelling out her name and number in red pen. It seemed like a correction, something marked right that was wrong, and I folded it over, stuffing it deep in my pocket as I stepped through the doors to leave this place, too, behind me.
Five
The noise was oddly familiar, but at first I couldn’t place it.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Clank.
I opened my eyes, blinked, and then looked at the slope in the ceiling, following it to the edge of the molding where it hit the window. Beyond that, there was only clear glass, some sky, and the dilapidated roof of the house where Dave had taken over the cellar. It was so big, though, that I wasn’t sure it was a residence at all. More likely, I’d decided, it was a business, long shuttered: the windows were boarded up, weeds growing up all around it. I’d seen a FOR SALE sign that looked equally ancient on its other side when I was walking to the bus stop. Now, though, from this weird angle, I noticed something else: a few letters painted on the roof, once red, now faded to the lightest of pinks. I couldn’t make them all out, but the first looked like it might be an S.
Thump. Thump. Swish.
I sat up, glancing out the window beside me. My dad’s truck was already gone. It was only 9:00 a.m. after a blistering Friday rush he’d worked pretty much one-handed, but the farmers’ market was on Saturday mornings, and he always liked to get there early to have the best pickings of what was on offer.
Thump. Thump. Laughter. And then a crash.
I felt the house shake slightly, and then everything was still again. I sat there for a moment, waiting for what, I had no idea, before finally sliding my feet onto the floor and grabbing my jeans from the nearby chair, where I’d tossed them late the night before. Outside, it was quiet now, my footsteps all I could hear as I made my way down the hallway.
As I first stepped into the kitchen, I thought I was still asleep and dreaming when I saw the basketball rolling toward me. Behind it, the door to the deck was open,uld air blowing in, and I just stood there and watched as the ball came closer, then closer still, slowing with each turn. So weird, I thought. I was sure I’d been awake, seen the truck gone, but—
“Whoops! Sorry about that.”
I jumped, startled, then looked up to see a guy standing on the porch, just past the open doorway. He was about my age, with short, tight dreads springing up from his head in all directions, wearing jeans and a red long-sleeved T-shirt. His face was familiar, but I was still too asleep to figure out why.
I looked at the ball, then back at him. “What—”
“My comrade has a bit of an overenthusiastic throw,” he said as he stepped inside, grabbing it from my feet. As he looked up at me, smiling apologetically, my memory sputtered up a flash of him on a TV screen, holding some papers. That was it: he was from the morning announcements at school. “Which wouldn’t be so bad, except his aim kind of sucks.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. I just . . . I didn’t know what was going on.”
“Won’t happen again,” he assured me. Then he turned, lifting the ball with both hands over his head, and pitching it toward the driveway. “Incoming!”
There was a thunk, followed by a series of bounces, each one sounding more distant. A moment later, someone said, “What kind of a throw was that?”
“Dude, you didn’t even try to catch it.”
“Because it wasn’t anywhere near me,” his friend replied. “Were you aiming for the street?”
The guy glanced at me, then laughed, like I was in on this joke. “Sorry again,” he said, and then he was jogging across the deck, out of sight.
I was standing there, still trying to process all this in my half-awake state, when I felt my phone buzz in my back pocket. So that’s where it was, I thought, remembering how I’d been searching my room for it just before bed the night before. I pulled it out, glancing at the screen. As soon as I saw my mother’s number, I realized that in the chaos of the previous day, I’d never called her back. Whoops.
I took a breath, then hit the TALK button. “Hi, Mom,” I said. “I—”
“Mclean!” Bad sign: she was already shrieking. “I have been worried sick about you! You were supposed to call me back twenty-four hours ago. You promised! Now, I understand that we are currently having some issues—”
“Mom,” I said.
“—but we’re never going to be able to work through them if you don’t respect me enough to—”
“Mom,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.”
These two words, like a brick wall, stopped her. In my mind, I could just see all the other things that had been poised on her tongue, piling up like cars on the freeway. Crash. Crash. Crash.