His lips formed a smile. It was clear this was good news to him.
“Stay here,” he said then, and disappeared down the sidewalk.
I leaned back to see where he went, but his truck blocked my view.
I thought about getting up and making a run for it on my bike. The last thing I wanted was for Mr. Finn to come back. Not to mention how embarrassing this was.
Suddenly I felt almost hysterical, as if either tears or laughter might come pouring out of me. I put my head between my knees and told myself to breathe.
This was ridiculous. It had been a stupid idea to come here. Who did I think I was? Some sort of Wonder Girl riding my ten-speed across town to save the day? I wished I could call Carly or Betsy to come get me. But both of them were on vacation.
I talked to Carly last week, and she couldn’t stop talking about the bonfires at the beach every night, how much fun they were.
And Betsy had gone tubing with her older sister and a bunch of their friends. I’d listened to her talk for what seemed like forever about the bridge they’d jumped off and the boys she’d flirted with.
“What are you up to?” she’d asked, and I’d mumbled, “Not much,” and changed the subject.
What was there to say?
That the big event of my summer so far was sitting at the kids’ table with my sister at a dinner party at my house? That my mom had thrown my dad out of the house, his shoes as well, and now my little sister was convinced my parents were getting divorced, and the only thing I’d come up with was this brilliant idea of threatening some kid, and I hadn’t even managed to do that.
I felt silly sitting there. Like a small child instead of someone about to turn seventeen.
I pictured my father tugging my ponytail like I was a toddler last night when I asked him what happened with Finn, and telling me I was a kid when I asked about his fight with my mother. Refusing to allow me to date, even though all of my friends had been allowed to date since middle school.
My father and I had argued about it months ago, but he refused to budge, said that when I went to college, I could make my own decisions but as long as I was under his roof, it was his rules. I told him his rules were ridiculous. My mother had chimed in that she thought I was old enough, responsible. But he’d stormed out of the room, my mother frowning after him.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. A minute later I felt a cool pressure against my ankle and looked up to see the mannish boy crouched in front of me, pressing an ice pack against the swollen part of my foot. He was holding a rolled-up Ace bandage in his other hand.
“Okay if I wrap it?” he asked, and I nodded, the cold immediately dulling the pain.
He held the ice pack in place, winding the bandage around it and over my foot in loops, until my foot looked like it was covered in a tan cast.
I lifted my foot, turned it from side to side. “Not bad.”
“That’s what premed at Stanford gets you,” he said, blowing on his fingernails and polishing them on his shirt.
“Really?” I asked, impressed.
“No.” He shrugged. “I did a lot of skateboarding when I was younger. My mother was always wrapping one injury or another. I paid attention.”
“Is that offer for a ride still good?” I blurted before I lost my nerve. My father’s face flashed in my mind, and I pushed it away.
There was a fluttery sensation in my stomach, and my heart was knocking in my chest.
It wasn’t beach bonfires and tubing, but at least it was something.
He looked surprised, but he held his hand out and pulled me up when I took it. I hopped over to his truck, the door creaking when I pulled it open. I buckled my seat belt while he put my bike in the bed of his truck.
There was a tall metal pail on the floor at my feet, and when he opened his door to get in, he reached over and grabbed it quickly.
“Let’s give you some room for your foot,” he said, lifting it away from me and placing it on the seat between us.
Inside the pail was a coil of rope, the handle of a saw jutting out from the top, a pair of pliers tangled in the rope.
I swallowed, feeling my heart speed up.
The door shut, and he put the key in the ignition, the truck sputtering a few times before it started. He pulled away from the curb and did a U-turn.
“We won’t break down, I promise,” he said, looking over at me. “That’s all you need, I bet. To be stranded on the side of the road with some guy you don’t even know.”
I gave him a weak smile, eyeing the contents of the pail, thinking maybe this wasn’t the smartest idea. But it was too late now. We were turning off the street, onto the main road. He turned left, and I gulped, felt for the handle on the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He looked over, startled.
“How do you know I don’t live that way?” I pointed in the other direction. I glanced at the sharp teeth of the saw, then back at him.
“Because unless you’re a mermaid, you live this way,” he replied. “That way ends at the ocean.”
“Oh, right,” I said, turning my head to look out my window so he wouldn’t see the red on my cheeks.
“By the way, what was that all about when I pulled up back there?” He gestured with his head in the direction of where we’d come from.
I didn’t know how to explain it to him, or even how to explain why I was there. I said the only thing that popped into my mind.
“It’s a long story. But that guy, the one you saw me talking to, is a total jerk.”
He looked over at me, his expression blank.
“I don’t even know your name,” he said.
“It’s Jess. Well, Jessica, but everyone calls me Jess.”
“I’m Alex,” he said. “Well, Alexander, but everyone calls me Alex.”
“Well, nice to meet you,” I said, smiling at him.
“Nice to meet you too, Jess,” he said, not smiling. “I’m the total jerk’s son.”
?7
Hope
The weeks passed quickly. Jack and I moved around each other carefully. My mother was visiting again, and she was a buffer between us, another body filling the space.
Last night over dinner, she’d mentioned that she was going back to Florida soon. She wouldn’t be back for a while. Maybe not until after the New Year.
Jack had looked at me, raised his eyebrows.
Later, in the bedroom, he came in and stood in the doorway, a look on his face that I knew well. I felt my body tense.
“You heard your mother. She’s leaving,” he said.
I didn’t answer him. I knew what was coming next.
“She’s been in your closet for a year,” he said quietly, looking over my shoulder into the darkness of the closet.
He was looking at Maddie’s ashes, nestled on the top shelf of my closet between my heaviest sweaters and covered with her worn baby blanket. I’d put them there to keep her safe and warm. I may have told Jack this at some point, but I’d never repeat it now.
Now the ashes were just another fight.
Jack wanted to spread them. I wasn’t ready.