20. Jeremiah
JEREMIAH
Chapter playlist:
Confide in Me — Miss Sammy J
Golden — HUNTR/X, EJAE
Nine a.m. sharp, and Badaszek’s already laying down the law before half of us have our skates tied.
“Phones stay in the stalls today. All of them. No exceptions.”
He says it like he’s daring somebody to argue. Nobody does, of course. During Saturday’s water break, half the team had their phones out, and he didn't say a word. Today there’s too much riding on game five for anybody’s head to be somewhere else.
I lock mine in my stall like everybody else and don’t think about it again until the whistle blows two hours later.
Skate wraps at eleven. I go for my stall before I even think about the catered lunch waiting down the hall, and my phone’s sitting right where I left it, one message lit up on the lock screen.
America.
While I love the Dangerous nickname, something made me want to change her contact info after yesterday’s breakfast. I dunno. I feel like something significant shifted between us. Don’t ask why that called for a contact name change, but it did.
I’m grinning before I’ve even unlocked the screen. The timestamp says ten a.m., so her text came in while I was in the middle of my morning skate. She was thinking about me while I was getting yelled at for a lazy backcheck. Awww.
I read the first text.
America: two truths and a lie. go.
Bold, starting a game before I’ve even played mine tonight.
America: 1. im secretly a time traveling alien sent from the year 2417 to study earth hockey culture
That gets an actual laugh out of me, loud enough that somebody two stalls down glances over. I’m fairly certain that was the lie. I don’t think she gets how this game works.
America: 2. im never giving the hat back its mine now
The hat, I’d bet good money on, is a truth. That hat’s basically bonded to her scalp at this point. So the next one…
America: 3. my dad is in prison
My stomach drops so fast it actually hurts, like something got yanked out from under it.
I read it four times before the words sink in. Then my whole body goes cold.
Something happened between yesterday’s breakfast and ten this morning, and I’ve had no idea for almost an hour.
I skip the lunch. Skip the shower too, still in my sweaty underclothes, hair damp under a backward cap, and I’m out the door before anybody asks where I’m going.
I take an Uber, knee bouncing the whole ride, to her Airbnb. It looks almost sketchier in the daylight. In fact, it doesn’t look like an Airbnb at all.
I knock. Nothing. Then, muffled through the door, female voices and feet scrambling around inside.
“My stuff is spread out. No, I need these tables.”
“Cover it up.”
“This is delicate work.“
More scrambling about.
“Don’t touch the settings.”
“Then move your stuff.”
“It’s too heavy.”
Then silence. Then the door flies open so fast I take a step back.
A single face fills the gap, framed exactly to the width of the chain. Dark eyes run the length of me, unhurried, like she’s pricing me for parts.
“We don’t want any,” she says, and shuts the door.
I stand there a second, recalibrating. Knock again.
“I'm looking for Erica. Er… America. This is the right building. Right? I brought her here Sunday.”
I think this is the place.
The gap reopens. Same face. Slightly less patient.
“We only open for Girl Scout cookies.”
Door shuts.
I back off the step, try to get an angle on the one window facing the street. It’s so small and so high that I can’t see in. I knock a third time, softer, mostly out of stubbornness.
“Please. I just need to know she’s okay.”
Nothing happens for a long time. Long enough that I've almost raised my hand to knock a fourth time when I hear the sound of chain sliding, and the door finally opens, slow, only a few inches.
Erica keeps her body angled into the narrow space, one hand braced against the door like she’s got no plans to open it any further. Streaks run down both cheeks, both dried and fresh, and her eyes are red and swollen at the rims.
My heart breaks instantly. I reach through the gap and pull her the rest of the way out to me, tucking her head under my chin right there on the stoop.
“I came as soon as I could. What happened?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just breathes against my chest in short, hitching pulls that make my arms tighten on instinct. When she finally gets words out, half of them get lost somewhere between her mouth and my shirt.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I should’ve…”
A hiccup swallows the rest of it.
“Erica. Talk to me.”
“If you want to leave, that’s…” Another hitch, her whole body shaking against mine. “You don’t have to explain it. I get it. I’ll give the cards back. I haven’t even used them, they’re still in the envelope, you can have them, I don’t need them.”
“Erica.” I pull back enough to see her face, hands on her shoulders. “What cards? Nobody’s asking for anything back. Slow down.”
