On the Fence (6 page)

Chapter 12

W
hen I got to work the next Tuesday, Linda’s face was beaming with a smile of giddy anticipation.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Go change and I’ll tell you when you get done.”

She probably thought it was weird that I brought my work clothes in my backpack and came in wearing my sloppy T-shirts. But I still cared more about what my brothers thought than what she did. And I didn’t live in my mind . . . or whatever she had said. I lived in a house full of guys who loved to make fun of me. I walked out after changing and looked at her expectantly.

“Okay, close your eyes,” she said.

Playing along, I closed my eyes.

“Ready? Open them.”

I did, and she held up a check for a hundred and fifteen dollars. It was made out to me. “What’s this?”

“Your cut of the makeup session we did the other day.”

I took the check and stared at the number. And here I thought I was going to tell Linda I didn’t want to do it anymore. But if I could make over a hundred bucks just sitting there, I could handle it. It meant I’d be able to pay off my dad quicker.

“We did so well, we’re going to hold at least two more classes and see how it goes.” She pulled a flyer out from under the cupboard and handed it to me. On the upper right-hand corner of the flyer was a picture of me in full makeup.

“Whoa. What’s that?”

“Your picture. I thought you were okay with it. It’s the one we took the other day.”

“I just thought you printed off a few for my . . . family . . .” I would not mention my mom again. It really was eating me up. “. . . to see.”

“Did she like them?”

“Yeah. They were great.” That wasn’t a lie, right?

“I apologize. I should’ve asked you. It just turned out so well, I offered it to Amber.”

I stared at the picture again. It was just a dumb flyer. Hopefully no one would recognize me. My friends and brothers weren’t exactly in the market for makeup.

That night I couldn’t sleep. My brain kept spinning. It was only midnight, earlier than my normal middle-of-the-night waking, so when I looked out the window and saw the light on in Braden’s room, I texted:
Up?

Yeah, see you in one minute,
he texted back almost immediately.

I heard his back door shut right after mine. We arrived at the fence together. He leaned his shoulder against the board and I could smell his deodorant. It was a sharp, clean scent.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Feeling restless.” I sat down, back to the fence, and listened as he did the same.

“No run again today?”

“No.”

“Are you out here every night you don’t run?”

“No. Aside from the two nights with you, I’ve only been out here one other time.”

“You should’ve texted me.”

“It was two in the morning.”

“So?”

“I may be selfish, but even I felt bad about that.”

He laughed.

I didn’t know why I texted him to come out here. It wasn’t like I had anything important to discuss. In a way it was nice to know I wasn’t alone in my middle-of-the-night world. My brothers slept like the dead. How was it that my brain wouldn’t shut off? I felt guilty asking my brothers about my mom. I didn’t want to be the one to make everyone else miserable when they had moved on. Maybe they’d moved on because they had real memories to hang on to while my brain had to make up its own. Why did my brain have to be so morbid about it?

“Why do you run so much, anyway?”

“I need to stay in shape for basketball or I’m in pain those first several weeks of practice.”

“So you run, what, six . . . seven miles a day to save yourself from two weeks of pain? It seems like you’re training for a marathon, not a basketball game.”

“Well, it helps me sleep, too.”

“Most people don’t need to exhaust themselves in order to sleep.”

“True. A lot of people just take sleeping pills.”

He let out a single laugh, the way he always did when something someone said surprised him. “Yes. I guess your way is more natural.” There was a long pause. “You’re good at avoiding questions, but what I’m asking is why you can’t sleep.”

He was just a disembodied voice, I told myself. I could talk to a disembodied voice. Or the moon. I could always talk to the moon. I found it in the sky, minding its own business, only half lit.

Finally, I said, “I have nightmares.” He must’ve sensed it was better to talk as little as possible, because he just waited. “About my mom and the night she died. My brain seems to think it’s fun to give me every scenario, even impossible ones. It’s pretty much the only memory I have from when I was little . . . that night. I don’t even know if any of it is real or if my mind has made all of it up.” I had never told anyone about my nightmares, not even Gage, who knew more than most about the inner workings of my brain. It felt strangely freeing, like I was putting it out there for the moon to deal with.

“What happens in them?”

