“I just—I wish I could undo it all. I wish I could turn back the clock and make things right.”
I laugh under my breath and dip my head to kiss his palm.
“I think we should get out of here. I’m sorry I brought you.” He turns on the engine, sticking the car into drive with an angry motion. He’s mad at himself.
I grab for his arm. “No,” I say.
He takes his foot off the gas and looks over at me.
“I want to do this,” I tell him.
He studies me for a beat. “You’re sure?” he asks. “Because we can just go. It’s not important. We can go back to my place and just hang out.”
“No,” I say, louder, taking a deep breath and rolling back my shoulders. “Let’s do this. I want to do this.” Before I change my mind, I almost add.
Before he can say anything else, I’m out of the car. My legs feel wobbly, but I’m determined. Jake told me that it was okay. But it’s not. It’s not okay. I’m sick of feeling this way.
Jake takes my hand and steers me toward the door. I focus on his palm against mine, the solidness of his body—a barrier between me and the world—and try to banish the images jostling in my head.
Jake unlocks the door and we enter the echoing dark. I shiver instantly. I’d forgotten how cold the rink was, had forgotten the smell, too: sweat, ice, ripe foot odor, stale popcorn. It brings back more memories—of games, of practicing with Jake, of the euphoric buzz of winning.
Jake fumbles for the light switch, and when the fluorescents flicker and flare on, I blink. I’m primed to react—expecting to be hit by more memories—but actually the place looks so different that I can hardly reconcile it to the place from my memory. They’ve changed the layout of the reception area and painted it in garish reds and blues. It could be a different place altogether. I glance over toward the double doors that lead to the locker rooms, the place where Jake first kissed me. The doors are the only thing that is still the same.
“You okay?” Jake asks me anxiously.
I nod. He takes my hand again and leads me toward the doors. My body tenses. Jake feels it. He stops at the doors, barring my way.
“What?” I ask. I just want to get this over with. I’ve decided that this is like therapy, like climbing back on a bicycle or a horse after falling off. I just need to do it once—skate one lap and then we can go. Five minutes at the most. I’ll have proven to myself I can do it and that I’ve won.
Jake drops his bag—which I realize now must contain skates—and takes my face in his hands. The world falls instantly away as it does every time he touches me. He takes it slowly, tauntingly, as if he’s been given a do-over for that first kiss we shared five years ago right in this very spot, and, by the time his lips meet mine, I’m not sure if I’m floating or have my feet still firmly planted on the ground. When Jake releases me a few seconds or minutes later, I’m as dizzy as if I’d just done a flying sit spin on the ice.
“What was that for?” I ask, breathless.
“Old times’ sake,” he murmurs, his lips still brushing mine. “Come on.” He picks up the bag and swings it over his shoulder. Then he pushes open the door, holding it open for me, and leads the way to the rink.
I stare at the ice—polished as a mirror—and I experience that loop-the-loop feeling once again, as if my stomach is on a spin cycle. I grin at Jake. He grins back, revealing his dimple.
“Here,” he says, crouching down and unzipping his bag. He pulls out a pair of skates. “Your size,” he says, handing them to me.
I stare at him in wonder. “You bought me new skates?” I ask.
He shrugs and nudges me back into one of the plastic seats lining the rink. He hands me some extra socks to put on, and when I’ve pulled on the skates and stood up, he also hands me an extra sweater. “Until you warm up,” he tells me.
I pull it on. It hangs almost to my knees.
“It’s one of mine,” he says. “Sorry, it’s too big.”
He helps me roll up the sleeves. I want to bury my nose in the collar and breathe in deep, but I stop myself, at least until he’s not watching.
Jake’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I watch him pull on his own skates—an old, battered pair that he must use for practice—and start to feel a tingling feeling shiver up my legs, bubbles starting to simmer in my stomach. I used to feel like this before a game.
Jake jumps up when he’s done with his skates and takes my hand. “Ready?” he asks.
