Hold-Up Read online

  “What the hell happened, Alex?” Spit sprayed from between his yellow teeth as he spoke. “Alexander Hoffman! Answer me!”

  “I don’t know,” I bleated, looking away from him and toward poor Ina, who’d been beautiful up until a few minutes earlier.

  Ina Stiller. The homecoming princess. Darren Childress’s girlfriend. Round light-blue eyes, long blond hair, glossy lips, perfect body. That Ina. I didn’t even hear the sirens ringing or see the ambulance that had apparently skidded up the snow-covered lawn to the foot of the stairs. It was January, and I remember feeling so hot that I unzipped my jacket and unbuttoned the collar of my uniform. The doctors wrapped her in blankets and put an oxygen mask over her bloody face. Her silky hair was sticking up where her hat had been, and her bangs were stuck to her forehead with blood. Between her moans and rapid breathing, I wondered if she were sobbing. Maybe she had dreamed of being a fashion model one day. An actress. Maybe she had planned to hook up with her pretty-boy Darren that night. Whatever it was she had planned, my stupid stunt was a game changer. Two guys in white scrubs picked her up from the ground like she was a fragile feather and lowered her onto a stretcher with wheels that squeaked as they pushed her to the back of the ambulance. The doors closed seconds later with no goodbye, no “We’ll let you know how things turn out,” no nothing. As soon as the sirens were out of earshot, things fell quiet. Too quiet.

  And that’s when I caught sight of Dad scrambling up the lawn, snow up to his knees, his coat on crooked and wide open. I remember thinking this was going to be a crap storm. As if I didn’t have enough of it to deal with already. Being the lawyer that she is, I knew Mom would reason me to death that night over dinner. But Dad was the wild card. I tried to analyze Dad as he reached the bottom of the steps, tried to determine whether he would take my side or pull me up by the ear. His squinty eyes could have been from the whipping wind or because he was furious. Or both. There was a clip to his step but his shoulders were relaxed. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or sneering. I looked back down at Mr. Wright’s loafers, but they no longer had the same mesmerizing, escapist effect.

  “What’s this all about, Alex? Headmaster just called the garage.” Dad’s voice was firm, but calm, and all that ran through my mind was how lucky I was that he hadn’t seen Ina on the steps the way Mr. Wright had. The way I had.

  Mr. Wright and his loafers slipped-slid over to Dad for a talk. I watched them whisper not six feet from me as if somehow, during this whole shit storm, I had become invisible. Mr. Wright pulled at his face and lips and mimed teeth falling to the ground. He ran fingers down the sides of his pasty cheeks and down his neck and pointed to the bloodstains on the steps. Meanwhile, Dad stood quietly, his cheeks turning from pink to red to purple. I decided that those cheeks could only mean one of two things: either Dad was going to need to punch yet another hole in our garage drywall later, or he was concocting a Plan B. And Dad’s Plan Bs are what make him the wild card. His latest Plan B— devised after I’d called Ms. O’Keefe, my Renaissance professor, Ms. O’Queefe—had landed me a weekend playing the jester in a local Renaissance fair.

  Dad’s hands on my shoulders startled me out of my Renaissance posttrauma. His sausage-like fingers stained with car grease and reeking of gasoline curled into my heavy coat as he helped me to my feet and down the stairs toward the car. “Let’s get going,” he said with a calmness that both surprised and worried me.

  When we didn’t take the Beuler exit home, my heart began to race.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, even though I did.

  “We’re going to the friggin’ hospital,” he said just as calmly as before, but his unusually tight squeeze on the steering wheel, his gritted teeth, and his having just called Vienna General a “friggin’ hospital” told me otherwise.

  God, I’d tried to help her. By yanking out the board. By stuffing my sweatshirt sleeve in her mouth. I’d apologized in my own way, I had.

  “You’re going to look that girl’s mother in the eye and explain what happened.”

  I slid deeper into the ’91 Cherokee passenger seat as we barreled past the visitor parking toward the front-door valet service. I’m royally screwed, I distinctly remember thinking.

  Once we were through the revolving doors, Dad pulled me toward the elevator and slammed the “3 Trauma” button with the side of his fist. While the elevator took its sweet time getting to the third floor, he popped the cough drops he kept handy for his eternal garage-induced bronchitis.

