Blade, p.9
Blade, page 9
Another sniffle, another wad of toilet paper hitting the floor.
“And then we both just kept saying that, why, because, why, because—and she never gave me an answer.”
Jolene’s maternal instincts were suddenly piqued, because she stopped twisting her hair and said, “So you went for the Axel to show her how bad it was? How hard you’ve been falling?”
Then Kayla rolled her eyes. “But she’s never letting you leave. I don’t know why, but you have to stop obsessing about Bobby Stark. It’s just making things worse.”
They were all sick of hearing about Bobby, who’d been Indy’s coach since she was five years old and who believed in her not just like a coach, but “really believed in her” like no one else ever had. They’d seen him before at competitions. To Ana, he looked like a tired old man, especially next to Coach Emile.
Still—they’d seen something else tonight. The way Patrice had almost teleported herself into Indy’s body while she performed, and the way Dawn’s face had lit up a little when Indy fell, so hard the entire arena gasped. The whole situation was a rivalry dumpster fire that had been burning for decades, and now Indy was right in the middle.
The room went quiet.
Indy sniffled, loud as thunder. But then she said in her most quiet voice, “I don’t want to fall anymore.”
Ana, Jolene, and Kayla looked at each other, shaking heads and shrugging shoulders, and Indy blew her nose, sniffled, blew again, until finally, the lock slid open, then the door.
She stood there in her bra and underwear, lean muscle head to toe, one hand braced against the wall. The other holding down the top of her underwear, exposing her right hip—and a giant plum-colored bruise—and stunning them into a collective silence.
It ran from her waistline all the way down her thigh to just above the knee, with shades of red, yellow, purple. Some spots appeared to be popping out, protruding from beneath the skin like they wanted to explode.
“Holy shit, Indy,” Kayla said, as Jolene reached out to touch it.
“What do I do?” Indy asked.
Ana stared at her best friend, at her bruise, and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before.
Jolene and Kayla shifted into their roles, performing their duties. Jolene wrapped her arms around Indy and let her bury her face in her neck.
Then Kayla pulled the flask of Jack Daniel’s from her purse. Only this time, she didn’t take a swig herself, but handed it to Indy, who shrugged, not sure whether to drink or not drink from Kayla’s flask, but the indecision stopped her crying.
“Going once . . .” Kayla said, waving the flask between them. She’d started to pull it away when Indy reached out and grabbed it with both hands.
Without a single beat she opened her mouth and tilted it back, wrapping her lips around the metal rim as she took a drink.
“God!” she blurted out, her face twisted and her throat gagging. But she swallowed it, only to have Kayla tell her to take another.
“Trust me,” she said. “Just take one more.”
Which Indy did, and then her face grew curious, and then she took a third sip, this time prepared and determined.
“It’ll kill the pain,” Jolene said.
“Which one?” Indy asked with a devilish smile. “The bruise—or my mother?”
Indy held on to the flask, drinking until she got a good buzz, while they spun plans and solutions to the problem of the bruise. They had no idea what to do about Patrice, who hadn’t even bothered to chase Indy down. Hadn’t come here to look for her. Apparently, she was more mad than worried.
Ice packs, heating pads, ACE bandages? What would help heal a bruise? A bruise that kept getting injured every day. Suddenly, Jolene knew.
“Wait!” she said. “Hugo told me about something he did back home. Something he used on a bad bruise.” Hugo—the Spanish skater who had a crush on Jolene and was bringing the booze to the field tonight for the underage skaters. Not exactly a reliable source for medical advice.
“He’s there—with the other guys from Avery!” Jolene continued, making her case for leaving now, for the field, because everything could be solved, satisfied, relieved—at the field.
And this was enough. This and the Jack Daniel’s were enough to get Indy into a pair of loose shorts and a T-shirt. Sandals and even some lipstick and then down the stairs and out the front door.
Jolene drove. Kayla sat beside her in the front, Indy and Ana in the back. The top was down, the wind drowning out Jolene’s singing until they were stopped at a light, and again until another light, and then a final time when they reached the field.
