All We Left Behind (25 page)

We're down by two at the end of the third and Conner drops himself next to me. He's the only one holding up the offensive line without me out there. The replacement striker is too slow. He can't keep pace for the whole game.

“Their left fullback is weak,” I tell Conner as he squirts water down his neck. “If you drive it up the right you'll have an open shot. I'd set you up if—” I glance at Coach and dig my knuckles into the bench.

“Don't blame Coach for that,” he says, tossing the water bottle to my feet. The whistle blows and Conner returns to the field.

The other team scores a goal. We score none. And I don't get up from that bench till it's over.

*  *  *

They're in the hall together. Again. Abe against the locker next to hers. Marion putting her books away. Sun shoots down the hall and I'm not paying attention to her hand on his elbow. Only, my feet are walking. Toward them.

Abe sees me and his grin falls. I step between them and lean my hand against the locker. My shoulder in Abe's face.

“Excuse you,” he snaps, stumbling back, and Marion scowls. I swallow hard. I've seen that look before. On other girls. Not her.

“I need to talk to you,” I say, and she frowns.

“Then talk.”

I shoot a glare over my shoulder at Abe and my fingers curl into a fist against the locker.

“You mind?” I say, and he flicks hair out of his eyes.

“Kind of.”

I drop my shoulder and face him. “Kind of? Are you sure you want—”

“We were having a conversation,” Marion interrupts, and I look back at her. She's pissed. “If you have something to say, Kurt, say it.”

A locker slams behind us and suddenly everything's too loud. I crack my knuckles against the aluminum and roll my shoulder.

“Say it,” she says quietly, without the anger of the moment before, and I think maybe she wants to know.

Only, I don't do this.

Any of it.

I drop my arm and I'm gone.

*  *  *

I lean against the brick of the school and kick the grass.

I want a cigarette.

Instead I pull my cell phone out and call home. Maybe Dad will let me take Josie out of the house. Go bowling. Get ice cream. So she's not rotting in that house all day long. So it's not just the two of them. Maybe it's my turn to get her out of that cave.

Students pour out of the building and I see Troy, fighting the crowd with his practice bag on his shoulder. He catches my eye when he reaches the gym door and steps to the side.

“Sucks that Coach didn't play you yesterday,” he says, and I shrug, lifting the phone for him to notice.

“Right,” he acknowledges, but then he stands there another moment rolling a rock under his foot.

“Coach will get over it,” I say. “Especially when he decides he wants to start winning again.”

Troy kicks the rock into the grass.

“You should really apologize to the B-squad,” he says.

I stare at him and he stands his ground. He's not angry, just matter-of-fact.

The phone rings in my ear, but no one picks up. There's no machine. No voice mail.

Nothing.

“Right,” Troy says, stepping off and opening the gym door. “See you at practice in ten.”

My bag is heavy with
books as I head through the parking lot. It's almost four p.m. and there's a flurry of snow in the air. It's nothing more than a handful of flakes dotting the sky, almost invisible, but everywhere.

I look up and see Kurt against my car.

He should be at practice, but he isn't suited up. There's a puff of something white near his mouth and I think it's breath from the cold, but when I get closer I see it's a cigarette.

He takes a drag, and I wonder if he deliberately chose to lean against my backseat door, the one we fell through after the ocean when our skin was salted and wet.

Kurt throws the cigarette on the ground when he sees me and stands upright like I'm a teacher and he's got something to hide. He shifts back and forth, and it's odd to see him uncertain on his feet, when he runs and plays soccer the way he does.

I stop a few feet away, but he doesn't say anything, like the fact that he's standing there should be enough.

“Don't you have practice?” I say, and he looks to the field, where his teammates are set up for a corner kick. One of the players lobs the ball and then the whole group moves as one. Motion, inertia, goal.

“Can we go somewhere else?” he asks, nodding to my car.

“You're kidding, right?”

He stuffs a hand in his pocket and stares at me. I shake my head, because he actually
does
think that's how this is going to work.

“Go to your practice,” I say, striding toward the driver's seat, and he steps back as I approach. “Or go find Vanessa.”

“I don't like Vanessa.”

“I saw you kiss her,” I snap. “So, you like her enough.”

“I don't
want
Vanessa.”

I shake my head and dig in my bag for my keys. “No, you just want to fuck around. I got that.”

He looks away, taking that blow, knowing he deserves it. I wait for him to apologize or show any kind of remorse, but he just stands there with his fists balled against his sides.

“Marion.” His voice gets low. “I don't know how to do this.”

“Then don't,” I snap. “Walk away. Ignore me. Do whatever you do with the others.”

His eyes cut to the ground and he kicks the asphalt.

“Can't.”

I press my palm against the roof of my car. It's covered with a sheet of ice crystals.

“Why not?” I look at him and there's so much emotion in his face I can't even begin to read it. Ice seeps through my palms and there's snow in his hair. “Why not?” I repeat, and he shakes his head. He's close enough that I can see the muscles in his jaw. They're clenched so tight I don't think he could speak even if he wanted to. And for a second, he looks like a little boy. A chill all too familiar reeds through me, shooting straight down to my toes. His eyes are filled with all the things that he
wants
to say. But he
can't.

He just can't.

My feet go cold. Creek-water cold.

I know exactly what it is to want to say something—and not know how.

I turn away from him and lean into the metal of the car. I breathe in the snow. Invisible. Unspeakable. Everywhere.

