What You Left Behind (21 page)

So we did it. We had sex. And then we did it a few more times. We never used a condom, because as far as Ryden knew, I was on the pill, though I've never taken the pill in my life.

Ryden would never talk to me again if he knew I got pregnant on purpose. He didn't want to keep the baby. I hate that I've been lying to him, but I can't lose him. I need him. I love him so much. And I love our baby so much, even though I haven't met her yet.

There are only three truly important things left in my life: My baby. Ryden. And the cancer. We're all so intertwined that I can't imagine any of them without the others.

Because even before the pregnancy, even before Ryden and I were together, he was part of it.

I liked him so much freshman and sophomore years that I couldn't concentrate. I could barely sleep. I didn't have an appetite. All I ever thought about was Ryden and how utterly convinced I was that we were meant to be together. Even when I started feeling really terrible midway through sophomore year with the fatigue, the unexplained bruising, the constant feeling that I couldn't get enough air, Ryden was still the primary occupant of my thoughts.

As this is the time for the truth, there's something else I want to get out there, something else I've never told anyone: while I sat there in that oversized chair during my first chemotherapy treatment, shivering and sick, I wondered if maybe I would have picked up on the warning signs earlier if I hadn't been so infatuated with Ryden. Turns out the symptoms of an unchecked melanoma that has metastasized to your liver, gallbladder, and kidneys are remarkably similar to those of lovelornness.

Would things have been different if I hadn't had a crush on him? Would I have noticed that the mole on my leg, the one that had been there as long as I could remember, had changed? Would I have gone to the doctor sooner? Would I be less sick now?

I don't have answers to these questions, and I never will.

But I don't care.

I got to be with the guy I love, against all the odds. And he loves me too. And I get to take all that love and energy and joy and pass it on to my daughter. My legacy.

Though I may not have many boxes left, the ones I have are pretty damn perfect.

“Pre
tty damn
perfect?!”
I slam the book against the face of the locker across from me. The sound of my voice reverberates down the empty hallway. I thrust my hands through my hair, pulling hard, feeling the skin of my scalp tugging away from my skull, and let out the longest, loudest scream I can.

Full sentences are beyond me right now. All I've got are words. Tiny phrases. Like my head is one giant keyword infographic.

On
purpose.

Legacy.

Love.

Lying
to
him.

Need.

Perfect.

Symptoms.

Lovelornness.

Blame.

My
fault.

Her
fault.

On. Fucking. Purpose.

Oh
God
oh
God
oh
God.
I pace the dark hall like a crazy person, raking my hands down my face over and over again, trying to make sense of all this.

The funny thing is it
makes
sense. It makes perfect sense, actually. I can think clearly enough to know that if I weren't me, if I were some random person watching the movie of my life, I would get it. The picture is clear now. But it's not making the right kind of sense, the sense that's been in my head for the past year.

Here's what I knew for certain: this whole mess was my fault.

Here's what I know now: Meg believed that too, but not in the way I thought. And not in a way that makes me feel any better at all. She was so obsessed with me sophomore year that she didn't go to the doctor when she started getting sick? Her cancer got bad just because I fucking
existed
? Are you fucking kidding me? Why would she ever write that? Why would she leave it in a journal for Alan to find? How cruel could she possibly be?

I can't believe I used to
like
knowing that Meg had a crush on me before we got together. That was the first secret I learned from her journal, the green one before the checklists. Now I wish I didn't know any of it. I wish I'd never laid eyes on her notebooks.

And the pregnancy, the one thing I
knew
I was to blame for—turns out it wasn't my fault at all. Meg lied to me from day one. Used me, manipulated me, made me love her, let me fight for the abortion when she knew her decision all along, destroyed me just so she could leave something meaningful behind.
Seriously, are you fucking kidding me?

Well, guess what you left behind, Meg? Nothing but misery and pain and regret.

I will hate you forever.

My phone's been going crazy. I sort of hear it ringing and beeping, but it's far away, like I've got on noise-canceling headphones.

It's not until someone slams their hand on the driver's side window of my car, right in my face, that the noise rushes in.

I blink at Dave through the glass.
Wait, how did I end up in my car? How much time has passed?
It's almost dark out now.

He tries the door handle. It's locked. “What are you doing? The game is about to start. You missed warm-up.”

Oh shit. The game. The recruiter.

I should fling open the car door, change into my uniform, and book it to the field with Dave. Maybe that's what alternate-universe Ryden Brooks is doing right now. Or maybe he's already there, warming up, because he never met Meg Reynolds in the first place. But all I do is slowly rest my head on the steering wheel.

Why
did I think the journals would actually contain good news? A cheat sheet of parenting tips? Really, Ryden? What the hell is wrong with you? You should have left well enough alone.

Dave pounds on the window again. “Ryden! What the f!”

Ha. Dave doesn't curse. Forgot about that. It's annoying. Sometimes a situation really calls for a
shit
goddamn
fuck
motherfucker
, you know? Like right now, for example.

“Why is everything so hard?” I ask. I'm still face-to-steering-wheel, so I'm pretty much talking to my crotch, but I know Dave can hear me.

