Impossible (16 page)

There was a crashing sound and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. Then I realized that it was actually Eddie banging on the drums as the boys launched into a song. Ugh. The music was just as bad close up as it was from my house. Luca was singing, but his words didn’t register because the music was so off putting.

Wishing I was anywhere else but here, I turned my attention back on the wall. Curious, I walked up to it and began studying its contents. My mouth fell open when I realized what I was looking at.

It was a shrine for Luca’s dad.

The images were mainly of Luca, his mom, and dad together. They were from happier times when they’d gone fishing, celebrated a birthday, or gone away on a holiday. There were even a few of me with Mr. Byron. One photo was so old that I was pretty sure I’d never seen it before. I looked about a year old in it and was trying to stand. Mr. Byron was holding onto my tiny hand and I was looking up at him with a huge smile on my face.

A tear escaped the corner of my eye and I hastily wiped it away. I knew I shouldn’t cry—that had obviously been a happy day, even though I didn’t remember it. But, God, I missed him.

There was this dull ache in my chest every time I thought about him. I was so used to pushing it away and hiding my feelings, but every once in a while the ache would expand until it hurt to breathe.

After Luca’s dad had passed away, I’d begun having panic attacks every time I saw his picture or thought about him. That’s why Mom had put away all of the photos we’d had of Luca’s dad in the attic. They were sealed away in boxes that were long forgotten. It was hard coming into Luca’s house and seeing things that reminded me of him. It made the ache in my chest throb with pain.

I took deep breaths in and out in order to calm myself down. I didn’t want to have another panic attack like the one I’d had in the car with Luca. When I was more in control of my emotions, I studied the rest of the images. There were a lot that looked so old I was pretty sure they’d been taken long before I’d been born. I studied one where Mr. Byron was standing with a group of men who were all wearing shirts that said ‘Skeptic Coil’. Wasn’t that written on Riley’s shirt?

Mr. Byron and one of the other guys were holding guitars. Squinting, I looked closer at the guitar in Mr. Byron’s hands. My heart pounded faster and I turned my head so fast, I thought I was going to dislocate my neck. The guitar in the picture looked identical to the one Luca was playing. In fact, it
was
the exact same guitar!

Stunned, I stared at Luca, suddenly seeing him in a different light. My heart sank to the floor. All this time I’d been calling Luca a freak and a loser because of the way he dressed and the music that he played, not realizing that everything he was doing wasn’t for himself.

It was for his dad. Luca was following in his dad’s footsteps. And I was the bitch who’d given him hell for it.

Luca

Once Eddie left, I headed back into the garage to clean up before Momma got home. Practice had gone really well and we’d tried the new song I’d written. We still needed a lot more work before we played at Berkeley, but tonight we’d done pretty freaking amazing. We just had to keep it up and maybe we could really make a mark on the music scene.

I was surprised by how quiet Ash had been. The entire two hours, she’d stood in the back of the garage with a weird look on her face. She’d given everyone tight smiles as they’d left, but hadn’t made one snide remark about how bad our music was or how we weren’t going to get anywhere in life. Maybe my warning had gotten through to her and she’d decided to be on her best behavior.

I walked back into the garage hoping that Ashton was ready to go home. This was about as much of her as I could stand in a day. At first, I couldn’t see her—had she gone into the house and I hadn’t noticed? I stepped into the middle of the room until I was behind the couch and that’s when I saw her.

She was lying on the couch, curled up into a ball; her face was streaked with tears. At the sight of her, my heart felt like it was splitting apart. I’d never seen her so vulnerable before. It tore me up inside seeing her like this.

My feet carried me around the couch and I sat down on the floor beside the couch so we were at eye level with each other. She tried to wipe away her tears, but I stopped her. I took her hand in mine and breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t pull away.

Then I waited.

If she wanted to talk about whatever was bothering her, I would listen. I’d sit here all night if that’s how long it took for her to tell me, but there was no way in hell she was leaving until she got everything off her chest.

Ash sniffled and her bottom lip quivered. “I didn’t notice at first, but this was his.”

Right away I knew she was talking about the couch. And she was right. It had been my dad’s. He’d kept it in his den where he’d let me and Ash chill with him and play video games. A few years after his death, Momma had wanted to turn the den into a sewing room. She’d gotten rid of a lot of Dad’s things and wanted to do the same with the couch, but I’d stopped her. There was no way I could let go of the place that Ash and I had cuddled with Dad on stormy nights. There were too many memories attached to it so, instead of throwing it out, I’d moved it in here.

On days that I missed Dad the most, I’d come in here and just sit. There was no feeling like the one when you felt safe and that’s what Dad’s old couch did for me. I knew he wasn’t coming back, but I still liked having a part of him here with me.

“He loved this old thing,” I said and touched it with my free hand. Parts of it were fraying, but it had never crossed my mind to throw it out.

“It makes me feel like he’s still here,” Ash said, closing her eyes. “Remember when he’d read ‘The Wind in the Willows’ to us and do all the different voices for the animals?”

My throat was tight and I couldn’t speak, so I nodded instead. It was hard hearing anyone talk about Dad, but with Ashton it was ten times worse.

Ashton sighed and opened up her dazzling blue eyes that were shining with tears. “Luca, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Why?” I managed to ask.

“All these years I’ve been calling you a freak and bitching about you, yet I never once bothered to see how you were or what you were doing. If I’d known you were doing all this for him then…I wouldn’t have treated you the way I have been this whole time.”

So, my worst nightmares had come true. She’d seen the corkboard. Except, in my nightmares, she’d laughed in my face and called me names. Her reaction was entirely different to what I’d expected it to be. Momma had been right all along. Ash would understand if I brought her in here and really told her why I was doing it, who I was doing it for.