I nod, so nervous I can’t talk.
That first step onto the ice is as perfect a rush as our first kiss. With Jake’s fingers linked through mine, it’s easy. I realize that I’d been worried I might have forgotten how to skate, but I haven’t. As we pick up speed, Jake skating backward, pulling me with him, the tingling feeling takes over, spreading down my legs and arms. “I can do this!” I shout in glee.
Jake lets go of my hands, skating out of my way, still facing toward me. I hunch down lower, and drive into the ice. It’s good ice: cold, with no snow layer on it; easy to accelerate on. The speed is indescribable.
Jake takes the corners without even looking behind him. There’s a light in his eyes—one I recognize from when he was younger—he comes alive on the ice. It’s the same joyful, triumphant, electrified look that he gets when he’s daring me to do something. The same look I saw the other night in the tent when he was kissing me, and that time outside the restaurant when his hands were hovering against my sides, his fingers sliding over my dress.
That’s what this feels like: sliding over silk sliding over skin. I’m laughing—it’s bubbling up and out of me, and suddenly Jake’s skating toward me, grabbing me by both hands, spinning me around. He digs his blade into the ice, braking, showering us both in a snowstorm of ice, and then catches me against his chest as we slam to a stop.
Out of breath, I look up at him. “Again,” I say.
Emerson
(Then)
The phone rings.
“Don’t answer,” I hear my dad grunt angrily.
It keeps ringing, plaintive at first, as though begging us to answer, but then, when no one picks up, the ringing seems to become accusatory, before plain irate. I cover my head with the pillow and scrunch my eyes shut. Finally, it stops, and I let out a deep breath. But then a few seconds later, it starts up again. A pneumatic drill through my skull.
Before I can bury my head under the pillow again, I hear my dad stomping across the hallway, my mom’s voice, soft and pleading, following behind him. The ringing is cut off abruptly.
“Bugger the hell off! We’re not answering any questions,” my dad yells before banging down the receiver. My mom mumbles something, and I strain to make out the conversation.
“. . . another journalist?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to unplug it.”
“But what if . . .”
My dad’s fuming. I can hear him pacing. His anger is a palpable thing—a force that makes me want to crawl under the bed and hide. I can’t look him in the face. Looking anyone in the face has suddenly become impossible.
I keep wondering if I should have lied, though—told my mom I was fine. What if I had just stayed silent? Made something up? Told her that Coach had just bawled me out for attacking Reid?
No. No. No. You did the right thing. That’s what my mom told me. That’s what my dad told me too. That’s what they kept telling me all night and all day, through the numerous interviews with the cops and a social worker. You’re doing the right thing.
But why does the right thing feel so bad?
“I’m going to go there!” My dad’s voice carries up the stairs. “I’m going to deal with this my own damn self. Goddamn cops. They’re just sitting there on their asses doing nothing. Why haven’t they arrested him? He should be in the county lockup, not walking around preying on—”
“Shhhh, shhhhh,” my mom urges, hushing my dad, clearly scared I’ll hear him. Too late for that.
He drops the
volume to a whisper that still has the force of a tornado behind it. “What?!” he whisper-shouts. “I’m just expected to sit here and do nothing while they conduct some sham investigation? We all know he and the coach are buddies. It’s his word against Em’s, and we know he’s denying it. Who’s the sheriff going to believe?”
“Quiet!” my mom hisses.
“You saw they didn’t believe her. They think she’s making it up!”
I draw in a breath and something sharp as a screwdriver twists in my gut.
“She’s not making it up,” my mom says. “I was there. I saw.”
“You didn’t see it happen, though, did you?”
There’s that pain in my gut again—twisting hard.
“Well, no . . . ,” I hear my mom say. “But I saw her face. I could tell something had just happened.” A pause. “She wouldn’t make this up.”
