Light from a Distant Star (46 page)

“What’re you doin’ over there, crying? Jesus!”

“I just feel so bad.” She covered her mouth.

“Well, don’t. Guy like him’s just not worth it, that’s all.”

“No!” she cried, spinning around. “That’s not true, and you know it! He worked so hard around here, and he really liked you. And I don’t know why, because you didn’t even care, did you? Making him sleep up in the barn like he was some kind of bum.”

“He
was
a bum! But I was damn good to him, and look how he pays me back, goddammit. Like I haven’t got enough goddamn problems. And now I gotta listen to you?” Charlie gasped, straining to squeeze out the words between pants as she grabbed her jacket and backpack and headed for the door. “Yeah, go! Go on! Go! Just get the hell outta here, will ya. I don’t need this shit, especially from you … you—” Coughing, he couldn’t catch his breath. Wide-eyed, he writhed from side to side, struggling to sit up. She slung her arms around him and pulled him up, then had to hold him so he wouldn’t fall back. His head hung heavily against hers as his chest rose and fell with each long, desperate wheeze for air. When he tried to speak, the words came like water sloshing in his lungs.

“Breathe, Charlie, please breathe, please,” she whispered against his cold, bristly cheek. “Please!” She couldn’t believe what she’d done, first to the Shelby twins, then to her poor, sick, old grandfather.

“Lemme go,” he gasped, and she told him, no, because she wasn’t going to let him die, she wasn’t. “I gotta lay down,” he pleaded, so she eased him back onto his pillows, then stood watching until the pace of his breathing slowed. His eyes finally opened. “You still here?”

She nodded.

“Max.” He closed his eyes again. “He liked you.”

“He did?”

“Only one he ever talked to. Besides me.”

S
HE COULD FEEL THE COLD GRAY SKY PRESSING DOWN AS SHE
hurried along, determined not to look back.

“Wait up! Wait up!” Brianna Hall kept calling until Nellie finally turned around. “I been running the whole way!” Brianna was out of breath.

“I didn’t know it was you,” Nellie lied, shifting her backpack.

“You saw me,” Brianna panted. “Then all of a sudden you go the other way.”

Just as Nellie’d gotten to the sidewalk, she’d seen the Shelbys’ car pull up next to Rodney and Roy in their shiny black jackets. Sitting next to Mrs. Shelby was Boone, his big head high over the dashboard, the way he used to ride in the truck with Max. Attached to the car, on what looked to be a homemade rack, were the two bicycles. After the twins took them down, they opened the door, tossed their backpacks inside, then pedaled off down the hill. As Mrs. Shelby drove by, Boone stared straight ahead, not even a yip of recognition.

In the week since seeing the twins on her way to Charlie’s, she’d tried to at least smile at them in class, but neither one would look her way. She’d been eliminated from their necessary field of vision as completely as everyone else who’d ever been cruel to them.

Brianna was asking Nellie again to come to her house. Her older brother had just gotten two new video games and he’d be at football practice until suppertime.

“I told you,” Nellie said irritably. “I have to be home for when my brother gets there.” Having lost sight of the twins, she walked slower. Probably just as well. Even if she did catch up, anything she said would only make things worse. And maybe it was best this way. Mrs. Fouquet
said she shouldn’t always be trying to be all things to all people, because it held her back from being her true self, a conundrum because her true self was the very person no one wanted her to be, including herself. She woke up every morning with this same emptiness inside. And the worst part was not knowing what was missing. In their last meeting, she had shown Mrs. Fouquet her
Get Tough!
manual. She told her how excited she’d been the first time she’d read it. But now when she looked through it, it seemed ridiculous. Embarrassing, even. She couldn’t understand why it had once seemed so important to her. So meaningful.

“Because your world is changing. You’re changing,” Mrs. Fouquet told her. “It’s like climbing a mountain. The higher you get, the smaller things seem back in the distance. The more insignificant.”

So maybe that was it. A depressing thought. Worse, though, was the fear that perhaps nothing had ever been the way she’d always believed. Not just Max’s innocence but her own for thinking all things were possible and within her grasp, her power.