“So, you don’t think I’m a loser for making a band dedicated to my dad?”

Ash shook her head. “No, Luca. I’m the loser. I’ve been so selfish and so fixated on myself since middle school.” She lowered her gaze. “I’ve been so cold towards everyone when I should’ve done the complete opposite. I shut you out, I shut out your momma, and I shut off my feelings. I’ve done horrible things to so many people and I didn’t even care.”

A part of me was in complete disbelief that Ash had owned up to her mistakes, but we both knew that I was also at fault. “I shut you out first.” The truth tumbled out of my mouth and Ash looked at me in surprise.

“You remember?” she asked in a whisper.

I reached out and stroked her head. “Of course I remember. It’s been eating me up inside for the last seven years. After Dad died, you tried to talk to me, but I wouldn’t let you come near me. I changed rooms so I wouldn’t have to see you. I started avoiding you in school. I completely shut you out. After a month, you stopped trying, and finally, when I did want to talk to you, it was too late. You had new friends and you’d moved on. I’d lost you.”

Fresh tears flowed down Ash’s face as she gripped my hand. “I thought you didn’t want me in your life anymore. I’d lost your dad and I was losing you too. I didn’t know what else to do, Luca. I just didn’t want to be alone.”

“Shh…it’s gonna be okay,” I said soothingly as I wiped away her tears.

“Why did you push me away?”

I diverted my eyes from her anguished face and focused all my attention on Dad’s guitar that sat propped against the wall. “It was easier than letting you in. I knew you’d want to talk about it and help me through it, but all I wanted was to forget about it and move on. I knew how devastated you were and I didn’t want to deal with. It took me a long time before I could talk to Momma about it. I was ten, Ash, and I made a stupid mistake.”

Ash’s hand touched my cheek, sending a shiver through my body, and she turned my head so that we were looking into each other’s eyes again. “I just wanted to be there for you. We were both going through the same thing—we could’ve gotten each other through it.”

“I’m sorry.” The words caught in my throat, and I swallowed. It had taken me years to get them out, but I’d finally said it. This guilt had been weighing me down for so long and now I was free of it.

We sat there in silence, lost in our own thoughts. Her hand was still in mine and I couldn’t bring myself to pull away. Several minutes passed before Ash spoke again.

“Why?” she asked, her voice raspy from crying so much. “Why do the people that l love always leave me?”

Her words tore me up inside and I wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her until she felt safe again, but I couldn’t. I’d lost that right a long time ago. She didn’t need me anymore. “Hey, don’t say that. You still have your mom and your brother.” And me.

She closed her eyes again and thick tears spilled out. “I miss him so much, Luca. He was like my dad too. He treated me like I was his own. I’ll never have that again. I’ll never be able to tell him my problems. He’ll never comfort me when I’m sad. How do I move on from that?”

I wish I had an answer for her every concern, but I didn’t. How could I, when the same questions plagued me every day?

“You can’t,” I said honestly. “All you can do is remember him and smile. That’s what he would’ve wanted. He wouldn’t want you sitting here crying for him. He’d want us to think of him, think of the good times and be happy for them. You know, that whole ‘better to have loved and lost’ crap?”

Ash laughed and propped herself up on her elbow, her eyes dancing. “You were doing pretty well up until that last part.” Her face became serious and she looked at me with a small smile on her face. “I’ve missed this, you know? I missed having you as a friend.”

Her words sent a thrill through me, and I stared at her in disbelief. If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be sitting here having this conversation with Ashton, I’d have told them they were bat shit crazy. “Yeah, it sucks.”

“We could do it again. Be friends, I mean. We don’t have to have a stupid arrangement between us being the only reason we speak to each other.”

“Friends, huh?” I sighed and ran my other hand through my hair as I thought about it. “Why not?”

Ash’s smile was bright and she gave me a nod. “Friends.”

Luca

Ashton and I walked into school together the next day, but she quickly left me to go and speak to that Bennett guy. I figured she wasn’t talking to any of them, but she’d seemed determined to catch him alone so I continued towards the courtyard, lost in my own thoughts.

Sitting down on the wall, I pulled out a pair of drumsticks from my bag and began tapping them on the bricks of the wall. The guys were depending on me to come up with a new song and if I could just come up with a beat that clicked with me, maybe I could get something going.

I closed my eyes and kept playing around with the drumsticks as something began forming in my mind.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

You can’t break me down. I’m broken, broken. This love is through.

See my eyes. Don’t love you. We need to let go. Gotta get over you.

I was so focused on what I was doing that I didn’t hear the voices until they were right next to me.

“You ask him!”

“No, you!”

“Oh my God, he looks so sexy sitting there with those sticks!”

“Yuki, he can probably hear you.”

“Oops!”

There was giggling, and I opened my eyes to find two girls in cheerleading uniforms standing a few feet away, watching me with interest. One girl had Asian features and was pretty hot. She had tan skin, slim legs, and long, black hair. She was the kind of girl you wanted other guys to see you with. The other girl was pretty cute too. Her hair was a mass of curls in a warm brown color. I didn’t know either of them, but they seemed to know me.

“Yes?” I asked placing the drumsticks beside me.

“You probably already know who we are,” began the girl with curly hair.

I shook my head. “Actually, I got no idea who you are.”

“Oh.” The girl frowned, clearly thrown off her game. “I’m Kendall and this is…”

“Yuki!” The other girl practically shoved her friend aside and stuck out her hand.

Surprised, I shook it and had to pull a few times before she let go. She had a steel grip, that one. “I’m Luca.”