Breakaway (3 page)

“Are you joking?” I asked. Jesus, the funeral had been bad enough and now I was going to be expected to sit through another service, sit there trying not to lose my shit in front of the entire school. I thought about ditching right then, just walking out of school and never looking back. Sylvia would understand if I didn't go. If it had been me who died, Sylvia would do the same thing. She would say, screw all of them, they never really knew Jason anyway.

Alexis was still talking but I wasn't really listening to her; my heart had started to bang around crazily in my chest just thinking about listening to people say Sylvia's name out loud, a fresh punch to my gut every time I had to hear someone else talk about her.

“Gosh, Jaz, everyone is really broken up about it. All the teachers and the squad and all the varsity players … everyone.” She sniffled and I could see a tear threatening to fall from her lower lash. “I can't believe you didn't know about it. So, meet me after the assembly, okay? Outside the auditorium.”

I gave her a noncommittal grunt that she seemed to take for agreement before leaving me at my locker to freak out on my own.

 

 

When I got to second-period gym class I was still trying to decide if I should just find Mario and get him to ditch the rest of the day with me. There was only one other person in the locker room when I got there because I was running late. Eli, who played as a forward on the varsity soccer team, was just lacing up his cleats.

Eli was a quiet kid so I never paid him much mind off the pitch. He was an excellent striker, maybe our best, but he never acted smug about it and I respected him for that. Eli wasn't the strongest or the fastest but he was a clever and nimble player—Ghost we called him on the field because of his pale hair and almost colorless eyes and his ability to slip through defenders like a puff of smoke.

Sometimes I'd see him in the locker room when he thought he was alone. He always had at least one nasty-looking bruise or welt on his body and I recognized the marks on him for what they were—a band of purple around the upper arm from the squeeze of a rough hand, red and swollen skin along the cheekbone from a backhanded slap, shiny pink scars on his knuckles from defending himself.

Sylvia's dad had been an angry son of a bitch, pissed off about the crap he was fed by life, and he liked to take it out on me. Never Sylvia. Sometimes my mom. Always me. Until he finally split for good when I was eleven, I had been his daily reminder that life hadn't worked out the way he wanted it to. And he made sure I paid for it.

Sylvia hated her dad. Even though he had never raised a hand to her, she hated him for the way he treated me, treated Mom. She always said she wished my dad were her dad too. Not that my dad was much better. For most of my childhood my dad had been like vapor to me. More of an idea than a physical presence, and when he
was
around he was usually high or drunk. Somehow he managed to not really be there even when he was with me. He wasn't mean though, was actually a pretty laid-back guy. Just not much of a dad. And that was how I thought of it, like I didn't really have a dad. Just some guy who had been with my mom when she was really young. Too young.

Eli kept the beatings he took at home a secret and I never brought it up. Why would I? If he didn't want anyone to know, it was none of my business. He always hung back and got dressed last so no one could see him with his shirt off. I understood that, remembered when I was a kid how I thought it was so critical to keep the beatings I took at home a secret from the rest of the world. It's like if other people know that you get hit at home, they'll know something's wrong with you, think you're a freak, so you keep it hidden … no matter what.

But that day I was running late for class, so Eli and I were in the locker room at the same time. I pulled my shirt on and when my head popped out of the neck hole, Eli was just standing there eyeing me. Like I said, he's a real quiet kid and I hadn't even heard him approach.

“Hey, Jaz,” he said, looking me right in the eye. His eyes were an almost colorless gray, which always gave me the impression his soul was empty. Today he seemed even more somber than usual, and the way he looked at me made me want to look away.

“What's shakin', Eli?”

“I'm sorry about your sister,” he said. “She was a real nice kid.”

“You think so?”

He lifted one shoulder uncertainly, his head dipping apologetically. “Yeah, sure. I didn't know her all that well. We had a couple classes together, AP English and Physics.”

“Right,” I said with a nod. “I forgot you're in all the smart-kid classes.”

