Tumble & Fall (4 page)

He’s never been afraid of the beach at night. As soon as it’s warm enough, he likes to walk down to Split Rock, the big-ass boulder at the end of the point that looks like somebody sawed it in half. He rolls a joint from the baggie full of shake, stolen from Ramona’s not-so-secret bathroom stash. He takes a few thoughtful hits, and falls asleep in the dunes. Nobody bugs him. Sometimes he wakes up to the early morning joggers, or a dopey retriever licking the salt from his face.

Tonight, he passes Split Rock and keeps walking. The way to the docks is longer by the water, but he prefers it to taking the streets. He tries to guess who will be out at the landing tonight. There’s always the core group of Roadies: Justin, Kiefer, Lou, and Deck. Then there are the hangers-on, the kids like him who live in other parts of town and join the ongoing party whenever they can sneak away. Some of them have parents who try to track them down. They pull up in their SUVs at the end of the dock, headlights streaking across the parking lot. They call out into the darkness.

Some kids try to run, some sulk to their cars, stoned and reeking of cigarettes. They don’t care about getting in trouble; nobody does anymore. It’s just that some of them feel guilty. They shuffle their feet and climb inside, carted off to the warm light of living rooms and last-minute bonding.

Caden never feels guilty. Sometimes he wishes his sister wouldn’t try so damn hard. He knows she’s doing her thing, that she goes to Al-Anon meetings at the Center because it makes her feel better. But Caden wishes she wouldn’t waste her time. Carly thinks this could finally be a way to get through, a way for Ramona to find something to hold on to. To live whatever time she has left with them, for them, clearheaded. But Caden knows better. Ramona was always going to die a drunk. Why would she change her mind now?

In the distance, Caden sees the deep orange light of a fire. There’s over a mile still to go. It must be one hell of a bonfire if he can see it from here. He picks up his pace, shortening his steps until he’s in a full sprint. Lately, he’s realized how much time he spends getting places.

*   *   *

“You wanna go for a walk?”

Caden’s feet are half-buried and there’s a girl in a light blue sundress, kicking the sides of his toes. He doesn’t know how long he’s been lying here, his legs heavy in the sand where it starts to get damp and slopes down toward the water.

“Who is that?” he asks, struggling to lift his head. It feels like he’s stacked full of bricks, like that game he used to play with Carly. She would pretend to cut an incision in his forehead, tap her fingertips like she was pouring cement, and fill him up. First to the knees, then to the waist, then all the way up to his collarbone until he was totally frozen, a concrete statue of a boy in the grass.

“Eliza,” the girl says, plopping to her knees and tracing big circles in the sand with her fingernail. “We had after-school together once. I gave you money for the vending machine.”

“You did?” Caden props up on his elbows, his brick-head throbbing. He wishes he’d brought along a bottle of water, wishes there was something to drink at the party besides cheap vodka and warm, flat beer.

Eliza nods. “Yup.” She scoops a pile of sand and lets it sift through her fingers, pouring a steady, tickling stream onto the tops of his shins. “You got pretzels. And you didn’t even share.”

Caden is confused. He hates pretzels. And the sand on his legs feels warm and cold at the same time. He shifts back and bends his knees. Now his head feels light, like a balloon, like there’s nothing keeping it from floating away. “What time is it?” he asks, looking around. The fire is dying but a small group of kids is still gathered around the glowing scraps, bottles and cans piled like pieces of abstract art at their feet. “I think I need to go home.”

“Come on,” Eliza says, leaning toward him. The light from the fire dances in the shallow creases of her slim, tanned shoulders. He gets a clear look at her face and places her at last. One of Deck’s old girls. He’s heard stories but he can’t remember details, and he doesn’t want to try. “Don’t you want to go for a walk with me?” She rests her hands on the points of his knees and tilts her forehead toward his.

Months, even weeks earlier, there were few things Caden wouldn’t have done to be asked to go for a walk by a girl like Eliza. The amount of time he’d spent conjuring up scenarios much like this one, scenarios in which a decent-looking female was not only interested in but maybe even enthusiastic about getting him alone, added up to a significant percentage of his waking (not to mention dreaming) teenage life.

But now that it’s happening, now that Eliza—and it isn’t just Eliza, it’s been almost a full month of Elizas—is exactly where he never thought she’d be, saying the things he never allowed himself to dream she’d someday say, all he wants to do is disappear. Sink into the sand and let the waves pull him out to sea.