  When we got out of the cherry-menthol-infused elevator, we were almost run over by a stretcher with dangling bags of liquid. In fact, every stretcher I saw had dangling liquids. And that’s when I saw her mother. I’d seen her a thousand times at school, for PTA stuff, I guess. And for homecoming. She looked exactly like Ina but with wrinkles and businesslike adult clothes, although I am pretty sure she doesn’t work. She saw me walking toward her, and before I could even figure out what to say, she rushed over and grabbed my arm.

  “Are you the boy?” she asked me. “The boy who helped her on the steps?”

  I deeply appreciated her vision of what constituted help.

  “She was talking on the phone, wasn’t she?” She pulled a stick of gum from her purse and began to unwrap the foil as she shook her head. “I’ll bet with that Darren.”

  “She was laughing, so probably,” I said.

  “Laughing! That boy wouldn’t know the first thing about making our daughter laugh.”

  I didn’t mind deflecting a little bit of the anger from me, but cutting on Darren didn’t seem exactly fair, and Dad’s nudge on the back of my shoulder shook off any doubt I might’ve had about this.

  “Alex, don’t you have something to say?” Dad whispered before backing off toward the vending machines at the end of the hall.

  “Are you a friend?” The way Ina’s mom grabbed onto my forearm told me that she wanted me to tell her that I was.

  “Yes,” I said. “Have you talked to Ina yet?”

  “She doesn’t remember what happened, and now that they have her drugged for the pain, I dare say she might never remember.”

  I looked over my shoulder to locate Dad, who’d wandered out of earshot.

  “Well, she’ll be going into surgery soon, dear. Could you come by tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” I said in character. I decided that Ina would like the story of a mysterious friend who came to visit her at the hospital and then disappeared. A little like Zorro.

  The mother hugged me goodbye and scurried toward the doctor as my dad approached, frowning.

  “Now that’s forgiveness.”

  “Yep,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  “That’ll make the next several weeks a lot easier for you.”

  “For me?” An image of the purple velvet jester shoes with curled-up toes topped with tinkly bells flashed through my mind. My body was suddenly hot.

  “You’re going to help this girl, Alex. You’re going to be here for her.” He pushed the elevator button normally this time. “I want you here every other day.”

  “Every other d—”

  Right at that moment, Mrs. Stiller whisked by with the doctor.

  “What’s your name, dear? I’ll tell Ina you came by.”

  “Alex!” My dad roared, not once but twice. “Alex Hoffman!”

  * * *

  The Monday after the accident, Ina’s mom welcomed me with a hug and Ina, who still didn’t remember the incident, seemed happy to see me too. From behind the white gauze, I could see Ina’s round eyes as blue as ever, not dulled one bit by what had happened.

  “Hey, Alex,” Ina greeted me as if we really were friends.

  “Hi, Ina,” I said.

  “I’ll leave you two to chat.” Mrs. Stiller made up a reason to leave us alone, which in any other circumstance would have been good, except that Ina and I had n
ever spoken a word to each other. While most people talk about the weather in awkward situations, I always choose cafeteria food. And so time passed thanks to the dear old cafeteria.

  But then there are the Tater Tots,” I said. “The exception to the rule.”

  “Disgusting!” Her voice escaped, scratchy from behind the gauze.

  “Everyone loves Tater Tots! What’s wrong with you?”

  Her giggle sounded like the high-pitched trill of a bird, but it didn’t sound girlie and fake. It was sweet. More shocking still was the fact that I couldn’t remember the last time a girl had laughed at something I’d said. My usual potty humor was a guys-only kind of thing. Joking with a girl, especially a girl like Ina, was new territory for me. Each little giggle that eked through the thick, white gauze took me one step further into this new world. Before I knew it, Dad was texting me from the lobby to take me home.

  “See you Wednesday, Ina.”

  “Can you come tomorrow too?”

  My cheeks heated up with her request, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she were slightly red underneath the bandages.

