Through to You (11 page)

I wonder if she was happier this way.

Sometime around ten my stomach wakes me up. I crank my iPod and try to ignore the unhappy growls, but after a while it feels like it’s starting to gnaw on itself, so I stumble out to the kitchen. The whole house is dark. No car in the driveway. Mom either passed out at the office, or she’s working late. There’s no note in the fruit bowl.

I get out the Toasty O’s box, but there are only a couple of stale O’s at the bottom. I dig around in the pantry and fridge until I find some frostbitten waffles at the back of the freezer behind some trout in a Ziploc bag from the last time Dad and I went to the lake. Definitely expired. I toast the yellow discs until they’re chewy, slather them with peanut butter, which never seems to go bad, and head back to my bed.

Halfway across the living room, I notice the message light blinking on the cordless phone. I suck peanut butter off my fingers and listen to a voice message from the secretary at school complaining about my absence, one from my newly
ex
-boss, and two from Dad that I delete without listening. I clear the call log and go back to the fruit bowl.

I toss the yearbook under the bed and flop down. My sheets smell kind of ripe. I fell asleep in my jeans before, and now they’re digging into my crotch. I strip to my boxers, flip my pillow over, and try not to think. Not about green lights, or Nina, football, Viv—or anything else that might have been. I cue my iPod to something with lots of bass and no words.

I’m almost asleep when the drums start thumping too hard, out of sync with the beat. It’s annoying because I like this song, but just as quickly as it started, it stops. I roll against the wall, but it starts up again, thumping in my ears … and straight through my shoulder. I hit pause. The beat repeats, rapping on the window above my head in an urgent pattern: 4-2-3. My blood chills.

It’s how Viv and I always used to announce our visits.

I throw the curtain aside—and see Nina’s face through the glass. My lungs release; air flows in and out of my chest again.

Always Nina, never Viv.

I let go of the sheet I’ve balled up in my fist, growing steadily more annoyed than freaked out. I open the window.

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk. Let me in.”

“Why bother with me? Why don’t you go talk to
him
?”

She closes her eyes. “Just let me in.”

“Nobody gets through this window without at least two cigarettes,” I say. A memory of Viv pulling the curtain back with two between her lips makes me wish I’d never said anything.

Nina ignores me and climbs over the sill onto my bed as if she’s done this a few times. She’s got on tall brown boots and warm-looking tights, which I can’t help noticing when her legs are dangling over my head.

“You don’t smoke,” she says, standing straight and fixing her skirt.

“Really.” I cross my arms. “What else don’t
I
do?”

Her face reddens.

I bore my eyes into her the way I used to stare at Viv when I was trying to win a fight. She doesn’t last long—she’s no Viv.

“God—” she stops. “You’re different … but you’re just like him sometimes.”

“The guy’s got my face, but that’s all,” I mutter.

I wait for her to sit down to talk, but she just stands there. Her back is straight, like she’s preparing to give a speech. My eyes follow hers to the overturned desk chair, defunct stereo, and pile of crap burying the laptop on my desk. She stands on the one empty spot of green carpet on the floor, although on closer inspection, I realize it’s littered with crumbs. Her eyes drift to me, then back to the floor. I wish I had a shirt on. And that I’d changed the sheets.

“Look,” she says. “I only came here to tell you not to go through—that thing again. It’s not safe.” She rubs her hands like she’s trying to brush off an unpleasant sensation.

“The green-light thing?” I ask. “I wasn’t planning on it....”

“Good,” she says stiffly. “I don’t know what it is or how it got there, but it just seems like something we shouldn’t mess with … more.”

I narrow my eyes. “You came through it just to tell me that?”

“Yeah....” She hesitates, then moves abruptly for the window. “Okay, good-bye.”

“Wait—” I grab her arm, and both of us stare at my hand in surprise. I let go fast. “There’s something I need to know.”

“The less you know, the better,” she says through her teeth.

“You haven’t even let me ask yet—”

“Trust me, you don’t need to.”

Frigid air pours through the open window, giving me goosebumps, but it’s probably the only thing going for the state of my room. I spot my black hoodie wedged between the wall and the bed, pull it free, and yank it over my head. Nina’s watching when I look up. Her cheeks turn pink as I work it down over my chest. I glance away, gesturing for her to sit in the overturned desk chair. She doesn’t move. Her eyes are flat. I hate that I can’t tell what she’s thinking the way I always could with Viv.

I slide out of bed, shake the chair free of an old pair of jeans, and set it right again.

“Please?” I say.

She sighs. “What do you want to know?”

I drop back on the bed, grateful my boxers are clean at least.

“I haven’t been able to play football since—my injury.” Saying it out loud makes my throat sting. “So … how did
he
?”

She rubs the side of her head, considering.

“He wasn’t going to,” she says slowly. “After he met with the doctors about it, he gave up.”

I lean forward. That sounds about right....

“But then what? What happened?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “He changed his mind.”

“Something had to be different—he wasn’t hurt badly?”

She shakes her head, paces a couple steps, and sinks into the desk chair. Her face remains blank, except she keeps pursing her mouth like she’s weighing what she should or shouldn’t say.

“No, it was bad. He and Owen shared a room at the hospital—I was there,” she says, looking me in the eye. “It was just … one day he’d given up, and the next … I came in to see Owen, and both of you—
them
—were sitting up in bed, talking pigskin.”

“Owen? In the hospital?”

“He’s diabetic,” Nina mumbles. “He was really sick.”