“What do you mean?” he asks, sounding a little less pissed off.

“Why does everything suck so bad? Even when you think it's getting better, it's not. Life's building up suckiness, getting ready to hit you again, at the worst possible moment.”

“Dude.” Dave's voice is way lower. I can barely hear him, so I lift my head and roll down the window a little. “Is this about Meg? I…uh…I've been meaning to tell you how sorry I am about…you know, for your loss—”

I hold up a hand to stop him. “Don't. Just don't, okay? I can't talk about this right now.”
Not
without
breaking
a
few
car
windows
and
hand
bones
anyway.

Dave nods, all relieved-like. “Well, I don't know what's going on, but you need to play, man. That recruiter is here to see
you
. Besides, we have no chance of winning without you.”

The recruiter
is
here to see me. No one else, only me. And that's who I need to be thinking about now—me.

I squeeze my eyes shut for three seconds, promising myself that by the time I open them, I'll be ready to play. One. Two. Two and a half. Three.

I open my eyes.

Everything's the same as it was earlier today before I laid eyes on that godforsaken journal
, I tell myself. Just because the
whys
have changed doesn't mean the
whats
have. Everything's fine.

Yeah right. Nice try, brain.

But I can still do this. I need to.

Don't let her win.

I unlock the door.

“Okay. Let's go.” I throw on my uniform right there in the parking lot, right in front of the stragglers who are still making their way to the stands. At this point, I don't give a shit if people see me in my underwear. Dave and I break into a run.

The stands are completely packed with fans dressed in Puma blue and white, the lights are on, and the guys are out on the field, ready to start. Coach O'Toole is standing next to a middle-aged guy in a blue-and-gold jacket.
UCLA
Bruins
is written on the back. Walter Paddock. I remember him from my visit to the school.

The energy of the place pushes into me. Yes. This is exactly where I need to be.

“Thanks, Dave,” I say, clapping him on the back. He raises his eyebrows in a
good
luck—you're going to need it
look and runs out onto the pitch.

Fuck luck. I don't need luck. This is soccer. I'm good at this.

Just
don't think about her.

I approach the sidelines. “Coach,” I say, trying desperately to clear my head. I secure my hair back in a rubber band and pull my socks up over my shin guards. “I'm sorry I'm late. I had a…family emergency.”

Coach looks like he would love nothing more than to punch my lights out. But he knows how important this game is to me—he's got to know I wouldn't have been this late unless something major went down. You know, like finding out your dead girlfriend was a lying, selfish, cruel bitch.

Goddammit, Meg.

Don't. Think. About. It.

“Ryden, this is Walter Paddock, the head recruiter for the UCLA men's soccer team,” Coach says simply, letting his eyes do the real talking. Even if I kill it tonight, I'll be lucky to see any more game time the rest of the season.

I shake Walter's hand. “Mr. Paddock, of course, I remember. Nice to see you again, sir. Thank you so much for coming all this way. My team is waiting for me, but I'd love to speak with you more after the game.”

Walter nods enthusiastically. “Looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to seeing more of what you can do out there in front of the goal. If your stats and game film are any indication, I'm in for quite a show tonight.”

“Thank you, sir.” I pull my gloves on and run out to rousing cheers.

“Wooooo! Go, Ryden! Number One forever!” Shoshanna shouts, waving her pom-poms and shaking her ass.

The ref flips the coin, and the Hornets win the toss. They choose their side, I head off to the goal, and the Pumas kick off. While the action is happening at the other end of the field, I let my attention drift toward the stands. Alan and Aimee are sitting toward the top of the bleachers, off to the left, huddled together under a blanket. Mom and I guess that's Declan—he looks like he belongs on the cover of one of Joni's romance novels with his dark hair, short beard, and leather jacket—are sitting along the halfway line down front. They're sitting as close to each other as Alan and Aimee, smiling like there's no place they'd rather be and no one they'd rather be with. Everyone's all coupled up and blissed out.
Don't get comfortable
, I want to shout at them.
It
doesn't last forever.

And then there's Hope. She's bundled in her hat and puffy jacket and propped up in Mom's lap, bouncing up and down as Mom jiggles her legs. Declan makes a stupid face at her, and she laughs and reaches out toward him, trying to grab his beard. She looks happy.

Out of nowhere, even though I look at Hope every day, it's like I'm seeing her for the first time.

Her face is almost perfectly round, except for a tiny little chin jutting out. She's got dimples on either side of her mouth, and the way her little eyebrows arch reminds me of the way my eyebrows look in my baby pictures—long before I got my scar.

Her hair is still like Meg's—dark and wild—but really, her face has changed so much in the months since she was born. She doesn't look as much like Meg anymore. She looks like me. The baby girl version of me.

Holy shit. It doesn't matter that Hope hasn't said “Daddy” yet—I'm a dad
already
. It's happening, with or without my permission and even though I don't have a single clue how to do it right. That kid is going to grow up and go to school and get into trouble and break bones and have her heart broken, and I'm going to be there for all of it.

Suddenly, the entire world is like an hourglass that's been flipped over, the sand running back through the narrow hole in the opposite direction as before.

