Breakaway (30 page)

Raine and I had hardly spoken at all since the news of Chick's death. Not that I didn't see her—just when I did, we said nothing, because there was nothing to say. I couldn't tell her how I felt, because I didn't know. My thoughts were so confused and twisted about, they paced the length of my brain like a man too angry or heartbroken to do anything but pull his hair and punch at walls.

When Raine finally broke away from her conversation with Jordan she came to stand beside me, her arm touching mine. I said hello to her and she didn't answer, just put her arms around me to give me a hug. After a few seconds, when it was clear she wasn't just going to give me a brief squeeze and step away, I put my arms around her and buried my face in her neck.

She told me she loved me, that she was worried about me, that I didn't have to say anything. I kept my face buried in her neck until the threat of tears passed and the lump in my throat shrank. After that Raine didn't leave my side, kept her fingers twined through mine the whole time.

Chris stood against one wall, alone and talking to no one, his meaty wrists and large hands out of sync with his tweed sport coat, and I wondered if he had purchased the jacket new for the funeral.

A couple of teachers from school showed up at the funeral home. They looked uncomfortable and spoke only briefly to Chick's dad, who was like a zombie, his clothes disheveled and his hair standing up in places. Raine kept the few visitors in conversation until the forty-five minutes passed and it was time to move the casket to the graveyard. Chris, Jordie, Chick's dad, and I acted as pallbearers and carried Chick's casket from the wheeled carrier to the hearse. The casket was so light I probably could have carried it myself.

It still bothered me, this idea of carrying the weight of a dead body. But now that it wasn't Sylvia's body, I could handle it, not freak out entirely. And since I still felt somewhat responsible for Chick's death, this was a burden I didn't feel like I could leave to the care of someone else. Looking after Chick had been my responsibility.

Only four cars made up the caravan to the cemetery, and a slow drizzle started to fall on our way there. I drove Raine's car and she held my hand the whole time, squeezed it so that it almost hurt as we rolled through the rain.

“You okay?” she asked me. In answer I only nodded and slid my hand onto her thigh and gripped the flesh of the inside of her leg, just above her knee. She rubbed the back of my hand and wiped at her eyes as she stared out at the rain.

At the cemetery I recognized Mario's dad's car alone in the parking lot. As I put the car in park I watched Mario climb out of the driver's seat and stand at the side of his father's car.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I asked as I watched him in the rearview mirror.

“Just don't worry about it,” Raine said as she rubbed my hand with more force. “Come on.”

Gravel crunched under our shoes as we followed a path under the trees to where a tent had been raised beside a new scar in the earth. When I looked back over my shoulder, Mario was about a hundred yards behind us, walking with his head bent against the drizzle.

I stopped in my tracks, Raine tugging gently at my arm. The others were already clustered around the grave but I waited for Mario to catch up with us. His pace slowed but since his only other option was to turn back, he came on. When he was within a few feet of us I said, “You're not welcome here.”

“I came to say good-bye to him. Same as you,” Mario said, his chin thrust out defiantly, his words sounding rehearsed. “He was my friend too.”

“You've got no friends here,” I said, “dead or alive. You didn't care what happened to him.”

“Jason,” Chris said as he came walking over to us. “Let it be.” He came straight for me and gripped me by the upper arms, directing me away from Mario and the pathway.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled, but Chris just stood still, his face drawn and sad, and blocked me. Chris turned to look over his shoulder at Mario and Raine and said, “Go on. Both of you. We'll be there in a minute.”

Raine and Mario turned and walked toward the small tent over the gravesite as Chris kept his hands on my arms, waiting until the others were out of earshot.

“We killed him,” I said to Chris as I started to cry again. There was a seemingly endless supply of tears and snot in my head.

“I know,” Chris said. “I know.”

“Everybody leaves,” I said, my voice a high whine as I tried to hold back the flood that was coming.

