Goodbye, Rebel Blue Read online

  He tugs on my hand, and I bend so we’re eye level. “Because I care about your soul.”

  “Oh … that’s nice.”

  Gabby walks in. Today she wears a black beret with black leggings, a black T-shirt, and ballet slippers, nailing a sixties vibe. She thrusts a sketch pad at me. On the page is a hand-drawn dress. “What do you think?”

  Nate cranes his head and looks over my shoulder. “I don’t think it would look good on me.”

  Gabby swats him, and I laugh.

  “It’s for me,” Gabby says with a stomp of her slippered foot. “It’s my prom dress.”

  “You’re going to a prom for ten-year-olds?” I ask.

  “No, silly. It’s for my prom when I’m in high school.”

  “And you’re designing it now?”

  “Of course. Here’s what I had in mind for colors.” She holds up a large ring with squares of fabric attached and selects a deep, rich red color, like the raspberries Macey and I saw in our trek to the farmers’ market last weekend.

  I squint at Gabby. “Perfect.”

  “I’m so glad you think so.” She throws her arms around my waist and hugs. I’m not sure what to do with my hands. Patting her head seems weird. I stand like a scarecrow with Gabby on one side, Saint Boy on the other. At last Gabby pulls away. “So when do I get blue hair?”

  “What did your mom say?”

  Her lips press into a pout. “Like what she says matters.”

  “Yes, Gabby, it does.” Aunt Evelyn cried the day I walked out of the bathroom with a streak of Electric Blue #1111 in my hair. My mom would have loved blue hair, and I liked to think my art-loving father would too. Gabby looks at the floor. “Well?”

  “Mom said no. She said it’s against the school dress code and will damage my hair.” Her hands ball into fists. “I told her you have beautiful hair and she’s a moron.”

  “No, you didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t say that to your mom.”

  “Of course I did. I’m mad as hell.”

  Another household disrupted by my wrecking ball of destruction. You were right, Cousin Pen.

  Nate unlatches Gabby’s tentacles and gives her shoulders a gentle shove. “Go channel some of your energy into Tia Mina’s new dance dress.” He points to Mateo. “You, math.” And he points to me. “You and me, back patio.”

  Outside on the patio, I stand on the bottom step. Before me stretches a giant backyard with wagons and bikes and scooters scattered among lawn chairs and a fire pit. In one corner, there’s a small plastic swimming pool, in the other a horseshoe pit. A place of chaotic happiness. Even the saint statue standing in a bed of flowers is smiling. He wears a long robe with a bird on his shoulder and deer at his feet.

  I stand on the patio, frowning. “I’m teaching your little sister to swear and yell at your mother. This is not good, Nate, not good at all.”

  “Families fight, and they make up.”

  “But Gabby’s obsessed with this blue-hair thing.”

  “No worries, Reb. I’ll talk to Mom when she cools off.” Because, like Kennedy, Nate has a way with people.

  I rub a knuckle on the railing. “I’m a screwed-up person.”

  Nate puts his arms around my shoulders, pulling my back into his chest. He feels solid, warm, and good. “We all are.”

  “But some of us are more screwed up than others. I’m letting you know I’m definitely on the far right-hand side of the bell curve on this one.”

  He runs his fingers along the strap looped across my chest. “It makes you more interesting.”

  I tilt my head, looking up at him with doubt. “Interesting is good?”

  He brushes his lips against the top of my head. “Interesting is amazing.”

  I sink back against the wall of his chest, matching my breathing with his and smiling as our hearts beat in sync. He rests his chin on the top of my head. I wish I could freeze this moment. Nothing else exists. No detention. No skinned knees and evil track coaches. No gropers under the bleachers. No doubts about who controls my life. No voice of a dead girl in my head. Just Nate and me and the beating of our hearts.

  The door flies open, and Gabby runs onto the patio. “Mom called. She’s going to be late and needs you to pick up Tia Mina at the dance studio.”

  “Duty calls,” Nate says, but he doesn’t move.

  “And you are most dutiful.” I drag myself from his arms and climb the steps so we’re face-to-face. I slide my fingers through his hair and pull him toward me, pressing myself against him. “I think you’re pretty amazing, too.” I brush my lips across his, and everything bad and ugly and confusing ceases to exist.

