Freefall (3 page)

I paddled to the steps and pulled myself out.

“Hurry up! Unless you
want
to get busted?” Daniel yelled over his shoulder as he went for the gate.

I bolted after him. My socks and shoes were sloshing, my T-shirt and jeans were heavy and suctioned against my
skin, and my coordination was for shit. But I didn’t stop running until I’d caught up with Daniel at the edge of the woods. “What about the car?” I asked.

“I hate to break it to you, but you’re in no shape to drive and neither am I,” Daniel said. “We’ll get it tomorrow.”

I followed him into the woods to go the back way home. It was a forty-minute walk, and by the time it was over, I was covered with dirt after tripping my way down the hill, through bushes, over fallen trees and branches, and across the river in soaked clothes and shoes that wouldn’t stay tied.

What was it Flip-Flops had been saying about movies, pools, and getting pushed in? Because as far as I could tell, it sucked balls in real life.

6:34
A.M.

Three days later. It was the first morning of eleventh grade, and I was up at a sickeningly early hour. I had to make it to my meeting with Ms. Naylor in the guidance office at the start of zero period—and not a minute later—or else. Or else what, I didn’t know, but she’d sounded threatening when she’d called, like she just might kill me if I ditched one more appointment.

Still at home, I was that miserable kind of tired where my eyes ached when I tried to open them wider than slits. My head was like a roll of wet toilet paper, and I was running ragged. After more than two months straight of partying, I was getting sick of being sick, burned out on being burned out.

My shower didn’t do the job of waking me up, so I threw on jeans and a T-shirt and headed to the kitchen, where I
grabbed a Mountain Dew. Then I ripped open the last pack of strawberry Pop-Tarts and set them side by side in the toaster oven.

The front door screeched open and banged shut. Jared must have been out all night. Or Mom? But ten seconds later, it wasn’t my brother or my mother who came busting into the kitchen. It was Kendall.

Her bright red hair dye must have mostly washed out, because she was now sporting orangey blond, messy pigtails along with glittery makeup, huge hoop earrings, and a short red skirt.

“Good morning, lover!”

She said it in a cheery, offhand way, as if this was how we always started our days. I had no clue what she was up to or how she could pretend like everything was fine. Well, maybe for her everything
was
fine. It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d hooked up with one of Isaac’s friends.

Guilt hit me full force once again. Most definitely I’d kissed this girl.
Isaac’s
girl. I’d touched her. And everything else too. Everything.

“I already told you,” I said, “don’t call me lover.”

The corners of her lips turned up. She walked right over to me by the counter, grabbed the pop can from my hand, and took a sip. Standing this close, I could smell her lotion or perfume or whatever. It reminded me of how a bag of gummy bears has cherry, pineapple, and citrus flavors all mixed together. Not a sexy scent, but still kind of nice.

“This is quite a nutritious breakfast you’re having,” she said.

“Why are you here?”

She flipped one pigtail behind her shoulder. “Because I need to talk to you.”

She needed to talk to me. Not wanted.
Needed.
Never a good sign. My heart started knocking a little harder as I braced myself for whatever bad news she was bringing. “Is everything cool?”

Instead of answering, she kept on smirking and drinking up my soda. I hated it when she looked at me like that. It made me paranoid.

I tried again. “I mean, you don’t think you’re knocked up or anything, right?”

That
sounded pathetic, but I still couldn’t remember what went on with us that night. Not one single detail. And knowing more than I liked about my brother’s close calls with a few chicks over the years, I wanted nothing more than to keep from getting into a situation like that. Jared’s miserable drama had a lot to do with why I hadn’t tried taking any postgig or party hookups all the way.

Kendall reached over to run her fingers through my damp hair. We were about the same height—five-feet-nine—which made her tall for a girl and me short for a guy, I guess. I ducked back so she’d quit touching me.

“I thought we had an agreement,” she said. “You’re not allowed to talk about my menstrual cycle and I’m
not allowed to sleep in your bed after passionate lovemaking.”

Passionate lovemaking.
She actually said those words.