“Eighteen hours in labor,” Brianna was saying. “Can you imagine? By that time, I’d be screaming for them to just cut it out of me.” Yesterday during last period, Mrs. Duffy’s water had broken in front of everyone, dribbling down her swollen ankles, staining her tan shoes. The principal had driven her to the hospital. Julia Marie Duffy had been born at eight
A.M
. A great cheer had gone up in the classroom this morning when it was announced over the PA system. And for some reason, Nellie had almost cried. While nothing could make her happy, happiness left her feeling only more hollow inside.

“I’m not going to have any kids,” Nellie said.

“Yeah, right. You’ll probably have, like, ten or something,” Brianna laughed.

As they came down the hill, Nellie noticed a crowd at the far end of the park. There were a few girls, the rest boys. Four more boys ran along one of the paths toward the swelling group. Whatever the attraction, it was taking place near the flagpole.

“Let’s go see!” Brianna hurried ahead in a half trot. “C’mon, I think it’s a fight!”

Like so much else lately, Brianna’s excitement was only wearying to Nellie. Her feet felt like cement blocks as she dragged farther behind.
The hoots and howls filled her with dread. She’d just keep walking. All she wanted was to get home so she could be alone. A fight was the last thing on earth she wanted to see. Brianna came running back.

“It’s awful!” she said, grinning. “Poor Rodney, Bucky’s got his crazy bike halfway up the pole and everyone’s laughing.”

With Brianna in the lead, Nellie plodded on. Her feet were too heavy. It wasn’t until she’d reached the edge of the giddy pack that she understood.

The bike had been hoisted almost to the top of the flagpole. Bucky stood below, holding on to the rope, which Rodney kept grabbing at without daring to get too close, the way you’d try snatching a stick from a roaring fire. Roy sat on his bike, black satin shoulders hunched, staring at the ground.

“Sorry, Freak!” Bucky howled with each of Rodney’s fearful attempts. “You had your chance and you blew it!”

“Give it to me!” Rodney grunted, head down like an abused dog.

“All I wanted was a ride,” Bucky said, smirking as he wound the rope around the pole cleat.

“No, you took it. You just took it, that’s what you did,” Rodney said, his dull voice breaking.

“Aw, c’mon, Bucky,” a boy finally called.

“Okay, I’ll trade you,” Bucky told Rodney. “Gimme your jacket.”

“No!” Rodney crossed his arms, hugging himself.

Two younger boys next to Nellie and Brianna laughed nervously.

“Jesus, you gotta give me something.” Bucky’s leering eyes scanned his audience, savoring their attention, their uneasiness. It wasn’t the bike he wanted or even Rodney’s misery, but this, control over everyone, their disapproval all the more exhilarating for him. “Fair’s fair, right, Nellie?” He smiled at her.

Maybe if her glasses hadn’t been so smudged she might have acted sooner. Or maybe because they were so smudged everything around her was blurred enough so that when she stepped forward, all she could see was shape, a featureless outline on brittle paper, the pages so fragile, the old, turned corners would crumble in her fingertips.

“Give him his bike.”

“Oh, okay, Nellie. Sure, whatever you say.”

“You feel really important, don’t you?” Fear and loathing—she could smell both in his nasty breath.

“Go fuck yourself, okay?” The excitement of his breathing pounded in her own ears.

Just as she touched the rope, he unwound it from the cleat, then shoved her out of the way. The bike fell onto the concrete pad in a crash of mangled metal parts.

“What the hell’d ya do that for?” he laughed. “You wrecked it!”

“You jerk!” she yelled, storming back at him.

Reaching out, he snatched off her glasses. “You’re fuckin’ cross-eyed!” he howled, staggering with laughter.

She grabbed for her glasses, but he danced back, ducking and weaving, dangling them high over her head, laughing as he told her to stop, please stop, because she was just going to get hurt. And with that she lunged at him. He swung back, punching her so hard her head shook with the jolt and her arms dropped to her sides. A shrinking pinprick of light gleamed through the end of the long, narrow tunnel.

