Chapter 11 #2
Nice.
I wipe it up and read Grace’s message.
GracieLou
I definitely was not sleeping. I had the craziest day. But I’m going to bed now. Double lock those doors, Arrow!
GreenArrow11
Shoot. I didn’t check my messages before going to sleep, so I forgot to double lock.
Sadly, I was attacked.
By an elf.
Why did I add that last part?
I could unsend it, but if I do, she’ll know there was a message, and she’ll wonder what I’m hiding.
But it’s not like Grace and I are a couple.
And obviously nothing is happening with Poppy.
I set my phone down, spit and rinse, and then get ready.
In the room, Poppy’s on the floor in her pajamas. Planking.
Okay, then.
“Morning,” she says with a strained smile. “Sorry, give me two more minutes.”
“How many minutes do you plank for?”
“Five. I hate it.”
“Not bad,” I say. I step around her and sit in the chair in the corner of the room so I can pull on my shoes.
“I already did my fifty pushups, but I still have a five minute wall sit after this before we can go. Or I could always do it during a rest stop. I’m sorry!”
“Stop apologizing. I’ll do them with you,” I say. I get down onto my elbows and toes and start planking. “So, this is your thing? Planks, pushups, and wall sits?”
“Yes,” she says, out of breath. “It’s the worst.” She pants. “My dad and I made a challenge when I was in high school.”
When he was in prison, I think. “Does he still do them every day?”
She gives a short laugh. “Honestly, I doubt he ever did them.”
My core is starting to feel a light burn, but Poppy looks worn out. “You think he lied?”
Her face gets redder. “Uh, yeah. I don’t know. I visited him about four or five years ago, and when I asked about them, he looked at me like I was …” Her timer beeps and she drops to the ground, panting. “Like I was naive.”
Anger explodes in me. “What? For believing him?”
She breathes heavily. “I assume so. So I just laughed and said I was joking, and he seemed relieved he didn’t have to explain how the world really works to me.” She gets up and moves on to the wall sit, resetting the timer on her phone.
I stand and join her. The wall isn’t big enough to give us a lot of space, so I’m less than a foot from her. But my face is a foot higher, too. “So why’d you keep doing the challenge?”
She looks up at me, the back of her head pressed against the wall. “It’s good for me.”
“Come on,” I say. “That can’t be the only reason.”
She wrinkles her nose, and her breathing gets heavier. “I think I’m holding on to the dad I thought I’d have. I expected him to be repentant, you know? To feel bad and want to connect? But he was just angry and ugly.”
I hold her eye. I’m not used to conversation like this. I don’t do feelings and back story, or whatever this is. But now that I’ve started asking questions, it’s like I can’t stop, at least with Poppy. Maybe talking to people is a matter of momentum. Or her story is just that compelling.
“Is he still?” I ask. “Angry?”
“I hope not,” she says, dropping her face and looking at her timer. “We don’t talk anymore.”
“You don’t?” I ask.
She shakes her head, making her braids flip from side to side.
“I wrote to him every week for years, hoping to be the one person who stayed by his side. But he was so bitter about the maximum sentence ... he started seeing me as a resource, not a daughter. He was always in debt in there, claiming he needed money for this or that, using my loyalty to ask me to send him money, even when I was living off student loans.”
“You sent him money?” I’m so mad, so disgusted, the words feel toxic.
“I felt like I had to,” she whispers. “I didn’t have anyone else, and neither did he.
I just wanted to be close, to get back the dad I had growing up.
It cost me almost $6,000 over the years, but I sent it.
One month, I couldn’t afford rent, and I realized something had to change.
I finally told him I couldn’t send any more.
I begged him to go back to Gamblers Anonymous, like he had when he first was imprisoned. ”
I watch her throat tense as she swallows. “He never responded.”
“Are you kidding?”
She sniffs and gives me a brave smile that makes me feel sick inside. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” I say, shaking from anger more than from the burn in my thighs. “How could he do that to you?”
I’m talking about her dad, but something about this resonates. Like I’m talking about my granddad—and dad, by extension. About everyone who’s made us feel like we’re only worth what we can give them.
“Prison?” she asks with a shrug. “He was so bitter that he got such a severe sentence. He dealt with it well at first. He was penitent. Wanted to make it right. But prison is hard. Seeing some people do the same crime and get reduced sentences. Seeing violent repeat offenders somehow cycle in and out of prison. The injustice of it never stopped hurting him.”
When Grace and I talk on the messaging board about sentencing, I always say, “Don’t do the crime if you don’t want to do the time,” but Poppy’s face is red from exertion and hurt, and the idea of adding to it makes my stomach lurch.
I feel my lip curl. “My brother got punched outside of a bar the night after finding out he was the top pick in the MLB draft. He went out to celebrate with friends, and he got chippy with some guy. He told Evan they should take it outside. When Evan got out to the parking lot, the guy sucker-punched him. Evan’s head hit the pavement. TBI.”
That familiar rage adds to the anger I already feel over Poppy’s situation. The idea that her dad would treat her so badly, would take advantage of her like that—
I want to quit these freaking wall sits, but Poppy’s still going, so I am, too.
“I’m sorry, Oliver.”
“You know how much time that guy got?” I ask. “Zero. He got community service and anger management. Meanwhile, my brother was in a trauma ward for six months relearning his right side from his left.”
Poppy doesn’t look shocked the way I expected. She just looks sad. “I’m sorry. How is Evan doing now?”
“This isn’t about Evan,” I say, standing up. I don’t care if there are twenty seconds left on her timer. “It’s about how messed up the system is that your dad could get fifteen years and the guy who attacked my brother got none.”
She furrows her brow and purses her lips, like she’s chewing on a thought. “Sentencing is hard. There are so many considerations.”
“Hard? More like broken.”
“That too.”
Her timer beeps, and she releases the wall sit to stretch her quads.
After a beat where I’m panting angrily at her, I do the same.
My anger is bitter enough to curdle milk.
“Some bleeding-heart nonprofit—Mercy in Justice—was at the trial. Claimed they were advocating for fair sentencing. Bull. They should have been handling cases like your dad’s, not letting violent idiots walk free. ”
Poppy must cool down a lot faster than I do, because all of the red has drained out of her face. In fact, she looks almost faint.
“Hey, you look sick. Did you overdo it?”
She drops her leg. “Nope! I’m fine. Let me get ready real fast and we can head out.”
Her smile is too bright, her voice too high. Something is wrong, but I have no clue what.
“Okay. I’ll go … check out the breakfast,” I say, because she’s being weird.
“Great! I’ll be down in ten minutes!”
“See you down there,” I say.
Poppy rolls her bag into the bathroom and closes the door with one last smile.
What on earth was that about?