It was total chaos, cars everywhere like in a parking lot where someone forgot to paint the lines. Music blasted from a speaker propped up in the trunk of a hatchback. It was so loud the bass notes shook the ground. One giant party on the last Saturday before the start of school.
They found a spot between a black windowless van and a silver sedan. Everyone could see them with the top down. IndyAna with cans of soda they’d sneaked out of the kitchen at Avery Hall. Kayla with her Jack Daniel’s. Jolene lit a cigarette.
The passenger door to the black van opened, and a wiry boy hopped out, his jeans falling from his narrow hips. He pulled them up, tucked in his T-shirt.
The driver’s side door opened next. Another boy. Then the double back doors, two more boys.
It was dark, well past nine. And dark in Echo was dark, even with all the parked cars, and the headlights of a gray pickup behind them. Even with the overhead lights shining from inside the van.
And in that darkness, the boys were just shapes in jeans and T-shirts. Still, they were boys, and Ana felt her brain out of sync, like she, too, had taken three swigs of Jack Daniel’s and her emotions were now drunk, not doing their job.
The show was over. Indy’s bruise crisis was over, for now, because Jolene had convinced her that they could make it better. The getting-ready part was over, the drive with the singing and wind in their hair—also over. It was time for this—boys getting out of vans in the dark—and where were the emotions this required?
Ana tried to analyze the boys like a science project, because the thinking part of her brain never failed her.
The tall wiry one. The sporty one. The two from the back, somewhere in between. Short hair. Long hair. Straight, wavy. One wore a jean jacket.
Then Jolene, with a different, more astute observation, said, “There’s four of them . . . and there’s four of us.”
“Cool,” Kayla said, taking another swig of Jack Daniel’s.
Indy leaned over, her eyes still red and swollen from crying, her breath smelling of alcohol and her face relaxed. “I need to find Hugo,” she whispered, as if she hadn’t noticed the four boys and what was about to happen.
Which then did happen when Jolene opened her door, and then Kayla opened hers, and the wiry boy from the passenger side said, “Want to party?”
They were around them in a second, Wavy Hair by Indy’s door, Wiry by hers. Jean Jacket went to the front to meet up with Jolene, and Sporty went straight for Kayla. As if they’d decided all of this beforehand.
And there they were, at last, Ana’s emotions catching up to the facts. Excitement. Check. Curiosity. Check. Anticipatory humiliation. Check. Fear. Check. Check.
“We’ve got some cool shit inside . . .” Sporty said.
Jolene liked the sound of that. “Really?” she said. “Like what?”
Kayla walked to the back of the van, and then Jolene followed. “Come on!” they shouted in unison.
Indy looked at Ana and shrugged. Like she was silently saying it’ll be okay if we stay together, and also like maybe it will be fun. But Indy was a little drunk, and away from The Palace and Patrice and Dawn, so there was no telling what part of Indy she was seeing, and if she’d ever seen it before.
Excitement and curiosity won the battle of emotions, and both girls climbed out of the back seat.
The inside of the van was set up with beanbag chairs and a shag rug and two enormous speakers. Wiry put on Led Zeppelin, and Kayla shook her head and whispered louder than she realized. “I think we’ve been transported to the seventies.”
“Shhh!” Jolene gave her a shoulder bump.
But Kayla didn’t shush. “We’re a decade off with the shirts,” she said. “We should have gone with some bell-bottoms. And clogs maybe.”
Jolene ignored her, plopping down in the red beanbag. And when Jean Jacket plopped down next to her, Jolene’s smile was so big Ana thought it might devour her whole face. Because this was happening. Boys were happening.
“What do you think?” Sporty asked, his face beaming with pride at the party room they’d created in their motor vehicle. He sat on the floor, cross-legged, and Kayla sat next to him. Ana watched Kayla’s face change, slightly, the way Indy’s had. Her disdain for life taking on more feminine attributes. What was that look, Ana wondered? Pouty—that was it. Kayla, of all people, looking pouty.
