Letters to Nowhere (2 page)

I bent over and put my head between my knees, trying to rid myself of the dizziness and nausea. After a couple minutes, Bentley joined me, but didn’t start the car. He sat in his quiet way and waited for me to speak. I raised my head, leaned back against the seat, and closed my eyes. “I can’t go back in there.” Telling Bentley
I can’t
wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do and I was sure he knew that.

“We can go somewhere else for a little while if you want,” he said. “We can go back to the gym or to Blair’s house if—”

I shook my head, feeling the panic creep back in. The last thing I needed was a trip to my best friend’s house. The place where I had first heard the bad news. A house with a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister. No way.

I opened my eyes and forced myself to tell the truth, to make him understand. “I mean I don’t want to go back in there, ever. It’s too hard, I just . . .” The lump in my throat grew too big to swallow. I used the back of my hand to wipe away a few tears. “Can you please tell my grandma I need to leave now?”

Bentley’s forehead wrinkled. “So you do want to go with her to New York?”

No. I don’t want that.
At least there was one thing I was sure about.

“If I stay with you, I can keep training like normal?”
Like an elite, not like a girl headed for college and only needing watered–down routines.
“I can go to National training camp and everything?”

“Absolutely,” Bentley said with a firm nod.

I exhaled. “Then that’s what I want. Can you tell her?”

Bentley didn’t move right away like I’d hoped. He watched the guy from the funeral home get into his car and drive off. “Karen, you’re going to have to go back in your house eventually. You’ll have to come inside and pack. There’re things to take care of before making this change. It’s not something we can do in a day.”

“Right.” I nodded and opened the car door, planting a foot in the snowy grass. I made it two steps toward the house before collapsing onto the ground. I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my face. No matter what Bentley or Grandma said to try to coax me out of this state, I couldn’t get myself to do anything but crawl back into Bentley’s car.

It was humiliating, and I don’t think anyone knew what to say or do except to let me have my way.

Eventually, Coach Bentley took me back to the gym, and a couple hours later, Grandma showed up in her rental car with suitcases for both of us and a room booked at a hotel between the gym and the lawyers’ office, where we could stay and finalize the details. It was the only time that I got scared and didn’t fight through it. I didn’t even consider fighting through it. I just needed to move on. Even if that meant agreeing to therapy for my panic attacks (Grandma’s idea) and regular calls with her to check in.

I’d do anything she asked if I could pretend that they were still there in that house while I stayed somewhere else. Like being out of town for a competition or training camp. And therapy was something I’d be willing to try if it got rid of the visions I kept having ever since the policemen showed up at my best friend’s door to deliver the bad news—the sounds, the images, the video playing through my mind of a black Toyota tumbling off the interstate, the semitruck slamming into it, the woman inside with a half–crushed skull and the decapitated man beside her with seventy percent of his body still determined to remain with his wife…All of it was contrived by my own imagination and sometimes, like right now, I couldn’t help but wish I’d seen the real accident, because nothing could be worse than this. Nothing.

***

“The movers offered to drive your parents’ car over here, but I told them to leave it at the house for now,” Bentley said, watching my face carefully.

After the weirdly personal afternoon with the lawyer and Grandma nearly two weeks ago, we both reverted to our normal, impersonal coach/gymnast relationship. I broke the spell briefly by not objecting to the car being safely out of sight. The car I used to drive to the gym and to Blair’s house if my mom didn’t need it. We hadn’t decided on a car for me yet. My dad had wanted me to practice more on our family vehicles.

Coach Bentley led me inside his town house and up the stairs. He turned the last knob on the right and I sucked in a breath as the door swung open. I knew what I’d see, I knew what I’d have to face, but it still hit me hard.

Coach cleared his throat as if anticipating a tearful moment and wanting to worm his way out of it. “There’re still a few boxes in the garage and on the bookshelves. They wouldn’t fit. Your room at home must have been . . .”

I lifted my eyes to meet his—brown and unreadable—before striding into the room. “Bigger. My room at home was much bigger.”

“Right.” He swung his arms back and forth; the bulk of his biceps from years of ring and high bar routines prevented a normal human range of motion, making this moment even more awkward.

My bedroom furniture was only about a year old. When I turned sixteen, my mom decided I needed something more mature than the white wicker set I’d had since before preschool.

I tossed my gym bag onto the bare mattress of my full–sized platform bed and tried not to inhale the scent of home that still leaked from its pores. “I should probably get ready for practice.”

Coach Bentley’s face snapped back into place, the familiar, serious, down–to–business expression returning. “I’ve got a booster club meeting at the McKays’ house in a few minutes. Jordan can drive you to the gym when he gets home from school.”

Even after hearing this well over a week ago, I still couldn’t picture him as a father, let alone a father of a teenager. He never raised his voice. Not even when we really pissed him off. How can you parent a teenager without ever yelling?

Coach Bentley left me alone in my new room that smelled too much like my old one. I changed into my practice clothes and sweats as quickly as possible, practically throwing myself out the bedroom door and into the neutral hallway.