“Get in the car,” I say, opening the door.

He doesn't move because I know he doesn't believe me. I throw my bag in the backseat and point to the passenger door.

“Kurt,” I say, tasting snow on my lips. “I don't know how to do this either. Just get in the car.”

There's still sand on Marion's
dash. Her seats are freezing, but my palms sweat as she pulls out of the lot. The seat belt presses into my neck, anticipating the need to hold me in this seat.

“Where do you want to go?” she asks.

I don't have an answer for that. I didn't think that far ahead. I didn't think about any of this. I roll down the window.

“Just drive,” I say, letting my head roll back and closing my eyes.

The engine hums low, then climbs high. It feels like running. Only it's sitting still in the motion of it. It's stillness inside the uncertainty.

It's running and motion and—

She puts her hand on top of mine.

And I want to tell her,
this
—why I can't walk away. Why I can't ignore her. This hope in my chest—

This
is why not.

I drive over the hill
and the road opens to the shore path where the ocean crashes against the rocks.

We don't say anything. We drive. We drive and there is music in the silence, the road humming, the rise and fall of his chest. There's music behind the quietness, wind lifting light in my hair, wind lifting light in our breath.

After an hour of driving around aimlessly, I park in front of a brick building with a line of small businesses. Blue awnings hood each window. There's a gift shop, a hair salon, and an ice cream parlor that's only open in the summer. The fourth shop is the reason I drove us here, it's the only shop I know of like this. Kurt leans forward for a better look.

“Have you been here before?” I ask, and he stares out the window before nodding. The blue awning shades a window full of guitars, and a neon sign blinks the word:

Strings.

“This place is still here?” he asks, hands perched on the
dash. He looks at me and a smile tugs at the edge of his mouth. “Do you play the—”

“Nope,” I interrupt. “Never touched a guitar in my life.” I open the door and look back at him. “But
you
play.”

A bell on the door
jangles and the owner behind the counter looks up. He's got long hair and a goatee, and there are more wrinkles on his face than I remember.

“Evening,” he says, his voice full of gravel. I nod, pretending to look at a rack so he can't see my face and recognize me. The problem with living in a small town is there's only one good guitar store for miles. You can't get anything this store has unless you go to the city. Guess that's what I used to love about it. It has everything. Mom used to call it wonderland. “Can I help you?”

“Just looking,” I say, turning to Marion like she's more interesting than him. The owner nods, checking his watch.

“We're open for another twenty. Try what 'cha like.” He motions to the room and goes back to his paperwork.

Guitars hang from the ceiling and band posters cover the walls: Fleetwood Mac, Dusty Springfield. The whole place is like a time warp and smells of carpet desperate to be cleaned, but I like that about it. It's real. I head for the
back, where the acoustic guitars line the shelf.

I pull one down and feel its weight. Solid neck. Light body. The strings feel good under my fingers. A radio behind the counter dribbles out an old country tune and I brush against the strings, but the twang still echoes through the store.

Too loud.

And at the same time, not loud enough.

Marion leans against a rack of sheet music, chewing on her pinkie. She pulls out a Steve Winwood book from his Blind Faith days and pretends to be interested in it. I adjust for pitch, turning the knobs. Not sure I want an audience. But the shy way she waits for me to play, just giving me the space, makes my chest clench in the best possible way.

A smile tugs my lip and my hands remember. The chords. The songs. How to fingerpick. Strum. My foot starts tapping and we have music. Music that I haven't played in four years. Music I was sure I'd forgot.

I don't worry about making mistakes. I just play, and Marion doesn't ask me about the song. She bobs her head like maybe she's remembering the one I played her on my iPod. Only this one's different. More raw.

Hair falls over her face as she tilts her head, watching me. It makes me nervous, but I like her here, listening. Like someone's supposed to hear this. I smile at her, which makes her neck go red, and we both start laughing.

My cheeks hurt from smiling and that fist in my chest,
that knot, it's easing. I tuck my chin down and hunch over the guitar and play the song. Music fills the whole store. Mom's music.

When I'm finished, I walk over to Marion and put the guitar in her hands. She shakes her head and puts her arm up in protest.

“Oh, I don't—”

But I move behind her.

“Don't worry, it's easy,” I say, wrapping my arms around her waist to show her how to hold it. I trace my fingers over hers and press them into the strings, mapping out the chord. “One, two—” Adjust her pinkie. “This one goes here. Okay, now strum.”

She laughs nervously and brushes the strings, the sound wavering.

“Not bad.” I laugh. “That's a G.” My head nods against her neck and I move her hand to the next position. “Okay, this is a D7.”

I show her the pattern of notes. Repeat them. Smell her neck and tell her to strum like she means it.

I leave my hands on her hips and she plays the pattern on her own. It takes a few tries before she gets it, and then she laughs, rocking back into my chest when she realizes what song it is.

“ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb'?” she asks.

“It's a classic,” I say, stepping back because I'm way too turned on by this. I move around so I'm facing her, and tell
her to play it again. She repeats the phrase, slowly growing more confident. Adjusting her shoulders so she's got room. Finding a posture that feels good.

Raindrops start to tap on the other side of the ceiling and I close my eyes. I want everything to be like this. Rain. Music. Possible.

The water starts to stampede and thunder claps, making me laugh. Marion slides her hand over my arm and nods to the front of the store. Right now, all I want is to take her into that rain.