“Different things—rain and breaking windows and cars. And my mom, of course.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hate it. Running equals dreamless nights.”

“Well, that makes a lot more sense than the basketball excuse.”

“It helps for basketball too.”

“I’m sure.” After several minutes he said, “You learned how to ride your bike when you were four. I was so jealous because I still had training wheels.”

I was relieved he had switched to our useless-facts game and said, “I remember your training wheels.”

“You do? Because right after you learned how to ride your bike, I spent that entire Saturday learning how to ride without them. You shamed me into it.”

I smiled and tried to think of something I remembered about him as a child, to match his fact. “How about in the first grade when you told your teacher that my dad was really your dad and you yelled ‘This man is trying to kidnap me’ when your father tried to take you home? Your dad was so embarrassed.”

“Yes, that was back in the days when I was jealous you all had each other and I didn’t have any siblings.”

“Now you’re trapped in the craziness. You’re one of us, baby, whether you want to be or . . .” I trailed off as his real intention of bringing up my bike-riding hit me. He wasn’t jumping back into the game. “Wait. I was four?”

“Yes.”

“So my mom was alive when I learned how to ride my bike.” I searched my memory, trying hard to picture her there, out in front of the house, watching me learn. I could clearly picture my dad holding on to the back of my bike, running along beside me. I kept telling him to let go. He wouldn’t. Was my mom watching us?

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Just let me ride around the block,” I had said. “I’ll go with her,” Jerom offered. He had been riding circles around me. He must’ve been almost nine at the time. We went around the block, and it wasn’t until the first corner that I realized I hadn’t practiced turning without training wheels yet. Fear stopped me from trying and I ran straight into the street sign. Jerom picked me up, put me back on the bike, and pointed me in the right direction. I crashed on every single corner, but made it home with only one scraped knee.

Had my mom taken care of it?

No. It was my dad. I knew that. I remembered sitting on the counter as he blew on it and told me I was tough. How was it possible I could have these detailed memories and not remember different times, different events, where my mom spent time with me?

“She looked a lot like you do now.”

My throat constricted a little. “Yeah.” I already knew that. Aside from the wedding picture in the hall, we had a box of pictures of her. That’s how I remembered her, in still snapshots—standing next to me when I blew out three candles on a cake, looking up in surprise from where she sat on the couch reading a book, wearing a baseball cap and cheering on Jerom at his Little League game. I remembered the pictures, not the events. “What else do you remember about her?”

“She was quiet. . . .” He hesitated. “She used to come over and talk to my mom. One time I went into the kitchen where they were talking and she was crying.”

“What?”

“I remember it clearly because I was afraid my mom would get mad at me for interrupting them.”

“What would my mom have to be sad about?”

“I’m not sure. My mom was rubbing her back and she was—”

“How old were you?” I adjusted my back against the fence.

“I don’t know. Around seven, I guess.”

“How could you remember that?”

“It’s just one of those vivid memories.”

Irrational anger surged in my chest and I wasn’t sure why. “Well, maybe she was worried about your mom. Maybe she was pleading with your mom to leave your jerk of a dad.”

“My dad didn’t start drinking until his back injury five years ago.” His voice was tight, hurt.

I stood. “Well, my mom had a perfect life, so I don’t know what she’d have to be sad about.”

“Charlie.”

“I’m tired.” I went back in the house, letting the door shut harder than I should’ve.

Chapter 13

T
he next morning I woke up to find Gage looking through the makeup catalog Amber had given me. “Is there something you need to tell me?” he asked. “Since when do you . . .”

I threw my pillow at his head. “Maybe I decided to go girly.”

“As if. Dad would freak if he saw you in this much makeup. Plus, it’s not you.”

I didn’t understand what that meant. I stared at the girl on the front of the catalog he held. She was soft and feminine and beautiful—like the wedding picture of my mom in the hall. So which part of that wasn’t me?

I turned onto my stomach and put my arms over my head. Who was I kidding? None of that was me. “Someone just brought it by my work the other day.”

“Amber?” he asked, turning the catalog toward me and showing me her picture in the front where she had circled her name in blue ink. “Is that this girl here? Because if so, you have to introduce us. She’s hot.”

