Butter (19 page)

Trent answered by slowly unfolding the list and reading aloud. “Number two: take a plunge into the Salt River.”

“No way.”

“Why not?” Parker asked. “You'll only be cold for a second.”

“It's not the temperature of the water I'm worried about.”

I wasn't worried about the current or the height either; it was only about thirty feet. I was most concerned about the cliff itself—equally famous for being such a popular spot to dive into the Salt River and for the number of people who died every summer doing just that. Most people cleared the cliffs and, at worst, broke an ankle hitting bottom when the water was too shallow.

But at least two or three times every year, some drunk idiots
would take the leap too close to the cliff and hit the huge sharp rocks that jutted out from its face. If they were lucky, they hit their head on those rocks and died instantly. The less fortunate hit the rocks some other way and cartwheeled down the rest of the cliff until they landed headfirst in the water and either broke their necks or drowned.

People who jumped these cliffs had a death wish.

But then again
, I reminded myself,
so do I.

I was starting to see the theme of Trent's bucket list: deathdefying stunts for the guy who wasn't afraid to die. Well, if he and Parker wanted to ride this ride with me, they'd have to commit a hundred percent.

“I'll jump if you'll jump,” I told them.

“Nah.” Parker waved a hand. “I've jumped the cliff a hundred times, and I don't feel like getting wet.”

“Besides, Butter,” Trent added, “this is
your
bucket list.”

I wanted to say it felt more like
his
list, but I bit my tongue because, the truth was, I was reconsidering. Maybe I did want to jump. I wanted to know what it felt like to fly through the air, to prove you don't have to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds to do it and—most of all—I wanted to impress Parker and Trent. They believed I was fearless in the face of death, and that faith was what kept me in their circle.

I took a breath and stepped to the edge. I turned to salute Trent. “Cross it off the list,” I said. Then I bent at the knees, pushed as hard as I could, and jumped
backward
off the cliff.

Man, I thought driving fast felt like flying, but this was something else. Wind rushed up my face as I dropped toward
the water, holding my eyelids open and massaging my skin. Colors raced across my vision—all reds and browns and flecks of white—the side of the cliff sailing by. I could have fallen forever, but the sensation was over much too soon. I plugged my nose as I hit the water and felt the bottom rush up too quickly. My legs ached from the landing, but I managed to keep from inhaling at the shock of sudden impact.

I didn't even feel the freeze until my head broke the surface. Icy water tried to pull me downstream, but it wasn't strong enough to move my bulk and ended up flowing around me, just like it did all the other steady boulders in the river. I trudged against the current and collapsed on the shore. I heard rocks tripping down the backside of the cliff as Trent and Jeremy ran to the waterline to meet me.

“Butter, you all right?”

“Butter, that was awesome!”

“Shut up. He's hurt or something.”

I felt a sneaker nudge my side and rolled over with effort, a grin spread across my face. “That … was excellent.”

Parker whooped and did a weird spinning leap. “You nailed it! And backward too!”

Trent held out a hand to help me to my feet. “Legendary,” he agreed.

The hike back up to the car was steeper than the first climb, but Parker and Trent were too distracted—whispering over the list—to notice me falling behind and clutching my chest. When I finally caught up to them at the top of the hill, they looked up from the paper and folded their arms in unison.

“We've made a decision,” Trent said. “Nothing else we planned today can top that, so we're calling your list complete.”

“We're done?” I was disappointed.

“Almost.” Parker winked.

Trent consulted the list one last time. “We're calling it complete
after
you cross off one final item—the very last one. And this really is on your bucket list.”

I searched my brain, but all I found was water between the ears and the dull pain of a headache coming on.

“I give up,” I said.

Trent smirked and handed me the paper. I scanned the list—bungee jump, catch and kill a rattlesnake, eat a live bug—until I found the last entry. Number twelve: get to second base with Anna McGinn.

I looked up and rolled my eyes. “Right. Like I wouldn't have done that already if I could.”

