Until It Hurts to Stop (17 page)

We’re in Nick’s room. I kick off my fussy, pinching shoes and swap my “nice” (that is, stiff and uncomfortable) shirt for one of Nick’s T-shirts. We leave his light off, relying only on the streetlight glow coming in the window.

I think Phoebe and Perry suspected something was wrong when we walked in the door. “How was dinner?” they kept asking, as if detecting the tension hidden in Nick’s blank expression, the truth buried in his monotone “Fine.” Perry paced, the way he always does when he wants to fix something, as if itching to physically put his hands on the problem. Phoebe turned from Nick to me in what I thought of as a flanking maneuver. “
Was
it ‘fine,’ Maggie?”

“Yes,” I said with Nick’s eyes fastened on my face. “Midi is beautiful.”
But now that we’re alone, I’m determined to get Nick to talk to me.
We lie on his bed as we’ve done a thousand times before, although this time his father floats in an ominous cloud over our heads. I’m not sure Nick knows I heard what Dr. Cleary said to him, but I can’t pretend that I didn’t.
“Your father’s wrong,” I say.
Nick tenses; the room temperature seems to fall ten degrees. But I push on.
“He was being totally unrealistic. He sees the world one narrow way, and—”
“Maggie,” Nick cuts in, “don’t tell me how my father is.” He sits up and leans his back against the headboard.
“You’re right. What am I telling you for? You already know he’s way off base.”
“I know I’m not smart,” he says. “I just wish he didn’t have to rub it in all the time. Like, since I’m not a genius, I’m a waste.”
“You are smart. Don’t listen to him. You’re seventeen, and he’s trying to compare you to world-famous scientists.”
“He compares me to himself,” Nick says. “There’s no way I’m ever going to win that one.”
I squeeze his arm.
“I used to think it would get better, that he’d ease up or I’d get smarter, but instead it gets worse every year. ‘If I got a C, I would hang myself.’ What the hell?”
“What does your mom say? I know she doesn’t believe—”
“She doesn’t know. I mean, she knows he thinks he’s God’s gift to the world, but she doesn’t know how bad he’s gotten. He used to talk about other stuff with me and just lecture me once in a while. He took me fishing and to movies and museums sometimes. Now all he does is tell me what a moron I am.”
“You should tell her.”
“No.”
“Why not? She’d want to know that—”
“You didn’t see that divorce, Maggie. She went through five lawyers. She got served papers every time she walked out into the driveway. They itemized everything in the house, down to the forks and spoons. She used to puke every time she had to go to court.”
It’s true, I didn’t see the divorce. Nick was about eight then; I didn’t know him yet.
“If she thinks I’m having problems with him, she might get some crazy idea in her head about trying to change the custody agreement. Which means more lawyers, more papers. I’m not putting her through that.” He coughs. “In six months, I’ll be eighteen and it’ll be easier. There’s no point stirring things up now.”
His voice roughens on that last sentence, cracking to reveal hunger underneath. It reminds me of the look on his face when he used to show his father basketball trophies and better-thanusual report cards, all the things he once brought to Dr. Cleary for approval, before he learned how futile it was. And I realize, despite everything, Nick doesn’t
want
to stop seeing his father. Which is maybe the most painful part of all.
I stroke his arm.
“This has been a hell of a day,” Nick says. He takes out his phone and checks the messages. “Should I call Vanessa?” he asks, his eyes still on the screen.
“Why?” I ask. Maybe I should’ve said yes right away, but I tell myself I’m trying to help him figure out exactly what he wants.
“She hasn’t called me,” he says as if I haven’t spoken. “Do you think I should call her?”
“Not if you’re still mad.”
“I’m not. But she probably is. I don’t know.”
I should tell him. Right now, I should tell him she wants him to call. But the words refuse to come out.
He puts away the phone and lies back down next to me. I let go of his arm. We stare up at his ceiling, but I’m very aware of his warmth, an inch or two away. “You know those glow-inthe-dark stars you can put on your ceiling?” he says.
“Yeah.”
“I had them when I was little, at our old house, when my parents were still together. Dad said we should put them in exactly the right spots to mimic the real constellations, but I wanted to make my own galaxy. So I stuck them up there in a pattern I invented myself. He went ballistic.”
“You’re
supposed
to have fun with those stars,” I say.
“To him, it was like I was insisting that two plus two is five, or that the Earth is square. He didn’t even talk to me for a week.”
“Jeez,” I say, “the guy doesn’t bend
at all
, does he?”
Nick laughs a little.
“Did he let you have toy dinosaurs, or did they have to be exact scale-model replicas of real dinosaurs?”
Nick laughs again, which makes me laugh, which makes him laugh more. And then we’re both laughing so hard that the bed shakes, and we gasp for breath. Beneath it runs a sad horror; we know there’s something profoundly unfunny about the bitterness between Nick and his father. But laughing still feels good, releasing the tension that’s been growing through the whole night.
Our laughter subsides, leaving behind the glow of connection. I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back.
“Hey,” he says, “I should bring you along every time I have to see him.”