I rolled out of bed and snatched the catalog from him. “What do you want?”

“We’re playing soccer on the beach. Let’s go.”

“I don’t feel like it today.”

He stopped cold, then looked around like he was in some alternate world. “Um . . . what? You don’t feel like playing soccer?” He put his hand on my forehead, then turned me in a full circle. “What have you done with my sister?”

Truth was, I didn’t feel like seeing Braden because I knew I’d behaved badly the night before. What he said had caught me off guard, and I ended up throwing him and his family under a bus to make myself feel better. And even though I knew it hurt him, what he had said still bothered me, so I wasn’t quite ready to apologize.

“I have to work in a few hours.” I didn’t have to work today at all. He didn’t notice my lie.

“That whole work thing is really cramping your style. You need to talk to Dad about the fact that you’ve learned your lesson. I’m sure he just wanted to see if you’d get a job.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll talk to him soon.” Later. I was finally making good money . . . and work wasn’t as bad as it had seemed at first. It was something different that my brothers had never done, and I kind of liked that.

“So really? No soccer?”

“Really.”

As I was folding shirts on tables at work the next day, Linda began folding next to me. “Your aura is blue today. Most of the time that means sadness. Is everything okay?”

Wow, even my aura was upset about my tiff with Braden. “I’m fine.” I folded another shirt. “It’s just weird when a belief you’ve had your whole life is suddenly challenged.”

“What belief is that?”

“Nothing. I just pictured someone a certain way, and maybe they weren’t that way at all.” Maybe I had no memories of my mom because she was never around.

“That’s hard, when someone doesn’t meet our expectations.” She moved around to the other side of the table. “Sometimes we expect more than people are capable of giving at that moment.”

Shouldn’t a mother be capable of being there for her kids? Was that too much to expect?

She was there. It was my memories that weren’t.

“Honey.” Linda touched my hand. I wasn’t used to such a soft touch. It made my stomach feel hollow. I moved my hand to the next shirt to break the contact. “If you need to go home, I understand.”

“No. No, I don’t. I’m totally fine.” And I was. I didn’t need to get caught up in the stupid emotion of this. I could shake it off.

“Do you want to talk about it? Tell me more about this person?”

“No.”

She paused as if expecting me to change my mind. I wasn’t going to change my mind.

“Okay. I’m going to crunch some numbers in the back.”

“Sounds good.”

I continued folding shirts. A movement by the window caught my eye, and I looked up in time to see a mother and daughter walk by arm in arm. The two of them walking together made me think of how it could’ve been now if my mom were still here. We would’ve spent time together—talked, laughed, shared stories only she would understand, shared secrets I couldn’t tell anyone else. The pit in my stomach seemed to expand with that feeling. I didn’t like it. Why was I suddenly feeling like something was missing in my life? I had a great life. Linda and her concerned looks and gentle touch didn’t need to come around and make me think my life wasn’t amazing.
I’ll run eight miles in the morning.
That would take care of this.

Chapter 14

I
walked into the kitchen to get a water bottle for my run and found Nathan staring intently at the red Frisbee on the counter.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I can’t do it. I can’t call her.”

“You’re returning her Frisbee, Nathan, not asking her out. Just dial the number.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right.”

I opened the fridge and grabbed a water bottle. When I turned around, Nathan was in the exact same position.

“If you were Lauren and some guy called you to return your Frisbee, what would you think?” he asked.

I pulled my foot to my butt to stretch out my thigh. “I’d think that some guy was calling me to return my Frisbee.”

He grunted. “Yeah, but you’re not a normal girl, so that doesn’t count.”

The ache in my stomach twitched, and I cringed.

“Normal girls read into everything.”

Switching feet, I stretched the other leg. “And what exactly are you doing right now?”

“I’m not reading into anything, I’m psyching myself out.”

I grabbed the phone off the counter and dialed Lauren’s number. “There. It’s done.” I thrust the phone toward him.

He held up his hands and wouldn’t take it from me, jumping away from it like it was an opposing team’s mascot or something.

“Ugh. You’re such a wimp.” I put it up to my ear.

“Hello?” a girl answered.

“Hi. Is this Lauren?”

“Yes.” She sounded like a completely normal girl—whatever that meant.