“You can,” Parker said.

“Dude, I can't even get to
first
base with Anna. How am I supposed to get to second? And how am I supposed to get that done in a
day
?” I moved toward the car, pulling my keys out of my soggy pocket and testing the remote. The doors unlocked; it still worked. I was glad I'd left my cell phone in the car; that would have drowned for sure. Trent and Parker followed me into the Beemer.

“It's not really second base,” Trent said. “It's just that you said you wanted to touch her boobs, and we promised to help.”

“This,” I balled up the paper and tossed it to Trent in the backseat, “is not helping. Unless you have some suggestions on
how to go about it.” I looked hopefully at Trent in the rearview mirror. He just laughed. I turned to Parker, who held up his hands.

“Hey, you think if I knew the secret to getting my hands on a girl's chest I'd be hanging out with two dudes in the middle of the desert?”

“Fair point,” I said, starting the car.

The guys agreed to let the last bucket list item go for now, but they spent the entire ride back to Scottsdale plotting how to make it happen by New Year's. They were still talking about the holiday when I dropped them off at Parker's Corvette.

He leaned into the passenger-side window. “And hey, don't forget about my party. If we can't make it happen with Anna before then, we'll do it on New Year's Eve.”

Trent's head replaced Parker's in the window. “Yeah, Butter, you're coming, right? Y'know … before?”

Before.

That tiny little tag—that almost afterthought by Trent was a powerful reminder that my invitation hinged on a fatal promise. Any shred of hope I had that Anna was right—that none of them really expected me to go through with my last meal—disappeared with that single word:
before.

I plastered a smile on my face. “Sure, I'll be there.”

Then I peeled out of the parking lot before they could see the tears.

Turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade cranberry sauce with orange slices, cookies and casseroles and breads and pies. Our Christmas spread would have fed an army—or, once upon a time, me and Uncle Luis. This year, though, Uncle Luis was on his own, with a little help from Dad and Aunt Cindy. Mom and I only nibbled. After spending days in the kitchen cooking, Mom was never hungry for holiday meals. As for me, I just wasn't hungry anymore, period.

In fact, watching Uncle Luis eat, I felt a little of what Dad must have felt every morning for years, watching me pack it away long after he was full—nauseated. Uncle Luis spilled over the sides of one of Mom's designer dining room chairs, and one roll from his middle section folded ever so slightly onto the top of the table. It was clear we shared DNA, but his girth was
still nothing compared to mine. I wondered what had kept him from hitting that point of no return that I had crossed so long ago.

Maybe it was Grandma and Grandpa. I didn't remember them very well, but Mom always said they pushed their kids into sports. They obviously pushed even harder than Dad. Uncle Luis played varsity football three out of four years in high school. That's how he met Aunt Cindy, a classic linebacker-falls-for-the-cheerleader love story. Maybe having someone thin and pretty was motivation enough to keep Uncle Luis from binge eating and getting lazy after graduation. Although he had clearly embraced beer in college and never let it go. So his weight stayed pretty steadily just shy of three hundred pounds.

Maybe it was the Christmas spirits—and by spirits I mean too much eggnog and brandy—but Mom gave me a pass and didn't nag me once about not finishing my plate. She saved the nagging for later, when all the presents were unwrapped, desserts devoured, and daylight gone.

“Baby, play us some Christmas carols.” She was on the living room couch, her feet curled underneath her and her hands curled around a glass of cream-colored alcohol.

“Nah, I'm tired, Ma.”

“That's the turkey talking,” Uncle Luis said.

Aunt Cindy disagreed. “He barely ate. He's just being shy.” She smiled her toothy cheerleader smile at me. “Come on, play us a little something.”

I sighed and trudged upstairs to retrieve my sax, trying to recall the notes to “Jingle Bells” or some other annoying song
that would have them begging me to stop. Unfortunately, the only songs I knew by heart were the kind that made moms and aunts melt and ask for more. I started with “Oh, Holy Night” and didn't falter, even when Dad chugged the last of his drink and used his empty glass as an excuse to leave the room.