There’s another, longer pause, and I find myself gripping the edge of the bed, heart pulsating like a frog in my throat. Doubt charges the air like static before a thunderstorm. He doesn’t believe me. My dad doesn’t believe me. It’s as if someone has taken the screwdriver and punched it right through my rib cage into my heart.
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch!” my dad yells, making the floorboards leap. The breath bursts out of me in a sob. My gut untwists as relief rushes through me. He doesn’t doubt me. Of course he doesn’t.
“No!” my mom shouts.
I don’t catch the next few words she speaks, but I hear my dad mumble something and then my mom urging him into the kitchen, using the same placating, sympathetic tone she uses on him when his team loses the playoffs.
I slump back on the bed. I knew that the cops didn’t believe me. It was obvious from the sideways glances they were sharing with each other and the patronizing tone they used to interview me, not forgetting the way they spoke over the top of my head, acting like I wasn’t even in the room.
“Are you sure she wasn’t imagining it?”
“You know, girls these days, they’ve got active imaginations.”
“He’s a good guy. I can’t believe he’d . . .”
I glance down at my palms. I’m digging my nails in and they’ve made a row of crescent moons. But I don’t feel anything. I stare at my arms. At my legs. They feel weird. My body doesn’t feel like my own anymore but like a costume I’m being forced to wear. I press my fingers to my lips. They’re dry and flaky. Nausea whooshes suddenly out of nowhere and a ball of vomit rockets up my throat. I swallow it with difficulty and then curl onto my side.
Jake’s face appears in my mind’s eye, and I try to blank it. I don’t want to think about him. It makes me feel squirmy and hot inside. He must have heard by now. Everyone must have heard. My mom says I shouldn’t worry about what anyone says because we have the truth on our side, but I can’t help but worry because I know what the kids at my school are like. They’re like snipers, always on the lookout for anyone to take a shot at. I’ll be a prime target. I can just imagine them laughing, making comments, calling me a liar. I can picture the graffiti on the bathroom walls.
There’s a projector screen in my head, and it keeps on playing back what happened on a loop. I’ve managed to partially block it out by forcing myself to recite poems and the lyrics to songs, but every so often my focus jumps to the screen—to Coach Lee moving toward me—to his face in my face and his hands . . .
The thought of other people—of Jake—imagining it is too horrible. It’s his uncle. I sit bolt upright. It’s his uncle, I think again. Jake worships his uncle. His uncle was once a national hockey player. Jake dreams of being a hockey player. He’ll never believe me over his uncle. Why would he?
The knife is back—twisting, gutting, slicing, ripping.
I look around. The room feels suddenly too small to contain me. My body feels too small to contain the screams that are ricocheting around inside my chest like echoes trying to find their way out of a deep, dark cave. My mind is too small to contain the images flickering onto the projector screen. I need to get out. My legs twitch. I need to get out of here.
I need to disappear.
Jake
It’s past midnight, and the ice is covered in a coating of wet slush. The nets are up at either end of the rink, and Em is facing me wearing my leg pads and gloves, glowering at me and gripping her stick like she’s defending the Ark of the Covenant. I forgot what she used to be like when she played goaltender. She never used to get put in that position often because she was too fast to waste on tending goal, but now that I’m trying to slide one past her, I remember how fierce she could be when given the opportunity to play defense.
Unfortunately for her, she’s now playing a pro, and though she took to the ice again like a duck to water, she’s still a little off her game when it comes to hockey. I play gently against her at first, letting her have a few scores and saves, but now I’ve upped my play and she’s frustrated, huffing at me.
I could back down, but something about her expression makes me not want to. I like seeing her this way: angry, obstinate, putting up a fight. It’s the old Em. And though I’m not unappreciative of the ways she’s mellowed and grown up (she’s no longer threatening to throw a stick at my head when I get a goal past her, for one thing), I still think a little more fire in her belly would do her good.
“One more!” she yells.