  When I pull away, he pulls me back. A dimple carves either side of his mouth. “Go to prom with me, Rebel.”

  “Ha-ha,” I say. “I needed a laugh today, especially after getting detention and missing track practice.” The muscle along the back of his jaw twitches, and if I weren’t so close, I wouldn’t have noticed it. “You are joking, aren’t you? Please tell me you’re joking.” Sweat pops up along the back of my neck.

  He loops his arm around my shoulders. “Of course.”

  “NO, REBEL, NO, NO, NO!” COACH EVIL STANDS ON the track, waving her hands. “You can’t slow down for the baton pass. You’re throwing off the other runner.”

  “Heaven forbid I do that,” I say under my breath as I jog back to the start line. You’d think after sixty-five tries, I’d be able to hand off a baton to a teammate. I assume the ready position at my start line.

  Pen, who’s been practicing long, graceful jumps for the past hour in the sandpit to my right, jogs over to the line. “You’re close, Reb,” she says. “It’s all about timing and rhythm and muscle memory. Pay attention to your rhythm. Count your steps if you need to.”

  I wipe the sweat from my temples and nod. The coach blows the whistle, and I take off. I pump my arms, keeping the baton straight and steady. As I approach the next runner, she takes off. I watch her legs, matching my stride to hers. One, two, three, four. No slowing, no hesitation. My muscles know what to do because, for the past two days, Coach Evil has been pounding it into my head. Five, six, seven, eight. I hold my hand in an inverted V and swing the baton forward. I keep my feet in motion, in sync with my teammate. Up goes the baton. Up goes my face.

  Someone stands near the finish line waving me on, her blond, perky ponytail bouncing furiously.

  Smack! The baton bounces off my teammate’s nose. She tumbles to the ground, and I fall over her. I scramble to my hands and knees and look at the finish line, but no one’s there. My confusion is quickly giving way to something hotter and sharper.

  With this fall, there’s blood. My teammate is fine, but a long scrape stretches down my forearm. “Go see the trainer,” the coach says. What she means is, Go far, far away.

  I drag the towel across my face, mopping sweat and the sheen of humiliation. Liia, the trainer, checks out the scrape on my arm. “How bad did I look?” I ask.

  “Maybe you’ll do better at middle distance,” Liia says. “I think we have room for one more runner in the 3,200-meter.”

  “Isn’t that like a mile or something?”

  “Closer to two.”

  I stretch out on my back and watch the sky. Clouds have been forming, and a brisk wind has picked up, but we haven’t had a spring storm lately, not the kind that rips the sky and weeps for an hour and then disappears. My eyelids droop closed. If I were the crying type, I’d have swollen eyes by now. As the coaching staff of the award-winning Del Rey School women’s track-and-field team has learned over the course of two weeks, I’m not a hurdler, sprinter, or jumper. I can’t throw things without damaging myself and others, and I’ve turned the 4 x 100 relay into a contact sport. When it comes to track-and-field, I’m an epic fail.

  Liia finishes with my arm and sits on an overturned five-gallon bucket. “Why are you here, Rebel?”

  I rest my bandaged arm on my stomach. Joining the track team was a way to get thirty straight days of r
andom acts of kindness. Then it became a matter of being true to my word. I’d promised to just show up, and I will, but now, things are blurrier. Pen is counting on me. The bungalow is more peaceful, and I can’t stop hearing Kennedy’s voice. That, more than anything, is eating at me. But it’s not just her voice. I’m smelling her and seeing her. I massage my head. The whole thing is making my brain ache. “Let’s just call it a random act of kindness.”

  When I open my eyes, I turn onto my side and notice Liia’s leg. It’s a uniform “flesh” color and smooth as glass. Two strips of metal curve around the part of her leg just below the knee. It doesn’t look human. I must make some kind of sound because Liia taps her calf against the bucket, and a hollow thud echoes.

  “A random act of drunkenness,” she says as she pushes down her sock, reveals a length of plastic, and unscrews her leg.

