Chapter 7
Sunday 1:05 A.M.
MOM HAS GIVEN up trying to reach me. Slade either hasn’t gotten my messages or has decided to ignore them. So now what? I can’t hide in this playhouse forever. What am I going to do? How am I going to fight this? There is no way I’m going to turn myself in, like Mom suggested. I saw what almost happened to my brother thanks to an inexperienced public defender. You may be innocent until proven guilty, but sometimes you’re guilty in people’s minds long before you set foot in a courtroom.
And I will not allow that to happen to me, or to my mother, or to what little is left of our family.
The phone vibrates. I flip it open and look at the number. It’s Slade! My heart leaps.
“Where are you?” he asks.
Oh my God! How many nights have I cried myself to sleep, yearning to hear his voice? I try to answer his question, but what comes out is a choked gurgle followed by sobs as I’m overwhelmed by a flood of feelings.
“I … I … Just give me a minute.” I try to catch my breath and calm myself. I’m happy and sad and scared and stressed. “Just don’t hang up. I have to talk to you. Don’t go away.”
“I won’t.”
I have to focus, get ahold of myself, stop trembling, breathe steadily. Finally I feel like I can speak again. “Thank you for calling me back. I know you didn’t have to. You probably didn’t even want to. I’m so sorry for what I did, Slade. You don’t know how many times I wanted to tell you. And now you probably never want to see me again.”
“No, that’s not true,” he says, but his voice is clenched like a fist.
Still, that’s all it takes for my filter to fall away and allow me to blurt, “I still love you.”
First there’s silence. Then he says, “Don’t say that, Cal.”
It would have been better if I hadn’t told him so soon, but now it’s too late. There’s no backing away. “Slade, I want to explain why I broke up with you. It was such a stupid, idiotic reason, and I’ve regretted it every second since. But I don’t have time now. Because … you won’t believe what happened tonight. Slade, I need to talk to you. I need your help. I … I—” When I think about the enormity of the task I’m faced with, tears start to bubble up and the shaking returns.
“Okay, stay calm,” he says. “Take a breath and tell me where you are.”
I do what he says and feel the cool air fill my lungs before I exhale. “Up in the Glen. In someone’s yard. In a kids’ playhouse.”
“I don’t know. The first one on the right when you drive in. A couple of houses down. I’m so sorry, Slade. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. I just wish it didn’t have to be like this. Please, believe me.”
“Cal, I can’t—” he begins, his voice suddenly anguished. I hear something bang in the background; then he curses under his breath.
“What is it, Slade?”
He ignores the question. “I’m coming. Just promise you won’t go anywhere, okay? Just be there when I get there.”
A surge of grateful relief floods through me. “I will, I promise. Thank you so much.”
We met at a football game when I was in eighth grade. I’d never been to a high-school game before, and my friends and I thought it would be daring and exciting to sit in the stands with the older kids.
At one point my best friend, Jeanie, and I decided to go get something to drink. Neither she nor I was a big football fan, and thus far, we’d been underwhelmed by what we’d seen. The snack bar was across the field and Jeanie suggested we cut across rather than walk all the way around.
“I don’t think we should,” I said.
“Oh, come on, don’t be a wanker,” she said, using one of her funny British words. “They’re all the way down at the other end. Everyone’s looking that way. They probably wouldn’t even notice us.”
I agreed reluctantly, but no sooner did we set foot on the field than a blond guy standing with some people near an EMS truck waved and shouted at us: “Hey! Get off the field!” While I hesitated, Jeanie, who had been experimenting lately with bold rebelliousness, said to ignore him and keep going. Meanwhile, the guy started jogging toward us, still waving his arms.
“Hey! You can’t just walk on the field!” he called.
“Yes, we can,” Jeanie called back. “They’re all down the other way.”
“One loose ball and they could be on top of you in an instant,” he yelled.
I started to jog off the field. Jeanie made a big show of rolling her eyes and then began strolling slowly, clearly letting him know that she was going to take her time. Just then a loud roar came from the crowd and we turned to see a horde of brutes in helmets and jerseys stampeding toward us. The one in the lead had the ball cradled in his arms.
In a flash, Jeanie and I were running for our lives. We’d just gotten off the field when the roar turned to cheers and the ball carrier crossed the goal line not ten feet behind us.
“See?” The blond guy chuckled and grinned. He had nice teeth and a thin but athletic build. “What are you, like fifth graders or something?”
Jeanie was medium-size and slender. But I knew that the reason he’d asked was that I was so small. “Beg your pardon,” Jeanie huffed with annoyance, and pointed at the brick high-school building. “We’ll be here next year.”
“Oh, yeah?” The blond guy looked surprised, and I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze was mostly on me. “That really true?”
I nodded.
“Okay, Shrimp, see you next year.”
I might have minded being called shrimp if I hadn’t been so used to it. Jeanie and I got our drinks at the snack bar, and to be honest, I didn’t give any more thought to the blond guy, who was obviously older and no doubt dated older girls.
But later, after the game, my friends and I passed the EMS truck, and there he was. Our eyes met and I had the strangest feeling that he’d been waiting for me.
“Enjoy the game?” he asked.
“Not really,” I answered truthfully. Our eyes stayed on each other.
“Hey,” he said, “you guys want to see what the inside of an EMS truck looks like?”
My girlfriends and I shared curious looks. None of us cared about the truck, but we were all interested in attractive older boys, especially the ones who paid attention to us. The blond guy opened the back of the truck and pointed out the stretcher and medical kits and oxygen tanks.
“What’s the oxygen for?” I asked.
He seemed glad that I’d asked. “Smoke inhalation,” he said. “For people in fires. Firefighters, too. They get overcome by smoke.”
“Have you ever saved anyone?” asked a girl named Mary.
“I’m not old enough to be an EMT, but my dad’s the captain of the squad, so I get to hang around with them.”
A moment later a man came around behind the truck. “Close it up, Slade, we’re leaving.”
Slade said he had to go, and my friends and I headed home.
“He likes you,” Jeanie said to me as soon as we were out of earshot.
“How do you know?” I asked, even though inside I was thrilled, as this confirmed that it wasn’t all in my imagination. “You could tell,” she said.
A few days later Slade was outside on the sidewalk after school. He asked if he could walk with me. Even though he was two years older, he had an easy, relaxed way that wasn’t threatening. He was there the next day and the next, and soon we were texting and calling and doing things together.
A month later we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I was the only girl at Soundview Middle School who was seeing a sophomore from the high school. To me it didn’t matter how old Slade was, but a lot of my classmates were in awe.