Intrepid (3 page)

After his speech, he took off with Sarah Schneider on the four-wheeler. Sarah Schneider, with her bursting boobs and curly brown hair. Sarah Schneider, with her stupid laugh and her willingness to do anything else but search for the Monks of the Hidden Humanity or fish for the bat-dolphins in the Suniuchu Lake. He told me to go home, but I didn’t. Instead, I sat in his living room and played video games by myself while Mrs. Ortiz ran errands. I cried through a few rounds of Super Luigi Brothers before I realized he didn’t deserve my tears. When he and Sarah stupid-Schneider returned from their ride, I’d already swallowed myself up in silence. We orbited around each other like opposing magnets after that day, but when I started high school, he acted like he wanted to be friends again. There was no apology. He simply switched from radio silence to mindless, one-sided chatter, which was especially annoying as we worked on the fence this summer. There was kindness in his voice and sympathy in his eyes, and there was absolutely no escaping the hours and hours of barbed wire spooling down the hill between our ranches.
 

I couldn’t explain it, but Iago’s being there to help with the fence pissed me off as much as him getting out of helping because of football.
 

“I think that cup is dry,” Iago said. He set down his fork and reached over to take it from my hands, but I tightened my fingers around the glass and shoved it into the cabinet before he could.
 

Mrs. Ortiz sighed and withdrew her hands from the suds as she pulled the plug up. “I believe I’m done here. Iago, do you mind helping Texi dry the rest of these dishes, and Texi, do you mind not trying to kill my son with those dagger eyes of yours?”
 

“Yes ma’am,” I said. I couldn’t tell if I should feel angry or embarrassed that I couldn’t even pretend to be nice. What Ringo said rotated in my mind, and I needed to stop letting Iago get under my skin in front of her.
 

“I can help Texi with the dishes!” Mina said.
 

Mrs. Ortiz rubbed the messy mop of orange hair and tugged at Mina’s bulbous ear. “You still have at least thirteen more minutes of reading, and now you have my undivided attention.”
 

They disappeared into the living room before I heard their soft feet plod up the soft stairs. I watched the sink drain and pulled on the spray-nozzle to push the rest of the suds down the garbage disposal.
 

“Thanks for asking, Texi. Practice was great. We’re definitely going to cream the Bulldogs tomorrow.”
 

I glared while he shoved a bite of chicken into his mouth.
 

“And then there’s the dance afterwards, but I know you’re too cool for homecoming dances.”

I grabbed another cup to dry and moved the towel over it.
 

“If you come, I’ll talk Gunner Proctor into dancing with you.”

“
Wow
. Every girl’s
dream
.”

“You could do worse.” He laughed.
 

 
I looked up towards the specks in the ceiling and silently asked the universe to send me some more patience. Iago wasn’t making my promise to Ringo easy, and I felt the surge of anger taking root inside of me. I just couldn’t do it anymore.
 

But as I turned to face him with a snarky retort, I felt a dull throbbing at the back of my head. The pain was like a tide coming in, slow at first before it grew into the space around my brain. I dropped the towel, placed the palm of my hand onto my forehead, and closed my eyes.
 

“You okay?”
 

I squeezed my eyes, but the pain came anyways. “I’m fine,” I barely managed to say.
 

“A headache?”
 

I reached behind me and squeezed my fingers into the counter to balance myself. There was a sledgehammer thudding on my temples, and I grunted out an answer that made no sense to either of us.
 

“Is it a headache?” he repeated. There was an ounce of concern, an ounce of panic, and an ounce of pity in his voice that startled me almost as much as the pain. He stepped towards me and placed his fingers on my temples, alternating circles with his forefingers. I was about to knock his hands away, but the pain started to pull back so I could breathe again. It wasn’t as if he was trying to be intimate with the gesture—that’d just be gross. The movement was more surgical than that, like he was a doctor who knew just what to do to make the pain lessen.
 

“See. You’re okay.”
 

But I wasn’t okay.
 

