Fade to Black (5 page)

“I don’t hate her,” I say. “I figured if her brother’s hurt, they’re probably at the hospital, so she won’t be home.”

“Is he in the hospital?” Another sniff. “How do you know?”

Mom gives me another shut up look, and I shrug.

“I don’t know. I’m going to do my homework. I can help you, maybe.”

“Like you’re so smart.” My sister’s in gifted and won’t let anyone forget it.

“I think I can handle fourth-grade work,” I say.

“You can call her after dinner,” Mom chimes in.

Melody wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

“A-all right,” she says.

Mom sends her in to blow her nose. “And wash your hands too,” she yells after her.

When the water starts running, Mom faces me.

“Now are you going to tell me where you were this morning?”

Jeez! She knows I was out
.

“No. You just have to believe I wouldn’t do what they’re saying.”

Monday, 2:30 p.m., bus home from school

DARIA

One time
,

I was on my bench at lunch
,

listening to my most favorite CD

which is

Pink
.

Kids say NO ONE

listens to Pink

anymore
.

But I do
.

I like her
.

I was dancing

a little
,

to “I’m Coming Out,”

and Alex Crusan

was there
.

He said
,

“You like Pink?”

“Yeah,” I said
,

“her hair.”

“Me too,”

he said
,

“she’s not afraid

to be different.”

Then he said
,

“Would you ever

dye your hair

pink?”

And I laughed

and couldn’t

even stop

laughing
.

All the days

after
,

he said hi

just hi

and I

liked him
.

Mama worried that

I liked Alex Crusan
.

She thinks

I am a baby
.

She asked Mrs. Taub
,

my counselor
,

was it okay
,

okay, me liking Alex Crusan?

I felt

stupid
.

But Mrs. Taub said yes!

Mama said

I can like him

but not go

to his house
.

“Don’t bother him, Dari.”

Mama would be mad
.

But last night
,

I went
.

I didn’t do anything
,

anything wrong
,

just looked

at his house

in the dark
.

Then

I saw him
.

Not Alex, the other boy
,

the fat, mean boy
.

He threw a rock
.

I wanted to tell

but

I

didn’t

tell

anyone

about

that

rock
.

Monday, 2:30 p.m., Memorial Hospital

ALEX

Now that they stopped the medication, my head’s clear. Unfortunately, that only helps me remember what happened this morning—in real time and surround sound.

Old Mr. Khan at the donut shop says he could set his watch by me. He opens at six Mondays, and that’s when I get there. I have to go early to make it before school. Other mornings I work out with weights in the garage. Just because you’re terminal doesn’t mean you can’t be buff. I’m getting better about mornings. When I was first diagnosed, I could barely get out of bed some days. Like, what’s the point? That’s what I thought. Now I make myself. But I still don’t use a seat belt when I drive—what’s the point when you’re going to die anyway?

This morning I left the house around ten of, maybe even a couple minutes earlier because I was so worried about Mom coming down on me. I saw that girl, Daria, this Down Syndrome girl who lives on East Main, about a block from our house. She’s always there Mondays when I go by. Maybe she’s there other days too, or maybe she’s waiting for me. I think she has a crush on me. I talk to her at school sometimes, just say hi, like whatever. No one else does, really. They let the disabled kids (
differently abled
they said in Miami, like the word made a difference, like it changed who they were) go to the regular schools—
mainstreaming
, they call it. It’s supposed to make them fit in the real world. It seems like a bad idea to me if people are going to be mean to them. And they are. They’re mean just like they are to me, call her retard or, at best, ignore her. I don’t know if she notices—if she’s smart enough to notice—but I think she does. First time I said hi to Daria, it was at lunch, and she was listening to music on her headphones, dancing in her seat. Everyone around was staring like she was from Mars, when she was only having a good time. So I walked up to her and said hey. Talked to her. And she looked like I was Ed McMahon with one of those big Publishers Clearinghouse checks. Since then I always say hi to her. I feel good seeing her smile.

None of which makes me a saint or anything, and I was probably worse before. But things look a lot different when you’re seeing it from the other side.

Anyway, today Daria was out there, hiding in the trees like she does. It was barely light out, so I could just make her out in my rearview. While I was at the stoplight, I saw her. I was almost thinking about opening the window and asking her if she wanted me to bring her back a donut, just to be nice.

That was when I saw the guy.

He was on the other side of the car, in my right side mirror. He had on a Pinedale letter jacket. He was in the bushes, waiting too. I couldn’t see him well.

What I noticed was the baseball bat. Now in Miami, you might carry a stick or something out walking in case a dog attacked you. But probably not a bat. And with the rednecks around here, dogs are practically like their children, so you definitely wouldn’t, so it was weird.

But before I even had time to
process
that, I heard the crash. Like an explosion all around me. Then another. I looked up at the spiders covering the windshield. Then, it was like slow motion, something—glass—falling around me. It cut my cheek, then my hand, and I didn’t know where to go, so I sat there. Frozen. Staring at the glass, the light, the colors, almost like it was pretty. Then I was down on the seat, trying to get out of the way. I could feel the wind in my face, hear the whiff of the bat, then more crashing all around me, and there was nowhere I could go.

The smashing stopped a second, and it dawned on me: I have my foot on the brake. I can drive. Even if I hit something, who cares?

I was still down on the floor, but I stomped the gas and drove away. I must’ve driven a quarter mile, not even seeing where I was. Then I managed to sit up, and I drove to Dunkin’ Donuts. I was bleeding pretty bad, and I couldn’t touch anything without getting hurt worse. Glass was everywhere, hanging from the broken window and on the steering wheel. But I stumbled up to the store and said, “Please,” before I collapsed. I guess Mr. Khan called an ambulance. My mom said he called them, too, so he must have gone through my pockets and found my last name. I don’t think anyone from school would have done as much for me.

