We Won't Feel a Thing (27 page)

“I’m ridiculously nervous,” he said.

“Why? It’s just me.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘just you.’” His eyes raked over her body. “Not anymore.”

She looked away, reddening. “So how do we start?” she whispered.

They didn’t have answers. So for the next fifteen minutes, they stole things.

They cribbed from every story they’d watched or read together and then thought about alone in their own beds at night, their hands slipping quietly under the blankets. They tried sweet teen-soap-opera kisses, experimental art-film kisses, slow deep literary kisses that came wrapped in words like
molten
and
lush
. Riley borrowed the finesse of Brawley Hawk in
Outlaw Unknown
, the way he’d trail his rough hand from north to south to get the sexy spy to give up her secrets. Rachel nicked some moves from Queen Vesuvia in
Winterthorne Avenged
, the chapter where she undid the rival king’s breeches as if she were ripping parchment. When it was time for the foil packet in Riley’s shirt, they followed the steps from the AV room’s ancient sex-ed film and almost ruined everything by laughing, because the busty old lady with the condom banana was ridiculous, and so was sex, if you thought about it. But then they stopped thinking about it. They stopped thinking and talking and pretending, and they moved together on the frayed white towels in the shadow of the shimmering wave mosaic, until the pieces of other stories blurred into a new one that was just them.

“I love you,” said Rachel.

“I love you,” said Riley.

It was over too soon.

They lay still, words knotted in their throats. Rachel sneezed. Riley pulled a towel around her shoulders. They traced the red raw spots on each other’s chest and arms, everywhere the clings had been. The world had gone quiet. Just a soft undercurrent of sweet safe sounds—crickets, water lapping the gazebo, the faint drone of the Tidals doing “I’ll Be Your Mirror.”

The music got louder. As if someone had opened a door.

The shouting drifted over slowly, wafting across Beechwood Lake like the scent of a brushfire. Rachel and Riley ignored it at first, lost in their kingdom of two. These were probably happy shouts—maybe Trick and Laurie Semper were toasting each other outside, releasing a pair of bewildered white doves. But then words came into focus—

…GUYS!—calm down…

…your own damn business, Bryan!…

…and this RIDICULOUS hair…

Rachel and Riley broke apart, yanked their clothes back on loosely. They peered over the privacy hibiscus. The fight between Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn had spilled onto the observation deck. A small crowd gathered at the tall glass windows to watch them. Bryan Garrett and a few others hovered behind the Woodlawns—palms out, negotiating.

Rachel and Riley watched it happen in a trance. Mrs. Woodlawn screamed something that ended with WHOLE GODDAMNED LIFE. Mr. Woodlawn shouted back, jerking his hands in the air. She took a swing at him with her corduroy purse, a violent miss that sent her careening on her heels, teetering backward. Mr. Woodlawn leaped forward and stopped her mid-tumble. She clutched his jacket, tried to heave him away from her. They stumbled in a dizzy circle, locked together, and slammed into the guardrail. There was a loud crack.

“Oh sh—!”

Riley sprang to his feet. Everyone on the deck gasped and went still. It looked like Anne and Ed had been lucky—the rail, though snapped in the middle and detached from one post, was still hanging on.

Rachel and Riley clutched each other, breathing hard. Anne and Ed held fast to the splintering rail, trying to shuffle to safety inch by inch.

“You’re all right…You’re all right…”

They saw the tiny form of Laurie Semper step forward like a ghost on the deck, heard her choke out the Woodlawns’ names, her white dress fluttering. Anne and Ed froze. Their eyes fixed on the long drop, calculating the damage three stories could do.

Then the guardrail broke free, and they fell.

Chapter Seventeen

The full moon beamed through a fourth-floor window of the St. Thomas Medical Center. It was soft and white as a light bulb. Riley could have sworn it was orange before.

“I keep replaying it,” said his father. “Over and over and over…”

It was 3:18 in the morning. Mr. Woodlawn was in Room 426, laid up with a cast on his leg, a fractured tailbone, a minor concussion, and twelve stitches where a patio umbrella point had gashed his arm. Riley sat in the chair across from him, jacket buttoned over his bloody shirt. His chest and limbs stung from the ointment a stern nurse had foisted upon him, along with a lecture about accepting temporary tattoos from strangers.