“I'm right here, man,” Chris said as he put his arms around my shoulders. I cried for all the shame and embarrassment I had ever seen in Chick's eyes, for the sister I had lost without ever knowing what she had really meant to me, and for the friendship I had always imagined between Mario and Jordie and me that wasn't really there. I cried for the kid who had spent too many Saturday afternoons watching out the window and waiting for the dad who never came to see him, and for the boy who would be left behind when Raine went on with the rest of her life. All of these things that were latent under my skin, that filled my head with worry at night and haunted my walking dreams, I let them take over my body, rise to the surface like bubbles that broke on sobs.

It was a full five minutes before I pulled myself together enough to join the others at the grave. They were all waiting when Chris and I got there, he with one hand on my shoulder.

The priest didn't talk for very long. I got the sense he was a little uncomfortable. The only people there were Mario, Jordie, Raine, Chris, Chick's dad, and me. The priest called Chick Walter, so it wasn't even like he was really talking about the person we knew. I had never called him Walter in my life. Chick's dad stood with his hands clasped in front of him, swaying back and forth like he was rocking a baby in his arms. At first it didn't even really seem like he knew what was going on but when the priest picked up a handful of dirt to throw on the casket Chick's dad started to whimper, then sob.

We all kept our heads down and tried to let Chick's dad grieve privately, but Chris stepped over to him and put an arm around his shoulder. He whispered words of comfort we couldn't hear as Chick's dad wept openly, like a child, which in a way he was. Chris looked sick, like his stomach was tied up in knots and he might cry too.

When the priest finished he held his prayer book against his chest and watched Chick's dad. I wanted to shout at the priest, ask him what he was there for if he couldn't even offer comfort. Instead I stepped up to Chick's casket and put a hand on the smooth wood, slick and cold from the rain. “See you around, Chick,” I said, then turned and walked away.

Chris blocked my path and put both arms around me to hug me tight. I could feel him trembling and I had a sudden vision of my mom standing beside Sylvia's casket and was relieved to find that there was at least one other person, perhaps two counting Raine, who would weep at my funeral if it ever came to that.

“Come by and see me later,” Chris said as I broke the hug first and walked away before anyone could see that my face was twisted with grief.

Raine caught up with me when I was almost to her car. “You okay?” she asked as she slid her arm under mine.

“I think I'm going to throw up,” I said.

And then I did.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Raine dropped me at the apartment, but instead of going inside I walked down to the park, my hands crammed in my pockets for warmth. I was still wearing the funeral suit, and by the time I got to the hidden footpath through the woods wished I had changed into jeans and a hoodie. But I didn't feel like turning back. Didn't want to face the probing worry of Mom's glances, didn't want to see the reminders of Sylvia in the apartment.

When I reached the split in the stream I stepped across three rocks, the path to the island of boulders so familiar I could have done it in my sleep. There were a few beers stashed in the hiding place and I sat on the cold rock sipping a beer I didn't really want.

The movement of the water had lulled me into a trance as I sat and thought about Chick, him down at the park, cold and alone. His ghost still lingered in this place, probably would forever. It would have been dishonest to say that I really missed Chick. We hadn't paid much attention to him when he was around. But Chick represented something lost to all of us, and I wasn't sure we could get it back.

Mario came then, on his own, in a black leather jacket and a knit hat. He carried a brown paper bag under one arm, heavy enough that it upset his balance as he walked along the narrow path.

Mario finished the jump to our boulder and set the bag down behind me. I wanted to yell at him some more, but somehow the words didn't come. He busied himself with opening the bag, cracked a beer for each of us, then settled in to sit beside me. The space available on the boulder didn't leave him room to sit far away from me. We sat with our shoulders almost touching and I didn't pull away.

“It's cold as shit,” Mario said to end the silence.

“He must have been cold,” I said, my voice breaking on a tremble. “That's all I can think about. How cold he must have been.”

“Stop thinking about it,” Mario said. “He's not cold now.”

“He came by the house,” I said, determined to beat myself up. “Mom said he came by looking for me two days before he died. I was out with Raine. Maybe if I had been there. Maybe if I had stopped by to see him instead of just blowing it off.”

