High and Dry (22 page)

Ryder untied me and I hobbled up to one foot. “I can't even play the second half now.” I swayed from side to side, woozy with pain and adrenaline and fear and hatred. I came at Steve wildly, wishing
I could balance enough to head-butt him and knock his teeth out.

Ryder held me back, his hands firm on my shoulders, and looked me straight in the eyes. “I'm sorry, man,” he said. “I'm so sorry. You'll still get your money, I swear—”

“I wasn't doing this for the money.”

Ryder turned his attention back to Steve, his fury mounting. “I told you you'd win the game. Didn't I tell you? Why didn't you trust me?”

“You sicced your pit bull on me. How was I supposed to know that was part of the plan?” Steve whined.

“If you had your fuckin' eyes open, you woulda seen what was going on. Penalty kick after penalty kick. If you don't start paying attention, you don't deserve to be scouted.”

My head felt shaky, and blackness threatened to overtake my vision again. I couldn't figure out what they were talking about. Wasn't the point of losing so that Ryder could break free of Griffin? So Griffin would be bankrupt and Ryder would have money to skip town? What did it possibly have to do with Steve being scouted?

“Let's get Charlie outside, get him some help.” Ryder snapped his fingers at Steve's thugs, who jumped into action, sensing a new alpha to lead them.

Steve was nervous now. “Shit, man. I wish you'd told me.”

“And I wish you weren't so fucking stupid.”

This may be impossible to believe, but the weirdest thing, the most vivid thing about the situation—besides my incapacitating pain and dizziness—was Ryder's behavior. He didn't sound like
himself. He was swearing a blue streak, smacking Steve around, issuing orders. Toward me, he was the same old Ryder—patient, cool, collected—kind, even. Toward Steve, he was acting like a boss. The Man in Charge.

He was acting like Griffin.

Steve and Ryder propped me up and carried me down the hall, one of my arms around each of their shoulders. I tried to walk, but even the slightest pressure on my foot was agony; enough to make me crumble. A microscope as a weapon. I'd never cared much for chemistry, but I didn't think it was capable of hating me back.

I could see the countdown clock at the edge of the field. Four minutes until the second half started. Coach saw us and sprinted over.

“Think fast,” Ryder whispered in my ear. “We can turn Steve in, get an assault charge going, or say it was an accident. Whatever you want to do, I'll back you.”

“But if I turn in Steve, they'll have to call the sheriff's department and cancel the game, and all this'll be for nothing.”

“I don't care,” said Ryder vehemently. “This never should've happened to you. What do you want to do?” And just like that, he was back to being Ryder, the kid who threw the bat for me. The kid I
knew
.

“Let's finish the game.”

“What happened?” Coach bellowed.

“Nothing, just fooling around on the stairs, twisted my foot,” I said. “I need an ice pack, I'll be fine.”

Ryder and Steve set me down on the team bench and brought me Gatorade and ice packs.

Steve, looking pale and ill, went to rejoin his team, occasionally glancing back at me. I propped my foot up, and Coach asked me if I was all right.

Before I could answer, I pitched forward and threw up, and the next thing I knew, I was lying down in an ambulance, headed to the ER.

I was on a gurney, and Ellie sat beside me, clutching my hand, as we coasted through Palm Valley. She was sucking on a blue-raspberry lollipop, her favorite. “Charlie, your parents are right behind us. They're following in their car.”

“I think I broke my foot. I can feel something shifting down there, in pieces …” I moaned.

“They said you were horsing around, that you fell down the stairs at halftime. What were you doing?”

“Um, maybe there really was water damage to the staircase last year.”

“It's okay, don't talk.” She smiled at me, but all I could see was Patrick's disappointed face during Steve's penalty kick, and the base of the microscope coming down on my foot.

“You were right. You said something bad was going to happen. You had that feeling, remember?” I gripped her hand tighter.

“I wish I'd been wrong. I wish I'd never said that.” Her eyes shimmered wetly. “I just want you to be okay.”

I closed my eyes and rested my head.

Ellie's fingers brushed against my temple, petting and caressing me. It felt so good, I could almost block out everything else.

“I want you to know something,” she said softly. “I don't want to lose you next year. We'll figure something out.”

It was almost worth it. The injury, the pain, the fear, to hear those words.

“I don't want to lose you, either,” I said.

She kissed me, a sugary mess of blue-raspberry tongue. It tasted like summer, and fall.

“How'd you get the blue tongue?” the nurse asked. She looked familiar.

“My girlfriend. She likes blue-razz lollipops. They sell them at the games.”

The nurse was familiar because I'd met her on Tuesday, when I'd peeked into Maria Salvador's room.

I was hooked up to an IV drip and my foot was elevated with an ice pack. The X-ray showed that my big toe was okay, but two of my smaller toes were fractured. My foot wasn't actually broken; only my toes got smashed. Steve's aim left something to be desired.

The doctor didn't think it was too serious. I was on a mild painkiller so the world felt soft and safe again, like it had never been any other way.

My tongue was blue. Ellie had kissed me. Ellie was my girlfriend again. She was coming to Lambert College with me.

My tongue was blue, because she'd kissed me.

My tongue was blue.

The kiss.

It left a residue.

Sugar, sugar.

“That's how Posey did it,” I blurted out. And because of the painkillers, I had a goofy smile on my face, which I didn't intend to have. But you kind of had to admire Posey's sneakiness, no matter how terrible it was.

“That's how who did what?” the nurse said.

“That's how Maria Posey—
Sound of Music
Maria—dosed her. They were playing Spin the Bottle. Posey made sure her turn landed on Salvador, and she took a sugar cube of acid and tongue-kissed her, transferring the drug.”