191

“The Maggie Lifeline goes live and in person.” I drop his hand and turn toward him, rolling onto my side, at the same moment he turns toward me.

Our skin is shadow-gray in the dim light, his mouth dark and achingly close. For a breathless minute I’m sure he’s going to kiss me again.

He doesn’t bend toward me. But he doesn’t pull away, either. “Thanks,” he says. “For coming with me tonight.” “I was glad to.”
He looks away from my face, chuckling as his eyes sweep

over the T-shirt he lent me. He touches my side, rubbing a loose fold of cloth. “This is really big on you.”
“And here I thought I was making a bold fashion statement.”
Our eyes meet again, the heat between us building and building, his hand resting lightly on the side of my rib cage. Neither of us moves. But then I have to, because the arm I’m lying on has fallen asleep. As soon as I shift my weight, he pulls his hand back. He turns his head away. I’m trying to work up the nerve to reach out to him when my phone beeps. It’s my mother, calling me home.

twenty-four

For the rest of the week, Nick and Vanessa avoid each other, though I catch each of them sneaking looks at the other. I wonder if Vanessa is the reason Nick didn’t kiss me in his room after Midi, even though I’d thought he wanted to. I can’t forget him checking his phone that night, asking me if he should call her. And there’s no mistaking the way his eyes follow her when she crosses the cafeteria to sit with Janie Fletcher.

Maybe it’s crazy of me to hope that they’re truly finished with each other. I should tell at least one of them that the other wants to talk—maybe that’s all it would take for them to fix the split between them—but I can’t force those words out.

I text Sylvie a million times so that she can tell me do the right thing.

am i a bad person for not wanting nick and vanessa to get back together
?
i really do want nick to be happy
.
it
’
s nice not having to watch her glue her lips to his face though
.
but i don
’
t want to be petty
,
either
.
if they belong together
. . .
then again
,
sometimes i think he might like me
.
what should i do
?
do you want to get together and talk
?

Sylvie doesn’t seem to want to help me with my soul searching. When I catch her on the phone on Friday, she says wearily, “What is it this time, Maggie?”

“Oh, uh—nothing. I wondered if you’ve been getting my messages.”
“Yes, of course. I haven’t had time to answer you. Things are complicated around here. . . .”
“Well, do you have any advice? I’m driving myself crazy trying to figure this out.”
“Just do whatever you think is right.” Her words are automatic, stiff. Even though she says she’s getting my messages, I wonder if she’s
reading
them.
“That’s the trouble: I don’t
know
what’s right. I keep changing my mind. It’s not like I can be objective about this.”
“I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m kind of distracted by some stuff going on with Wendy, and I—can we catch up later?”
“Well—okay . . .”
She says a hurried thanks before hanging up. Leaving me alone with this same problem, spinning in the same old spot.

JENNIFER R . HUBBARD

The piano doesn’t have any answers for me, either, though I go to it anyway, playing “Nightwaves,” playing fast and complicated pieces that require concentration. I keep hoping that if I distract my conscious mind, some deeper part of my brain will come up with a solution and jump out of the darkness, waving the answer in my face.
This is what you should do!
But it doesn’t happen.

There’s also the upcoming hike to worry about, my second chance at Crystal. For that I play slow, powerful music, anything that sounds like confidence to me.

By the time Nick and I set out for our return to Crystal Mountain, he and Vanessa still haven’t worked up the nerve to talk to each other, and I haven’t said anything to either of them. I tell myself it’s their own business; it’s not my job to fix their relationship. My job is to see if I can make it up this mountain. Or at least past the point where I froze last time.

On Friday night, at Nick’s, I keep the conversation to practical things: our route up Crystal, the weather we expect, the food we’ll bring. I’m up before six on Saturday, packing my gear under electric-light glare. The sky outside is black. I double-check that I have all my gear, using the checklist Perry once gave me, packing extras of everything.