The worst thing about this is, it’s like the beginning of the end. Whether we stay here or move back to Miami, my parents are scared now. They’re right to be, but now I’ll be even more of a prisoner. They’ll let me do less and less from now on.

I hear someone at the door, probably Mom, and pull my pillow over my face to pretend I’m sleeping again. I don’t want to talk about moving or how crummy everything is. Or God. It only makes me feel worse.

But from my vantage point under the pillow, I can see it’s not Mom. It’s Jennifer.

Monday, 2:35 p.m., Cole residence

CLINTON

“Look, I said I didn’t do it,” I tell Mom again.

We’re still in the front hall. I’m talking real soft so Melody doesn’t hear us from the bathroom.

“You’re making it very hard for me to believe that, Clinton. I know you weren’t in bed this morning.”

“But you do believe me about Alex. Don’t you?” I hear begging in my voice.

Hers, too. “I want to. I want to believe that no son of mine would do something so cruel to a boy unfortunate enough to have this disease. I want to believe it, Clinton.”

“Then believe me.” I feel like screaming it.
Believe me!

“I’m trying. There was a witness who says she saw you.”

“What witness?” I didn’t see anyone when I was out this morning.

“A girl. Daria something.”

“I don’t know any Daria.” Then I remember and laugh. “She’s a retard, a dummy.”

“Please don’t use those words, Clinton.”

“But…” Then I decide not to argue. Why get her madder at me than she already is? “Sorry.”

Mom sighs. “It would be easier for me if you’d tell me where you were this morning. Otherwise, I have to assume—”

“I can’t,” I say. Telling her where I was will make her feel bad.

She starts to say something else, but the phone rings and she goes to get it. I watch her, feeling like I’m up a creek and a gator ate my paddle.

Thing about my mother is, even though we don’t always agree on things, she stands by me. Like today, with those cops. Or when I was little. Like I said, I was never long on friends as a kid—not like now. Once, in fourth grade, I got beat up by this kid, Tyler Grendi. My parents really got into it then. Mom wanted to call Tyler’s parents and the school. Dad told her she was making me a mama’s boy and what I really needed was karate lessons. They argued for hours. I guess both of them lost, ’cause Mom never called the school. I never got karate lessons either (though Dad did give me a talk about setting my feet when I threw a punch. He even let me hit him some and pretended it hurt). But at the end of the day, it was Mom who came to my room and said things would get better.

And it was Mom who got custody of us when they split up. Dad said the courts always give custody to the mother anyway. He didn’t have money to fight her about it. But, thing is, he didn’t even try.

I hear Mom in the kitchen, winding up her conversation. She’ll be back here any second, and I can’t face her. It feels bad, having her think I could do something like that. Yeah, maybe I’m harsh on people, like Crusan or that Daria girl. But I’m only being honest. Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? That doesn’t mean I’d hurt someone like that. Like, doesn’t she know me any better? I want her on my side, like she always used to be. But I can’t have that if I don’t tell her where I was this morning. And I don’t want her to know. I was at the Gas-n-Sip, calling Dad on the pay phone there. I didn’t tell Mom because she’s real mad at Dad about the child support thing. So it would sound like I was going behind her back, which I kind of was, or taking his side, which I was not. Best thing I can do, probably, is avoid her completely by helping Mel with her homework.

I hear the phone in the kitchen go click on the receiver thing, and I head for the stairs as fast as I can without running.

Melody’s homework is pretty hard. She may only be in fourth grade, but she’s in all these brainiac classes. It’s social studies, which should be simple. I mean, you just flip to the questions at the end of the chapter, then flip back, looking for the answer in the reading. And it’s not like I haven’t learned about Benjamin Franklin five hundred times already. But today I can’t look at anything long without getting all frustrated. Soon it’s like she’s showing me how to do ’em instead of the other way around.

“I guess I don’t remember this easy junk as much as I thought,” I say.

And I’m glad when she says, “It’s okay. I’ll do it myself.”

But I’m less glad, a few minutes later, when she puts her pencil down completely and says, “Clinton, do you know what happened to Carolina’s brother?”

I look at my trig book. I’m not sure what the assignment was, exactly, since I wasn’t in class. But Mr. David usually assigns the page after the one we just did. So I figure I’ll do that one.

“Clinton?”

“I think someone smashed his car window.”

“But he’s in the hospital. They had to do something else.”

“Well…” I pretend I’m figuring a problem in my head. “I think he was in the car.”

Melody looks at me, and her cheeks seem sort of pinker than usual, but she doesn’t say anything. I go back to the math book.

After a minute Mel says, “Is Alex going to die?” in that honest, nosy way kids say things.

Eventually
, I think. But when I look at her, she looks really scared, so I say, “I don’t think so. Not from getting his window smashed.”

The cops would’ve probably mentioned if Crusan was that bad.

“Carolina called last night. She told me someone threw a rock through her window. She thought her parents might take her out of school.” The phone rings again, and I hear Mom answer it. “Why would someone do that?”

I don’t want to go there since that one
was
me. I look over at Melody’s bookshelf, at her doll collection, because I can’t look at the book anymore. I’m good at math. I tell myself that—
You’re really good at math, doofus
. But if Melody’s homework was hard to concentrate on, mine is impossible. “I don’t know. I guess maybe they don’t think her brother ought to go to school here ’cause he’s sick. He could get other people sick.”