Freefall (7 page)

Daniel gave me a weird look. “What are you talking about? You see her at school all the time. Just ask her for it the next time you run into her.”

His way of being all casual about the chicks he fooled around with had always been a mystery to me, but never more than at that moment. Daniel hooked up with Kendall once at a party last winter. Things got screwed up for all of us when Isaac found out about it, beat the shit out of Daniel, and quit the band. After a month or so, Isaac and Kendall got back together, like they always did, and Isaac started playing music with us again, but things between him and Daniel were never cool after that. The thing I didn’t get was that Daniel never even seemed sorry. There was no chance of Isaac finding out about what
I’d
done, but I felt like a bastard over the whole thing, anyway.

“You’ll probably get your mic back faster if you give Kendall a call and ask for it,” I said to Jared.

“Can’t you just do it for me? I don’t have her number.”

As much as I didn’t want to risk making these guys suspicious, I wanted to talk to Kendall even less. “Get it from Mom. I’m not your secretary.”

Mikey rolled his eyes. “You know what? I’ll call Kendall. It’s only a microphone. No big deal.”

“Cool,” I said, lifting the door and heading out.

Mikey and Jared stayed put, but Daniel caught up with me and we walked to our parking spots. For a few seconds I wondered if he was figuring things out and was going to give me shit over Kendall, but instead he said, “That’s pretty awesome news about that Rat Rodders tour, huh? I think it’s exactly what we need.”

“Yeah, if it even ends up happening,” I said, shrugging.

And right then I wondered how I could
let
it happen. No one had said much about my sloppy, embarrassing performance at our show the week before, but I’m sure they’d have just told me to get over it and get back up there. What they didn’t get was that I couldn’t. Not without Isaac.

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s going on with you? Why do you have to be such a downer? You were never like this before.”

Before? Did he mean before all the times the Rat Rodders screwed us over? Before Isaac died? Or maybe before I’d found him on the floor this morning.

“I’m trying to be realistic,” I said. “Those guys never come through. Maybe we should just hold off on getting our hopes up.”

“Whatever.” Daniel climbed on his bike. “You keep being negative, Dick, but I’m going to think good thoughts. Like about how, soon, this is all finally going to be paying off. We’re going to get out of this town. The four of us. We’ll travel all over. Get paid to play music. What could be better?”

What he didn’t mention were the parts he was looking forward to most: the partying, the booze, the drugs, the chicks. For Daniel, being in a band was about fun first and music last.

“You realize this isn’t going to be tour buses and ritzy hotels,” I said. “We’ll spend half our waking hours driving in
some van from one sketchy club to the next. And then we’ll sleep on strangers’ floors and live off convenience-store hot dogs and chips.”

“Sounds like a hell of a great time to me.” He started his bike and yelled over the engine, “Maybe you can try keeping an open mind?”

But it was way too late for that.

5:38
P.M.

Two days later. A thrilling afternoon at work. Mikey, who manages his dad’s full-service car wash/gas station, had given me the crap job of scrubbing wheels, so I was on my knees finishing up a minivan. It was overcast, and with the wind redirecting the water from the hoses Trevor and Lyle were using, my sweatshirt and jeans were getting damp.

I was deep in concentration when someone touched my shoulder. I looked up to see Kendall staring down, wearing her orangey hair in those stupid pigtails again. “You’re in luck, lover,” she said. “I was here dropping something off for Mikey, and he just so happened to mention that it’s time for your break.”

So the missing microphone thing was over and done
with. It was good of Mikey to take care of it for Jared so I didn’t have to, but it was really
not
cool that he’d sent Kendall out to harass me afterward. Especially since I was shaky and sweaty, and I hadn’t felt much like eating ever since I’d started this no-drinking thing.

“I don’t want to take a break,” I said.

“Of course you do.” As she put one hand on her hip, her fitted black shirt with too many undone buttons shifted so I could see the top of her lacy red bra. “Everyone wants to take breaks. And anyway, we need to talk.”

