One Way (4 page)

“I…I…” The words won't come out.

“Kenzie wanted to see how Stassi is doing,” my mom says. She sounds calm enough to someone who doesn't know her that well, but I notice that her voice is higher than usual. That means she's nervous.

“Get out of here,” Mr. Mikalczyk says. He is gripping the cardboard coffee containers so hard that the lid pops off one of them and coffee splashes on the floor.

Mrs. Mikalczyk appears beside him. She takes the coffee from him and sets them on a chair. She wipes his coffee-covered hand with a tissue.

“Tadeusz, please,” she says.

But Mr. Mikalczyk still has me in his sights.

“My girl is a vegetable because of you,” he says. “Why don't you just kill her and get it over with?”

“Tadeusz!” Tears spring to Mrs. Mikalczyk's eyes. She glances over her shoulder at Stassi lying all hooked up to machines in that bed. “Tadeusz, how can you say that?”

“Well, it's true, isn't it?” Mr. Mikalczyk shouts at her. The nurse at the far end of the hall is coming toward us now. “That's what the doctor said, didn't he?”

“He said there was some damage.” Mrs. Mikalczyk is whispering as if she's afraid that Stassi will overhear. “He said we won't know exactly what's going on for a few more days.”

But Mr. Mikalczyk isn't listening to her.

“Get out of here,” he says to me.

“Mr. Mikalczyk, please,” my mom says. “Kenzie just wants—”

“I don't care what Kenzie wants,” Mr. Mikalczyk shouts at her, startling her so that she jumps back a little. “
I
want him out of here. Now!” To make his point, he shoves me.

“Keep your voices down, please,” the nurse says. She's right beside us now, and she sounds annoyed that she has to tell a bunch of grown-ups—and me— to keep a lid on it. “Any more shoving or yelling and I'll have to call security.”

“Then make him go,” Mr. Mikalczyk tells her. “He's the one who put my Stassi in that bed. Get him out of here.”

The nurse looks at me. There's no expression in her eyes. My mom takes one of my hands. She tugs on it, and I stumble after her toward the elevators. Mr. Mikalczyk watches us every step of the way. He looks like he wants to kill me. Finally we're inside, and the elevator doors slide shut. Neither my mom nor I say a word the whole way home.

I'm lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and wishing that everything was back the way it used to be before the stupid play, when someone taps on my bedroom door. It's my mom.

“Mandi is here to see you,” she says.

“Tell her I'm sleeping.”

“She's worried about you, Kenzie.”

I go downstairs and step out onto the porch.

“What do you want?” I say. I don't even try to be friendly, because all I want is to be alone.

“I—” Her face turns red. “I just wanted to see how you are.”

“How do you think I am?” I say. “I just put my girlfriend into the hospital.”

“Your
ex
-girlfriend,” Mandi says in a soft voice.

“I never should have let her go.”

“She was cheating on you, Kenzie. You saw it yourself.”

“She says she was just rehearsing,” I say.

I believe that now. I don't know what made me doubt it. That's not right. I do know. I was jealous. Every girl in the whole school dreams about going with Logan—and Stassi ends up opposite him in a play where he gets to kiss her in front of everyone. Also, from what I could see, he enjoyed rehearsing those scenes way too much. So when Stassi told me they were rehearsing outside of regular rehearsal hours, all I could think about was him wrapping his arms around her and kissing her. It made me crazy. I wanted him to stop. I wanted her to refuse to let him touch her.

What an idiot I was. It's a play. That's all. She kept saying she loved me. Why didn't I believe her? Why did I let myself get so crazy and jealous? Maybe if I'd believed her, I would have been at that rehearsal instead of blowing it off. Maybe I would have been with her. That way I wouldn't have crashed into her.

“She wasn't
just
rehearsing,” Mandi says. “I saw them together, Kenzie. I heard her. She was going to dump you once and for all. I'm glad you did it first.”

“What? What do you mean? What did you hear?”

“I heard her talking on the phone. She said she was going to dump you.”

“Who was she talking to?”

“I don't know. But I heard her loud and clear.”

“When? When did you hear that?”