It's not about what I did to Meg anymore. The journal made sure of that. It's about what
she
did to
me
.

She blamed me—not for her pregnancy, but for her cancer. By writing about it in her journal and leaving it where she knew someone would find it, she made sure I would feel that guilt forever. Even though
I
didn't even
know
who
she
was
when she was diagnosed.

And because she blamed me, she felt I was hers to do whatever she wanted with. So she used me as an unwilling means to her own selfish end. She left me sad and alone and with a baby. She never thought what my life would be like once the baby was born and she was gone. She knew she
would
be gone, and she didn't even do me the courtesy of talking about it. She only thought about herself and how to fill her remaining calendar squares.

I didn't take her life away from her.

She took mine.

The ball whizzes past my head and into the net. I feel it and hear it, but I don't see it because I'm still watching Hope.

The crowd is on their feet and booing, waving at me to wake the fuck up.

I wrench my eyes back to the field in front of me, where all the players—from both teams—are just standing there, staring at me. I don't know what expression is on my face, but it must be pretty scary, because no one's coming over to talk to me, to find out why I didn't attempt to block that goal.

I make myself move, though I feel like I'm walking through a wall of thick, gooey plasma, and return the ball to the ref.

“You all right, Brooks?” he asks, low enough so that no one else hears.

“Yeah,” I say. “Fine.”

All this time, I've been trying to make the best of this awful situation, trying desperately to be a good father (and failing miserably), trying to reconcile my life now with the part I played in taking Meg's from her. And it turns out
I
was the one being played all along.

The ref returns the ball to the center of the field, and the Hornets kick off.

I try to get my head in the game, I really do. At least my feet aren't nailed to the ground anymore, but the rest of the half doesn't improve much. I manage to block one shot, but I let three others go by.

By the time halftime hits, the mood in the stands is somber, and my team won't talk to me. The only one who says anything is Shoshanna. “You're joking, right?” she bites out as I make my way to the sidelines, her hands on her hips, a dark scowl marring her beautiful face. I pretend I don't hear her.

I sit on the bench for the entire fifteen minutes, alone, thinking, trying to regroup. I'm not confused anymore. Everything is more clear than it's been in months.

The fact that Coach hasn't pulled me out of the game yet means the recruiter is still here. The guy came all the way across the country to see me play, and Coach has to honor that, even though
no
one
wants to watch me play right now.

I have to get my shit together. Show the recruiter what I can really do.

Don't let her win. Go to UCLA and prove your life is
not
over.

When halftime ends, I calmly get up and take my place at the opposite goal.

For the entirety of the second half, I do not look at the stands once. I do not think the M-word. I do not think the H-word. I don't even think about UCLA. The only thing I think about is BLOCKING THE FUCK OUT OF EVERY GOAL THE HORNETS ATTEMPT.

It's like therapy.

And it's even better than last week.

Gradually, the mood in the stands lifts. The cacophony of sounds coming from the crowd becomes higher pitched and more amped up. My moves become sharper. My name is chanted with rising enthusiasm each time I make a clutch save. My teammates start high-fiving me. My blood is pulsing with adrenaline and defiance.

Final score: 6–4 Pumas.

• • •

I head straight to Coach O'Toole and Walter Paddock like a man on a date with destiny.

Walter extends his hand. “I'm not sure what was going on in the first half, but boy am I glad I stuck around for the second. That was quite an impressive comeback, Ryden. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.”

“Thank you, sir. I know it's not an excuse, but I got some bad news right before I arrived tonight and it affected my game. But I'm glad I was able to pull it together and show you some of what I can do. And if you allow me to come play for you, I will bring one hundred and ten percent every single day.”

Walter's glance cuts to Coach. Coach doesn't look nearly as happy as he should after winning a game like that. What am I missing?

Walter looks back at me. “Ryden.” He says it in a way that sounds less like my name and a whole lot more like,
You
might
want
to
take
a
seat, young man. I'm afraid I have some more bad news
. “You're an excellent player, and UCLA would be honored to have your kind of talent on our team.”

I hold my breath. “Thank you, sir.”

“But Coach O'Toole here has filled me in on your…personal situation.” He
what
? “I wish I had been informed before coming out here. In fact, I wish our department had been notified as soon as your situation changed.” He looks kind of annoyed. “If this were just about your skill, it would be a much different story. But unfortunately, we cannot offer you a spot on the UCLA team at this time.”

My head is on the verge of exploding. “If this is about the way I played in the first half, it was an extenuating circumstance,” I manage to eke out. “Please, let me have another chance.”

Walter shakes his head. “Division One athletics are an incredibly demanding commitment, Ryden. It's hard enough for our players to manage a healthy balance between academics and athletics. There's simply no way for someone to manage that while also being the primary parent to a young child. Which, it seems”—he looks at Coach O'Toole—“has already been proven during your season. Your coach said today is not the first time you've been late or distracted by personal issues. Plus, we require all our first-year athletes to live on campus, and the university does not offer family housing.” He pauses and looks right in my eyes, like he really wants me to know how much he regrets having to tell me this. “Unless you've made some other arrangements? Will the child be staying with her grandparents during the academic year?” He sounds almost hopeful.