“You trust that a railing’s going to hold,” Mr. Woodlawn said. “You take it for granted. They’re supposed to build them to stand up to anything.”

Riley filled a paper cup with water and put it in his father’s hand. “I guess it was old,” he said.

“I could have done something. I should have fallen a different way so she didn’t get hurt, or maybe if I didn’t—”

“It happened fast,” Riley said. “You didn’t have time.”

“Every time I close my eyes I feel us falling again.”

“So maybe…don’t close your eyes. For a while.”

Mr. Woodlawn shuddered and closed his eyes. “I hate that the two of you saw it.”

“We didn’t. Not really.”

“Why were the two of you outside, anyway?”

Heat crept up Riley’s neck.

“I…uh, felt sick,” he said. “Rachel was making sure I was okay.”

Mr. Woodlawn studied his son. Riley sat on his hands. He tried to look helpful and casual, and not at all like a Bad Riley Feeling was snacking on his insides.

He and Rachel had barely spoken since the gazebo. Concern for his parents had stunned them into silence, but no words had come even after they’d absorbed the reassuring news. The gazebo joy had curdled into a brew of awkward moments in his mind. She’d gotten a splinter in her elbow. She’d said “ow—can you move up a little?” at least twice. Near the end he’d actually
bitten her ear
—why? He’d seen it in a movie. Stupid movies. Every sex scene should fade to black so no one got dumb ideas about how to be sexy.
There’s maybe a 12% chance I wasn’t completely awful,
Riley thought. Rachel was probably sitting in his mother’s hospital room right now, trying to think of gentle ways to break it to him. He pictured her frowning at a St. Thomas scribble-pad, diagramming IT WAS A MISTAKE.

“You feel better now…right?” said Mr. Woodlawn.

“Yeah,” said Riley. “Sure.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Mr. Woodlawn squeezed his eyes shut. His fingers explored his arm bandage, which was starting to unravel.

“Are you okay, Dad?” Riley said.

“Just hurting a little.”

“You want me to get the nurse?”

“No. No.” He shifted, wincing. “I have something to tell you, Champ.”

“You do?”

“Some…news.”

“Okay.”

“It might come as a shock.”

“Dad. What is it?”

Mr. Woodlawn scratched the back of his head. He dropped his hand in his lap and sighed.

“Okay, look,” he said. “So I know you probably won’t be ready for this, but…uh…” His face looked like someone had been tampering with it, pressing the creases deeper and making the saggy parts sag more. Riley thought of him as old for the first time. A feeling like cold rain whisked through his insides.

“Tell me.” Riley primed himself for the possibilities. Maybe the doctors found something. Maybe he had a secret family in another town, a wife who loved roller coasters and superheroes and a son and daughter who belonged to him and not each other.

“I think I have to,” said Mr. Woodlawn, whispering the next words:
“get divorced from your mother.”

“Oh,” said Riley.

“I know! I know you guys must have thought we were fixed and everything, with that stupid DERT program, but really we just…” He let loose a sudden whinnying sob and pressed a hand over his eyes. “Oh God.” Tears leaked between his fingers. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

Riley handed him a tissue from the box on the nightstand. “It’s okay, Dad,” he said.

“Don’t. Don’t be brave.”

“I think it’s a good thing.”

“You shouldn’t say that. You should let your true feelings show.”

“Those are my true feelings.”

“It’s not your fault, you know.” Mr. Woodlawn honked into the tissue. “Or Rachel’s.”

Riley cringed. “I know.”

“You honestly think it’s good?”

Riley thought. He weighed the rare nice times—the odd Ed joke that made his wife give up a laugh, the fall drives to Indian Cave to see the changing leaves—against the hostile silences, the endless bickering, the ridiculous Recovery Ring and Splatter Sessions.

“Yeah,” said Riley. “I do.”

“I want you to tell Rachel, okay?”

“What?”

“I can’t tell her stuff like this! She scares me.”

“I really think—”

“Can you be there when I tell your mom?”

“Dad. No. Please.”

Mr. Woodlawn’s shoulders sank. “I’m
terrified,”
he said.

Riley dragged his chair closer.

“Well, listen,” he said. “It’s time to change that.”

Mr. Woodlawn tilted his head, looking vaguely like Sniffles. Riley took a deep breath, channeling his brave self from the men’s toilet trailer. It was best to do this now, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

He told his father everything. (Almost everything.) He told him about his offer from Aunt Jerrie, about Rachel’s letter from Martinet College. “So when summer’s over, we’re going off and doing new things,” he said. “And we don’t know for sure what’s going to happen, so it’s kind of scary, but…it’s exciting too. Right?”

