Leap (8 page)

“Still waiting.”

I searched for something to say and remembered the Camaro. “Some of your friends came by here looking for you.”

He glanced at his watch. “I missed them, huh?”

“You don't sound too disappointed.”

“Ever since the accident, those guys' idea of fun seems more and more like a death wish. You know?”

“I can imagine.”

He shuddered as if to put it all behind him. “What are
you
doing out by yourself on a Saturday night?”

“That's a popular question.”

He smirked. His eyes reminded me so much of Sasha's that I blurted, “My best friend suddenly stopped talking to me.”

“You mean my sister?”

I nodded. Kevin bent his head as if to scan the ground. “Things are pretty crazy at home right now. You shouldn't take it personally.” He hesitated, then raised his head. “Look, Natalie, you've known our family for a long time, but—”

Claire bounced back outside. “Sorry! Usually I get at least fifteen minutes.” She noticed Kevin and added, “Oh! Hi.”

“Nat and I are just heading off on a sunset bike tour. Want to join us?”

I glared at him:
the nerve
. Claire would think Kevin and I had planned to meet here—that we were on a date. But if she felt surprised, it didn't show. “I'd love to, but I have to work for another hour.” She winked at me as she gathered abandoned ice cream dishes. “Have fun!”

“Don't look at me like that!” Kevin said as soon as Claire was out of earshot. “As long as we're both on bikes, we might as well ride together. Besides, I know a great route.” He put his helmet on. “You coming?”

I shrugged and donned my helmet. He led the way down alleys I didn't know existed, along dirt paths so narrow that salal branches scratched my arms and legs, and up steep hills that led to glorious stretches of downhill coasting. Wind whipped past. Gardens scented the evening air: cedar, jasmine, honeysuckle. At times I didn't even know where we were. When he called over his shoulder, “Having fun, Natalie?” I squealed in reply.

We must have been riding for close to an hour. We were scaling a big hill and I was just getting ready to demand a break—the guy is in
great
shape!—when the path spat us out onto rocks, bald except for moss and broom bushes. He screeched to a halt and I veered just in time to avoid a crash. He grabbed the frame of my bike. The rocks fell away to streets, houses, and ocean far below. The air had thickened, somehow. Dusk hung in it like fog.

“Turn around.”

The sky blazed fuchsia. The disc of sun slipped, second by second, behind purple hills on the horizon. Clouds sponged the light and the sky shimmered peach, pink, yellow, and even green. A plume of airplane exhaust twisted vertically, like a tornado. With every breath, the colors changed. The brilliance faded, slowly, and left us standing in the dark.

The last time I'd been alone with Kevin at night, we were parked in his car. He'd pulled me towards him and kissed me. Would he make a move now? My bike stood between us, like a wall. I casually rolled my wheels back to open up a passage way.

He snapped his head at the motion. “Ready to go?”

So much for romance.

Then it hit me. “I've got no light!” We were miles from home.

“Don't worry. I know this neighborhood even better in the dark.”

The ground was rapidly disappearing underfoot. “What do you mean?”

“I was a bike-riding outlaw for years before I ever had a driver's license. This takes me back to my roots.”

I stayed close to his rear wheel as we wound down narrow, unlit streets. When we hit the major roads with their streetlights, he sped up. I played it safe and hung back. I didn't want to hit a pothole, or a cat—or get hit by a car, for that matter. But then the distance widened between us.

What the hell?
I pedaled harder. I caught up to Kevin's rear reflector so that we were almost riding tandem. Keeping pace with his skinny-tired road bike on my mountain bike nearly killed me. I was so absorbed that I paid no attention to where we were going. My street loomed up and surprised me. Before I could call out, Kevin swerved. He
did
know his way around. He escorted me to my driveway, where we stopped, and he balanced, his feet wedged in toe clips. Finally, he wobbled too far off center. He freed one foot just in time to catch his fall and ended up close enough to hear my huffing and puffing.

He laughed. “Need to add a little cardio to the routine, hey?” He leaned forward—moving in for a kiss? I gasped. He pressed two fingers against my throat and held them still as I gulped air. “Your pulse is dangerously fast! I'm serious.”

At least it was too dark for him to see me blush.

He let his hand fall. “Maybe we should do that again some time. Get you in shape. I could be your personal trainer.”

I was gaining control of my breath. “Get real! Have you
seen
what I'm riding? Look at how fat these tires are. Let's just switch bikes next time. I'll kick your ass.”

He dropped his chin to his neck and grinned at the ground. “That sounds like fun.” He mounted his bike. “So long, Natalie.”

He rounded the corner and vanished. I didn't know where he was staying or when I might see him again. I stood in the driveway long enough for my heart to slow down, then stowed my bike and headed for the shower.

Sunday, July 18th

This morning I woke up to the sound of a softball landing in a glove, mixed with Paige's chatter. The soft noises drifted through my bedroom window, much more pleasant than the squawk of an alarm clock. Sunday: nowhere to go. I stretched and resettled, then remembered: this kind of movement was Petra's raw material. As I rolled and flopped, I paid attention in a new way.

A deeper voice rumbled in response to Paige's. I flung off the covers and pried the blinds apart. Paige was playing catch on the front lawn with a man I'd never seen before. I pulled on shorts and ran outside. “Paige!”

“Hi, Nat. You're finally up. Mom says teenagers need more sleep than anybody else, but I don't see why.”

The man chuckled and looked at Paige like she was the most adorable thing he'd ever seen.

“Who are you?”

He shifted the ball to his left hand and stuck out his arm. I ignored it until he let it fall to his side. “Phil Ainslie. My parents live across the street; you must have met them?”