Eli's face shifted into one of his rare, lopsided grins. “Yeah, well. I don't know what I'd do if I lost my brother. I hope you're doing okay.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said as he started to turn away and walk back to his own locker. “Hey, did you hear about this memorial assembly they're having at the end of the day?” I asked. “The thing for Sylvia?”

“Yeah, sure. They were announcing it all last week,” he said. “We don't have seventh-period class today so everyone can go.”

“Huh.”

He waited to see what else I would say, maybe like he was wondering if I had lost my mind or something. “I guess I just missed the announcement,” I said finally. “I didn't know about it. What do you think they're going to do? All hold hands and sing and shit?”

Eli chuckled at that. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“I think I'm going to skip seventh period today,” I said. “Maybe I'd better skip sixth too, just to be on the safe side.”

“Don't let the cheerleaders hear you say that,” Eli said in warning. “I think they're the ones who organized this whole thing. Singing and all.”

“Yeah, thanks for the heads-up,” I said thoughtfully. Eli drifted away while I stared off into space, trying to picture this whole ridiculous thing in my mind. Would the cheerleaders wear their uniforms? Did they have a special mourning cheer? Sylvia, being the smallest one on the squad, had always been the top of the pyramid. Maybe they would do a pyramid with no top—a symbolic metaphor for the significance of Sylvia's short life.

Maybe I would go after all. Out of curiosity if nothing else.

CHAPTER FOUR

As I entered the auditorium after sixth period I felt everyone's eyes on me. I sensed their anticipation, waiting to see how I would react to Sylvia's memorial. Mr. Hudson, the principal, had pulled me out of fifth period to see how I was holding up and asked me if I wanted to get up and say something about Sylvia at the memorial service. I just looked at him like he was crazy, and he seemed to take that for an answer. Chick and Mario were sitting together near the back, Jordie in the row in front of them with a seat held for me. I fell in beside Jordie, giving him just a shake of my head. Mario put his foot up on my seat, his smelly shoe near my neck. I pushed his foot away and Chick cried out as Mario's foot landed on his shin.

Usually during an assembly the teachers are just struggling to keep everything under control, trying to keep everyone from shouting and goofing off, but not today. Once the assembly started, most people avoided looking in my direction. And it was really quiet—like church quiet.

Just as I had feared, there was singing. At first I didn't recognize the song but when I realized they were actually singing Kelly Clarkson's “My Life Would Suck Without You,” I almost lost my shit. Fucking jazz choir.

I realized then that this memorial assembly was going to be a cakewalk compared to Sylvia's actual funeral. Nothing about it was real. Standing beside Sylvia's casket at the cemetery, that was as real as it got. The worst was when they lowered her casket into the ground. The box had trembled as the electric winch started with a small jerk and I had imagined Sylvia's body rocking against the plush satin lining. I had wondered if they put some kind of strap around the body—a seat belt or something—to keep it from shifting around in the coffin. Later, even now, this idea still bothered me, wondering if her body had shifted into some awkward, uncomfortable position as she tried to find some rest in her grave.

And when it was time to leave the cemetery, I'd had a hard time walking away. It felt weird to take Sylvia to that place and just … leave her there. Like somehow we should have been bringing her with us when we left. Maybe that's why some people get cremated and scatter their ashes. That way you don't just get left behind.

I was a little disappointed that the cheerleaders didn't turn out in uniform for the memorial assembly, but a couple of them got up to say nice things about Sylvia, Alex being one of them. Since Sylvia was only fifteen when she died there wasn't a whole lot to say. It's not like she had been on the verge of curing cancer. And Sylvia had done a good job of keeping most of herself hidden from people at school. Like an iceberg, the only part of her that broke the surface was the pretty, outgoing cheerleader. Kept submerged was everything of substance about her, the things that made her who she was—resentment of an asshole father, shame about our poverty, hatred of her diabetes.

They mentioned Sylvia being in Model UN and all the fun memories of her from cheerleading camp. Then there didn't really seem to be much else to say, so the chorus sang another song and Mr. Hudson released us after a moment of silence.

