Don’t Let Me Go(96)

Wings.

They did not flap at him, nor did they taunt him by holding still. They surrounded him. Wrapped themselves around him like a warm blanket.

Billy slowed to a trot, and trotted the rest of the way home.

? ? ?

“Oh, boy, you’re here. Thank goodness,” Grace said. “I was worrying about you all day at school. So I guess you got home OK. So how did it go?”

“It was all right,” Billy said. “I just ran.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna tell me about it?”

“At least for now,” he said.

? ? ?

Billy woke from a dreamless sleep to hear Grace whisper his name from her bed on the living room couch.

“Billy? Are you awake?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“Did I wake you?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’m having trouble sleeping. You know tomorrow is Wednesday.”

“Right.”

“And then Thursday and Friday, and then the weekend, and then the big day. It just gets harder and harder to sleep every night.”

“Are you nervous about the dance? You know it backwards and forwards.”

“A little bit. Just because it’s big and exciting. Not because I think I won’t be good. Mostly I’m nervous waiting to see if my mom really is coming, and if she really is about to have thirty days clean. Just think. I could go back and live with her again. But then the closer it gets to that, the more I get scared.”

“Yolanda says she’s really doing it.”

“Right. I know. That’s why I get scared. Cause I always say I won’t get my hopes up, but then I do. I just can’t stop. Cause I really do want to live with her again.”

Billy said nothing, absorbing the emotional resonance of Grace going home.

As if she could hear him thinking, she said, “I’ll still come visit you all the time, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m also worried that it’ll get harder and harder to sleep every night. And what if Sunday night I don’t sleep at all? I’ll have to do my big dance and I’ll be all tired.”

“If Jesse’s back, I bet he could do reiki on your sleeplessness.”

“But what if he isn’t? And that’s another thing. What if Jesse’s mom is still dying on Monday? Maybe he won’t come to my school to watch me dance. Maybe Rayleen won’t even come.”

“You’re getting yourself too upset to sleep. Here. Try this. Close your eyes and picture something with me. Picture big, white, feathery wings. All wrapped around you. Taking care of you.”

A long silence.

“Wings? Like the ones you have nightmares about?”

“Except not scary. Because…I mean…you can turn things like that around. Remember how I used to be scared of cats? But then I got to know one. There are all manner of things that scare us at some point in our lives, but then later we find out they really never meant to hurt us anyway.”

“What made you think of that, Billy?”

“Just try it. Please.”

A long silence. It lasted. And it lasted.

Finally, a good five minutes later, he got up and checked on her, quietly. She had fallen back asleep.





Grace



It was Friday, last school day before the big event.

Billy had danced her to school every morning, and every morning more and more people had looked out their windows or stepped out on to their porch to watch them go by. Like people knew to expect them by now. Like it was the morning performance of some big show, and everybody wanted to get a good seat. Except they mostly stood.

On Thursday they’d done the tango, and people really seemed to like that.

And Billy seemed OK.

But then it was Friday, and Grace had the big idea to waltz to school. Because it was fun when they waltzed in Billy’s living room, and it had made them laugh.

Billy said again what he’d said the first time, that the waltz takes you more around in a circle. Not so much to school. But Grace was sure they could just take longer steps in the school direction, like they did with the Latin salsa. And she was in one of those moods that involved not letting anything drop.

They were about halfway to school when it happened.

Billy had just spun her around in a twirl, and that nice Spanish-speaking family in the blue house were all watching and clapping, and Grace thought it would be nice to spin Billy, too. She thought the family would like that.

So she reached up high, and he ducked down low, and he spun wildly, really getting into it, lots of forward motion, and then he got his foot caught on a big slab of concrete where the sidewalk was uneven. Grace saw it happen, but there wasn’t much she could do. It just all happened so fast.

He went down like the trees she’d seen in movies about lumber cutting. You know, right after somebody says “timber.” He built up speed on the way down and landed right on his face. Literally. He put his palms down, but it just wasn’t enough to stop his face. Grace could hear the sound all the air made when it rushed out of him. She heard the sound of gasps from the nice family.

“Oh, my God! Billy!”

Grace helped him turn over and sit up. There was a lot of blood coming from his nose. A scary lot.