Anything but Ordinary(26)
“Bye,” Bryce said, unbuckling her seat belt. “Thanks for the field trip.”
“Yeah. See you soon.” His eyebrows knit together as he clutched the steering wheel. “Hey, Bryce?”
“What?” She ducked back inside the car.
“Go easy on them, okay?” He nodded toward her house. Bryce felt herself tense. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone you love that way.”
“And you don’t know what it’s like to lose five years of your life.” She closed the door and he drove off.
As she made her way up the lawn, fuming, the automatic light from the driveway illuminated to reveal the open garage door and Sydney with a can of gold spray paint in her hand.
“Moved on to vandalism now?” Bryce called. Sydney looked up.
A pair of vintage high tops sat on a paint-splattered sheet on the cement. Bryce couldn’t tell what their original color was, but now they were a deep, shiny gold.
“Don’t touch those,” Sydney said in greeting, taking off one of their dad’s oversized Vanderbilt T-shirts and tossing it onto the cement floor.
“Why were you messing up Dad’s shirt?” Bryce asked, grabbing it from the ground.
“Chill, Bryce. I was using it to protect my clothes.”
Sydney wore a completely sheer lace dress, her black bra and spandex boy shorts visible underneath. Her feet were tucked into impossibly high chunky heels, and she had put a thick black ring through her lip piercing. Bryce snorted. “Ha. Clothes. Good one.”
A rusty blue car without a muffler pulled up in front of the Graham residence. The side was emblazoned with the graphic B60 and it was being driven by an emaciated-looking guy with bleached hair and a tattoo sleeve. He revved his engine, echoing off the soft-lit houses, and shouted at Sydney to hurry her ass up.
Sydney grabbed her purse from the ground.
“Who is that guy?” Bryce squinted to get a closer look.
Sydney adjusted her painted face briefly in a compact mirror and said casually, “Like you care?” She snapped the compact shut.
Bryce’s fists clenched. As Sydney made her way down the driveway, Bryce had the urge to topple her tall, skinny form over like a mannequin. The B60 zoomed off, engine roaring. After a minute, the street was quiet again.
In a fury, Bryce picked up one of Sydney’s spray-painted shoes and hurled it as hard as she could toward the grass.
“I do care,” she said aloud. But there was no one there to hear her.
ou know I hate surprises, Dad.” Bryce followed her father from her bedroom to the basement storage room the next evening.
“Just wait, you’re gonna love it.” It took her dad several kicks to get the storage door open, but when he did, Bryce gasped.
All the boxes were gone. Rubber mats covered the unfinished floor, and on top of the mats stood a full rack of free weights, medicine balls, and a large piece of equipment that could transition from an elliptical to a rowing machine. The sole piece of decoration hung under one of the high, small windows: a Rocky poster. Sylvester Stallone’s gray sweat-suited form seemed to nod back at her in appreciation.
Her father put his hands on his hips proudly. His gold shirt with the Vanderbilt logo was tucked neatly into his pants, and a speck of shaving cream still hung near where his close-cropped hair met his neck. “Started installing it when you came home.”
“Wow.” Bryce stepped up to wrap her hand around a free weight. She picked it up. The metal was cool to the touch, and the weight of it jerked her weak arm down. She set it back on the rack and closed her eyes, letting memories overtake her.
She remembered putting one foot in front of the other on the rough, bright turquoise board. Pushing off her left, her head leading her body, limbs tight but relaxed. The world seemed to rotate around her as she stayed still in the air. For a millisecond that contained an eternity, she was weightless. Flying. Then she snapped, tight, and straightened, ready to break the surface. When she hit the water, her sight was a dark kaleidoscope. Her body hung in suspense in the water, then flew upward.
She broke for air on the sunny day, hitting the water with her fist, her dad shouting in celebration.
“Perfect!” He shouted. “REVERSE! Two and a half!” he yelled, pausing between each word, like a football announcer calling a touchdown. “SOMERSAULT! TUCK!”
She swam over and gave him a high five.
At the snap of the two hands, Bryce opened her eyes to the workout room, her father beside her. It was the dive she’d done when she hit her head. The dive she was supposed to do.
“Things didn’t work out the way we planned, did they?”
Her father gave her a long look. “No, they didn’t.” He took a breath, but then didn’t say anything else.
Bryce shivered. “It must have been hard.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Your old man wasn’t really sure what to do with himself when he wasn’t yelling at you all the time.” He chuckled, but the sound caught in his throat.
Bryce pretended to be occupied by picking up a medicine ball. She pressed it from her chest. “I know,” she said. “I saw the plane.” She thought of its still, silent form sitting in the unused barn. You stopped doing everything. Working. Coaching. Living. “Still not done.”
He nodded wordlessly and looked away, blinking. He was blinking back tears, she realized.