Falling Into Us (10 page)

“So that’s your motivation to win all the time?”

He jerked the gearshift violently into second as we accelerated away from the green light. “Partly.”

“What’s the rest?”

He glanced at me, then away, the shutters drawn across his features. “Not important.”

I sensed a deep secret here, and I knew I shouldn’t push, but I did anyway. “Maybe it is to me. I want to know about you.”

“Drop it, Becca.
Please
.” He didn’t look at me, and he spoke in a whisper that somehow communicated his desperation.

“Okay, sure. Sorry, I d-didn’t mean to p-ppp-pry.” I dropped my gaze, upset that I’d upset him, and confused by his sudden shift in demeanor over a camera.

Jason groaned in frustration. “Damn it, Becca, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just…there are some things about me that are just…that I can’t talk about.”

“Is it okay to ask you what you take pictures of? Could I see them?”

Instead of answering, Jason spun the wheel, barely touching the brakes and then tapping the accelerator so the truck skidded across the center line and onto a wide dirt road, the back end fishtailing in the gravel and sliding on an angle before he corrected it straight once more. I was gripping the oh-shit bar above my head and barely breathing as he powered the truck forward, and then I openly shrieked when he took a long curve at dangerous speeds, his brights on, illuminating the narrowing track ahead of us. He seemed to know each and every curve by heart, turning the wheel and touching the brakes before the turn so he could accelerate through the curve in practiced power slides. My heart was hammering in my chest, pounding with equal parts terror and excitement.

“Jason! Please don’t crash us!” I was pleased that I said it without stuttering, considering how rampant my nerves were.

He just grinned at me, a cocky flash of straight white teeth. He rounded another corner, then abruptly braked down to nearly a stop and twisted the truck onto an even narrower two-track path through the woods. He took this much slower, reaching down to twist a knob so the four-by-four engaged. The path dipped and rose, and he often had to gun the engine to power the truck over hills, only to speed down the other side.

“Where are we going?”

He pointed ahead of us with a finger flicked from the steering wheel. “Not too much farther. A favorite spot of mine.”

The truck dipped precariously sideways as the path twisted and ducked low under a pair of spreading oak trees. Another half mile or so, and the track petered out to nothing, and we were jouncing over grass and between trees. The ground leveled off, then began a slow rise that grew steeper with every foot until the truck was straining upward at a steep angle. At the top, Jason turned the truck to the side and stopped it, cutting the engine but leaving the radio on. He turned off the headlights, dug out the blanket, and hopped out of the truck, gesturing at me to follow. I pushed open my door and hopped to the ground, immediately chilled by the cold air. Jason had the back of the bed lowered and was standing up, waiting for me. I started to climb up, rather awkwardly, but Jason bent at the waist, caught me under my armpits, and lifted me bodily off the ground. I squealed at the sudden loss of gravity, and as soon as my feet touched the ribbed bed of the truck, I stumbled forward and wrapped my arms around him.

“God, Jason! Don’t
do
that!” My voice was muffled in the waffled fabric of Jason’s long-sleeve shirt. He smelled like cologne, deodorant, and sweat, and something else spicy and unidentifiable.

 
“Scared?” He sounded amused and pleased with himself.

I huffed in irritation and glared up at him. “Startled, maybe. Not scared. Give a girl a warning before you haul her off the ground next time, will you?” Jason just chuckled. “You’re really strong, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “I work out a lot. For football, and because sometimes I just need the outlet.”

“Outlet? What do you mean?”

He hesitated. “Umm…god. Okay, listen. I don’t have the best home life, Becca. I told you how my dad pushes me to be perfect, right? He’s just…he’s not always a nice guy. We fight a lot, and sometimes I just need to…vent. That’s all.”

Things clicked together, and my stomach sank at the meaning between the lines of what he wasn’t saying. “Does he hit you, Jason?” I pulled away and watched his face carefully, sure he was going to avoid the question.

He looked down at me, his features hard and closed. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Don’t get involved. I don’t need saving.”

I frowned. “So that’s a yes, then. Why have you never told anyone?”

Jason pulled out of my arms and turned away. He squatted and spread the blanket out on the bed of the truck, then un-strung a pair of hook-ended bungee cords holding a cooler in place. Opening the lid of the white and blue Igloo cooler, he withdrew a six-pack of Coke, four wax-wrapped sandwiches, and a bag of potato chips.