  For the next six weeks, Room 321 became my second home. Through the gauze, Ina told me everything. About her rescue mutt, Rusty. About her dad, who’d died when she was only three. About how she spent her free time at the Rose Avenue Cinema Arts Theater. About Darren, who never seemed to make it to the hospital. In fact, other than me, no one from Greenbriar made it to the hospital. That must’ve been a real doozy, to be bandaged up and in pain when you realize that your friends really aren’t your friends. Even your boyfriend. And no matter how hard her mom tried, there is no way she could erase that kind of loneliness.

  I did my fair share of talking, especially at the beginning, when it was more difficult for Ina to speak. About my dad’s mechanic shop and Mom’s late nights to make partner at her law firm. About my weird allergy to green grapes. And even though after a while I found the sound of my own voice mind-numbing, her eyes had a glimmer that told me otherwise. And so I kept talking. She probably knows more about me than my parents do. Except for skateboarding and my expulsion. It sounds absurd, maybe even cruel, that after six weeks, she still assumed I was still a student at Greenbriar—an incredibly helpful student at Greenbriar, at that. Her mother, who spent a cumulative ten minutes a week at the school to pick up her homework, was the closest connection Ina had to her previous life. But saying I was no longer at Greenbriar meant talking about my expulsion, which meant talking about the reason why she was here, which meant the end to my visits. I could’ve told her all sorts of lies about why I’d left Greenbriar, but I didn’t want to. As easy as it would’ve been, I couldn’t. And I’m no prude when it comes to lies of any nature. And so the weeks passed. Four. Five. Six.

  “If I could do anything, I would take a year off and go around the world,” Ina blurted out the Friday marking her sixth week in the same bed. “You know, backpacking.”

  “You? Backpacking? You’d be whining for four-star treatment before the end of the first day.”

  She rolled those beautiful marbles she has for eyes, and through the gauze that was now thinner and only around her jaw and mouth, I could see her purse her lips. She had a sweetness I could almost taste.

  “If you could do anything at all, Alex, what would it be?”

  “Skateboard,” I blurted without thinking. “But I’ve given it up,” I added in full grave-digger fashion.

  “Ah.” Her eyes darted to her lap.

  “Ina, why are you with Darren?” I blurted again without thinking.

  “I’ve known it was you from the very beginning.”

  “What do you mean you’ve known it was me?”

  “I turned around and saw you skidding down the railing. The last thing I saw was you falling backward and the board in the air.”

  “Why did you wait until now to tell me? Why didn’t you tell me to piss off weeks ago?”

  Ina grabbed my hand. “Do you remember what you said on the steps while you were trying to help me?”

  “No.”

  “You were wiping away the blood from my face with your shirt sleeve.” She paused. “You really don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  “You prayed.”

  “You mean like ‘God help me’ kind of thing?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause everybody says that shit.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.” She squeezed my hand. “It was sweet, Alex.”

  “Sweet?” I wanted to sneer but couldn’t.

  “You prayed that God would erase those last few seconds, and when that didn’t happen, you prayed for me.”

  “You mean while I was stuffing my dirty sweatshirt sleeve in your mouth?” I was marinating in a level of truthfulness that left me utterly defenseless. “Was it before or after I’d stupidly pulled the board from your mouth?”

  “I’ve never had someone pray for me before.” She looked up at me teary-eyed. “I mean, I’ve never heard anyone pray for me before.” She looked down at her hand in mine, and a truthful seriousness descended on us like a light rain, like a fog. My mind reeled.

  “What about Darren?” I tightened my grip on Ina’s hand.

  “He broke up with me after my first week here.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your skateboarding?” She draped her arm around my neck and pulled me in. Her long, narrow fingers were soft and cool, and a chill ran across my shoulders.

  Right at that moment, the doctor knocked, and I looked at the clock on the wall.

  “Shit! Dad’s waiting downstairs!” But Ina didn’t seem to care. Instead, she leaned in close and then closer until her forehead rubbed against mine.

  “Let’s take off those bandages!” The doctor clapped in excitement.

  In a daze, my forehead and neck still buzzing with her touch, I reluctantly heaved myself up and out of the room to go home.

  It must have been after I’d left that Ina found out she was going home. The next day when I skidded into Room 321, it was empty. There had been a fragrance, a roselike smell when Ina had been there, and less than twenty-four hours later, the smell of antiseptic had taken over.