Trevor and Lyle were watching. How could they not with Kendall’s boobs hanging out? And her legs. With that skirt.
Jesus
.

I didn’t think Kendall would say anything about That One Night in front of them, but I didn’t want to risk it. “Finish this for me?” I asked Lyle.

He nodded, so I tossed him my brush and walked with Kendall until we were out of earshot.

“Have you ever considered that I don’t want to spend my break with
you
?” I asked.

“You only get fifteen minutes. Don’t waste it arguing.”

Then she grabbed my arm and pulled me across the parking lot. I was too tired to fight her, and even if I’d tried, she’d only have blabbed loudly at me anyway. What was the point?

We sat together on a bench facing the busy street, and I could smell her gummy bearness. With the headache I had going, it made me kind of queasy.

“Our last conversation didn’t work out the way I’d planned,” she said.

It was weird that she was so calm about it. I’d expected her to go crazy on me for driving off without her. But even when I’d hurried to get past her in the halls at school, the worst she’d done was stick out her tongue.

I raised my voice so she could hear me over the traffic. “Yeah, I’m sure it was a real bummer having to find another ride to school.”

“Actually, I drove myself.”

“In what?”

She twisted her lips in this guilty-looking way. “My . . . car.”

“It was an easy fix, then?”

“Very easy,” she said, still making that weird face. “I stuck the key in the ignition and away I went.”

“I don’t get it.”

She put her hands over her face and peeked through her fingers at me. “Don’t get mad.”

And
that’s
when I got it. “You’re unbelievable. You actually made up a lie about your car breaking down just so you could come over and tell me that you think my friend—your
boyfriend—
was a loser who deserved to die?”

She was frowning as she dropped her hands. “First of all, I never said that about the car. You assumed. Second, Isaac and I had been broken up for two months when he died. And third, I never said he deserved it.”

“So you broke up for a while,” I said. “Like that was
anything new. Everyone knew you’d get back together like you always did. Isaac said it was only a matter of time.”

“Isaac was wrong.”

I stood. “I’m going back to work now.”

But before I’d made it two steps, she jumped up, grabbed both my hands, and squeezed so hard it hurt. Her eyes were intense, serious. Pleading, even. “We still have, like, twelve minutes left. There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you and I need to get it out, okay?”

I pulled free from her grasp. “Hurry up, then.”

We sat again. She let out a loud breath and started talking quickly. “I know that what I was telling you the other day about Isaac seemed a little harsh. But the only reason I said it is because I was hoping it would help you get some perspective—”

“This is a joke, right? Because I’m about to be pissed if you dragged me out of work to badmouth Isaac some more.”

Kendall folded her hands in her lap and calmly said, “I’m trying to explain myself to you. I want us to be able to get past this.”

Why she thought
we
needed to be getting past anything was beyond me. “There are things people with decency don’t do,” I said, focusing on the swaying evergreens beyond the railroad tracks to avoid looking at her. “Like stealing from the church offering plate. Or talking shit about people after they die and then calling it ‘getting perspective.’”

“Oh, please.
You of all people are indignant about someone robbing the offering plate?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by me “of all people.” Because I didn’t go to church? Because I was arrested for shoplifting in ninth grade? Either way, why would she even be going there right now?

“What is
wrong
with you?” I asked. “Did you even care about Isaac?”

In that instant Kendall’s entire expression changed: eyebrows lowered, mouth turned down, shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes tightly, and when she opened them again, several seconds later, they were bright with tears. “Of course I cared. I
do
care.”

“Well, you sure don’t act like it.”

She started blinking fast. “Seth, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know the
right
way to be. I’ve been dwelling on every single thing that ever happened with Isaac, trying to figure out how I could have helped him, and blaming myself for the fact that the most memorable thing he did with his life was throw it away. It totally just . . . sucks!”

In all the time we’d known each other, I couldn’t think of when Kendall had ever said something so honest, so dead-on to what I was feeling.