I looked at this Phil person more closely: salt and pepper hair, receding hairline, a paunch forming over the waistband of his Bermuda shorts. “There's an old couple across the street,” I said.

“That's right, they're my parents. They moved out here to retire. I'm just visiting. from Ontario. Got here last night. They're having a rest right now, and I was just heading out for a walk when your sister here,” he winked at Paige, “asked me to play catch with her.”

I put my hand on Paige's shoulder. “Ontario. Isn't that a little far? What happens when there's an emergency? You're not much good to them way out there. We had snow this winter, you know. I saw your dad out there shoveling and I was a little worried about him. He could have keeled over from a heart attack.” I was getting off topic. “Do you always play with little girls?”

Phil's expression hardened. He set the ball down on the grass and backed away. “I'm sorry I intruded. I wouldn't have done this back home, but it seems so small town here, I thought a person could be neighborly without—”

Paige whined. “He was playing with me!”

“
I'll
play with you.” I picked up the ball and let it smack against my palm several times, as if it might come in handy as a weapon to bean Phil's head. He kept retreating until he reached the pavement, then he turned and strode back to his parents' house. Apparently, he'd changed his mind about the walk.

Paige placed her fists on her hips. “Why were you so mean to him?”

“I'll get Mom to explain it. Come around to the back.”

“Hey! You said you'd play with me.”

“I will, I will, just let me eat breakfast first. Mom!” I sprinted to the back porch with Paige in tow. Mom was stretched out on the chaise longue, a hardcover book propped open on her stomach, a glass of orange juice in one hand. “Mom! While you're back here reading yourself senseless, your ten-year-old daughter is out front playing with a creepy old man!”

Paige protested. “He wasn't creepy!”

I left Paige and Mom to sort things out and shut the sliding glass door behind me. I grabbed a box of bran flakes and shook it into a bowl. A strainer filled with rinsed raspberries sat next to the sink. I dropped a few berries onto my cereal and stirred in some milk. Boring. When Dad lived with us, he made pancakes on Sunday. I stared past my bowl at the phone.

Dear Dad,

All you are to me is a voice, tinny and two dimensional. We can't do stuff together. I never see you. I don't even think of you as flesh and blood anymore.

And it's all your fault. You chose to move 3,000 miles away. Nobody made you.

Damn it. Don't you miss me?

Don't answer that. You don't deserve to see me. You don't deserve a daughter, let alone two.

I couldn't finish my cereal. My stomach cramped up. I stormed back out to the porch, where Mom was just settling back into her book.

“I hope this makes you realize how dangerous it is when a little girl grows up without a father. She's a sitting duck for any man who pays attention to her.”

Mom held her place in her book with an index finger and pushed her sunglasses into her hair. We looked each other in the eye. “Don't you think you're overreacting? We know who the Ainslies are.”

“That's not the point. He could have been anyone! And you, did you even know he was out there? Why don't you wake up and do your job as a mom?”

At that, Mom carefully placed her bookmark between the pages, shut her novel, and stood up. I didn't know what she was doing.

She bent over the wooden side of the balcony. She was wearing shorts, for a change, made of sage green cotton. When she rose on tiptoe, her calf muscles rippled. Apart from a few varicose veins, her legs are still in decent shape. It annoys me that they're thinner than mine. “Paige?”

Paige responded from down below. “What?”

“Do you want to play catch?”

“With who?”

Mom winced, as if Paige's response confirmed her guilt. “With me.”

Paige didn't say anything for a second. “You mean you want me to teach you? Okay!” She ran to the foot of the stairs. “I can show you everything I've learned at softball camp!” Holding the banister, Mom glanced back at me and raised her eyebrows.

She was admitting I was right. I'd won.

So why did I feel so bad?

Monday, July 19th

Ms. Kelly kicked me out of the studio today. Every jazz class, she has harassed me, and today she finally said, “Natalie, we only have four rehearsals left before the showing. I've been waiting for you to get over your slump, but it's just not happening. You're putting the other dancers in jeopardy. I'll have to take you out of the piece if you can't turn your attitude around—and I mean
all
the way around.”

I couldn't believe she was interrupting rehearsal to chew me out in front of the other girls. I had actually semi-enjoyed the warm-up, and we had only run the dance once. “What did I do?”

“It's what you're not doing, Natalie. You're half the dancer you used to be. You're one of the most advanced dancers in the school and people used to look up to you. But now you act bored and …” She paused, her hands on her hips. She was wearing gold spandex pants, a white blouse open over a leotard and knotted at the waist, and white jazz shoes. A pair of high-heeled sandals lay on the floor beside the stereo—she would slip into those after class, as if she had Barbie-doll feet. She always wears full makeup—foundation, blush, the works, like she's about to go on stage. She must be close to Mom's age. “And you seem disgusted! As though the movement is beneath you.”

I muttered, “Just because I don't want to look like a slut …” I don't think Ms. Kelly heard me, but some girls nearby tittered. She definitely heard them.

“Your attitude is damaging the morale of the class and setting a bad example for the younger girls. You're excused for the rest of the day. I suggest you go home and think about your behavior.”

“Fine,” I snapped. As I passed Lisa, she mouthed, “I'll call you.”

I changed into my shorts and hurried down the street. In the window of Con Brio, Petra was bent over a notebook, twisting a strand of blonde hair around her finger. Every so often she jotted something down with a pencil. I entered the café and approached her. She raised her head and smiled. Her sea green T-shirt set off her tan and her platinum hair so well, it took my breath away. She glanced at her watch. “It's not like Ms. Kelly to end class early.”