She shakes her head like slowing down isn’t a thing she knows how to do right now. Presses the heel of her hand under one eye, smearing more than she wipes.
“I’m not good enough for you.” She says it like a fact she’s tired of arguing with.
“Hey now, hold on. I’m here now. Is your dad okay?”
I know she adores her dad, and whatever happened to him, I want to support her. “Do you need to go see him? Because I can get you on a flight today. Right now. Whatever you need.”
“You’d do that.” Not really a question. Something in her face breaks further, like the offer itself is what’s undoing her.
“Of course I’d do that. Talk to me. What happened?”
“You happened.”
“Me?” I’m not following.
“Yes!” she cries through what’s probably snot clogging her words. “You. You and your Ted Lasso puppy energy.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. You texted, I came. Your dad…”
“Exactly!” A fresh fit bubbles up and she’s sobbing into my shirt again.
I am utterly, and completely confused.
“I should’ve told you before. I kept thinking there’d be a better time. A right time to tell you. I mean, when is it ever a good time to say, ‘Hey, my dad’s a jailbird and I’m a loser.’?”
She stops herself, presses her lips together so hard they go white.
Wait.
“Erica.” I pull back another inch, need to see her whole face for this part. “Let me get this straight. This didn’t just happen today?”
She blinks at me and sniffs. “What?”
“You texted that your dad got arrested.”
Two little lines form between her brows. “No, I didn’t. I texted that my dad is in prison. Nobody gets arrested and sent to prison on the same day.”
Aye, que la…
“So, he was arrested before?”
“Yes.”
“And got sentenced today?”
She shakes her head. “What? No. Why would you think? Ohhh.”
“So he’s been in prison for a while, I take it.”
She nods solemnly.
“And you’re missing him today, is that it?”
Still a good reason to cry, but not as urgent as I thought.
“I texted you because I want to be honest with you.”
Then she adds under her breath, “Better to lose him with honesty than keep him with a lie.”
“You’re not going to lose me,” I say softly.
“I’m not?”
“No. What happened to your dad is not your fault.”
“But it is my fault. A little.”
Then she tells me about a man who was working with her father on a job.
How friendly he was. How smart he seemed to an eighteen-year-old girl majoring in art history.
He seemed so knowledgeable on the subject, and she was a young student, trying to make something of herself at the local community college.
How one night, he’d snuck away from the other men planning a thing in the basement and walked into her room uninvited.
How he’d shut the door behind him and sat on her bed.
My blood boils when she says this, and now I truly want to burn the world down for her. But I let her finish.
He didn’t touch her. But something about the delivery of his words made her uncomfortable.
And perhaps he would have made a move. Her father barged in, saw the man too close to his daughter, and went feral.
He threw the man against the wall and threatened him.
Erica was young, and downplayed the situation.
That was her one big mistake. Because after that day, there was a rift between her father and the man.
And that is why he’d set her father up for a fall.
I want to scream and tear down every wall in this country to find this guy. Horrible thoughts run through my head. Thoughts of violent, poetic justice.
But Erica does not need that. She needs someone who will be here, to comfort her. So I just pull her back in against me and let her get the rest of it out in pieces, whatever order it wants to come in.
When she’s finally cried herself down to hiccups, I take her by the shoulders and hold her out far enough to see her whole face, bending until we’re level.
“Listen to me. You did nothing wrong. You understand?”
She doesn’t answer, so I keep going.
“It wasn’t your fault. And I don’t see you any differently because of it or anything else.
Nothing you say or do will change the way I feel.
You can tell me anything. Everything or nothing or just what makes you comfortable.
I don’t care what it is. I just need to know you’re okay.
And if you’re sad about your dad, I’m right here.
If you’re angry and want to throw things, I’m here.
If you want to go find this guy and rough him up…
you’ve met my cousins. Especially Dante.
He’s huge! And I’ve got a lot more in Mexico and LA and trust me, they would ride at dawn.
Except Memo. He’s a priest, so he would probably just, I don’t know… pray at dawn.”
Her chin wobbles and a small laugh escapes through the tears. I use the hem of my T-shirt to wipe under both her eyes, the same shirt I never got around to changing out of, but I'm not letting her walk around with her mascara doing whatever it’s currently doing.
“Gross,” she says, and it’s the first almost-normal thing she’s said since the door opened.
“You’re welcome. You want to blow your nose into it? I don’t mind.”