  A breath catches in my throat. “What happened?”

  “I was jogging one evening the summer before my sophomore year, and a drunk driver ran a red light and clipped me.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, I thought so at first, but here’s the crazy part. The accident was the beginning of my track career. I run in a league for athletes with disabilities and got a full scholarship to my number one college. I’ve come to believe that this”—she points to the plastic and metal—“is part of my journey. It’s not what I planned, and it certainly hasn’t been without pain, but I believe there’s a higher being or unseen force that places us where we need to be when we need to be there.”

  I throw my hands over my ears. You are dead, Kennedy, and I’m making a choice. I’m banishing you from my head. This is it. No more.

  You don’t look well. Do you need something?

  Something soft and warm presses into my shoulder.

  Liia. It must be Liia, the trainer. I look at my shoulder and see the heavy polyester fabric of my uniform tank shift, but Liia’s hands are busy strapping back on her leg. I stand, my legs unsteady, as if I’d run two miles. “I … I … need to go.”

  I don’t bother to change. On my two-mile run from school to the bungalow, my feet pound the pavement, the thwack loud and real and completely of my own making. When I get home, I toss my backpack at one of the brass hooks in the kitchen.

  “Rebecca, pick that up!”

  I race up the ladder to my studio and sit in the window seat, watching the fleeting sun set the wall of glass picture frames on fire.

  I believe there’s a higher being or unseen force that places us where we need to be when we need to be there.

  Shut up, Kennedy! Liia. I mean shut up, Liia!

  Who said the same thing as Kennedy.

  Who couldn’t have touched my shoulder.

  Fragmented bits of light tumble through the attic. I hop up from the window and begin to pace through the fractured light. Kennedy knew Liia because Kennedy was no track-team superstar. She was a support person, and she probably helped Liia when the trainer needed an extra set of hands. That makes sense. I’ll bet every jar of sea glass I have that Liia and Kennedy had more than one conversation about fate and destiny and life after death.

  None of which I believe in.

  I’ll hang my hat on a guardian angel.

  “Please, Percy, not you, too.”

  I slide my palm along my shoulder. But I felt heat. I saw the dip in the heavy polyester fabric.

  I’m here for you.

  “Nope, not going there,” I say aloud. “It was the wind.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  My hands drop to my sides as Penelope pokes her head through the door in the floor.

  “Did you hit your head with the discus again?” Penelope asks.

  “Ha-ha.”

  Pen rests her arms on the door opening. “I’m not joking, Rebel. Liia said you left practice early. She was worried she said something to upset you. She wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “She thought maybe she freaked you out with her leg.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Because Liia is a nice person, and I don’t want you treating her like a freak and hurting her feelings.”

  “Dammit, Pen. I’m fine with Liia. I’m fine with her leg. I’m even fine with the discus. Got that? I’m fine.”

  Pen’s face folds in a frown, and she disappears down the ladder.

  No lies.

  Shut the fuck up, Kennedy!

  The best way to get Kennedy out of my head is to get her bucket list out of my life.

  I point to the repaired easels and boxes sitting in Percy’s maintenance closet. “Do you think you can get all of it into the back of your dad’s truck?” I ask Nate.

  Nate squints at the art supplies and nods.

  “Even the potter’s wheel? It’s awkward and heavy.”

  Nate puts one arm around my shoulders, pulls me to his side, and brushes his lips against the side of my head. “Even the potter’s wheel.”

  I push him away. “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Hanging all over me.”

  “Past experience tells me you like it.” He nuzzles my hair with his chin.

  “Stop being a pain in the ass.”

  “You shouldn’t swear,” he murmurs against my ear.

  I elbow him in the chest in a nonplayful way. “I’m serious, Nate. I don’t want you to do that.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not here.”

  We’re standing in the doorway of the maintenance closet at the end of Unit One. It’s Friday after school, and most of the student body has gone home. However, a few upperclassmen stand at the bulletin board posting prom posters.

  “All right, Reb.” Nate steps back and throws his palms into the air. “Tell me what you want, then. Tell me exactly what you want.” He sounds snappish. Today he wears his baseball-practice clothes. Sweat and dirt ring his collar.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. He had a tough practice, and he’s tired. “I’m in a bad mood and taking it out on you. I can get Percy to help.”