  I never got a chance to tell her that I’d been expelled from Greenbriar before she certainly found it out for herself. That must’ve been the kicker. The omission she won’t let me live down. I called her every day after she left the hospital. Left messages, texts. But she never contacted me again. Out of sight, out of mind, maybe? Maybe that Stiller forgiveness wasn’t as genuine as I’d thought. And now there’s so much I need to tell her. About Dad leaving. About Todd. About this sadness I can’t shrug off ever since she vanished into thin air. I never got to see her with the last of the bandages off. Never got to kiss her lips.

  * * *

  I sit down in Algebra 2/Trig and run my fingers lightly over the middle of my forehead the way other people run their fingers over their lips. So many months later and I can still feel her pulling me in. I see her eyes close as she approaches my forehead. I try to breathe in her flowery scent, but it’s impossible in a packed classroom that smells like pencils and sweat. Now I can see Ina’s forgiveness for what it had really been. A cruel trick of leading me on and then dropping me like the craphead I never should have forgotten that I am. But I’m not mad about it. In fact, I think I deserve it. No, I’m not mad. Just Shakespeare-grade heartbroken.

  2. CHARLOTTE

  Tuesday

  Miller’s is a controlled environment. Even the little idiosyncrasies of our family store, like the nail file on the radiator behind the counter or the tennis ball that’s been stuck under the ice cream freezer for as long as I can remember, have been accepted as fact. From the bay window behind the register where I’m sitting, Rose Avenue takes on the life it does every morning. Gus—as in Gus’s Gas on the
corner—has already dropped in for his frozen vegetable-lasagna breakfast like he does every morning. And just as expected, the florist followed right behind for her two energy bars and coconut water. The super-skinny sophomore kid, wearing a backpack double his width and a furry hood cinched tight, is teetering up the slushy hill toward Lincoln at 7:50 on the dot, like every morning. We’re all creatures of habit. Even the ink-sticky pages of Gossip Mag tell the same truth. I flip to page to seven to find that the lead singer of Stingray has cheated on his model girlfriend yet again and that she, under the obvious misconception that habits can be broken, has taken him back. On page eleven, it says that child-star Jordan Mitchell has just reentered rehab for what he says will be the third and last time, but I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about the “last” part. The fact that we’re all creatures of habit doesn’t bother me like it does some people who think they can somehow break the mold. Without habits, even the bad ones, there would be total chaos. I’ll bet philosophers have written about this somewhere.

  And that’s why this morning is making me queasy. Apart from the blizzard in April, Margo Price has just walked in for what seems to be a leisurely browse before school. Beside the fact that she never comes here, I’d have thought that this was the last place she’d want to be. I can’t help but admire her as she roams aisle two: her bright blue eyes and dimples, the wedge-heeled booties and funky wool jacket with big orange buttons. Nobody holds the popularity prerequisites of beauty and fashion sense like she does, which might explain why she’s the most popular girl not just of our sophomore class, but of all of Lincoln High.

  The sour-tasting nausea that has slowly crept from my stomach to my throat, however, has nothing to do with her knack for style. It’s got everything to do with her equally impressive and well-documented gift for vindictiveness. Jenny Cho’s locker stuffed with sex toys and Carolyn Hunt’s bra hanging from the school flagpole out front are just two stellar examples. I watch her rummage through the boxes of protein bars in aisle three as my six-week-old nickname scratches its way into consciousness. I wonder if she bothered to learn my real name, Charlotte Chelsea Miller, before replacing it with “Pudge” six weeks ago. As far as nicknames go, someone as ruthless as Margo could have done better. Pudge doesn’t make sense. Unless, that is, you count boobs and hips as Pudge material, which I don’t. She chomps on her gum and blows a pink bubble twice the width of her hollow-cheeked face until it pops. This I’ve seen her do millions of times because her locker is just seven away from mine, and because the “no gum allowed” rule doesn’t seem to apply to her. Her phone rings, and that disinterested drone peppered with the lilt of money invades the soundwaves. I immediately start picking at my cuticles, something I haven’t done since Mom and Dad’s divorce almost two years ago. Just one more example of how old habits don’t die. They just sit under the surface and wait for the right moment to make a strong comeback. Margo in my store is clearly my personal moment.