Things felt far from okay.
 

I started to step away from him, but the counter bit into my hip reminding me I had nowhere to go. His fingernails had moved on to scraping lines along my scalp just above my ears, as if he was pushing the headache out of my skull, and it was working. I ground my teeth and yanked his hands out of my hair so I could shove him away with my hip.
   

“You can finish the dishes. Tell Ringo I walked home.”
 

“But—”

“Just don’t,” I said, and walked to the kitchen door. When I shut it behind me and stepped into the backyard, I felt the weight of something big coming. I looked up into the night sky, and watched black, blotchy clouds race across the stars. They made it darker than normal, but I didn’t need the starlight to lead me home. I knew the entire one-and-a-half-mile walk back to the cabin on our ranch like the back of my hand.
 

Still, as I walked home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly, horribly wrong.
 

I just didn’t know what yet.
 

Chapter Three
 

“You’re a bit late this morning,” Rebecca said as she put down the chart she was working on. The green scrubs she wore had teddy bears on them. She was sweet, but what self-respecting adult wore teddy bears?
 

I rapped my knuckles on the raised countertop wrapping around the desk that faced the door and sighed. I checked the clock above her desk, and realized I only had about twenty minutes before I had to be at school. It’d have to be a short visit. “Not my fault. Blame my moron father. He couldn’t find his keys,” I said.
 

“Moron or not, I wouldn’t exactly mind if your father stopped by more often. I’m still waiting on him to wake up and ask me out on that date,” Rebecca said.
 

“Gross.”
 

“Gee. Thanks.”
 

I laughed. “I don’t mean you’re gross. I just can’t picture Ringo on a date… with anyone.”
 

She frowned. “Both you Nicholsons are drier than ice. A love life is a good thing to have. Speaking of, you’d be surprised to know that Sheriff Garza and you have not been the only visitors this week. On Tuesday, a handsome Hispanic boy showed up. Does the name Sully ring a bell?”
 

“Sully was here?”
 

Rebecca winked, and I sucked in a breath. I’d been more worried than normal about my grandfather for the past few months, but when I spilled my guts to Sully, I didn’t think it’d spur him into a visit of his own. Friday and Wednesday mornings were my days with Papa, and the old man was getting worse and worse and remembering less and less. Sometimes he wasn’t even aware of his surroundings, and he sat in silence the entire visit. It made the conversations with him tricky to navigate.
 

Alzheimer’s Disease is an evil, evil beast.
 

“If I were you, I’d snatch that boy up! He’s a hottie,” Rebecca said.
 

I crossed my eyes.
 

“You know, if you keep doing that, they may get stuck that way.”
 

“You should know that statement is a scientific impossibility created as a last-ditch effort by parents to scare their children into submission. And, by the way… Sully? Gross.” I walked past the nurses’ station towards room 124 before she could say much more.
 

Rebecca was hitting on nerves that I was barely starting to realize existed. It scared me because I was becoming extremely aware that Sully
did
exist in volatile new ways. I told everyone that he was simply my best friend, but lately, that didn’t feel true. I couldn’t help notice how girls looked at him in the hallway. Muscles were sprouting everywhere off of him, as if he had a secret stash of steroids that he mixed in with his Frosted Flakes every morning, and his voice was growing into this soft, deep growl that tickled the hairs on the back of my neck. I hated it, because it meant that things were changing.
 

“Suit yourself, hon, but boys like that don’t stick around forever. Sooner or later, some hot little blonde is gonna scoop him up, and you’ll be sorry.”
 

I looked back to see Rebecca fluffing up a lackluster blonde curl and laughed. I wasn’t sure when she decided my love life was her business, but she was determined to live vicariously through me. Not many young people entered the nursing home, and I think she appreciated the opportunity to talk to someone under the age of ancient. Luckily, I’d already reached the door and could escape the rest of the uncomfortable conversation.
 