Mom listened to every song with her eyes closed and her hand on her heart, humming along. Aunt Cindy convinced Uncle Luis to slow dance with her next to the Christmas tree. He picked her right up off her feet and held her there, floating above the floor, with his strong arms. My own arms ached from holding the saxophone, and by the third song I had to sit and rest.

My aunt and uncle applauded, and Mom pressed a thin hand to my arm in thanks. Dad had never returned to the living room. Was it too much to ask for him to suffer through a couple songs?

Anger turned my stomach. I wanted it to be enough that the rest of my family enjoyed my playing, that 75 percent of my audience was satisfied, but all I could focus on was that 25 percent that left. I imagined standing on a stage in front of a bar packed with people, and a quarter of them walking out the moment I began to play. No musician could ignore that, and I couldn't imagine what compelled the Professor and others to take that risk, to suffer that kind of rejection on their way to success. Living the dream couldn't possibly be worth the humiliation they had to endure to get there.

I digested the anger and felt it transform into an ugly but familiar feeling—hunger pangs. I was craving a piece of Mom's
sweet potato pie. I left my sax on the couch and followed my stomach to the kitchen. One step through the doorway I was startled by a tall figure immediately to my left. Dad was leaning against the wall staring into his glass, still empty in his hand. He jumped when I stepped into the kitchen, looking just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“I—um—” He cleared his throat and looked down again.

“Were you listening?” I asked.

His eyes darted around, and he mumbled something about never being able to find anything in “this damn kitchen.”

Then he hollered a little too loudly into the living room. “Honey, where the hell is the brandy? I'm going dry here.”

Mom laughed all the way into the kitchen, teasing Dad that he wouldn't be able to find a whale in a pond. My aunt and uncle and the holiday spirit all followed Mom into the room, filling it up with so much festivity there was no room for the tension that had been there a moment earlier. Uncle Luis kept us laughing the rest of the night with stories from his drug-hazed college days, and Mom's postdinner snacks put sleepy smiles on everyone's faces.

If only we could have captured those few precious hours and stretched them out until New Year's Eve. Instead, the peace was shattered the very next day.

• • •

Really, I blame Mom. She should have known better than to drag me to the mall the day after Christmas. I couldn't stand walking the mall
any
day, let alone the one day a year when it
was impossible for me not to knock into people and when gift-return lines were so long my legs went numb from standing in them.

I had deftly avoided the big-and-tall sections of the department stores, where Mom liked to put me through the ritual humiliation of holding sweater after sweater up against my massive frame. Once, she'd made me get a tuxedo to attend some big formal gala thrown by Dad's company. She had spent over a thousand dollars on a specially made tux, and at the end of the day, I still looked like an orca. I distracted her from adding to my wardrobe by pointing out sales in the purse and perfume departments.

But I couldn't escape the lines. We were in the third gift-return line of the day when Mom started making small talk about school. First it was just more nosy questions about who I'd been spending all my time with and whether I had put off my schoolwork the way I'd put off my saxophone. Then she got to the point.

“Well, I just don't think Scottsdale High is challenging you. You'll be much happier next year in private school.”

“Private school?” I was only half listening. My calves ached, and I had to concentrate on shifting my weight back and forth to keep the pain from spreading up my legs.

“Yes, the Barker Institute, remember?”

I stopped shifting. “I remember saying I didn't want to go.”

“No, no, you said you'd consider it.”

“Yeah, and apparently to you that means it's a done deal.” I could hear my voice getting louder. “Well, I considered it and decided I'm not interested.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't want to start over at a new school my senior year; because I'm not a zombie who takes orders first and asks questions later; because I don't want to bump into Tucker in the hallway—”

“Tucker from camp? He's going to BI? That's wonderful! You'll already have a friend.”