At twenty minutes to three, I was searching the kitchen cabinets of the three–bedroom town house, digging for something on the list of approved foods for elite athletes when I heard the front door swing open and slam shut. Before I could even get a glimpse of Coach Bentley’s unfamiliar offspring, he was thudding up the steps, slamming a second door and blaring music that would probably vibrate through the shared walls.

At a quarter to four, I headed upstairs and paced the hallway. I was already late for practice and yet I didn’t have the nerve to knock on my negligent driver’s door. It turned out I wouldn’t need to. Just as I was about to break down and call Coach Bentley, the door flew open and I came face–to–face (well, forehead to face, since I wasn’t quite five feet yet) with a blond, brown–eyed boy—white uniform shirt half tucked in, red tie loosened, top button already unfastened, shoes off. Not exactly the look of someone about to go out again.
Like to give me a ride
.

“Oh,” he said, diverting his eyes from mine. “You’re…uh…Cassie—”

“Karen,” I corrected, voice cracking. My experience with teenage boys was very minimal due to homeschooling the past three years and a girls–only gymnastics team taking up practically my entire life.

“Right, sorry,” he mumbled as he slid past me toward the stairs.

I spun around with my mouth hanging open, knowing the words would stay lodged in my throat. Jordan froze with his foot on the first step.

“Shit,” he said, the heel of his hand making contact with his forehead. “You need a ride, right? To the gym?”

“Yeah,” I said to the back of his head.

I followed as he thundered down the steps, whipped the door open, stuffed his feet in a pair of tennis shoes, not bothering with the laces, and headed outside. I hadn’t seen Jordan’s car earlier since he was at school, but I knew which was his right away, despite the nearly full parking lot. It was old, rusty, and a combination of puke green and purple. Something only a teenager desperate for freedom beyond a ten–speed bike would own.

I immediately opened the door to the backseat and started to get in, but stopped when Jordan shook his head.

“Seriously? I’d rather not look like a chauffeur if that’s all right with you.”

Even though my boy experience was minimal to nonexistent, I knew better than to tell him the backseat was much safer, especially when short people and airbags were involved, especially when this hunk of metal was being driven by an unreliable motor vehicle operator. Whenever I rode anywhere with Blair, her mom still made us ride in the backseat of their minivan. But Blair wasn’t old enough to drive yet, so that would obviously have to change soon. I sighed, decided it wasn’t worth making a scene, and climbed into the front passenger seat.

I tugged on my seat belt five times before accepting its correct positioning. When Jordan backed out of the parking lot and took off toward the main road, I felt my fingers searching for the sides of the well–worn seat, gripping them until my knuckles turned white.

The traffic light in front of us switched to red and Jordan hit the brakes, jolting us to a hard stop. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath and willing away the sound of glass shattering, metal crunching against pavement, screams—high–pitched like sirens.

Please, no more panic attacks. Not now.

The car jolted into motion again. All I could hear were the ten beats my heart pumped out for every single rotation of the tires. Air continued to move in sharp, jagged motions through my lungs, letting me know I wouldn’t pass out.

The car had been stopped for at least thirty seconds when I finally opened my eyes. The sandy–haired boy was staring at me, looking as though he had no idea what to say and like he wanted out of this situation ASAP.

“Um…are you…?” he stuttered without finishing.

My face burned as I flung the door open and mumbled, “Mental choreography. I do it before every practice.”

God, I’m a dweeb
. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen that look before—the one plastered on Jordan’s face right now. I’d been seeing it everywhere for the last three weeks.

I didn’t give him a chance to respond. My feet moved toward the front doors of the gym, and within a minute, I had my bag stuffed in my locker and had joined my three teammates running around the blue carpeted gymnastics floor.

Normally, on the few occasions I’d ever been late for practice, our second coach, Stacey, would cross her arms, avoiding eye contact, and say sharply, “You’re late.”

Then we’d all find ourselves doing extra sets of pull–ups, v–ups, and leg lifts before getting to our first event. Today, Stacey looked right at me, the sympathy wearing thin but still relentlessly hanging on in her expression, and said, “Glad you made it, Karen.”

And she said this completely free of her usual sarcasm. To be honest, Stacey’s behavior might not have been one hundred percent sympathy driven. She knew Coach Bentley was responsible for getting me to the gym on time now, and Coach Bentley was her boss.

Even though Stacey was a total hard–ass and had no tolerance for any typical girl reactions and emotions when it came to gymnastics, two years ago she might have been a better option than Bentley for providing me a temporary home. But the summer before last, she got married to an accountant and now she had a baby attached to her boob almost 24/7, leaving no time to raise an orphaned teenager.

Gymnastics was a tough sport, especially at the elite level, and I couldn’t make it a day without the support of my teammates, but during practice we were more competitors than friends. That was just how it had to be, and I never appreciated this more than I had in the last few weeks. The
dead parents
look never entered any of their faces until we were dismissed by Coach Bentley or Stacey. This was one big reason why I was so determined to stay in St. Louis.

***