The Kiss. Sugar, Sugar. In Exile.
It wasn't Chekhov titles. Or at least, it wasn't
just
Chekhov titles. Maria Salvador remembered what happened, or she remembered what happened just before a bunch of worse things happened. Her bizarre babblings when I'd seen her on Tuesday weren't incoherent. They were clues. An attempt to reach out.

“Go ahead, ask her. She'll tell you. She remembers. She just couldn't say it, you know? But she remembers. Ask Maria Salvador about the kiss, and the sugar cube, and Spin the Bottle. I know that's what happened, I know it.”

The nurse looked disturbed and upset. “I would ask her, but she's in a coma. It happened last night.”

While Mom and Dad were in the hospital cafeteria grabbing a bite, Granddad stuck around for a chat.

I motioned for him to sit closer, and I told him about the game, the whole truth; why I'd been fouling Steve, what he'd done to me in return.

To my surprise, he didn't mention Steve at all. “Your friend Ryder doesn't sound like a real friend,” he said. “He sounds desperate. And desperate people are like pets you shouldn't have. They turn on you.”

I frowned. The muscles in my face felt tight. “He's not a dangerous pet, Granddad. He's just a guy from a lousy family who got in over his head. If I hadn't helped him, I couldn't live with myself.”

“And now look what you have to live with,” he said, motioning to my foot.

“They said I'll be fine. I mean, not right away, but soon,” I said. “I won't be able to play for a few weeks, that's all.”

I upped the dosage on my IV because what else could I do? They'd taped my wrecked toes to the stable ones for support. It was called “buddy taping.”

The phrase had made me laugh, in that sour way. I was taped to Ryder and he was taped to me, and if it caused me pain once in a while, that was the price of having a friend, right? He'd paid a price for having me as a friend a long time ago.

“I've been cut loose,” Granddad added. “Pneumonia-free. I can go home now.”

“Home home, or senior center home?” I asked.

“Senior center.”

I was bummed.

“It's time. Time to sell the house. Time to move on,” he said.

“Maybe I can take some days off school and we can fix the house up together, repaint it, refloor it, make it shine for the agent.”

“Maybe,” said Granddad, but what I heard was, “Probably not.” I felt smaller under his gaze, like my hospital bed was receding and his chair was growing farther and farther away.

He was no longer proud of me.

Sometimes you can see the shift right when it happens, and seeing it does nothing to help you correct it. Awareness isn't power.

I hated the phrase “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” As if knowing something was going to happen made it in
any way
possible to avoid. No. If anything, knowing something beforehand made it even more inevitable. Like me in Little League, telling myself not to throw the bat but always doing it anyway. Or like Ellie moving here from New York but never intending to stay.

Except she was, wasn't she? She was staying here with me, even though I wasn't a soccer player anymore, even though I'd worked for Ryder. So why? What did she see in me, exactly? It wasn't my love of sci-fi and bad TV because she didn't know about that. It wasn't my kindness toward her brother; I'd used him.

The hospital cut me loose, too, with a page of instructions and nothing stronger than a bottle of Tylenol. At home, I watched a bit of TV in the den while keeping my foot propped up.

When Ellie came over, Mom told her I needed to rest, but Dad gave in and said we could have half an hour. Mom shot him a look that could burn through glass, but for some reason their contradictory responses didn't bother me anymore. They felt comforting, a much-needed dose of normalcy after a surreal day.

Ellie and I went up to my room, and the half hour played out like a soccer match, each minute important, vital.

Minutes one and two, I spent with my head resting on Ellie's thigh, making her confirm for me what she'd said in the ambulance. She didn't want to lose me.

Minutes three, four, and five, she filled me in on gossip from school; everyone was worried about me. And we'd lost the game. Apparently Josh's handball resulted in a penalty kick for Agua Dulce, putting them ahead.

“Huh,” I said.

“What?” said Ellie.

“Nothing. Go on.”

Minute six, we undressed to our underwear and got under the sheets and started kissing. I couldn't get enough of her hair, which fell on my chest like a curtain I could lift again and again to start the show.

She settled on me like a soft, satin pillow, careful not to jar my foot. My skin was cool where the sheets touched me, and warm where Ellie curled against me. It was the perfect combination of opposites, like ice cream on a scorching summer day; or hot chocolate on a cold winter one; or the moment, in the blaze of the
unforgiving, endless desert, when you reach the oasis—and for the first and only time, the mirage is real. The water is yours and it will never run out.

Minute seven, Ellie said, “I couldn't stand seeing you in pain, thinking you might not be able to play soccer again. I wanted another chance, to get things right, to get
us
right. I kept thinking about what you said in my room yesterday.”

“Can you be more specific?”

She shimmied up my body and gave me a playful swipe on the nose. “Well, I didn't record and transcribe our conversation—”

“Why not?”

“—but I do remember we talked about you holding back. I think if we don't hold back, if we're honest from now on, we'll be fine.”

I removed a condom from my bedside dresser.

I stroked Ellie's face and collected her tears with my thumbs, gently smearing them away and kissing them for good measure, absorbing them into my lips, my own body.

“Okay,” I said, gently unclasping her bra. “This is me, not holding back.”

Minutes eight through thirty were too blissful for broadcast.

THE AUCTION

ON SATURDAY, I SLEPT LIKE A LOG STUFFED WITH SLEEPING
pills until I heard a knock on my bedroom door around noon. Having discarded my virginity like a heap of clothes on the floor, and having discarded my clothes on the floor like a heap of virginity, I scrambled to get dressed, and barely noticed the throbbing in my toes.