“Papa?” I peeked into the door to make sure he was decent. Seeing him in an open bathrobe once was traumatizing enough, but lucky for me, today he was fully clothed in his khakis and an old man shirt. Papa loved wearing wool button-ups that were close to being plaid but were never actually plaid. He sat near the window, and he didn’t say anything in return which meant it was one of his silent days.
 

“Papa?” I tried again.
 

I was asked all the time why I called my father Ringo and my grandfather Papa. I’ll admit it was a strange habit, but as a toddler, I kept hearing Ringo call my grandfather Papa, and Papa calling my father Ringo. Those were the names that stuck in my head. They found it too endearing to correct, and eventually it was too late to even try.
 

I put my backpack down and sat in the chair next to him. A gift bag was on the windowsill with “Texi” written in Papa’s big, shaky letters. When he was lucid, he always talked Rebecca into helping him find a gift for me when I visited. Torn our pages from musty books with highlighted passages, Internet printouts of obscure poetry, mismatched chess pieces with letters on them, magazine clippings about a new species found in the rainforest or some other scientific discovery. It was always a something small, and I had a box hidden under the floorboards of my bed where I collected them like soft memories at the back of my mind. The little box put tangibility to the intangible. It reminded me that every once in a while, my grandfather was still himself—a thoughtful, kind, old man—even if by the time my visit came around, he’d already forgotten all about the gift he worked so hard to find for me.
 

Rebecca always set the gift on the windowsill by the fern. “I’d give it to you as you walk in,” she explained once, “but this way, it comes from him completely. It’s a dignity thing, you know?” Things like that made Rebecca the best person for this type of job. I couldn’t imagine spending every day watching people move in and out of lucidity, but she always found a way to remember the person trapped inside the fading mind.
 

I pulled the bag into my lap and reached in to find a small box. “What’s this?” I asked without expecting an answer. I knew that on his silent days, I talked more for my comfort than for his. I opened the lid to find an orbed, blue pendant hung from a silver chain. It looked liquid in texture, like an ocean wave had been rolled up into a marble. When I lifted it, I learned that it was dainty but sturdy. I wasn’t much for jewelry, and the only piece I wore constantly was a faded leather bracelet that had been my mother’s. Ringo gave it to me when I was ten and old enough to understand just how special it was. I remember the day he clasped it to my wrist and made me promise to never, ever take it off for any reason.
 

“Where did you get this?” I asked. Of course he didn’t answer, and I pulled the necklace around my neck to clasp it on me. “It’s so beautiful. Thank you.”
 

His face snapped towards mine, and a strange expression hovered over it. “You have to get Sheriff Garza. You have to get him.”
 

“You okay?”
 

“Rebecca. Promise me you’ll tell him.” His words were firm, though his cheeks began to shiver. His aggressive wrinkles began to take on the dynamics of gelatin, and the warning signs of an episode were everywhere. “She’s in danger.” I got up to press the call button for Rebecca because I didn’t know what else to do, but as I reached over to press the buzzer, he grabbed my wrist. His gnarled knuckles were surprisingly strong. It wasn’t a grip that belonged to a body that was shaking this much. “They found her.”
 

“Found who?”

“Texi. They know who she is.”
 

I froze and tried to swallow, but my dry tongue wouldn’t let me.
 

“She’s in danger. Tell Garza to initiate protocol for the Ortizes. Tell Ringo to get her out of here.”
 

“Papa?”
 

But his eyes glazed over, and he stared blankly at the wall past me. His fingers relaxed their grip on my wrist as he slumped into his seat and the shuddering stopped. He moved his stare to the fern, and his breathing calmed.
 

 
I stood up and tried to hold back a sob. It was hard to see him in the midst of his delusions, let alone be the object of one. Over the past few weeks, he kept talking about how he found me in a transport sphere or that the
Change
was coming. This was the first time he was convinced I was in danger, and none of it made sense.
 

I rubbed the pendant between my forefinger and thumb and tried not to cry in front of him. The clock that hung above his bed reminded me that it’d still take me ten minutes to walk to school. I was going to be late.