Страница 8 из 47
Walking home with Noe after practice, I was tired and elated.
The air still felt like summer: humid and warm. The gutters were littered with popsicle sticks stained pink and orange, and crushed Slurpee cups from the Avondale store.
“Want to know something crazy?” Noe said. “Steven’s mom told me he attempted suicide last winter.”
“What? Why?”
“He was already depressed and his stupid friend got him really drunk, which is the worst thing for depressed people. He’s just lucky someone stopped when they saw him on the bridge.”
“Whoa,” I said. I’d never met anyone who had tried to kill himself before.
“His mom says I pretty much saved his life,” Noe said. “She hasn’t seen him so happy in years.”
I thought of the note Noe had shown me after English, the one Steven had tucked into her copy of Modern Western Poetry. He’d copied out a Shakespeare quote in exquisite calligraphy: Hear my soul speak/The very instant that I saw you did/My heart fly to your service.
That was it, I’d thought to myself. That was it exactly.
“He does seem happy,” I agreed.
We came to the intersection where we normally said good-bye. “Want to come over?” Noe said.
“Only if we can take the shortcut.”
“Bethy, I’m wearing ballet slippers.”
“So go barefoot.”
“You go barefoot, Rambo.”
I dragged her off the sidewalk and onto the tiny trail that led into the maples, and soon Noe was singing. The leaves were still green, still soft and whispering, like summer dresses the trees had yet to exchange for sturdier clothes. A broken bottle sparkled in the dirt.
In my head, I was doing spins on the uneven bars. I was on a plane to Paris. I was dropping a goldfish into a bowl, and I’d never been happier in my life.
14
SEPTEMBER IN OUR TOWN IS THE fastest month, and also the most beautiful. The blue of the sky is made sharper by the yellowing leaves, the air turns clear and pure, and the roadside fruit stands that hawk peaches and plums all summer set out baskets of apples and pears instead. Tourists still come by the busload to stand by our waterfall in disposable raincoats and buy fudge from the little gift shops that clog the main road, to ride the SkyTram back and forth across the river and pay too much for a horse-drawn carriage to clop them up and down the historical district’s flower-lined streets. At school, the bulletin boards are plastered with sign-up sheets for sports and clubs and volunteer groups, and everyone seems to rush around in a great hurry before the lethargy of winter sets in.
It sucked not having most of my classes with Noe, like we’d had every other year. Normally, we did all our group projects together, but now when I met her by our lockers, she’d be bickering over animal rights with Steven or chatting about a physics assignment with Kaylee and Rhia
“Lindsay’s thinking we should make reservations at Luigi’s,” she’d say, and after some questioning it would emerge that she and Lindsay Harris had spent Biology making plans for the homecoming dance.
I did my best to keep up with the changes. I said hey to all the people Noe said hey to. In practice, I stayed with Noe’s group as long as I could before being banished to the Level Ones.
I learned to point my toes when I cartwheeled and sweep my arms up when I landed. I waited in line with the other Level Ones to take my turn ru
“What?” I demanded. “WHAT?”
“A
She peeled herself up off the mat and did an impression of me: jaw set, eyebrows knit, planting her hands with a thwack and landing with a clomp.
“That is not how I look,” I said.
“Oh, A
She straightened my shoulders and turned my hips, showed me how to lift my arms high above my head and rock back slightly before throwing my body forward one limb at a time.
“Noe,” a semi-irritable Ms. Bomtrauer called from across the gym. “Your exalted presence is required in Level Nine Land. A
“Coming,” Noe sang, scampering back to the vault. I blushed, sheepish at getting in trouble and privately enjoying the shared reprimand.
As the palms of my hands met the coolness of the mat, I thought how lovely it was to feel yourself molded into something better, to feel the motions of your real limbs and muscles inch closer to the perfect version in your imagination. Maybe that was why Noe loved it so much, why she treated the other gymnastics girls like fellow members of a secret society, hugging them and trading obscure lingo in the hall. After practice, I always stayed back with her to stack the heavy mats into a pile and push the equipment to the walls, or we’d go to the Java Bean with Kaylee and Rhia
One day at the end of practice, I went to grab Noe’s hoodie where she’d forgotten it by the vault and saw a bright red heart sewn inside it, the stitches hidden behind the kangaroo pocket. I stood by the vault with the hoodie in my hands, momentarily stu
As I walked across the gym with the hoodie tucked under my arm, my heart thumped in a way I couldn’t explain. Somehow, I wished I hadn’t seen it. The discovery made me feel strange and guilty, like the time I’d found the antidepressants behind Mom’s bathroom mirror. Great love, great pain: both made me uncomfortable, tugging as they did at the corresponding places in myself. I wondered at the startling red of the heart stitched so tightly into the well-worn fabric, at the intimacy and certainty it suggested.
“You forgot this,” I said, and tossed it to her.
“Thanks, doll,” she said.
15
THE WEEKEND OF THE SENIOR CAMPING trip, we had a gymnastics meet at Gailer College, the sprawling university forty-five minutes from our town. I didn’t have a floor routine or bars routine yet, so all I had to do was jump over the vault a couple of times and do a few simple moves on the beam. Noe had forgotten the camera, so we couldn’t take pictures like we’d pla