This was entirely too fucked-up. Kendall and I were tight when she still lived next door, but I never thought we’d be hooking up. In fact, I’d kind of made it a point over the years to be sure we
didn’t
. And that it happened like this only made it worse. We were both there that night, but she was the only one with memories of my first time. I mean, how sick is that?

“When did we make the agreement?” I asked. “Because all I remember is waking up, feeling like shit, and you calling me lover. And while I was trying to figure things out, you were telling me I’m an asshole and stomping—”

“How exactly do you expect a person to react when you say they’re an STD-ridden whore who wants to have your baby?” she interrupted.

“I never said that!”

“You implied it.” She crossed her arms over her chest, smiling like she was enjoying this. “Seth, you were a complete dick. Just admit you didn’t handle it well, beg for my forgiveness, and maybe we can move on.”

I shook my head. She was unbelievable. Sure, I’d freaked out a little, asked a bunch of questions about how the hell we could have done this, and stressed about whether we’d used protection. None of it seemed out of line to me, and now Kendall was twisting everything around. Like she always did.

“
I
didn’t handle it well?” I asked. “Hey, at least I wasn’t
screaming and throwing things—”

“What
things
? I threw your shirt only because you acted like it was oh-so-offensive that I was wearing it in the first place!”

I rubbed my temples. I had a Kendall-induced headache coming on.

“Look, I didn’t come here to talk about this,” she said, leaning against the counter. “I just need a favor from you.”

Of course she did. “Does the agreement we supposedly made include you not asking me for favors? If not, it should.”

“My car’s on the side of the road. I want you to take a look.”

The brand-new MINI Cooper her stepdad bought had crapped out already? “I can’t help you.”

“Don’t be a prick,” she said, sighing. “Seriously.”

“Sorry, but I
seriously
have to get to school in a few minutes.”

“Uh-huh. You really expect me to believe you’re taking a class during zero?”

Zero period at the start of the day—just like seventh period at the end of it—was set up for those overachievers who couldn’t get enough of learning during the regular hours we were trapped in school. As Kendall and everyone else knew, I’d sell my left nut before signing up for extra classes.

I didn’t get a chance to explain—not that I owed her an explanation anyway—because right then three of my senses
were hit at once: I smelled smoke, I heard the smoke alarm, and I saw orange flames all over my breakfast.

“Shit!” I said, yanking the toaster oven door open as the alarm practically blew out my eardrums.

I grabbed one of Mom’s cow-print dish towels and tried smacking at the fire, but it didn’t help. The flames got higher, and then the towel started burning too. While I was stamping
that
out against the linoleum, Kendall pulled something from the cupboard above the stove and pushed me out of the way to throw a handful of white powder. The flames in the toaster oven went out instantly. Magic.

She held up an orange box of baking soda and gave me a pointed look as she yelled over the alarm, “You realize that to keep that from happening you’re supposed to clean out the crumbs and melted cheese that fall under the rack, right?”

I stuck my fingers in my ears to block out the beeping and Kendall’s voice.

During the commotion, Mom had come out of her room in a satiny green robe. She stood in her doorway with her auburn-from-a-bottle hair a tangled mess, managing to look dead tired, confused, and annoyed all at once. “What’s going on?” she shouted over the racket while Kendall picked up the singed dish towel and started waving it toward the ceiling to redirect the smoke.

After about twenty torturous seconds, the noise stopped, but the smell lingered on.

“Sorry, Mom. It’s nothing,” I said.

“Right, nothing at all.” Kendall shook her head. “Your
son is just setting everything on fire out here.”

Mom had been pulled from sleep after probably only a few hours, but she still managed a small smile. Kendall was like the daughter or little sister she never had, and they were always doing girly things together like painting their nails and watching
Gilmore Girls
reruns. They just clicked for some reason, and even after Kendall’s mom got married and moved with Kendall and her sister from the trailer next door to some fancy place on the Hill two years ago, Kendall still kept coming around.

The two of them started gabbing about how much I suck at cooking while I pulled my blackened and white-powder-coated Pop-Tarts out and dumped them in the trash. The cow-shaped clock on the wall said zero period was starting soon. Which meant I needed to be out the door. So much for having breakfast.