This time, I don’t have to drag Nick out of bed. He meets me in the kitchen: uncombed and bleary-eyed, clutching a mug of coffee, but awake.
“I’m guessing it’ll be windy at the top,” he says as we climb into the car.

“Maybe.” It’s hard to believe, since the air is calm right now, so peaceful that Nick and I might be the only people alive. But that tropical storm has been stirring up the atmosphere all week, and Perry has warned us about the weirdness of mountain weather, about breaking through tree line to get slapped in the face by wind.

Nick shifts out of park, his knuckles paling as he grips the knob. I focus on his hand to keep from looking at the rest of him. To keep from thinking about the rest of him.

But I have a more immediate problem: getting past those ledges that stopped me before. I don’t want to be weak. Weak gets walked on. Weak is how Raleigh saw me, and the last thing in the world I want is to see myself through her lens, to believe that anything she said about me was right. If I don’t belong out here—on the mountain, in the woods—then I don’t belong anywhere; there’s no room for me in the world.

The first highway sign for Crystal Mountain is tilted today, probably blown crooked by the recent storm, and I tell myself not to take it as a bad omen. My legs twitch, and I jiggle them to keep the muscles loose. I stare out the windshield as the car eats up the miles, heading north to the Cinnamon Range.

twenty-five

When we step onto the Crystal trail once again, I have to admit that those hikers in the online forum weren’t joking about the rocks. They’re not evenly spaced, so every step is different, and it’s a struggle to stay balanced. I have to watch my feet instead of the world around me. I slip and stumble, and Nick slips and stumbles. Our experience doesn’t help us here: it’s just as hard the second time around.

We find plenty of bare rock still coated with wet leaves from the week’s storm. The leaves form a slippery pulp on which our boots skid.

Sometimes climbing hurts so much I wonder why I do it: the strain in my legs, the soreness in my feet, the scrape of twigs against my face. After our first few hikes, Nick and I did the “Frankenstein shuffle,” hobbled by stiffness for a couple of days. (Even so, Perry used to say, as he grabbed various muscle wraps and ointments, “Boy, you kids bounce back quickly. Wait until you’re my age.”)

But today, on the lower slopes of Crystal, sunlight touches a clump of lacy ferns with a gentleness that makes me glad I’m alive to see it. Dead leaves give off an earthy fragrance, and I find mushrooms to identify along the trail.

Even Nick’s silence is okay right now, because we’re usually pretty quiet when we hike. This quiet is sharper, more jagged than usual, but for now I can get away with pretending that it’s our usual comfortable silence. Pretending that Vanessa doesn’t haunt the space between us.

About halfway up, we start catching views. We stand on a rocky knob, panting, looking out over a valley with tiny houses and a greenish circle of lake. I use the scissors in my knife to trim a piece of moleskin for my left heel, to keep a hot spot there from turning into a blister. Nick helps me smooth it over my skin.

Above us rises the rest of Crystal. “There’s our high point from last time,” Nick says, nodding at the ledges still ahead.
“My Waterloo,” I say in a voice deliberately melodramatic, and Nick laughs.
That laughter breaks some icy dread within me. I had decided to be brave, to pretend I’m not scared out of my mind. But who am I putting on a front for? Nick was here. He saw what happened.
“Onward and upward,” he says. In this moment, our old connection is back: our pre-kiss, pre-Vanessa link. I follow him without a word, not wanting to break the spell.
We reach the base of the exposed ledges. “Okay,” Nick says. “Do you want to go first, or do you want me to?”
“I’ll go.”
I make sure my backpack’s snug so it won’t slip around and throw me off balance. There’s so much
air
up here. Fears shout inside my head. I picture myself wheeling through the air, my neck cracking, skull smashing, spinal column snapping.
I gather myself, summoning every mental trick I’ve ever come up with: Breathe deeply and slowly. Take one step at a time. Pretend I’m setting my boots down squarely on Raleigh Barringer’s face.
I force myself to concentrate on the position of my hands and feet, on the ground in front of me. I pick my way up through the first section, finding the dimples and bumps in the rock. I test each inch of ground before I put my full weight on it, avoiding the least stable footholds. After the first few steps, I don’t glance down, but I know Nick is there below me. Spiderlike, I creep upward, occasionally bending forward to use my hands.
This step, this step, next step, you can do it, you can do it
, I chant to myself.