“I know it’s not, like, a gourmet spread or whatever, but it’s food.” He separated the four sandwiches into two piles, pointing at each pile in turn. “These are turkey, Dijon, and swiss, and these are ham and sharp cheddar with mayo.”

He sat down and patted the blanket next to him, reached behind himself and shoved open the sliding glass window so the soft strains of a country song floated in, a woman’s voice singing about gunpowder and lead. I hesitated for a long moment, and then sat down next to him, taking one of the turkey sandwiches.
 

After we’d both eaten half our sandwich, he set his down on his lap and met my eyes. “Listen, Beck. It’s my thing to deal with, okay? Don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m fine. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“I just don’t understand. Why don’t you tell someone?”
 

His green eyes filled with hurt and anger. “Won’t do any good. Tried once, and it only caused problems, not just for me, but for everyone who found out. It’s not worth it. As soon as I graduate in two years, I’m gone, and I’m not coming back. I’m gonna play football at either MSU, U of M, or Nebraska, and then I’ll go pro. I won’t ever need shit from my old man.”

“I-I-I…
ugh
.” I took a deep breath and focused. “I don’t know what to say, Jason. It’s wrong.”

“Nothing to say. Nothing to say, nothing to do.” His voice grew intense. “You’re the only person except Kyle who knows, okay? You can’t say anything, Becca. Promise me.
Promise
me!”

My head was spinning, my heart aching for the boy I was growing to like very, very much. “Jason…someone should know. He can’t do that to you. He’s your father, for fuck’s sake. He should protect you, not hurt you! It’s a-a-aw-aw-awful.” I felt rage rising up like bile in my throat, images whirling in my head, images of Jason in a corner, cringing away from a shadowy giant with huge fists.
 

“Does your dad protect you?”

“He’s overprotecting and overzealous,” I said, not sure why I was defending my father when I spent so much time vilifying him in my own head. “He’s unreasoning and hard-headed and stubborn and pushes me to rebellion with his ridiculous rules. But he loves me, in his own way. He’d never hurt me. He just wants me to be the best that I can be. He’s overcompensating because of all the trouble Ben gets in.”

“And my dad has a world of anger and demons hidden away in his soul.” Jason’s voice was surprisingly soft, his words poetic. “He got injured playing his first pro game, and it ended his career. The only thing he ever wanted to do was play pro ball, and he couldn’t anymore. He had to go crawling back to his parents here in Michigan, and his dad was worse on him than Dad is on me. He ended up joining the police force and moved up pretty fast, but then the Gulf War happened and he saw his chance to be something. He joined the Army and did two tours in Iraq. He was a grunt with no college degree or training. He saw some heavy shit, Becca. Some really awful shit. He
did
some really awful shit, all on Uncle Sam’s orders. It…scarred him, on the inside. He has his reasons, too, is my point. Doesn’t make it okay.”

I was silent for a long time, listening to a different song on the radio and watching the salt-sprinkle of stars across the black-cloth sky. “How do you know so much about what your dad went through?”

Jason answered around a mouthful of chip. “He drinks a lot. When he’s had enough, sometimes he talks to me instead of laying into me. Tells me stories like I was one of his buddies from his unit.” He swallowed and stared up at the sky. “I hate those stories. Rather get hit.”

I shivered then, as a gust of wind blew and cut through my sweater. Jason planted his palms on the lip of the truck bed and hefted himself out to the ground, leaned into the truck, and snagged his sweatshirt. I watched him hesitate, then grab his camera bag. He jumped back into the bed, climbing on the rear tire, and tucked his sweatshirt around my shoulders. It was heavy, warm, and smelled exactly like Jason.
 

He lifted the camera bag and then glanced at me, a smirk on his face. “You wanted to see a photograph I took?” I nodded eagerly. “Then you gotta trade me. I’ll show you one of my photos if you show me something you wrote.”

I swallowed hard. “That’s—that’s…I’m not sure. I’ve never showed anyone my writing. No one. It’s my journal.”

Jason nodded, gesturing with the bag. “That’s how my photos are for me. They’re private. Only for me, because I enjoy it. No one even knows I do it, not even Kyle. It’s like a journal for me, too. I’m no good with words, so I use pictures instead.”