I went over to Mom and bent to kiss her cheek. “I’m off to fix my schedule with guidance.”

“Oh, thank
God
,” she said, yawning. “Does this mean that woman will quit bothering me now?”

Mom’s always been kind of weird about school, and I’d had the feeling for a while that she wouldn’t care if I never went back. I wanted to keep going with it, though. I guess I didn’t want
this
to be the smartest I was ever going to get.

“Seth, do you mind if I carpool with you today?” Kendall asked.

I
did
mind, but I didn’t
want to say so and get Mom all over my case. “I’m out the door, so if you want a ride, it’s now or never.”

“I’m
so
ready, lover.”

“Then get in the car, enemy.”

Mom laughed. “Aren’t you two the cutest?”

6:42
A.M.

As I walked down our front steps, Kendall followed closely behind. “Would you believe I sometimes wish I still lived here?” she asked.

“Not for a minute.”

Riverside Trailer Park was the roughest part of Kenburn, and the cops were constantly busting our neighbors for drug deals and drunken brawls. The mobile homes were all rusty and at least thirty years old, and the carports were crooked and loaded up with old tires, soggy cardboard, and long-abandoned sinks. I wish I could’ve said our place looked better, but we had our own mess of broken TVs and other crap that no one ever dealt with. The longer it sat, the more it blended in, to the point where I hardly noticed.

“It’s true. Most of my best times were here,” Kendall said. “And anyway, I feel like an imposter on the Hill.”

“I wish I had your problems.” I scooted past the out-of-control rosebush. Naturally, that’s when a breeze kicked in and gave a thorny branch the push it needed to hook itself
into my skin. I pulled free. Blood ran down my arm. “Goddamnit,” I said.

I yanked open the driver’s-side door and tossed my bag in the backseat. But before I could get in, Kendall was standing next to me, making a face that looked like real concern. “I know how painful this is for you,” she said.

“It barely stings.”

“I’m talking about Isaac. About you finding him.”

I tensed up. Anytime I thought about the morning two months earlier when I’d found Isaac’s body, I wanted to puke. Which is exactly why I tried to
never
think about it.

Kendall touched the mini Magic 8 Ball dangling from the key ring on my belt loop. She knew it was Isaac’s. Everyone knew. It had been his good-luck charm for years and he never went anywhere without it—until the night he’d given it to me, saying I needed its advice more than he did. It was all a joke, really, and I would have given the stupid thing back to him the next day. If only he’d woken up.

Kendall went on. “I’m dealing with stuff too, but I’m really worried about
you
. I know you’re not okay. Everyone says you’ve been hiding and drinking all summer. I’ve wanted to talk to you since it happened, but during the few times that I’ve even seen you, I haven’t been able to figure out how.”

It was surprising how quickly she’d gone from obnoxious to caring. My annoyance melted a little. “I probably wouldn’t have wanted to talk, anyway.”

“Believe me, I know how you are.” She started rubbing my arm—the one that wasn’t bleeding—like it was a cat. “I just don’t want
to see you blaming yourself forever. You need to remember that Isaac made his own choices. It isn’t your fault he died.”

“I know,” I said.

But I was lying.

During the weeks since it happened, I’d filled my time with working at the car wash, playing bass, and getting wasted to keep from thinking, thinking, thinking about the last time I’d seen Isaac alive. The one thing I knew without a doubt was that I’d made a huge mistake that night, and I could never undo it.

“Isaac was a lot of things,” Kendall said. “Some good, some not so good. But more than anything, I think he was impulsive and reckless.”

I waited, figuring she’d take back her harsh words and offer up some funny story, like some people did when they mentioned Isaac these days. But she didn’t. She just kept petting and staring at me. And that’s when I realized she was going to leave it like that.

Isaac was impulsive and reckless
.

Kendall and Isaac’s relationship hadn’t been what anyone would call perfect or even decent, really. But what kind of girlfriend talks trash like
that
after a guy dies?