Mr. Woodlawn looked stunned, like when he went to see
Terminal Conquest III
and they killed off Virgil Payne.

“Dad. Say something,” said Riley.

Mr. Woodlawn blinked. “You’re…leaving?”

“We have to.” Riley took the end of his father’s loose bandage and gently reworked it, making it tight again. “So do you.”

“Next month? Already?”

“We should have told you sooner. A lot sooner. We had…stuff to work out.” Riley hooked the bandage in place. “I’m really sorry.”

Mr. Woodlawn’s lip trembled. He found a clean part of the tissue and honked again.

“Everything’s changing,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’m not cut out for change, Riley.” He looked lost, like the boy in his old family albums who misbuttoned his brother’s hand-me-down shirts and held his toy rifle the wrong way. “I’ll have to get my own place. I’ll have to move my business. I’ll have to pay bills on time and cook dinner every night.” He dropped his head back on the pillow. “I’ll have to learn to
iron.”

“Yeah. You will.”

“And I’ll be by myself. I mean, I know this wasn’t any good, but compared to being all alone…?” He shook his head. His eyes dripped shamelessly. “How am I going to do this?”

Riley passed him another tissue. Five seconds of silence passed. There wasn’t an easy answer—there wasn’t any good answer at all—but Mr. Woodlawn was sad enough without Riley telling him that.

Riley leaned in. He laid a hand on the cast encasing his father’s right leg.

“The first thing you gotta remember,”
he said, putting on a lame outlaw-cowboy voice,
“is that the human heart’s got a cage around it.”

Mr. Woodlawn looked up from his tissue. “Jericho Moses,” he said. “In
Shattered Spurs.”

“The one and only.”

Mr. Woodlawn blew his nose once more. He returned Riley’s small smile, but his lower lids were already wet with new tears. Riley patted his father’s cast, though he knew Mr. Woodlawn couldn’t feel it. He thought of the time he’d fallen off his bike and fractured his arm seven years before. His father had drawn crosseyed cats and dogs on the cast with markers that smelled like grape and bubblegum, and Rachel had curled next to him on the couch and read excerpts from their science textbook with words like
connective tissue, your body’s healing instinct
—her familiar voice cradling the comforting facts until Riley could feel new strong bone growing under his skin, closing up the break.

***

“How much more time?” said Mrs. Woodlawn.

“Six minutes,” said Rachel.

“That is
preposterous.
If you’re in pain, they shouldn’t make you wait for morphine!”

“Well. People would abuse it.”

“So I should suffer for the stupidity of others?”

Rachel had no answer. “Do you want me to read out the channel guide again?”

“Please.”

Mrs. Woodlawn was down the hall in Room 402. She had a nasty hip fracture, a badly sprained ankle, and a broken wrist. She seemed angry that her injuries were boring; you could practically see her regretting the moment she’d fallen shy of the umbrella points, missing out on a scar with a story behind it. Rachel knew an easy way to amp up the drama, but she felt Mrs. Woodlawn might not respond well to
Your son and I just did it in a gazebo.

She gazed at the channel guide as if the numbers held her future. Riley had barely said a word to her since his parents’ fall. He probably thought the accident was some cosmic punishment. Or maybe she’d made a noise that grossed him out, or he’d imagined a much nicer body underneath her clothes.
I was bossy, too.
She crinkled the channel guide, going over every stupid word her nerves had made her blurt.
I was scared it would hurt, so I couldn’t stop talking, and then it didn’t even hurt that much. Did I sound like an auctioneer?

“Channel 2,
Timeless Mysteries,”
she read. “Channel 3,
Home Checkers.
Channel 5,
Aggravation Island.”

“What on earth is
Aggravation Island
?”

“Some reality show.”

Mrs. Woodlawn shuddered.

“Do you want to play Crazy Eights instead?” said Rachel. “I could help you.”

“No. Thank you. It’s fine.” Mrs. Woodlawn sighed. “I need to talk to you, anyway.”

“About what?”

Mrs. Woodlawn gave Rachel her familiar squint, like the busybody in movies who wants all the books burned. “I’m sure you can guess,” she said.