“Or we could just stay here,” she’s whispering now, inching her face closer to his. “You do look pretty cozy.” With a jolt like a spasm, her hands are on the sides of his face, and she’s pressing her lips onto his. Her tongue is cool and tastes like fruit punch and tobacco. Caden lets the weight of her fall into him, his mouth hung open and slack. He tries not to move. He tries to keep up. Of course he’ll keep up. Who wouldn’t?

He’s on his feet before Eliza can catch herself, toppling face-first into the leftover imprint of his body in the sand. She doesn’t move, and for a minute he’s worried she’s not breathing. But then she starts to laugh, a quiet cackle that crescendos into a maniacal guffaw, somehow getting louder the farther he gets down the beach.

He’s walking fast, trying to erase the memory of each individual moment with his steps. If he keeps walking by the water he’ll have to pass whoever’s left, he’ll have to explain why he’s leaving. Instead, he cuts through the parking lot.

He doesn’t notice the town car until it switches on its lights. He can’t tell if it’s just pulled in or has been sitting there, hidden in darkness. At first, he assumes it’s another anxious mom or dad, red-faced and feigning anger, but actually just relieved to have a chore, somewhere to be, a simple task with a beginning and an end.

The car creeps along the asphalt and Caden looks at it again over his shoulder. He shortens his steps and heads for a trail in the bushes. He hears the car accelerate, pulling up and matching his pace. The front window slides down and he can see two men, one driving, one inching an elbow out of the passenger seat.

“Excuse me,” the passenger says. He’s bald, with a long, oval head and a shiny black goatee. “I’m looking for Caden Crawford.”

Caden stops. He feels his heart freeze and jump-start. He wonders if he’s dreaming. He’s back on the beach, with Eliza. He stayed, her body pressed warm and hard against his. Afterward, they fell asleep.

The thick-necked driver says something under his breath. The passenger nods twice, two quick, precise bobs of his egg-shaped head.

Caden is running before he knows why. There’s a sharp squeal of tires as the car cuts him off, blocking his path to the trees. Both doors open and the smaller man is on him first, holding his wrists and twisting his arms in awkward angles behind his back. The driver lunges forward. There’s something in his hand that feels warm on Caden’s face, covering his mouth and nose. It’s damp and smells medicinal.

Caden struggles, trying to free his hands, trying to look somewhere, anywhere else. He can’t open his eyes, the weight of the cloth keeps them shut, and in the cloudy dark he thinks he sees a face. A girl. Not Eliza. His sister, Carly. They’re little again and he wants to ask what she’s doing, how she found him here of all places, but she’s already tapping sand into his forehead, filling his arms and legs, until even his eyelids are heavy. He takes a breath and heaves forward, sticky leather slapping the fronts of his legs. The car jerks into the night.

SIENNA

Denise looks like she plays a lot of tennis.

This is what Sienna thinks as she sets the table. The bags of groceries Dad brought from off-island have been unpacked and put away, and he’s already stationed himself at the grill, wearing an old apron of Mom’s that says “Kiss the Chef” over a cartoony pair of pursed, painted lips. Denise—Sienna so far has refused to call her “Denny” despite many cheerful prompts—walks back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, asking where to find things like napkins and serving spoons and offering Sienna lemonade every fifteen seconds.

She hasn’t stopped moving since they arrived. Which is odd since, when they pulled in the driveway, she seemed relaxed and content, flipping through a travel magazine and having a colorful drink on the upstairs deck. Sienna had to avert her eyes as she waved hello, so as not to see directly up Denise’s short, pleated skirt. Her legs were bronzed and shining, like they’d been oiled to star in a commercial for disposable lady razors, and her thick blond hair was pulled back in one of those fake-messy buns, exposing a patch of darker roots at her temples.

Ryan says she wears makeup to the beach. He was waiting outside when they showed up, concentrating hard on a sign made from the taped-together insides of broken-down cereal boxes. “Sienna Welcome Ho” it said in meticulous green crayon. Sienna scooped him up, mid-scribble, swinging his scrawny legs back and forth like floppy, defective windshield wipers. His hair smelled different; less sweet and more sweat. He felt different, too, more hard preteen angles, less soft little boy.

