Rumors (12 page)

I started training again—but not for basketball and not for
my teammates or friends. Every day when I ran along the trails,
bundled against the cold, I trained for
me
. However, the efforts to
strengthen myself were less about building my muscles and lung
capacity, and more about fortifying my sense of self. Dead leaves
crunched beneath my shoes, sweeping behind me while I pounded the
dirt. Rhythmically, I breathed in and out, absorbing nature’s
goodness and exhaling my stress, my confusion. I wished I had more
to give back but, for now, I worked on my emotional cleanse.
Out with the bad, in with the good…

As I
ran, I felt myself letting go of some of my hurt and pain—just a
little at a time. I wasn’t sure I could talk about Maddie to anyone
yet, even Mr. Nordell. There was still a well of guilt that I had
to draw out of the abyss inside me—guilt that I didn’t want to toil
with, for fear that I may never step out of its grasp. Perhaps with
time, during one of my frequent visits to chat with Mr. Nordell,
I’d tell him why Maddie’s death loomed over me—and the role I’d
played and could never undo.

Christmas break came and went, bringing with it the new
winter semester. My sisters continued thriving on the basketball
court, even as I sat on the bleachers beside Mom. She didn’t
understand my decision, but she let me be.

On a
particularly grey winter day, I left campus at lunch to run to the
store. I’d seen Mr. Nordell in between classes, wiping sweat from
his brow with a handkerchief—something I had teased him about in
the past. Who wanted to carry around sweat and snot in a cloth
hidden inside your pocket anyway? At the store, I grabbed a box of
tissue and a packet of flu medicine, just in case the frigid
weather was about to bring him down. I always broke out with a
sweat and chills before suffering from the flu. I would keep my
distance, of course—no one wants the flu—but from the looks of him,
Mr. Nordell could use something to help him get through the last
half of the day.

I
returned to school. As I neared his classroom, I had to maneuver my
way through the crowd of students in the hall. I checked my watch,
confused by the bustle of kids hanging around. I knew the bell
hadn’t rung yet. Nearing Mr. Nordell’s classroom, I could no longer
mistaken the panicked energy buzzing the hallway. I heard the
crying before I saw their faces—heard the words before I saw them
spoken.

Get a teacher!

Call 911!

I
barreled through the crowd, shoving my way past anxious students,
their eyes wide and their cell phones open—texting, calling, taking
pictures—I could only hope someone had called an ambulance because
I knew what I was about to find.

Mr.
Nordell laid in a heap on his back, his head lolled to the side and
his legs crumpled together.

Too
still.

A kid
named Peter was checking his pulse, though he seemed to be going
through the motions in a haze, as if he weren’t sure what to do.
Too many students were standing around, gawking, crying,
unsure…

Principal Hayden’s voice boomed from the hallway. “Move,
move! Everybody out of the way!”

I beat
him to Mr. Nordell, falling to my knees beside his body. Peter
stepped away, visibly shaking.

“
He’s not breathing, I—I can’t find a pulse,” he
said.

“
No! No, please, no…” My hands grabbed Mr. Nordell’s in mine,
squeezing tightly. While mild warmth lingered to his touch, I could
almost feel it seeping away with every moment that
passed.

“
Allie, step aside. Let me see him! Please, Allie—call an
ambulance.” Principal Hayden threw his phone into my hand, almost
knocking me over. He gave two breaths, and then swiftly
transitioned to pumping Mr. Nordell’s chest. I came to my feet, my
trembling hands touching 911 on the phone.

My
breaths quickened in my chest. Too fast—I was breathing too fast. I
felt my mind falling into a stupor, my knees threatening to
buckle.

“
911, what’s your emergency? … Hello?”

“
It’s my teacher…” My voice cracked, my eyes falling shut. “I
think he’s dead.”

***

I don’t
know what happened to the box of tissue or the flu medicine that
I’d held in my hands. They were lost amongst the chaos with the
crowd of students and teachers seeping into Mr. Nordell’s
classroom, shocked and too concerned to follow protocol. When the
paramedics arrived, they strapped him to a gurney and sped him to
the hospital. Classes resumed once the ambulance left, though
school seemed more like a holding place to maintain a sense of
order. I, for one, didn’t learn anything for the rest of the
day—except an hour later when Principal Hayden formally announced
Mr. Nordell’s death. He’d suffered a heart attack and was unable to
be revived.

When
death strikes, suddenly the deceased has friends he didn’t even
know about. I couldn’t help but scowl inside when I saw students,
who had only ever referred to him as “Nerd-dell,” wiping away a
tear or two in conversation. Tara was one of them.

“
It’s just so horrible,” she said the next day, dabbing at her
damp cheeks.

You didn’t even know him
, I wanted
to interrupt. Still, I knew it wasn’t fair to judge her, or any of
the students who seemed upset, despite their shallow relationship
with “the boring, old science teacher.” Mr. Nordell’s heart attack,
which seemed to come out of nowhere, was a reminder of the
fragility of life, warning everyone that death could happen at any
time and to anyone.

In what
surely must be in the school’s code of conduct, handouts on grief
circulated the classrooms. School counselors wandered the halls,
keeping a sharp eye for students breaking down or suffering any
kind of unusual emotion that they might attribute to grief. It
might have been in my head, but I was pretty sure eyes were
watching me again, as though waiting for the ultimate breakdown. I
could almost hear the questions bouncing off the halls.

Is Allie going to totally lose it? What will she do
now?

I
refused to be a grief project.