“Why would you keep something like that a secret?” I asked. “It’s not like it’s embarrassing. It’s cool. It’s artistic.”

His face darkened. “You don’t know my dad. I told you, he’s not a nice guy. For one thing, I’m only allowed to do schoolwork and football. Working out, homework, practice, that’s it. He’s drunk or passed out now, so he doesn’t care what I do or where I am as long as I don’t get arrested and make a big spectacle or some shit. He’s the captain of the police force, so I have to be careful. He won’t bail me out, won’t get me off the hook. He’ll kick the shit out of me if I ever so much as get stopped by one of his men. They’re scared of him, too, so they won’t dare go against him, either.”

“What’s that got to do with photography? It’s just pictures.”

He unwrapped the second ham sandwich and another can of Coke. “Well, that’s the second part. Anything that even remotely smacks of art is for fags. His word, not mine. On top of being a plain mean-ass drunk, he’s a bigot. Hates pretty much anyone who’s not him. If he even knew I had a camera, he’d put me in the fuckin’ hospital. Musical instrument? No way. Painting?
Hell
no. I love taking photos, though. I love capturing something in the lens and making something else totally different from it.”

He opened his bag and lifted the camera from it, turned it on, and touched a few buttons so the display showed his previously taken photos. He scrolled through them a ways, then turned it to me.
 

I took the camera gingerly, afraid of handling something that was so important to him, and so hideously expensive. The photograph he’d shown me was breathtaking. It was of a bumblebee, taken in the act of the bee landing on a daisy. It was from up close, so close you could see the wings blurring and the individual hairs on the fat yellow and black body. The sunlight was refracted off the insect’s bulbous, multi-faceted eyes, the daisy sharp and bright yellow, the sky a blue blur beyond. It was like something out of
National Geographic
, stunning in its clarity and focus and use of color. The bumblebee looked like an alien creature, made mammoth and impossible.
 

“Jason…oh, my god. This is incredible. You could sell this to a magazine, I swear to god.” I breathed in and examined the photo again, amazed at the way he’d framed it with the flower in the center, taking most of the space, with the bee near the top, caught in the act of hovering downward.
 

He grinned, and seemed oddly shy for the first time since I’d known him. “Thanks. I got stung about six times trying to get that shot. There were a bunch of big, fat bees flying around a field.” He pointed out beyond the tree, to the field beneath us. “Right out there, actually. There must have been a nest or something. Anyway, I followed these bees around for hours, taking picture after picture. I must have taken a couple hundred before I got that one.”

“Can I see some more?” I asked, excited now.

He lifted an eyebrow at me. “Nuh-uh. Now it’s your turn.”

I felt my hands trembling. I knew if I spoke it would come out all jittery and full of blocks, so I just sucked in a breath, reached into my purse, and pulled out my journal. It was a spiral-bound, unlined sketch pad, a piece of brown paper Meijer bag cut out and wrapped around the outside covers. On the front cover, I’d used a Sharpie to copy an inscription of a poem in Arabic:

لست
وحيدا
أبدا

كلّ
مافي
الأمر

انني
 

صرت
رفيقا
لوحدتي

“What’s that say?” Jason asked.

I hesitated, breathing several times and reciting the words in my mind before I said them out loud. “It says, ‘I am not alone—the truth is I befriended my loneliness.’” I traced the lines with my forefinger before opening the cover and flipping a few pages idly, looking for the perfect poem to show Jason. “It’s by an Arab poet named Abboud al Jabiri. It’s actually part of a longer poem, but that’s the part I like the most.”

“Was he from, like, a long time ago?”
 

I shook my head. “No, he’s alive and living in Jordan, still writing. My mom is a pediatrician, but she’s always loved poetry. On top of her medical degree, she has a second minor in Arabic poetry. She kind of turned me on to it, I guess.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Jason said. “So what’s your dad do?”

“He’s in real estate. He owns several industrial properties, plus he does commercial real estate sales.” I glanced at him as I chewed and swallowed. “What about you? You told me about your dad. What about your mom?”

He shrugged. “She doesn’t do shit. Works in a dental office three days a week, making copies and shit. Other than that, hides in her room gluing paper cut-outs into a book.”