Drawn

  I got up and went downstairs, one hand clutched around the railing and the other pressed against the opposite wall to try to get as much weight off my knees as I could. The pain in my head made me dizzy, too, and I stumbled twice getting to the bottom.

  In the kitchen I grabbed a plastic bag and filled it with ice, then stuck a wet towel in the microwave and nuked it for thirty seconds. I hobbled into the living room and curled up on the couch. The towel burned and the ice gave me shivers, but as I alternated the two of them it helped the headache. Nonnie’s afghan reached from my toes to over my shoulders. I curled up and pulled it over my face.

  Pinpricks of light filtered through the knitted twists of yarn. Nonnie made every single stitch in this by hand. “Everyone needs to be covered,” she told me once, when she tucked me into bed and kissed me on the forehead.

  I lay back and breathed in the warm air under the blanket as sleep drifted over me.

  If only I never had to wake up again.

  * * * * *

  “Julie.”

  My body pushed through a fog so thick and wet, it felt like frozen quicksand.

  “Wake up, Julie.”

  The darkness, the not knowing, the other place of sleep carried me along and cradled me in its syrupy current, and I didn’t want to come out of it.

  Something shook me. “Open your eyes.”

  Consciousness drew me up, like a body rises to the top of the water. No, let me float some more. I don’t want to remember what’s up there.

  My cheek reached the surface of the water but hit ice. I gasped and flailed to get to the air beyond it.

  “Julie!”

  I jumped up and cried out and Damon caught me. He held the bag of half-melted ice in one hand, and my arm in the other.

  “Sorry about the cold. You kind of scared me. I couldn’t wake you up.”

  Everything, consciousness, flooded back in, and the headache along with it. I took a deep breath and laid my ear on the back of the couch.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What time is it?”

  “About eleven.”

  An hour past time for the pain meds. “I need my pills.” I tried to get up.

  “Where are they? I’ll get them.”

  I started to argue, but the throbbing paralyzed me. “On my desk. Upstairs. First on the right.”

  Damon bolted up the stairs and came back with three bottles. “I didn’t know which one.”

  “The white ones. Two.”

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  “Don’t need it.” I grabbed two and swallowed them, then leaned back and waited for them to work. “How’d you get here?”

  “Snowmobile.”

  “I mean, how’d you get in?”

  “The front door was unlocked. I kept knocking and no one answered. Then I saw you through the window. You were pretty zonked. I was worried.”

  “How’s Adam?”

  Damon put the medicine bottles on the coffee table and sat on the floor beside the couch. “Fairly awake this morning. Doesn’t remember the accident, but he knows Dad and me. We actually had a conversation.” He looked around the house. “Where is everybody?”

  “Who?”

  “Your parents. Mark.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t remember.

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m not alone.” I tried to smile, but even that hurt. “Church. Mom and Dad are at church.” I picked at an itchy scab on the back of my hand. “Well, they’re probably not, but that’s what they said. I don’t know where Mark went.”

  Damon moved up onto the couch and I rolled on my side to make room for him. He brushed my hair away from the bandage over my temple. “How’s that doing?”

  “Haven’t looked at it yet. I have to change the dressing once a day.”

  “Can you do it yourself? It could be kind of gruesome, huh?”

  I saw your brother’s skull and felt his blood pulse into my hands. “Yeah, I think I can do it.”

  A wave of pain moved from my forehead to the back of my neck and I closed my eyes.

  “What do you need?” Damon asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He stroked my hair back, and that actually helped. I didn’t mean to, but I sighed.

  “What’s the towel for?” He picked it up off the throw pillow, where it left a huge wet spot.

  “It was warm. It helped the headache.”

  “Want me to heat it up again?”

  I shook my head.

  “I wish I could do something.”

  “There’s nothing to do.” I shifted a little, to get my weight off a bruised rib. “I’m fine.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Well, better than Adam.”

  Damon looked at me. His eyes looked the same, and his face and smile looked the same, and so did his hands and arms and shoulders and legs and everything else that ever made my heart beat like crazy. I could recognize him like that, with one way of seeing. But in another way he didn’t look the same at all. I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me, and our paths just crossed for a little while and before long we’d be apart and he’d find someone else and there was no point in hopes or dreams or unanswered prayers because we simply didn’t matter.

  “What?” he asked.

  I shrugged and looked away.

  “Are you warm enough?”

  “I’m okay.” I pulled the afghan up and he tucked it in around me. “Why don’t you go back to the hospital?”

  “Dad said he’d call home and here, if I needed to come back. I’m not going to leave you alone.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you still messed up about the days?”

  “I don’t think so. Tuesday, right?”

  He looked alarmed for a second, till I smiled.

  “You’re terrible.”

  The pills started to kick in. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

  “Come on,” he asked. “Give me something to do.”

  “Go home.”

  He picked my hand up off my stomach. “Julie. What’s wrong?”

  I pulled it back. “Seriously, Damon? Really? What’s my problem?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “That’s what you meant.”