“Last week. Just before you broke up with her.”

“No way. You're wrong.”

“I know what I heard, Kenzie. You did the right thing. She never appreciated you anyway.”

My dad's car turns into the driveway and stops so suddenly that it rocks back and forth a little before he gets out. He slams the door and thumps up the porch steps. He doesn't say anything, but he glowers at me as he goes by. The front door bangs shut behind him.

“You've got to be kidding,” he says to my mom. His voice is loud. I can tell he's angry. “Why didn't you call me?”

“What would you have done?” my mom says. She's perfectly calm.

“Called Howard, for one thing.”

“What for?”

“What for?” My dad shouts the words at her. “What for? What do you think I'd be doing if some kid went the wrong way on a one-way street, struck Kenzie and turned him into a vegetable?”

“No matter what anyone says, I'm with you, Kenzie,” Mandi says. She bites her lower lip and looks at me like she's trying to figure something out. Finally she says, “I would never cheat on you, Kenzie.”

“What?” What is she talking about? How can Mandi cheat on me? We're not even together.

“I really like you, Kenzie,” she says slowly. “I—I always have. No matter what. And…well, wasn't I there for you when Stassi cheated on you and lied to you? Didn't you say I was a good friend then? And didn't you…” She blushed. “You kissed me, remember, Kenz?

Yeah, I said it. And I did it. I kissed her. It's embarrassing to remember. I did it because I was so mad at Stassi. We had that huge fight, I told her she had to choose, and she walked away. That afternoon I saw her crying, and she let Logan hold her to comfort her. So when she turned her head, I grabbed Mandi and kissed her. I really kissed her, if you know what I mean. But I don't want to think about that, so instead I say, “Lied to me? Stassi never lied to me.”

“She said she wasn't interested in Logan, didn't she?” Mandi says.

“Look, Mandi—”

“But I would never lie to you, Kenzie.” She presses herself against me and goes up on her tiptoes so that she can kiss me—on the mouth. I'm so surprised that I push her away.

“Mandi, I'm not…I mean, I don't want…”

“Don't want what?” she asks.

Mandi and I look at each other.

“I love Stassi.”

“You just feel bad about what happened,” she says. “You don't love her. Not after what she did.” She tries to kiss me again. Again, I shove her away.

“Stop it!” I say. “Leave me alone!”

“But—”

“I mean it, Mandi. Leave me alone. I made a mistake. I'm sorry. I don't love you or anything like that. I…It's all my fault. I never should have let Stassi go.”

Her face turns red. Her lower lip quivers. Her eyes get all watery. Just my luck, she's going to cry.

“I have to go,” I say quickly. I don't wait for her to answer. I go inside, where my mom and dad are still arguing.

“They don't know that for sure,” my mom is saying to my dad. “She might be okay.”

“For Pete's sake, Susie. If there was a chance she was going to be okay, her folks would have said so. If I were them, if this happened to me, I'd be on the phone to a lawyer. I'd be getting the best advice I could on how I could sue the little hooligan who did this to my son. I'd be figuring out how I could take his parents for everything they were worth. It's negligence, Susie. Carelessness. Maybe all the criminal court can do is slap him with a fine. But the civil court? I'd sue for sure. And I bet that's just what the Mikalchuks are going to do.” A moment later, I hear my dad yell into the phone: “Howard, I think we may have a problem.”

Chapter Six

My mom calls me for supper. I yell back that I'm not hungry. She doesn't call me again. I hear knives and forks chinking against plates. I smell chicken. My mouth waters. My stomach rumbles. But what kind of guy sits down and eats a hearty supper after he's just given someone permanent brain damage? I lie facedown on my bed and hold my pillow tightly around my head, trying to block everything out. If only I could stop my brain from playing those pictures over and over again—Stassi lying on the sidewalk, the paramedics bending over her, Stassi being loaded into the ambulance.

The doorbell rings. The front door opens, and my dad says, “Howard, thanks for coming.”

They must go into the living room, because after that all I hear is the rumble of two deep male voices. It's at least an hour later before I hear the front door open and close again, followed by footsteps on the stairs and a knock at my bedroom door.