“My brothers and I were playing disc golf out at Woodward Park the other day and found one of your Frisbees.”

“Oh. Awesome. I guess putting the info on the back really works.”

“Yeah. So what do you want me to do with it?” Disc golf Frisbees weren’t like standard cheapie plastic things. They were weighted and high-quality, so I knew she’d want it back. I happened to glance up at Nathan, and he was clutching the Frisbee in two hands, staring at me.

“Can I come get it, maybe?” Lauren asked. “Do you live near Woodward?”

“Not really. We’re actually about five minutes east of the mall, by Hillman Park.”

“Oh, cool, that’s not too far from me. Will you text me your address?”

“Yes, but I’m getting ready to leave. My brother Nathan will be here, though.” And he owed me big for this.

“Okay. Thanks.”

I hung up, then texted her our address.

“Did she sound cute?” he asked.

“Nope, she sounded like a big, burly girl. Have fun.”

I lay on my bed, throwing a soccer ball in the air over and over. It was midnight. I couldn’t face sleep. I wondered if Gage, whose room shared a wall with mine, was going to come over and tell me to be quiet. I caught the ball with a loud smack and then pulled my arm back, poised to hurl it against the wall this time. That would wake him.

I sighed and let it roll off my fingertips instead, landing on the floor with a thud. I didn’t want to talk to Gage. I wanted to talk to Braden. I needed to apologize. That’s why my bedroom light was still on, after all—a hope that he would see it. His room was dark, though. I sat up and planted my feet on the ground. Forcing myself to stand up, I walked to the light switch and flipped it off, then lay back down again.

The curtains on my bedroom window weren’t drawn tightly closed, and a strip of light from the moon cut across my ceiling. It was as if the moon were trying to tell me to stop being so stubborn. I stood again and marched down the stairs and outside. Then I sat there in the dirt by the fence. I should’ve just texted him, but I couldn’t. What if he ignored it? At least this way if he didn’t come, I could tell myself it was because he was asleep.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed as I sat there. Long enough for me to wonder why I was still sitting there. I stood and paced the fence. If he didn’t come out by the time I counted to fifty, I’d go back inside and forget about this. I started my count. When I reached forty-nine, I decided that one hundred was a much better number. I needed to give him a chance, after all. Fifty seconds was barely more time than a center got to snap a football.

The numbers ticked through my head, one for each step I took along the fence line. “Seventy-six,” I whispered aloud, my bare foot landing on a rock. “Ouch.” I stopped and clenched my fists. This was ridiculous. Just as I turned to head back to the house, I heard his back door snick shut. I whirled to face the fence again and watched him walk slowly toward it. He didn’t know I was there. I should call out to him. If he did know I was there, would he tell me how heartless I was for what I said the other night?

I was surprised when he walked right up to my board and leaned his forehead against it. “Hey,” he said.

I leaned into the board as well. “Hi,” I whispered. “I didn’t think you could see me.”

“You’re wearing white. It practically glows through the cracks.”

I looked down at my basketball camp T-shirt. “Oh.”

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked.

“No . . .” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Relief flooded my body. I had missed him more than I realized. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For what I said about your mom and dad. My family is far from perfect—you know that as well as anyone. I’m sorry for turning it around on you. I was just surprised.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sweats. “Maybe my mom was different than I imagined her.”

“Your family is pretty amazing, Charles.” I heard him draw in a deep breath. Maybe he was relieved we were talking again too. “I shouldn’t have said that about your mom. I wasn’t thinking. Here you were upset you couldn’t remember anything about her and what do I do? Give you these depressing memories that aren’t even yours. There were so many reasons she could’ve been sad. Maybe your brothers were fighting too much that day and she was at her wit’s end. She had four kids in six years. That had to get overwhelming at times.”

Unlike when we sat back-to-back against the fence, I could feel his breath seep through the crack and touch my cheeks. I still didn’t open my eyes. We were so close that the air smelled like him. I didn’t realize I knew how Braden smelled until that moment. “Thank you.” I twisted, turning away from his scent, which was making my head spin. I put my back to the fence once again, then looked up at the night stars.

He didn’t do the same thing, because his voice was crystal clear next to my ear. “My dad
is
a jerk and my mom should leave him.”