This was going to be trouble.
Jolene asked Sporty, “What do you have to drink?”
And there they were. Kayla and Sporty, now sitting side by side on the shag rug that lined the floor of the van. Jolene and Jean Jacket on the beanbags. That left Ana and Indy, trying to stand, their heads brushing the roof, next to Wiry and Wavy Hair, waiting for someone to decide what would happen next.
And then, like gusts of wind:
“Wanna score some weed?” And Kayla was gone.
“Wanna go for a walk?” Then Jolene was gone.
“Be good!” she said, winking at Ana.
Indy was next, hopping out right behind Wavy Hair, telling him she wanted to find their friend from Avery Hall, the Spanish skater named Hugo.
“You’re skaters?” Wavy Hair asked. And then, “Cool,” and then they were gone.
Leaving Ana alone in the van with Wiry, and all of her emotions, excitement and curiosity still in the lead. Fear coming in next, but the other one—the anticipatory humiliation—was right behind it. Saying things to her like don’t do anything stupid, and by stupid it meant things that would expose her ignorance, her inexperience, her age.
Because tonight she was not a skater. She was not an Orphan with a sick mother. She was not lying on the ice waiting for Dawn to slice her neck, turn her into a zombie.
Not being any of those things felt like a giant stone had been lifted off her chest.
And then, before she could hear the rest of the chaos going on inside her own head, Wiry moved closer, grabbed her wrist with his bony fingers, and pulled her onto the beanbag left vacant by Jolene and Jean Jacket.
Then, “Want a beer?”
Then, “What’s your name?”
Then, as if by magic, the opening bars of “Stairway to Heaven.”
And the sound of metal on metal as he closed the doors.
Chapter Twelve
Ana
Now
Downstairs, I find Westin gone and Artis waiting for me by the door. He’s slipped on his boots and tucked the pant legs of his suit inside them. The fake fur on the collar of his parka frames his face. The rest of it seems to swallow him whole.
“Did you see Grace upstairs?” Artis asks.
I shake my head. “Let’s just go.”
The dark clouds are here now, along with the wind that tears right through my coat and sweater, to my skin and into my bones as I walk from the front door to the parking lot.
I shiver as I climb into Artis’s SUV.
“You got soft in New York,” he says with a smile.
We take the long way to Avery Hall so we can drive by the field. The scene of the crime. I want to look at the layout again, the proximity to the dorm and The Palace. And, also, the highway that runs along the other side.
With the town hunkered down for the storm, the roads are deserted.
“Does Shannon know we’re coming?” I ask Artis.
“Yeah,” he says. “She remembered you right away. You skated here at the same time.”
My entire body recoils—not at the thought of Shannon, but at her mother and the other bleacher bees who tormented us. I remember how they would sit in the stands above the snack bar. The lessons I had to learn about them. How their words turned to knives. How they were always looking for ways to hurt us, undermine us, come between us. Anything that would weaken us so their daughters would have an advantage, especially over Indy.
“A lot of skaters are still here,” he adds. “It’s a cool town.”
I nod, thinking it has nothing to do with Echo. They couldn’t let go of this world and now cling to it for dear life. But what do I know? Maybe they’re happy here, hiking and fly-fishing.
Artis turns off the engine. “Looks like they’ve removed the police tape,” he says, pointing to the field. “The body was found just beyond the tree line.”
I let myself see it now. Really see it, the way it was. The field. The cheap beer in plastic cups, spilling on my hands. Wiping them on my jeans, or the dead weeds. Pot smoke. Fires burning. Music playing. Cars and kids. Finding a place to pee behind a tree, girls laughing, standing guard on wobbly legs.
“What goes on here now?” I ask.
Artis shrugs. “Same as before—small-scale stuff. Kids coming to score, drink, make out in cars. There’s still that truck stop about a quarter mile up the highway, so we get some riffraff from that.”