I contemplate her and then shrug, shaking my head. “If you insist,” I say, scooping up the puck with my stick and sliding it over the ice toward her. I pick up speed, racing toward her, seeing the faint flicker of alarm in her eyes as I get within ten feet of her with no sign of slowing. But instead of sliding the puck between her legs and into the net, I skid to a stop in front of her, pull her into my arms, and kiss her. Her cheeks and nose are cold, but her lips are warm enough to melt ice.
“What was that?” she demands, pulling out of my arms after a few seconds, looking unimpressed. “You were meant to take a shot.”
“I thought you were asking for one more kiss,” I say, laughing.
She whacks me across the shins with her stick—just lightly, which is good, as I’m not wearing shin pads. “Ouch,” I say, skating out of her reach.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Did you just apologize?” I ask her, skidding to a stop, just outside of hitting distance.
She makes a face at me. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Oh, I’m not,” I say, laughing still, as I grab hold of the net and start dragging it off the ice.
“We have to go already?” Em asks, her shoulders slumping.
“Yeah, it’s almost one,” I tell her.
“Oh my God,” she says, her eyes flying to the clock above the rink. She skates after me, her arm looping around my waist. “Thank you,” she says as we step off the ice. “That was . . .” Her face glows from the exercise and the cold. “The best.”
I smile.
“You are the best,” she says.
“I’ll take that,” I murmur, my gaze falling like it always does to her lips. I pull her close for another kiss, this one longer and deeper. By the time I’m done, her face isn’t cold anymore. Her skin is fire to the touch, and I think my own core temperature has risen so high the rink beneath us is in danger of turning completely to slush.
“Come on,” I say, throwing my arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get going. I’ve got more planned.” I need to get her home. And I don’t mean to her house. I mean to mine. She must be able to tell what I mean by “more planned,” because she smiles up at me knowingly and sits down, in a hurry to take off her skates.
“Do you ever think it’s weird?” she says as she undoes her laces.
“What?” I ask, sitting down beside her.
“Us,” she says as she kicks off the skates. “I mean, us being together.” When she says “being together,” she keeps her head down, but I see the flush creep up her neck. “I keep getting flashes of you at thirteen. I keep being reminded of how we were friends, th
at we’ve known each other since we were babies. Sometimes I have to blink just to make sure it’s really you. It feels like you’re a stranger”—she squints at me—“but at the same time like I’ve known you forever. Do you know what I mean?”
I nod. “I think it’s because we’re getting to know each other all over again. There’s a lot that’s the same but a lot that’s changed, too.”
“How am I different?” she asks, pulling on her shoes.
“You’re mellower and more guarded,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I can’t read you like I used to. Not all the time, anyway.” I drop the skates in the bag. “But I figure I’m getting better at it.”
She smiles a little to herself.
“You’re not as argumentative,” I add. “Or at least, not quite as much.”
She elbows me in the side. “Still violent, though,” I say, grabbing for her fingers.
“I think you’re the same,” she says, pulling back to study me. “Maybe a little bigger.”
“Bigger?”
“Taller.”
“Just a little?”
“Yeah”—she smiles slyly—“just a little.”
“The same, huh?” I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment. I was a scrawny kid back then who didn’t have a clue how to kiss.
Em strokes my hair back from my face, her eyes searching mine. “You still have so much good in you. You haven’t lost that. Everyone always loved you. I used to envy you for that.”
“Everyone loved you, too.”
She whacks me with the back of her hand. “No, they didn’t.”
I snatch her wrists. “Well, they were kind of awed by you. You were fierce. You still are. It’s what I loved about you. It’s what I still love about you.”
We both fall silent, and I quickly bend down and start zipping up the bag, aware of Em looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
“How long did you like me for?” she asks.
“What?”
“Back then, when you kissed me. The first time, I mean. How long had you liked me for?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. A while.” Oh God, I knew one day she’d ask me this, but I still don’t have an answer prepared. I stand up, throwing the bag over my shoulder.