“I get it.”
“And pretty soon I’ll have to sit in some courtroom and tell everyone how I let a kid die.”
“You didn’t let anyone die, Charlie.”
“You can say that a million times and I’ll never believe you.” He coughs. It’s ragged and tired. “But this is all to say that I think it’s important you keep your ring and your game and your team. You still won the championship last year. You earned that ring. Be proud of it. Don’t let the stuff you love slip away.” He coughs again. “Listen to me, I’m like a public service announcement for how to not be a couch-surfing college dropout.”
“You need to stop talking about yourself like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re some loser. Because you’re not.” I clear my throat. Cough out the dust. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you my ring. You hold on to it until you’re ready to love Stanford again. Because I think, with a little time, you’ll love the stuff you loved again. We both will. And when that happens, I’ll take my ring back.”
“I like that. Holding on to your ring.”
“Okay. It’s done. That’s the plan.”
“I should give you something, too.”
“Great. You pick.”
He hums as he thinks. “How about my journal? That’s the thing I’d be most devastated to lose.”
I feel bad for almost rolling my eyes when I first saw Charlie and his journal. He didn’t deserve that. “I’ll protect it at all costs. And I won’t even crack it open if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s okay. You can read it and tell me if I’m any good.”
“Deal.”
“I’d shake hands on it but, you know. Rubble.”
“Your promise is good enough for me.”
The laundromat is dark. The sirens are echoes. The minutes are swirling. Charlie is quiet, lost in his guilt and his memories.
“What happened wasn’t your fault, Charlie.” I say it again because I believe it. And I want him to believe it, too.
PROMISES
When I turned up to my first day of club water polo at ten years old, I expected to find a team of girls like I’d met when I played soccer. It turned out the ten-and-under team was mixed, meaning boys and girls played on teams together. Besides me, there was only one other girl on my team: Mila.
Even at ten years old, the boys had already created a bro-club culture, and Mila and I were the odd girls out. When we went to tournaments, the boys traveled in a pack, while Mila and I hung together on the outskirts. No matter. We fought our way to earn starting positions. She played goalie. I played the field.
One day, as we warmed up before a game, the boys took shot after shot at the goal. Mila consistently blocked each attempt, proving every ounce of her All-America status.
“Watch Ruby,” Tanner said when it came my turn to shoot. “Bet she throws like a girl.”
“Duh. I am a girl.” I raised my arm, gripped the ball, and aimed at the right corner of the goal. My shot flew past Mila’s outstretched fingertips and into the net—the first goal of the day.
Mila glared at Tanner and yelled, “Yeah, Ruby throws like a girl all right. Too bad you don’t.”
Later, when we were sitting on the pool deck, drinking water and sharing a granola bar after the game, I asked Mila if she’d missed my shot on purpose.
She looked at me, her eyes nearly shiny with hurt. “Why would I do that?”
“Because the boys were being jerks. As usual.”
“They were, but you made the goal. I missed it. I promise.”
“Okay, good.”
“We’re the only girls here,” she said, handing me another bite of the granola bar. “We have to stick together.”
“I know.”
“We should come up with a secret handshake or something.” She tapped her fingertip to her chin, thinking. “How about something like this?” I followed along as she pinkie-promised our pinkies, made jazz hands, high-fived, led us into a legit handshake, and ended by pulling our hands apart and doing some weird thing of rubbing her fingertips together. “I’m sprinkling glitter,” she said as she danced her dangling fingers above the ground. “Because we can like glitter and kick butt at the same time.”
“I love glitter,” I said. “I wish I could put it on everything.”
“They should make glitter water polo balls.”
We agreed that would be the best.
We also agreed we would be the best at water polo and the best at being friends.
Too bad it didn’t last.
CHAPTER EIGHT
11:00 P.M.
My eyelids droop. Heavy. Like weights are pulling them down. I take a quick peek at my phone. Eleven o’clock at night. I attempt to dial my mom but get nothing. Again. Six hours of nothing.
On school nights, I’m usually finishing up homework and going to bed right now. On a typical Friday night, eleven o’clock would be my curfew. I’d just be getting home, putting on my pajamas, logging into Netflix, and firing off one last text to Leo. I’d crawl between the cool sheets of my bed and tuck the puffy purple comforter underneath my chin.
I want to be there.
I want to hear the sounds of my house falling asleep.
I want to hear the hum of late-night television through the wall to my mom’s room. Her faint laugh over a joke from the opening monologue.
I want the soft flicker of the night-light in the hallway.
I want to sink into my mattress.
I want to drift.
I want to dream.
But I’m stuck on this hard slice of cold ground in a darkness so dark it fills me with fear. My thoughts narrow to focus on different points of pain. My head. My arm. My right elbow screams loudest, the knot of it bruised from grinding into the ground like the mortar and pestle set my mom uses to smash garlic cloves. The skin is rubbed raw. The simple thought of the Minnie Mouse Band-Aids my mom used to put on my cuts when I was a kid makes me want to cry.
Charlie mumbles in the dark. His words a chant under his breath. The sound has kept me company for the last hour, the repetition somehow soothing. His words aren’t loud enough for me to decipher, so I let him keep his secrets. Maybe he’s processing what he told me. I want to tell him over and over again that what happened isn’t his fault. But I understand the way he needs to be quiet with himself right now.
There’s a slow build to a new spot of pain. Like it’s growing. Expanding. Pushing.
My bladder.
I have to pee. I have to pee so bad that my insides ache.
I can’t hold it any longer.
I close my eyes like it will somehow hide what I’m doing.
I’m about to pee my pants.
On purpose.
I want to make noise with my hands to drown out the sound of it, so I pat them against the sides of my legs.
And then I relax enough to go.
The relief is instant and makes me sigh. The way I’ve felt on long road trips after scanning the horizon for an exit and finally finding a bathroom. My pee is warm at first, almost hot against my body that’s gone so cold, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel good. Is it gross to think my pee feels like a warm bath? Yes. But then there’s the smell of urine mixing with the ground grime and I want to gag.