“No. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s sick. If he would just stop drinking—”

“It didn’t start five years ago. I mean, the drinking did, but he was always a jerk. You know that. The alcohol just makes it worse. Why do you think I claimed your dad was mine at school that day? I wanted him to be mine. I wanted to be in your family.”

“You are in our family.”

“No, I’m not.”

“In all the ways that matter. I told you the other night that you’re stuck. You can’t disown us now.”

“I don’t want to,” he whispered. My heart thought that was the time to beat out of control. I tried to respond, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The fence between us had never felt like a barrier to me. It had always felt like protection—the only reason I was able to say some of the things I could out here. But tonight, I wanted to feel him next to me. I wanted to comfort him.

He took two deep breaths, then said, “You missed one of the funniest tantrums ever on the field the other day over a supposed foul.”

I relaxed, glad he changed the subject. My reaction had proved it was getting too intense. “George?”

“Of course.”

“Who fouled him?”

“That’s the point. Nobody fouled him.”

“So you did, then. What did you do?”

He laughed. “I barely tripped him. Barely! He didn’t even fall. I was going for the ball. His foot just got in the way. Nobody else would’ve called it.”

“George is a baby.”

“Yes. Never date anyone you haven’t seen play sports. It says so much about a guy.”

It was true that you could tell a lot about someone by the way they played a game. I knew Jerom was a leader, Nathan followed all the rules to a T, and Gage was laid-back, in it for the fun. What about Braden? What had I learned about Braden over the years from watching him play? He was a team player, never hogged the ball or took it when he couldn’t deliver. He hung in the background a lot, waiting until someone needed assistance. So he was . . . what? Observant? Not selfish?

“And never, ever date a guy who acts like he’s playing in the finals of a professional sporting event when he’s really playing a pickup game.”

We had laughed about that a lot. People who took a pickup game so seriously that they lost their temper or threw a tantrum over the stupidest things. “What if he
is
playing in the finals of a professional sporting event?”

“Then it’s perfectly acceptable. And you should find out about getting free season tickets.”

I laughed. “Which brings me back to the fact game. I have one. If you could only have season tickets to one sport it would be baseball. A’s.”

“Are you sure? There are so many sports I like. This could be the fact that you lose over.”

“Only if I get it wrong and you can answer the same fact about me and get it right. But I’m not worried. You leave puddles of drool on the floor when you watch the A’s play. If you could watch even one game in the Coliseum, I think your heart would stop.”

He let out a short burst of air. “Yes. It’s true. But I don’t think I know this answer about you.”

“I’ve known all along that I know you better. It just took me a while to prove it.”

“Can we institute a three-strike rule?”

“Nope.”

“Fine. Give me a minute to ponder it, then.”

I hummed the
Jeopardy!
theme song. The funny thing was that I didn’t know if
I
knew the answer to this question about myself. I would love watching almost any sport live. So technically, I’d probably let him get away with any answer as long as it was a team I really liked.

“Your brother.” He said it with so much confidence that I almost immediately believed him. But then I realized what he said made no sense.

“What?”

“If you could have season tickets to any sporting event, it would be the UNLV Rebels soccer team so you could watch every one of your brother’s games from the stands. You would be in heaven.”

I started to deny it, to say that wasn’t technically a match because it wasn’t a professional team, but then I remembered how sad I felt every time Jerom told me he had played in a game and I wasn’t there.

“You should see the look on your face when you watch your brothers play. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more proud than you.”

I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t trust my voice. He was right. There were no other games in the world I’d rather watch than ones involving my brothers.

“I know it’s not technically season tickets or a professional sports team, but I think it’s the most accurate.”

He was right. He did know me well. Better than I thought he would. I didn’t think he’d been paying such close attention over the years. He was always around, and being a year younger I was always interested in what he and my brother were doing. But I didn’t think it went both ways. “Yeah, it counts,” I said quickly.

“What was that?”

“Yes.”

“Your voice sounds funny.”

“Yeah, well, your face looks funny. See you tomorrow.” I walked away from his laughter.

“Who knows who better now?” he called out.

I shook my head with a smile. He was pretty good. I’d have to step up my facts. He would not beat me at this game.