At first, it looked like he was going to cry, and not because he was happy to see them. Dad had told him they wouldn’t be getting in until later. They’d messed up his plan, and Ryan hates surprises. He was only two when Mom died, but Sienna thinks he tries so hard to be perfect so nothing bad will ever happen again. She tries not to wonder how much he knows about her, what she did, and where she’s been.

“I won’t look,” Sienna promised, shielding her eyes from the unfinished sign and lugging the rest of the bags up the steps.

Dad kicks open the door to the back porch, carrying a tray of charred burgers and deformed-looking hot dogs. “Who’s hungry?” he asks in his very best TV sitcom voice. It’s not clear right away if the poor showing is a result of meat that has been stockpiled in the freezer for months, or Dad’s overall culinary deficiencies. Either way, Sienna finds herself surprisingly homesick for the Tater Tots and frozen pizzas they served most nights at the House.

“It’s nice to find a man so useful in the kitchen,” Denise whispers to Sienna like they’re suddenly girlfriends, quiet collaborators. To Dad, she makes an overly enthusiastic
mmm
-ing sound, which leads Sienna to suspect that Dad has met his match in the false-truth department. Either that, or she never actually eats anything he cooks. Maybe that’s how she stays so thin.

“Wanna put the paper away, Bud?” Dad forks the burgers onto the open buns and passes them around the table. Ryan ignores him and stares with fierce concentration at the newspaper in his lap, tracing words with his finger across the front page.

“It’s all right, Mark.” Denise touches Dad’s forearm as she reaches for the ketchup. “Let him read. I don’t mind.”

Dad shrugs and gives the table one last glance before settling into his seat at the head.

“I’d like to make a toast,” Denise says. Sienna raises her full glass and tries not to look bored already. Denise’s nails are filed into perfect squares with shiny white tips, and they clickety-clack on the table as she clears her throat. “I’d like to make a toast to—”

“Nuclear bombs!” Ryan blurts, lifting his glass high above the rest. The semicircle dimples cut on each of his freckled cheeks get deeper as he smiles.

“Ryan,” Dad snaps. Denise lowers her glass and tucks a strand of her fried blond hair obsessively behind one ear. “That’s not funny.”

“I didn’t say it was funny.” Ryan shrugs. “I think we should toast them. They’re probably going to save our lives.”

Ryan unfolds the paper on the table, pointing at a headline on the front page. “What are you talking about, Ry?” Sienna asks patiently. Denise is smiling, but Sienna can tell it’s forced.

Dad lifts up the paper and scans the front page. “Where did you get this?” he asks, distracted. “Is this today’s…”

“It was in the neighbor’s trash,” Ryan says calmly, pushing at the forlorn-looking pieces of lettuce on his plate. “It’s not stealing if they threw it away.”

“What does it say?” Sienna asks, shoving her plate to one side and leaning across the table.

Dad clears his throat. “It’s the new Space Alliance. NASA with Russia and China. They’re sending a nuclear-tipped rocket directly into Persephone’s core,” he tells them. “It looks like they’re trying to blow the asteroid up.”

“I thought they decided it was too risky,” Denise says quietly. Something about her has changed, Sienna notices. She looks smaller, like she’s shrinking into the furniture.

“It is risky,” Ryan explains. “But it’s the only option left. Right, Dad?”

Dad scans the rest of the article. “I’m not sure yet, Buddy.” He flips through the pages of the section, hurrying to find a continuation. He spreads his arms wide, accidentally knocking Denise’s glass onto her plate, her burger bun quickly drenched in lemonade.

“Denny, I’m so sorry.” Dad grabs his napkin and sops up the leaking puddles of juice from the table.

Denise doesn’t move and the spill begins to drip onto the tanned tops of her knees. Her glossy lower lip does an abrupt little quivering thing, and her eyes look like they are straining to stay focused on her plate. There’s a pause that feels too long, and then the squeal of her chair as it slides back across the polished floor.

Dad stands and tries to stop her but she shakes her head and gestures for him to sit before rushing out of the room. The bottom step creaks loudly as she hurries upstairs.

“What was that?” Sienna half mouths, half whispers across the table. Dad glances at the ceiling, following Denise’s footsteps as she shuffles down the hall, toward the master bedroom. The door clicks shut, and Dad exhales. He stares at the food on his plate. He looks suddenly tired and old.