She went on. “I’ve been thinking that maybe the only way a person can feel how they want is by acting like they already feel that way. So I’m doing it. I’m pretending like I’ve moved on. I wish you’d try it too,
because I hate seeing you depressed and drunk all the time.”

This dealing strategy of hers sounded crazy, but Kendall lying to herself—and to everyone—was easier for me to handle than if she really were just some heartless bitch. “I can’t fake nondepression,” I said.

She used the back of her hands to wipe under her eyes. “It’s easier than you’d think.”

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I sat still, stared at the cars, and listened to all the whooshing they made as they passed. For once Kendall didn’t push me. In fact, she managed to keep her mouth shut for about two solid minutes before finally saying, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Are you still mad at me?”

I shrugged.

“I wish things could be how they were before,” she said, tugging on her pigtails. “I mean, you and I have known each other our whole lives. I’m over at your house all the time, so we’re still going to be seeing each other. It doesn’t even make sense that we can’t get past everything.”

By “everything,” I assumed she was also including the drama she’d caused for all of us with the Isaac/Daniel thing—and, of course, the sex that
we
never should have had.

“It isn’t like you’ve given me much of a chance,” I said. “It’s only been a week since my show and you keep turning up and being all ‘lover’ this and ‘lover’ that. I mean, maybe
what happened was no big deal for you, but it’s weird for me, okay? I feel like a complete dick.”

She dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips and then wiped black makeup splotches onto her skirt. “You do? How come?”

There was no way to say the whole truth—that I’d never wanted her in that way—without pissing her off, so I admitted only part of it: “Because of Isaac.”

“Oh.” She seemed to consider this for a few seconds. “Okay, well, stop it. Because wherever Isaac is right now, I think he wants you to move on with your life. Isaac wants you to get some and be happy.”

“Not with you, he doesn’t.”

Kendall sighed like I was a lost cause. “Look. I’m not expecting things to turn around instantly for you and me. But can’t we try being nonenemies first and see how it goes at least?”

If someone had asked Isaac a question like that, he’d have taken out his Magic 8 Ball and gone with whatever answer floated up to the surface. I didn’t have that kind of trust in a plastic toy, so I just shrugged.

Kendall looked at her watch. “Your break’s almost over. If you say you’ll give me a chance, I’ll leave you alone now.”

“I’ll
think
about it.”

To my surprise, she didn’t ask for more. “See you soon, nonenemy!”

7:16
P.M.

I’d been waiting about fifteen minutes when my mom came rushing in and set a plate of tacos in front of me. I was at my usual corner table at Good Times, in the back area where no one else sits unless they have to. It’s even darker back there than in the rest of the joint, hot air is always blasting down for no good reason, and the view of the TVs is nonexistent, but I like it.

“Still no sign of your brother, huh?” Mom asked.

I shook my head. Jared hadn’t picked up when I’d called home, and he wasn’t at the storage unit when I dropped by after my shift either. Not that this was anything unusual. For someone who didn’t have wheels, a job, or anywhere to be, Jared sure did turn up missing a lot.

“Well, I’m too busy to take a break and eat with you tonight anyway,” Mom said, turning to head back to the bar. “If he shows, tell him to just put his order in with the kitchen.”

Technically, Jared and I weren’t even supposed to be there because Good Times was a tavern and we were both underage—minors could get in for the occasional Friday or Saturday all-ages rock show, and that was
it
—but Mom had been bartending forever and let us in on the sly. I came down for dinner most nights that she worked. Jared dropped in when he wasn’t busy doing whatever the hell it was he did.

A couple of minutes later I was eating when Jared came busting through the back door. He threw himself onto the
heavy wooden chair across from me, snagged a taco from my plate, and crunched into it, letting lettuce and tomato chunks fall onto the table. “I have news,” he said. “Big fucking huge news!”

Jared doesn’t get excited often. Not like this. It could only mean one thing. . . .

“I’ll give you a hint,” he said, grinning. “It starts with a
T
, ends with an
R
, and has
O
and
U
in the middle.”

Just like I’d thought. Shit.