Purple Hearts(71)

“I bet she complains, though. I’d whine about it all the time if I were her.”

“She doesn’t too much,” I said. “Not to me, at least.”

“She’s a good one, Luke,” Jake said, looking from the game to me for a moment. “You picked yourself a good one.”

The buzzer sounded for halftime. Jake stood, stretching. “You want anything?”

Suddenly, a man in a bright orange T-shirt took the court, holding a wireless microphone. “Okay, okay, people! Who’s ready to win some pizza from Gino’s?”

The crowd roared.

“What the hell?” I asked Jake, laughing.

Before he could answer, a blond woman in an equally bright orange shirt accompanied the man, holding a fishbowl of red scraps.

“All of your ticket stubs were put into this bowl. The lucky seat I draw will get the chance to win free pizza for a year if you make a half-court shot!”

“Well, shit,” Jake said, turning to look at me, eyebrows raised. I rolled my eyes.

“And the lucky seat is . . .” The woman drew a scrap from the bowl. “Row C, seat eleven!”

The folks around us turned side to side, and then, slowly, all faced me. I looked at my seat. It was me. I was in row C, seat 11. Shit.

For the second time that day, everyone stared. Ex-girlfriends who had gotten plump with babies, former social studies and English teachers who had wanted to flunk me, former football coaches who had failed to whip the mouth off me, former friends and parents of friends who had seen me drunk off of the vodka stolen from their liquor cabinets, all were waiting to see what I would do.

I lifted my cane, shaking my head, feeling humiliation rise in my stomach, hot and soupy. Jake tried to wave them off, smiling politely, saying, “All right, now, back off,” through his teeth. “The man doesn’t want to do it.”

“Jake,” I said suddenly, warmth rising to my face, “you gotta do it.”

“What?”

“Yeah, are you kidding? You’ve made that shot a hundred times.” Even as a kid, he could launch it from well past the three-point line, if he did it from his hip.

I pointed at Jake, and I don’t know what came over me, but I began to chant. Maybe it was the army man in me, the person who loved to move in sync, who’d fall back to the privates who weren’t running as fast, breathe with them, yell with them, helping them make it to the finish line.

“Jacob, Jacob, Jacob,” I shouted.

Everyone caught on. “Jacob, Jacob,” the whole gymnasium joined in.

Jake’s face turned red. He held up his palms. “All right!”

I watched him leap down the bleacher steps two at a time. I held no hardness, no anger that I would be able to go only half as fast when we left, that the pain would almost break me, that I’d want OxyContin when I got home to make it all go away.

Jake caught a bounced pass from the man in the orange shirt. I won’t do that to you again, I’d told him. This time, I knew what terror might come, tempting me to go back, to let Oxy numb me. But I also knew that the pain of giving in to my addiction would be much deeper.

Jake looked at me. I gave him a Power Rangers stance in my seat. He dribbled to the opposite free-throw line, pressed forward, and launched the ball into the air.





Cassie


Luke sat in the front seat of the Subaru, his cane propped on the door. I reached between his legs to clear out the empty water bottles and granola bar wrappers that had accumulated near his feet. And by ‘clear out,’ I mean put in the backseat. “Sorry,” I said, stifling a yawn.

“It’s cool,” he replied, laughing a little, eyeing the empty Queen, Natalie Cole, David Bowie, and Patsy Cline CD cases piled on the dashboard.

He’d wanted to go to the river, so he could keep working on his PT outside. Of course I’d said yes, and offered to pick him up later, but I was nervous, for some reason. He’d been inside for so long, sheltered from the chaos of the outside world, vulnerable and defenseless. I felt like I was releasing an injured lion back into the savanna.

When I turned on the ignition, Portishead blasted at high volume. I turned it down, giving him a whoops look as I reversed. “Not used to having anyone else in my car.”

Except for Toby, and unless I kept the volume up high, he would talk about the music instead of just listening to it. That’s why, I’d discovered, going to loud concerts with him was fun.

Luke rolled down the window. “You can keep it turned up,” he said, content with his face in the breeze.

Okay, Cassie, chill. He wasn’t an infant with sensitive eardrums. I turned it up, and, yeah, fine, I sang along with Beth Gibbons, because that’s what I would have done otherwise. Luke nodded along, lost in his own thoughts.

When we reached the river, he guided me to a spot in the park as if he knew it.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah,” he said, not elaborating. I resisted the urge to ask him more. I didn’t know why I wanted to know, anyway.

“Thanks, Cassie.” He lifted his injured leg out, put the cane on the pavement, and pushed himself up, reaching a hand in to wave good-bye.

“Oh, Luke, your phone!” I said. He’d left it on the seat.

It was vibrating. He grabbed it, looked at the number, his mouth twisting for a moment in disgust.