“Leave her alone!”

“Jesus,” someone said.

“Oh, my God!”

“Nellie!” Brianna screamed.

Rodney Shelby was lifting her to her feet. Brianna was trying to put her glasses back on her. Bucky pushed his way through the shocked children. They’d never seen such a thing before. Roy was rocking back and forth on his bike.

S
HE WAS ON
the couch. Henry kept pressing a bag of frozen peas against her cheek. Her father ran into the house. Ruth had called him at the store. She was afraid Nellie had a concussion. She’d looked it up in their medical encyclopedia and Nellie had all the symptoms.

“You’re falling asleep again. Don’t! You can’t!” Henry told her again, his bony shoulder pressed into hers. Ruth said he had to keep her awake. Every time her eyes closed, he’d nudge her and call her name as if she were in another room or outside. She’d never felt so strangely, distantly weary.

“She got in a fight,” Ruth whispered. “Bucky Saltonstall.”

“What do you mean, a fight?” her father asked.

“A fistfight!”

Looking stunned, her father sat on the edge of the coffee table, facing her. He removed her glasses, then with two fingers lifted the lids in each of her eyes and peered closely. She smiled with his touch.

“Nellie, what on earth is going on? You had a fight? You hit someone?”

“It wasn’t her fault!” Henry said. “She was just tryna do the right thing.”

“Since when is hitting someone the right thing?” her father asked, but he was looking at her.

“When someone hits you first because you’re tryna help somebody?” Henry’s voice quavered. “That’s when!”

“But this keeps happening, doesn’t it, Nellie?” her father said, shaking his head. “And every time it get worse, doesn’t it? Every single time.”

“Dad!” Ruth said, coming into the room. “You don’t even know what happened. And besides, look at her, she’s so out of it.”

She was trying to stand up. Her legs were still wobbly so she had to sit down. Her head ached, but things were starting to clear. She knew what came next. Her father told Ruth to call her mother at the salon and tell her he was taking Nellie to the emergency room.

“No,” Nellie said, standing up again, this time managing to stay on her feet. “That’s not where I’m going.”

“Come on, hon.” Her father had his arm around her on their way to the door. He called back for Ruth to get her sister’s jacket. A light snow had begun to fall, the first of the season. Ruth asked if she and Henry could come. He wanted to—she said he was crying. All right, her father said. Go back in and get him.

“No,” Nellie said. “Nobody can come. Not now.”

“All right,” her father called after Ruth. “Nellie’s right. We’ll do this. We’ll be right back. Tell Henry I’ll call from the hospital and let him know what’s going on.”

He was looking over his shoulder and backing out of the driveway when she said she had to go see Detective Des La Forges. He thought
she wanted to report her injury to the police. White flowers were falling. Lacy petals melting on the windshield. Snowflakes.

“But first let’s make sure you’re all right, okay?” he said as he turned on the wipers.

“Just a little dizzy, that’s all.”

He drove slowly down the street, trying to avoid bumps and potholes. “And then after, we’ll figure out what to do. Probably the best thing—and I’m sure Mom’ll say the same thing—is to call his grandparents. They should—”

“No, that’s not why. I have to tell him about Mr. Cooper.”

“Nellie!”

“I know, and if I’m wrong, then … then that’s okay.” Her eyes wanted to close. The swish of the wipers back and forth, back and forth was making her stomach queasy.

“Oh, Lord, Nellie, please, let’s not—”

“I’m just gonna tell the truth, Dad, that’s all.” Her tongue felt stiff.

He kept driving, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. They were two blocks from the station. The closer they got, the slower he seemed to drive. So far, they had stopped at every yellow light. The next one was turning yellow when he suddenly sped through it. He drove past the police station.

“You’re not gonna take me?” She was stunned.

“Nellie,” he pleaded. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

Springvale Hospital was another mile ahead. With every blue H sign they passed, her thoughts became clearer. He didn’t have to come with her. No one did. She could do this by herself.