“Kenzie? Are you awake?”

It's my dad. I tell him to come in.

“Rough day, huh?” he says as he sinks down onto the edge of my bed.

Is he kidding?
Rough
day? How about the worst day of my entire life?

“You holding up okay?” he asks.

This is why he came into my room? To ask me one stupid question after another?

“Howard Grossman was here,” he says.

Here we go.

“He says he doesn't think we have anything to worry about.”

I sit up. I want to scream. I want to hit something. But I hold it in.

“He says he doesn't even think the Mikalchuks will try to sue. And if they do, he doesn't think they'll get very far. You're just a kid. It was a stupid accident. And he checked out that sign at the corner. It's almost completely obstructed. He checked out police reports too. At least three motorists have been ticketed for making a wrong turn at the same corner—and they all said they didn't see the sign. He says if anyone is responsible for what happened, it's the city for not making sure that the sign was clearly visible. So, worst case, you'll get a fine.”

He's smiling by the time he gets to the end of his little speech, which makes me want to scream even more. Doesn't he get it?

“She's got a head injury, Dad,” I say. I try to keep calm, but my voice is high like a girl's, and it's shaky. “Her dad says she's never going to be the same. Stassi is never going to be Stassi again. And you think the worst case is that I'll get a stupid fine?”

My dad pulls back a little. He's startled and, I think, afraid of what I might do.

“All I meant was—”

“I know what you meant, Dad. Howard thinks you're not going to get sued. I'm happy for you, Dad. Really, I am.” The truth is, I couldn't care less. “But I love Stassi, and because of me, her life is ruined. You get that, right, Dad?”

My mom appears in my room. I know she's heard every word.

“Oh, Kenzie,” she says. She doesn't say anything else, and I love her for that. I know that she, at least, understands what I'm talking about. Like I said, my mom is a people person. A lot of times, that makes her way smarter than my dad.

My dad blinks. He doesn't know what to do. He never knows what to do when people get all emotional. He stands up. He looks at me. He opens his mouth, but I guess he can't figure out what to say, because he shuts it again. He leaves the room. My mom wraps her arms around me again and hugs me. It doesn't make the hurt go away. It doesn't make me less scared. But I'm grateful all the same.

T.J. comes to pick me up the next morning, and we walk to school together. He tries to get a conversation going, first about baseball, then about tv. When that fizzles out, he gives up. We walk in silence. But I'm glad he's with me.

People stare at me, of course.

A half hour before lunch, one of my teachers gets a call on the classroom phone and then tells me I'm supposed to go down to the office. He looks puzzled, so that tells me he doesn't know who wants me or why. T.J. jabs me in the ribs when I pass his desk. I wince, for real. I'm thinking that probably I'm going to get in trouble for ditching drama class without a written excuse. Ms. Rego is probably mad at me for what happened to Stassi.

It turns out the cops are in the office. Not uniformed cops, but the two detectives who showed up at the hospital. Mr. Pawls, the principal, is with them. He tells me the cops want to talk to me. He also tells me that I should call my parents before I say anything to them.

“I'm supposed to call my lawyer,” I say.

One of the detectives raises an eyebrow. “You have a lawyer, Kenzie?” he says.

“My dad said I should have one. He says I'm supposed to call him if you want to talk to me again.”

“Why does your dad think you need a lawyer?” the other detective says.

Before I can say anything, Mr. Pawls steps in. “He's a juvenile,” he says. “You have to inform him of his rights.”

The first cop sighs. He says that they want to talk to me about Stassi. He says that I don't have to talk to them if I don't want to. He says if I do talk to them, I have the right to have my parents or some other adults, like a lawyer, present. Then he asks me, do I want to call someone?

“I'm supposed to call Mr. Grossman,” I say.

Mr. Pawls leads me behind the counter. I lift the receiver of a phone on one of the office assistants' desks. Then I realize that I forgot to put Mr. Grossman's card in my pocket. I look helplessly at Mr. Pawls. He says he'll get the number for me, then asks one of the assistants to do it.

“What's the problem, anyway?” I say to the detectives while I wait. “My lawyer says I'll just get a fine.”