“Is that a possibility, then?” I ask, wondering. “That Emile was killed by a stranger—a trucker maybe—or maybe he was involved in something, like drugs?”
“That doesn’t explain the blood on her skate. And I’d bet good money Grace came here to party like we did, which means she knew her way around.”
His smile fades as he looks from me to the window, out to the field.
“But why would she come here with Emile? In the middle of winter?”
This doesn’t make sense to me.
A gust of wind rocks the car as Artis turns the ignition. “We should get moving,” he says, making a U-turn to head back to the access road.
The car moves, and the field disappears, and I look ahead to the storm clouds and the deserted road.
Artis draws a long breath and holds it, like he’s not sure how to say something.
“Westin’s kinda odd, right? Or is it just me?”
I don’t know how much to tell Artis about Westin. I remember Grace with her finger to her lips. The whisper, shhhh. Why she didn’t want me to answer his question about her mother. And why Westin brought up the conference in Aspen.
“Did you know about his name being on the new edition of Dawn’s book? His whole life is tied up in this.”
“When you say this, do you mean Dawn?”
“Dawn, The Palace, the training,” I say, pondering the possibilities. “The point is, Westin has an interest in protecting the program. And that could be at odds with helping Grace.”
“You think Westin is involved somehow?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
I can tell he doesn’t agree. “I think anything that hurts The Palace hurts him, and I don’t see a way around it. If Grace knows something about the murder that implicates another skater or parent—or even something about Emile—that would damage the program.”
Artis sighs. “Look—that applies to pretty much everyone in this town. It wouldn’t survive without the skating center. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here,” he says.
“Okay, then,” I say. “That’s our first line of defense—Grace is being framed. And it could be anyone—even a stranger. That will buy us time.”
“And if the evidence keeps pointing her way?”
I shrug. “You’ve read my cases. You know how I operate.”
I see the skepticism on his face. I’ve seen it before. Not everyone believes in trauma psychology. “You disagree with the defenses I use?” I ask him.
“Nope,” he says. “Look—I’ll argue whatever the fuck I can to get my client off. Even the guilty ones.”
At the first stop sign, Artis makes a right-hand turn, then drives past The Palace—too fast for my mind to orient itself, to linger. Next, we’re at the short driveway that leads to the rectangular beige building.
I can hear my mother’s words now, something about the landscaping and dormers. She didn’t want to leave me in a place that looked like this. A beige box. An older woman in an apron, too tired to climb the stairs. And the other Orphans luring me away and down the hall. Pulling me into their fold. The family that would replace her, and my father and brother. Stand-ins that would have to do because she didn’t want me to see her illness progress. Or the side effects of the treatments.
Artis turns into the empty driveway and parks the car. He gets out like this is nothing, to him or to me. Like these memories aren’t quicksand.
I follow him silently, up the stone steps with the metal rail, to the front door. It’s open, and he walks right in, with me close behind.
It’s the smell that gets me first, drags me back in time. I can’t pin it exactly. Industrial cleaning products. The distinct must old houses take on and can’t shake. The decor has changed. Beige paint on the walls, and wood floors replacing flowered wallpaper and pale linoleum. But the smell lives deeper than that. Too deep to be stripped away by the redecorating or the Christmas tree in the TV room, still flickering with colored lights and ornaments.
Artis keeps moving to the door on the right. The apartment where Edie used to live, which is now inhabited by Shannon Finch.
He appears steeped in anticipation as he knocks, his parka rising and falling with his breath. And I fight to catch mine. Everywhere, I see the ghosts. Kayla. Jolene. Indy. Mio. Dressed in leggings and sneakers, hair pulled into ponytails and buns. And back up the stairs at the end of the hallway, to my room on the left, and the Orphans at the end. And the bathroom across the hall—which brings a smile as I remember caking on makeup, Kayla with her Jack Daniel’s, teasing us. But then other things creep from my mind, where they’ve been hiding, and I stop before I sink deeper.