“Don't go down that path,” Mario said, almost angrily. “There's no point thinking how it could have been different. It will just make you crazy. Make me crazy too.”

“I didn't think I could feel any more alone than I did after Sylvia died,” I said as I blew out a sigh and shifted on my butt, now numb with cold. “I was wrong.”

“You're not alone. You have Raine and Chris and me. Sort of. And Primo misses you,” Mario said. “He always did like you better.”

“That's because I'm not a fuckup like you,” I said.

“Yeah, well,” he said, letting the insult roll off him like rain, “you should come by and see them. Mama's worried about you.”

Mario was looking at me but I was watching the trail, Jordie's familiar form approaching through the woods.

“Well, this ought to be awkward,” Mario said under his breath.

And he was right.

We were all silent as Jordie made his way across the rocks to us. No one called out a hello or even looked at one another. Jordie stood above us on the edge of the boulder, hands in his pockets.

Mario took a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it, as if to give himself a distraction from the awkwardness.

“Hey, Jaz,” Jordie said, his voice soft, like I might break if he greeted me too loudly. “Mario,” Jordie said with a nod at him. “How've you been? I haven't seen you around in a while.”

“Yeah, well, I've been by to see your mom when you weren't there,” Mario said with a rueful smile, the smile that could usually get him out of just about any amount of trouble with his mama.

“Nice,” Jordie said.

I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back on my tailbone. “Don't,” I said suddenly, interrupting them. “No ‘your mama' jokes. Chick wouldn't like it.”

“Yeah,” Mario said as he blew out a cloud of smoke and tossed his cigarette into the stream. “Yeah, you're right.”

“I don't think he would mind so much now,” Jordie said. “As long as he knew we were all down here together.”

Jordie's comment surprised me. He wasn't usually very sensitive to other people's feelings, and I had thought him oblivious to how much it upset Chick that the rest of us weren't getting along.

“Maybe if we had been down here together more he wouldn't have done what he did,” I said as I felt my throat start to fill with a familiar and unwelcome lump.

“You don't know that,” Jordie said, and I responded instinctively with anger, because he wasn't willing to take any responsibility for Chick leaving. “It's not your fault, Jaz,” Jordie said, his gaze on the middle distance instead of on me. That made me angry too. As if I had been asking him for some kind of forgiveness or absolution he didn't have the power to give. “You couldn't have done anything for him,” Jordie continued, oblivious to my anger, “just the way you couldn't do anything for Sylvia. He was sick, like she was. Nothing you could do about it.”

Chris had said the same thing, but coming from Jordie, it just pissed me off. Jordie had already rationalized the whole thing, absolved himself of all blame. “Who said anything about Sylvia?” I asked hotly. “I blew Chick off. Treated him like shit. We all did,” I said as I turned my head to include Mario with an accusing look. “We were his friends. We were supposed to be there for him.”

“Take it easy,” Mario said quietly, and held out a hand as if to place it on my arm but then thought better of it and tucked his hands under his armpits for warmth instead. “You don't want to blame yourself, I get that,” Mario said to Jordie. “But you can't let Jaz take it all on himself.”

Jordie just shook his head and we settled into another silent stalemate.

“You think I don't feel bad about it?” Jordie asked, the first to break the silence. “This was our senior year. It was supposed to be the best time for us. Instead we've been fighting the whole time. We lost Chick. You know, he was the only one who ever really gave a shit about any of us. He loved us like we were his brothers.” As he said this, his voice broke and he turned his back on us to hide his tears. “Shit.” After another minute he regained his control and said, his voice hollow, “You want to know something really stupid? All I could think that night after we found out about … what he did … Chick never even got laid, man. I don't think he ever even kissed a girl.”

“Stop,” I said as I squeezed my eyes shut, still trying to banish the mental image of Chick cold and alone down at the park in the last minutes of his life. This thought, about Chick dying a virgin, hadn't even occurred to me before now. Now I had to add it to the list of worries that were already clogging my brain. Add it to the list of all the things Chick would never see or do.