  Nate runs a hand through his hair. The sides stick out like straw from a scarecrow’s hat. “No, I want to help.” He surveys the art supplies and nods. “So tell me again, what are you doing with all this stuff?”

  I explain that Miss Chang, my art teacher, cleaned out the art supply room, and Percy rescued and fixed some of the supplies. The easels won’t fit in the attic crawl space, so I can’t use them, but someone could, some needy elementary school or scout group. Kennedy would know where to find little people in desperate need of art supplies. “I stopped by the guidance center, and Lungren gave me the name of an after-school program for at-risk kids,” I tell Nate.

  “Sounds like the seeds of a 501(c)(3) charity.”

  “Yeah, something like that.” I shift through the old easels. “Are you sure you can fit all of this in the truck? It’s pretty bulky.”

  Nate squints. He does that when he’s deep in thought, while staring at a twenty-five-foot sailboat that will someday be his, while painting bird decoys, while looking at me. “Yeah, we’re good.” So true. Nate is good, a good student, a good son, a good kisser.

  “And you can help me deliver them on Saturday?”

  “No worries. Got everything under control.”

  That makes one of us. “Then let’s go to the beach.” I need to feel warm sand slipping between my toes.

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  Nate makes an mmm sound.

  “We cleared the weeds. We set up the decoys. We built the chick condos and fencing. You alone spent more than a hundred hours on the nesting site. The rest of the birds should be here by now.”

  “Mmm.”

  I thwack him on the chest. “The nesting grounds, Nate. Look at the nesting grounds. Except for that one bird on the fence post, they’re empty.” He hauls himself out of my lap, where he’s been resting with his eyes closed and toying with the tips of my hair. I point to the mudflats we�
��ve been working on for the past month. “It’s mid-May, and the birds should be here. It’s weird.”

  He squints at the mudflats. “You’re right. It’s weird.” He settles back into my lap.

  “And you’re not worried?” I ask.

  “Reb, the birds will get here when they get here.”

  “But—”

  “I have faith.”

  I picture the gold chain hanging at his neck, the one that holds the tiny gold cross. Nate has faith. He’s the one who suggested there was something on Kennedy’s list that I, and only I, needed to complete, and he believes I will complete the list because I’m true blue.

  My fingers glide up to the thick, lush folds of his hair. It’s so easy to be with Nate. That’s what’s making my life bearable. With Nate there’s no track-team humiliation, no fights with school admin about trees, no possessed bucket list taking over my life.

  He loops a curl of my hair around his finger. “Go to prom with me.”

  “The first time was funny. The second time is annoying.”

  He rolls out of my lap and sits, facing not the ocean, but me. “I’m serious, Rebel. You talk about living your truth, and you pointed out how most people are less than honest, including me. The truth is, Reb, there’s not another girl in the world that I want to dance with right now.” Nate’s dark eyes are clear, intense.

  I pick at a seam of my cargo pants.

  “Now your turn.” Nate takes my hand, lacing his fingers with mine. “Tell me the truth. Is there anyone you’d rather tango with?”

  “All right, I’ll say it. There is no one I’d rather dance with than you.” I stare at our intertwined hands, a good fit. “But I won’t go to prom.”

  Nate’s hand tenses. “Why not?”

  “I’m not a prom kind of girl.”

  “But I’m a prom kind of guy.” One side of his mouth crooks in a half smile, and I catch my breath. He plucks a spray of purple wildflowers from a sandy part of the outcrop and runs the bell-shaped flowers along my leg. “And don’t say you didn’t enjoy our tango.”

  Yes, we’ve tangoed, and I enjoyed being in Nate’s arms, but this whole prom thing isn’t about dancing. “Think this through, Nate. Can you picture me at a prom? If there were a gathering of Children of the Anti-Prom, I’d be the poster child. I hate dresses and can’t walk in high heels. I can’t dance. I’m not good at small talk and ooing and aahing over sparkly new shoes. I would be the world’s worst prom date. You wouldn’t have fun with someone like me.”