  The muscle in his jaw tensed. “Talk to me.”

  I propped up and scooted back. “What do you want to talk about? The divorce? Me leaving school and moving away? My mother’s new boyfriend? The accident that almost killed your brother?”

  “And you. We can talk about any of that. Or anything else.”

  I shook my head and looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He took my hands and wouldn’t let me pull them away. “It all matters, Julie.”

  “Well there’s nothing I can do about any of it, so what’s the point?”

  “So you’re just going to give up?”

  Oh, what do you know?

  Outside the window more snow fluttered down.

  Then that voice jumped back into my head. What do you think you’re going through that he hasn’t?

  I wanted to clap my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t ever have to hear it again.

  “What do you want me to do, Damon?”

  “Don’t quit.”

  Something inside my chest wrenched up, like it does when you’re about to cry, but my eyes felt dry as sand. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It just means hanging on. And if you can’t hang onto anything else, then hang onto me.”

  My hands felt limp, useless, inside his. “For how long?”

  He laced his fingers through mine and stared at me forever. A week ago that would’ve turned me into a puddle of shivery mush, but now I felt nothing but cold, foggy, and hard as a rock.

  “Julie. I swear, nothing but you can ever keep me away from you.”

  * * * * *

  He wouldn’t leave and I slept and woke up and slept and woke up and took more pills and slept and woke up. He asked
where my socks were, got one, filled it with rice and tied it up. He microwaved it and it stayed warm a really long time. It felt great on my shoulders and neck.

  “Where’d you learn that?” I asked.

  “From a doctor, after I crashed one time.”

  By dinner time I felt quite a bit better. My body did, anyway.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said. Then my stomach growled.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Lying is not helpful. What are you hungry for?”

  I thought about it. “Mashed potatoes and gravy.”

  Damon raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Not sure I can manage that. Okay if I look around your kitchen?”

  “There’s not much in the kitchen. Mom’s been checking out for a while now.”

  “Feel up to a ride? We could go to the diner.”

  “I’m a mess. I’m not really ready to go out,” I touched the bandage at my temple, “like this.”

  He came over and knelt down beside the couch. “I think you look great.”

  “Liar.”

  “You know, if you wore a hat no one would be able to see anything.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah.” He went over to the chair where he’d dumped his stuff and he brought his own stocking cap over. Blue, green, and brown, it looked like the world did when I rode behind Damon on the dirt bike. “Here.” He stretched it open and fitted it carefully over the top of my head. “How’s that feel?”

  “It’s fine.” It came down to my eyebrows. “I need to change, at least. I slept in this last night.”

  I pushed back the afghan and Damon helped me stand up.

  “You okay?”

  “Dizzy. And my whole body hurts.”

  “Maybe a snowmobile ride isn’t the best idea.”

  “No,” I said. “Fresh air sounds good.”

  I shuffled over to the staircase and tried not to look crippled, but getting up the stairs proved harder than going down. My muscles and joints screamed with each step, and I had to pause to catch my breath on the third stair.

  Damon crossed the room toward me. “I’m going to carry you up.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  His hand grabbed the railing right below mine. “Hang on around my neck.” He put one foot on the first step and reached for me.

  I let him pick me up, and just as we started up the steps the front door opened. Mom hung her coat on the hook by the door, then turned and saw us. The expression on her face reminded me of Mrs. Teele.

  “Hi, Mrs. Brynn,” Damon said. “Julie was having trouble getting up the stairs.” I knew what he really wanted to say. This isn’t what it looks like.

  “Mm-hmm,” Mom said. “Where’s Mark?”

  “Out,” I told her. “Damon and I are going out to eat after I change.”

  She looked a little confused, a little angry, and a little nervous. “Isn’t your dad here, either? I thought one of them was going to stay with you.”

  “Mark said Dad left the same time you did. Church, you know.”

  Damon shifted his weight and moved both his feet to the same step.

  “Just put me down.”

  “I’ll put you down upstairs.” He started up the staircase.

  “Have you been all by yourself?” Mom asked.

  “Damon got here around, what?” I looked at him, then called back to her. “Eleven?”

  At the top he put me down, gave me a nervous grin, then went back to the living room. I hobbled into my room and pulled a clean pair of pants and a sweater out of the closet. I didn’t even bother to close the door while I changed, and by the time I pulled my ratty sweats off Mom stood in my doorway. I let her get a good look at my banged-up body.

  “You’re not well enough to go out.”

  “Probably not. But I’m going anyway. I’m hungry.”

  She took a breath, then didn’t say anything for a second or two. When she did speak, her voice came out really wobbly. “You are still a child, Juliet. I’m still your mother.”

  “Are you really going to tell me I can’t go get dinner, when there’s almost nothing to eat in this house?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “No thanks.” I pulled the sweater gently over the bandage on my head.

  She sat down on my chair. “Juliet. What if you get in another accident?”

  “Maybe I’ll die this time.”

  “Don’t joke about that.”