During the moment of silence, most people dropped their heads and closed their eyes while I squirmed in my seat. Jordie slapped the back of his hand into my gut. His chin was pressed to his chest and his eyes squeezed shut. I wasn't sure if he was trying to comfort me or was telling me I should drop my head too so I would look like I was praying.

Sitting there thinking about how all the people in that auditorium—the ones up on stage saying all the right things about Sylvia but who didn't know shit about her—my stomach started to ache again. The pain was so intense that I was unconsciously holding my breath and gripping the armrests of my seat. My knuckles were white and the muscles in my forearms trembled from the exertion. By degrees I started to relax as the pain subsided a bit, but then I was left with the feeling that I had to go to the bathroom really bad.

When the memorial assembly was finally over, Alex came to find me and asked me to go back to her house to hang out for a while. I waved off Jordie's offer of a ride home and followed Alex for the short walk to her house.

Her family lived in a two-story brick house with a screened-in porch and a deck with a gas grill. They weren't rich, but comfortable. Alex was an only child and both her parents worked, so the house was deserted when we got there.

I followed her inside and into the kitchen and watched her black curls against the green of her sweater as she got glasses down from the cupboard and poured us both a drink.

“Want to go up to my room?” she asked, her brown eyes wide open—trusting, maybe hopeful.

“Sure,” I said as I took the sweaty glass from her.

There were dolls and stuffed animals watching me from the window seat as I sat on her bed, the one chair in the room taken by a pile of clean laundry. I looked for a place to set my glass and finally set it on a book that lay open facedown on the bedside table.

Alex put on some music, then came to sit beside me, her leg touching mine.

“Sylvia's favorite band, huh?” she said.

The music she chose had been Syl's favorite, Maroon 5, which made me wince just to hear it. Sylvia was always listening to whatever crap pop artist was churning out hits on the radio. It was something I had always teased her about, her shitty taste in music. I had tried to turn her on to some of the bands that I really liked. But it was no use. After a minute I said, “Jesus, she really had terrible taste in music.”

Alex laughed and it startled me. I had almost forgotten she was there. She was looking up into my face, her eyes wet with new tears. I kept silent after that, knowing that if I did, this would only go one way. I had seen it in her eyes when she asked me to come over.

At first I hesitated because all I could think about was what Sylvia would think if she could see us together. Since Sylvia had died I couldn't shake this creepy feeling, the idea of her watching me, able to see me no matter where I was or what I was doing. I could almost feel her there, in Alex's room with us, like some Jedi Force ghost, wanting to tell me that this was a terrible idea.

Despite Sylvia's ghost, Alex and I did end up making out, and she was really into it. She even had a new pack of condoms, still in a CVS bag, that she dug out from the top drawer of her dresser. Like maybe this plan had been in the works for a while. Even though she had invited me over and I knew she would let it go all the way, when the time came to go for it, I backed off.

With most of our clothes off, my weight on top of her, we had reached the point when the only logical next step would be for us to have sex. That was when I stopped and pulled away. She asked if something was wrong and I said no, just closed my eyes and lay back on the bed, engaging in the necessary internal dialogue to convince myself that I really didn't want to sleep with Alex.

In case you don't know, talking yourself out of having sex when there's a mostly naked girl lying in your arms is virtually impossible. The amount of willpower I was mustering practically made me a candidate for the priesthood, though Mario had told me priests weren't even allowed to jack off. Which is crazy.

Mario was the only person who knew I was a virgin. My life had started as an accident, someone else's mistake. I could just as easily have been an abortion, unwanted by both my parents from the minute I was conceived. If I ever had a kid, he would know it was on purpose, that I wanted him around and would give him more than just my name.

My dad was the one who always told me, don't sleep with a girl unless you're willing to have a kid with her. Reminding me, every time he said it, that he thought having a kid by accident was the worst possible thing that could happen to a guy. He never told me not to do drugs or to mind a curfew or get good grades. Just don't end up with an unwanted kid.