I
attended Mr. Nordell’s funeral, doing my absolute best to merely
observe respectfully and keep my emotions at bay. I tried to find
comfort in the belief that he must be with his beloved Cynthia now.
As the weeks passed, a protective casing slid over me, sealing
Maddie’s and Mr. Nordell’s deaths inside—and keeping everyone else
out. I took again to the outdoors, though my rhythm changed. I ran
fast, and I ran hard—so that when my body would tremble inside and
out, and my lungs and throat burned from the cold, I could chalk it
up to physical exhaustion alone and nothing more. Even when I
became aware of Maddie’s death tapping incessantly from inside me,
seeking a way out, I’d seal the cracks and keep moving.

The call that summoned me to the counselor’s office didn’t
surprise me. They had to follow protocol. With a calm expression, I
seated myself in the extra cushioned chair in front of her desk.
Composure—it was all about keeping composure, so that Ms.
Carol,
with her pleated, blue skirt and
high-buttoned yellow blouse, would have no reason to take
notes.

She did
anyway.

Smiling
pleasantly, she asked, “Allie, honey, how are you
doing?”

“
I’m fine.” I tried to slouch in my seat a little to appear
less tense.

“
How are you doing with school these days?” she asked,
choosing to sit in an identical cushioned chair beside me, rather
than behind her desk.

What a clever, calculated choice in
seating
, I thought.
Like we’re buddies, so I might confide in you.

“
I’m sure you’ve looked at my records,” I said, eying the
computer on her desk. She wouldn’t have called me in without
checking my academic status. “I’m maintaining decent
grades.”

“
Oh, well, that’s wonderful!” She clasped her hands together
in her lap, one manicured hand on top of the other. “It probably
helps to have extra time on your hands without basketball practice,
am I right?” Ms. Carol appeared innocent with her question—though I
knew she was fishing for a discussion.

I
offered a noncommittal shrug.

Ms.
Carol waited… and when it appeared that I had nothing more to say,
she excused me to return to class.

Every other week, Ms. Carol pulled me into her office for a
few minutes, probing for something,
anything
, emotionally significant
from me. I wouldn’t budge. It was comical to see her own smooth
exterior begin to fray with what I imagined was frustration. Her
questions became more direct, and her hints more blatant. Finally,
a couple of months into the subtle interrogation, she asked me flat
out if Mr. Nordell’s death re-triggered the trauma from Maddie’s
drowning.

Her
unexpectedly straightforward question knocked me off guard, and she
almost had me for a moment. I felt the smallest fracture from
within, aware of the tapping from Maddie’s death drumming harder,
louder. Ms. Carol seemed almost pleased, as if she could sense the
slight change in my demeanor.

“
Allie,” Ms. Carol said, her voice softening. “You don’t have
to fight me on this. I’m just trying to help.” When I said nothing,
she continued. “You are about to graduate high school and enter the
adult world on your own. You appear to be faring well enough—on the
outside.” She paused with her scrutinizing gaze. “But you will be
on your own, with no support. No one will know about Maddie, or Mr.
Nordell, or your near drowning. You have a support system
now
. Please, won’t you
talk to me about what you’re feeling?”

After a
few moments, I interrupted the usual quiet that took place in
between Ms. Carol’s efforts to break me. “That’s what I
want.”

Ms.
Carol appeared hopeful. “What do you want? To talk about
it?”

“
For no one to know about Maddie, or any of it.” At my
contradictory words, Ms. Carol’s expression dropped. I lowered my
gaze. “I just—I don’t want to be assessed anymore. I don’t
want
to talk about what
happened!” For the first time with Ms. Carol, my voice raised. I
was done. I wanted to be done.

Ms. Carol’s hands returned to her lap as she quieted a sigh
of defeat. “All right, Allie. If that’s what you want, you can be
done.” She stood up and rifled through a drawer in her desk. She
pulled out a cheap, spiral-bound notebook that would surely unravel
itself with time. “Just one last request,” she said as I accepted
the notebook. “You don’t have to talk about it today, or tomorrow,
or maybe ever. But all I ask is that you
write
about it. I’m not going to
read it,” she hurriedly added, waving her hand at me. “This
notebook is for you. Just take some time this week to write down
what happened last summer—every detail.”

“
What’s the point?” I asked, flipping through the blank pages
grudgingly.

“
The point is to get it out of your head,” Ms. Carol
explained, opening her office door to release me. “You are free to
go.”

***

I sat in
my room that night, after barely touching dinner. Ms. Carol’s words
repeated in my mind, her instructions clear and terrifying. I ran
my thumb along the plastic, spiral binding, grazing my fingernail
along the edging with indecision. I stood up and sat down too many
times to count, biting the end of my pen until the cap became
irrevocably dented. Finally removing my head from my hands, I
flipped the yellow cover open. I brought my damaged pen to the
empty, white page—took a breath—and began to write…

LAST SUMMER

Last
summer wasn’t supposed to be anything momentous. Every other year,
Dad’s side of the family met up at our cabin in Hidden Pines,
located in the heart of the Sierra Nevadas in California. The drive
up the canyon—with its array of evergreen trees stretching towards
the clouds like skyscrapers—seemed particularly long that day,
perhaps because I had just finished my last day of junior year and
couldn’t wait for a taste of vacation.

“
Can we rent a boat tomorrow?” Leah asked. She sat in the
front seat next to Dad, her smile big and hopeful. After
basketball, wakeboarding was the next best thing, and we were all
eager to get back in the lake.