  I grabbed the brush off my vanity and ran it through my hair as lightly as I could. “What’s the joke? There are worse things than dying.”

  “Juliet Alexis Brynn,” she whispered.

  When I got my hair fairly detangled, I slipped Damon’s hat back on. “Things would be easier for you and Dad without me around, anyway.”

  “Don’t say that. We both love you. You know that.”

  “Whatever.”

  The letter from the contest caught my eye as I headed out the door, and I grabbed it and stuffed it into my pants pocket. Mom followed me to the stairs. I would’ve liked more help from Damon, both because of the pain and just to shove him in Mom’s face a little more, but I didn’t want to show her even that much weakness.

  She reached her arm around me. “Let me help you.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  I went down by myself with just a hand on the railing. By the time I got to the bottom a sheen of sweat slicked over all of me.

  “It’s getting dark out,” Mom said.

  “I’ll drive carefully, Mrs. Brynn,” Damon said as he helped me put my coat on.

  “Like your brother did?”

  She stood there at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked helpless. Lost.

  Good.

  “And stop calling me Mrs. Brynn. It’s Sheri.”

  “See you later, Sheri,” I said.

  She didn’t say another word as we walked out the door, and I didn’t look back.

  * * * * *

  “Most of the time I was in juvie I didn’t do anything, except what they made me do. Eat. Go to group. Up at six, lights out at ten. I didn’t talk to anybody and totally blew off school work.” He took a bite of bacon double cheeseburger. “That’s why I got held back a year.”

  I swirled the gravy into my mashed potatoes with my fork. “You could do eighth-grade work in your sleep.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you can do. It matters what you do.”

  “So why didn’t you just do it?”

  He looked straight at me. “I gave up. Didn’t care.”

  I nodded.

  “Mom was gone, and Dad was kind of gone, too. Adam went straight off the deep end and kept going. And I went to detention because of one stupid decision. I felt like my life was screwed up totally and forever.”

  The steam off my food made little wisps as it rose into the air. I put another bite in my mouth and let the salty, meaty gravy roll around the good side of my tongue a while before I swallowed it. “So what changed?”

  He took a drink of soda. “Call it a crisis of faith.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s when you have to decide whether you’re going to be all in or all out.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “I grew up in the church, right? We’d gone to Africa as missionaries. We all talked this stuff about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

  I knew that story.

  “But then, you get to this place where it all just sucks. People say stupid stuff like, ‘Count your blessings’ and ‘It’s God’s will’, and you just want to punch somebody or drive into a tree or something.”

  The waitress refilled my water on her way around the room.

  “So after four months in juvie, with not much to do but think, I realized I couldn’t believe in a good God and believe at the same time that my life and everything about it was worthless and beyond help. It didn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  He shook his head. “Because they’re lo
gical opposites. A good God can’t allow bad stuff without a purpose. A reason.”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t care.”

  Damon nodded. “Yeah. That’s kind of where I was. I had to decide if I believed in a good and all-powerful God, or if I thought that life was just random and meaningless.”

  “And you sided with God.”

  He picked up several fries. “That’s where the logic took me. Yeah.” He stuffed the fries in his mouth.

  I finished up my mashed potatoes. “I want pie.”

  “Okay.”

  When the waitress came back again I asked about dessert.

  “Darlin’, we got peach pie, apple pie, pecan pie, chocolate pie, banana cream pie and vanilla ice cream.”

  My mouth watered when she got to chocolate pie, so I ordered that. Damon ordered ice cream.

  “Comin’ right up,” she said and headed back to the counter with our empty plates.

  “So where are you?” Damon asked.

  “Where am I?”

  “Between God and random meaninglessness.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I figured he’d be shocked or mad, or try to guilt me back to God. But he just said, “You’ve got every right to wonder.”

  I tipped my glass in a circle around its bottom edge and stared at the tiny red boxes on the gingham tablecloth. A single little square, then a box of four, nine, sixteen, twenty-five. My eyes lost track after thirty-six.

  “I don’t want to move away.”

  He reached across the table for my hand. “It’s just across town. Not to another continent or anything.”

  “Still. I won’t know anybody. We won’t be at the same school, or the same high school.”

  “In a little over a year I’ll have my license, then the distance won’t be a big deal at all.”

  “And I have to pick one of them to live with.”

  The waitress came over and slid our desserts in front of us. I sliced a piece off the tip of my pie and slid it in my mouth.

  “How is it?” he asked.

  I shrugged. It tasted like homemade chocolate pie with homemade whipped cream, and I knew that homemade chocolate pie with homemade whipped cream should taste really, really great. But somehow it just didn’t. My taste buds felt numb, or something. Like my tongue had a coating of wax over it.

  The waitress came by and dropped our check on the table.

  He reached for the check, but I got it first. “My treat.”

  “No way.”

  “Seriously,” I said, and pulled the envelope out of my pocket. “Remember the art contest? I got a hundred bucks from that.”

  He whistled.

  I pulled out one of the fifties and laid it on the check. “Got to earn my keep,” I said.