Reece thought about the red marks he’d seen on Caleb’s neck last year. Caleb claimed they were hickeys. If so, that was one wild weekend. To Reece, they’d looked more like rope burns. But maybe that was only his own morbid imagination.
“You played soccer last year, right?” Reece asked. “Why’d you stop?”
“Injury, at first. It healed, but my parents still said I couldn’t do after-school activities until I got my grades up.”
“But zero hour’s okay?”
Caleb laughed for the first time. “They’re fucking amazed I get out of bed at all.”
“But you know that next week we have afternoon practice, too? It’s only a week, though. Just for the show. But you gotta be there, or our choreography will fall apart. If you do have to stop coming, for any reason, tell me ahead of time. All right?”
“Why do you care so much about this show, anyway?”
“Because I do.”
Caleb squinted over Reece’s shoulder. “I gotta run. You got a cigarette?”
Reece walked toward the bedpost where he’d slung his jacket and dug around slowly in the pocket, thinking maybe Caleb was just trying to get up the nerve to say more. As he pushed his fingers around the lining, he stared up at the Polunin poster and thought about school—not the time-wasting, low-bar school he attended, but the early college private school with the national-caliber dance program that he hadn’t gotten into. He’d been crushed.
Luckily, he hadn’t googled how to slash your wrists properly. He’d ended up with only three faint scars, bare white threads against the pale skin of his wrist, which he now kept hidden under a wide leather band with metal snaps and faux Navajo styling.
They say you can’t erase the past. But you can accessorize it.
Returning to school in September after that act of despair, he knew he faced a choice: give up on dance or find a way back in. Taking over leadership of the Rockets had been the right move. Coaching others had given Reece a way to stop thinking about himself and to be reminded, watching novices, that repeated failure was necessary in life. Get over it.
That was why this show mattered, even if Reece wasn’t going to spell it out to a guy like Caleb. Because you had to start somewhere.
Reece withdrew the crumpled pack and handed it over. Five cigarettes.
“Keep it. I’m trying to quit. You need a ride home?”
“No, I want to walk.”
“All right. Offsets the unhealthiness of the smokes.” Not really, but whatever.
Reece didn’t feel guilty adding to Caleb’s smoking habit. It was the least of the guy’s problems. Underclassman, small for his age, pretty face, bad grades, former jock desperate enough to try tumbling, butt of the other jocks’ jokes, not enough attention from his parents, too much attention from creeps.
Reece asked, “Didn’t I see you get a ride from Vorst the other day?”
“That asshole? Are you kidding me?”
Vorst was the volunteer coach who hung around the Rockets’ practices. They weren’t allowed to use the gym equipment at all without him, but he didn’t know a thing about their act. Most of the tumblers just learned to tolerate him without engaging.
“So why did I see you near his car?”
“You saw me keying his car.”
“Wait, really?” Reece laughed. “You messed up his car?”
That made Caleb half-laugh.
“My mistake,” Reece said. “Anyway, the offer’s still good. I could give you rides home from afternoon practice, if that helps.”
“Maybe,” Caleb said, serious again, all the light gone out of his face. “But I like to walk.”
Out on the front porch, where they said their goodbyes, Caleb lit up a cigarette, blew out a stream of smoke and with it, a mumbled confession. “I might not be at school some days coming up.”
Reece shook his head. “Staying home isn’t the answer. Whatever’s going on, my advice, and I mean this, is to show up. Just come to school and lay low. I promise you, if you’re gone, people will talk about you more . . .”
“I don’t care if they talk.”
Of course he did. Everyone did. “Then what?”
“Then nothing.”
Reece sighed. “Then I’ll see you at practice tomorrow. And Caleb, if you’re getting hassled by anyone I know, especially if it’s someone in the Rockets, like Gerald and his friends . . .”
“I know it’s no big deal. They’re just joking.”
“No. If you’re feeling hassled, then they’re being dicks, and I want you to tell me.”
Caleb didn’t answer, but Reece had to assume that was it. Sometimes you just had to ride out a reputation or grow beyond people’s limited expectations. Already, Caleb looked and sounded a lot different than last year’s freshman “Kale.”
Back in his room, Reece texted Ruth, since the sun was setting and she might have already finished the rest of the journal. No answer.
He had an English assignment to do. But an argumentative essay about the politics of gerrymandering seemed so much less interesting than trying to find out whether someone was committing a historical hoax.
He did a little online browsing. As it turned out, Ruth McClintock no longer taught at the local community college, and though she had published a few academic papers about the 1800s, she didn’t seem to have a book out anywhere.
That had been ridiculously easy.
He texted her again. Have you read it all yet? It was like he had another underclassman on his hands, someone to encourage and take care of. And she probably thought she was doing him a favor.
An hour passed with no answer. People over twenty-five had no manners.
6
Ruth
When Reece was out of sight, Ruth stood slowly, hand on her hip, ready to go back into the house, still thinking of the journal entry’s first line: The mind has an uncanny way of saving us from unendurable pain.
Well, yes and no. During her own accident, Ruth’s mind hadn’t protected her with gauzy, soft imagery or any sense of slow-motion serenity. Instead, it had flooded her with fear and terror, then gut-punched her with a confusing hallucination.
Comparing her own traumatic experience to Annie’s was a senseless distraction. She should be thinking only of Oakley herself, once a strong, independent girl from a humble background, not only talented with guns but a survivor. In her teens, she started beating men at shooting matches, and from there she kept going, rising to the very top of her domain, in control of her own image, determined, unstoppable.