Something’s still not adding up. I study her, looking for some kind of clue. She twists the edge of her skirt, but her eyes are still trained on mine.

“Hmm. So you’re my best friend and you have no idea how I went back to football?”

“No … I didn’t know you as well then.” Her cheeks go pink again. “But I do know that when you make up your mind to do something—” She pauses. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I stare at my open palms. My dad used to say something like that about me. But this guy, this
me
, still goes to the lake with Dad. He’s the captain of the team. I try to envision the Red King in that hospital room … but all I see is me. There was an empty bed behind a curtain.... Mom slept there a few nights before going back to work. Dad sat on it awkwardly and offered me Jell-O. Viv always climbed into my bed. No one else ever came in, especially not Nina’s brother.

“He’s really into football—Owen?”

“When he gets to high school, he wants to be just like—” She stops.

We both look away. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, that kid will never want to be me.

She rises and goes to the window again. “I have to get back to him … good-bye, Cam.”

“But wait, aren’t you dying to find out all about the other
you
?”

She turns. “Not really.”

I stare at her, but I still can’t read her. This has to be an act. Who wouldn’t want to know how their life could be different?

“Well, I’m going to guess you don’t work at a diner … but that’s where I saw you. Running around, filling orders—service with a great big smile.”

I wait for her to react, maybe laugh at how different she sounds, but she just stands in the freezing cold by the window and doesn’t move.

“She’s not me.”

“You don’t go to my school, if you’re wondering—”

“I don’t want to know.”

“You’re not even a little curious?”

As soon as I say it, I realize …
I’m
curious. What makes the Nina in front of me so somber when the girl I saw at the diner was all smiles and so eager to please? What’s different? If Camden Pike has everything in her world, shouldn’t she?

“Look, I have to get back. Owen’s waiting for me,” she says. “You really won’t go through the light again …?”

I don’t speak, just shake my head.

“Okay,” she says. “I just wanted … to say good-bye.”

She comes toward me, hesitates, then puts her boot on the bed and climbs over me, her long hair swishing over my arm. She swings her legs out the window and her feet crunch dry leaves when she hops to the ground. I sit up, wanting to say something else. Maybe ask where her parents are, or why she keeps horror movie posters stashed in her closet. But when I look out the window, she’s disappeared into the night.

DR. SUMMERS WENT ON AND ON ABOUT DEEP BREATHING TODAY
,
and it was all I could do to keep my butt on her couch and stare at the carpet. When I get home, there’s the pizza note in the kitchen again. I shove the money in my pocket and don’t bother to write back. I turn on the TV and flip through the guide until I find something about dirt bikes. Nothing like a Friday night alone watching people shred through mud on two wheels.

Except that’s not at all what it is. There’s this guy hopping around on the rear wheel of his motorcycle, but he’s in a city, jumping it onto loading docks and riding over a parked car. He does these insane maneuvers where he propels the whole bike off a ledge, rotates in the air, and manages to land perfectly on the trash-littered pavement. Finally, they show him loading the bike into a service elevator and accelerating out onto the roof of an old brick building. He hops onto the lip of the roof and proceeds to ride all the way around the edge. The camera zooms to the filthy pavement eight stories below, and when it pans back up, the crew has removed the front wheel of his bike. My stomach drops. One wrong move to the left and the guy tumbles to his death on an expensive hunk of metal. But he completes the circuit doing a wheelie, wavering only slightly at the corners, and hops down to huge applause. My palms are covered in sweat.

I guess I’m supposed to be amazed at what the stupid guy accomplished, but all I can think about is what might have happened. What if he got his pants caught and fell off his bike? What if the wind had been different, or he’d made a wrong move? What if
I
had made different choices? If I’d never dropped the lighter—never
took up
smoking in the first place? Would things have changed if I’d met Nina and her brother? Or if Viv had stayed with Logan? What if I’d never quit football and she’d stayed a cheerleader? What would have happened if we’d never even met? Would she still be here, happy and alive?

I wish I’d never opened Nina’s stupid yearbook.

I click the TV off and go to my room.

Maybe the Other Cam’s life isn’t as great as it looked.... Surely the guy had some kind of flaw. Perfect life, perfect team, perfect girlfriend—my breath cuts off, my eyes burning as I remember the tattered remnants of memorial on his side.

He
did
do things differently, and he lost her anyway.

But he couldn’t have appreciated her. Not the way I did.

I turn my light on and kneel to scan the random items that have collected like driftwood under my bed. I spot my old earbuds wrapped around a foul-looking sock, and tug the whole mess gently out by the cord. Along with my school ID from freshman year, a chopstick, a blank CD, and lots of dust, comes the red leather yearbook. I drop onto the bed and open the cover.

There’s a picture of Fowler High, in all its 1960s architectural splendor. The address is below that, but the rest of the paper is blank. I go to turn the page when something catches my eye. On the inside flap, crammed down in the corner, is something handwritten.

I peer at it more closely … and recognize my own writing.

So the guy’s got my face
and
my handwriting. Great.

I read the note again. Nina saved me? From what? I read the words a third time, but they still don’t make sense. I shattered my leg in the Homecoming game, but there was no chance I was going to die. The only time I came close—

I swallow hard and flip through the pages in the rest of the yearbook, but I don’t find any other writing. I skip past the Valentine’s Day Dance spread because I can’t bear to see Viv in that dress again. There’s an index of names in the back, with a page number for every time someone appears in a photo. I skip past Pike and Hayward, each followed by a string of numbers, until I find
LARSON, NINA
—
PAGE 32
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