Sublime

A WEEK LATER

COLIN HOVERS NEAR THE DOOR, staring down at the fingers sticking out of the end of his newly set cast. They’re big and awkward—some are crooked from the older breaks he’d never had set. His knuckles are wide, his skin scarred from cuts and scrapes left to heal on their own. Today his fingers look swollen. Abused.

He’s finally managed to get the door open when his boss confronts him.

“Colin,” Dot says, her face set in a grim line. “Joe called and told me you’ve been at the infirmary all morning.” She doesn’t need to add, Don’t bother making an excuse, or, I knew this would happen again.

He exhales a shaky breath, and it condenses in the cold air in front of him. “I’m sorry, Dot,” he says, letting the door close behind him.

“Why are you apologizing to me? It’s your arm in a cast.” She clears her throat, her expression softening as she touches the plaster. “Broken this time?” He nods. “So why are you showing up for work?”

Her apron is drenched. She’s been doing dishes again, and Colin makes a mental note to kick Dane’s ass for not finishing before he left for class.

“I was coming to tell you I can’t work for the next two weeks.” The words burn as they come out. Working in the dining hall makes him feel less like a charity case.

“Only two?” She cocks her head and looks straight at him, catching the lie.

“Okay, four.” He fidgets, starting to reach to scratch his neck with the hand of his broken arm, and then winces, working to not grunt some cusswords in front of Dot. She was his mom’s best friend and the closest thing he’s had to a grandmother for the past twelve years. The last thing he wants to do is upset her.

“And you haven’t been to basketball in three weeks,” she says. His eyes widen, and she nods. “Yep, I know about that. Talked to Coach Tucker a week ago; he says they cut you from the team.”

“Come on, Dot. You know that kind of stuff isn’t my thing.”

Dot narrows her eyes, considering him. “What is your thing, exactly? Defying death? Driving the rest of us to drink, worrying about you? I’ve always loved your fire, kiddo. But I’m not going to tolerate any more of this insanity.”

“It’s not insanity,” Colin says against his better judgment. “It’s biking.”

“Now, that’s a bald-faced lie. It’s tricks and props and jumping from train cars to the tracks. It’s riding on the train tracks and across bridges made out of rope over the quarry.” His head snaps up, and Dot nods forcefully. “Oh yeah. I know about that, too. You could have died out there. When will you realize you can only be so reckless before it’s too far?”

Colin curses under his breath. “Does Joe know?”

“No.” He hears the layer of warning in her voice, the unspoken not yet. “Slow down. The tricks, the racing. Everything. I’m too old to lose this much sleep worrying about you.” She pauses, considering her words before speaking. “I know seventeen-year-old boys think they’re invincible, but you more than anyone know how quickly people can be taken from us. I’m not going to let it happen to you.”

He bristles slightly, and Dot reaches for his arm.

“Just promise you’ll be more careful. Promise you’ll think.” When he doesn’t respond, she closes her eyes for a long beat. “I’m cutting down your spending account and revoking your state parks pass. You’re grounded to school property until I say otherwise.” She glances at him, probably waiting for him to explode, but he knows it isn’t worth it. Since Colin’s parents died, Joe has kept Colin under his roof and handled the official details of Colin’s meager inheritance, but Dot has the unofficial final say. The two of them give Colin miles of rope to proverbially hang himself and are always there to cut him loose when he almost does. This has been coming for a long time.

He nods, hooking his bag over his shoulder before walking into the kitchen to cross his name off of his dining hall shifts. The marker squeals in the silence with a sound of finality, and he can feel the pressure of Dot’s attention on his back. He hates disappointing her. He knows how much she worries about him; it’s a constant, obsessive loop in her mind.

It’s why he hid in his room with a broken arm last night instead of going straight to the infirmary. It’s why Dot and Joe will never, ever know half the stupid shit he’s done.

• • •

Pulling his hood up against the wind, he grips the handrail as he climbs the steps of Henley Hall. The metal is cold and familiar beneath his palm, colder even than the autumn air that snakes around him. White paint has started to flake away, the surface marked with the scars of tires and skateboard axles—most of them his. The beginnings of rust bloom around the edges. What little sleep he got last night was broken up by stabbing pain; now he’s just sore and tired and not sure he can deal with today.

He pushes through the door, and emptiness greets him; the space ticks dully with the synchronized rhythm of the clocks at either end of the long hallway.

The halls don’t stay empty for long, though. The bell rings, and he turns the corner to find Jay pressing a girl against a locker outside class, a set of red-tipped acrylic nails running through his dirty-blond hair.

Jay looks back as Colin approaches, smirking at him over his shoulder. “About time you got here, slacker,” he says. “You missed the world’s most painful calculus class. I could practically hear my brain bleeding.”

Colin nods his chin in greeting, lifting his cast. “I think I’d have preferred calc over this.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Jay’s latest conquest reluctantly leaves as he and Colin walk into the classroom. Students continue to file in around them, and Colin drops his bag at a desk inside, bending to dig for his assignment.

“So you were right,” Jay says, motioning to the cast. “Broken?”

“Yeah.” As quickly as he can with one functioning arm, Colin finds his paper and stuffs everything else back in the bag.

“Joe and Dot read you the riot act?” Jay’s been at Saint Osanna’s as long as Colin has—since kindergarten—and knows just as well that Dot has never appreciated the two boys’ particular thirst for adventure.

Colin looks at him pointedly. “Dot did.”

Jay straightens. “Did she ground your fun money?”

“Yeah. And I’m restricted to school property indefinitely. Thank God you took my bike to your parents’ house last night or she’d probably take that, too.”

“Brutal.”

Colin hums in agreement and hands his assignment to the teacher. What kills him the most is that this ride wasn’t even that dangerous. A week ago he jumped from the lip of the quarry onto a boulder at the base and came home without a scratch. But yesterday he couldn’t land even a rookie jump without wiping out.

“Hood off, Colin,” Mrs. Polzweski says. He pushes it off and shoves his hair back from his eyes as they move to their desks.

Just as the second bell rings, she walks in. The girl from the dining hall. Colin hasn’t seen her in a week, and he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about what she said just before she ran out the door.

I think I’m here for you.

Who says shit like that? He’d tried to call after her, but she was gone before the words dissolved in the air in front of him.

She slips through the noisy room and takes the seat in the row next to his, moving her eyes to him and then quickly away. Her arms are empty, no books or paper, no backpack. A few people watch her sit down, but she moves so fluidly, she seems to already have joined the rhythm of the room.

“If you can’t ride for a whole month, we’re going to need a plan,” Jay whispers. “No way can you be stuck inside that long. You’ll go insane.”

Colin hums, distracted. It’s crazy; the girl seems otherworldly, almost as if a faint sheen of light surrounds the exposed skin on her arms. Her white-blond hair has been brushed free of leaves, and she has these badass black boots laced to her knees with a French-blue oxford tucked into the navy uniform skirt. Her lips are full and red, her eyes lined with thick lashes. She looks like she could rip through the wool of his trousers with only a dirty word. As if feeling him watching, she pulls her legs farther under the desk, her arms closer against her body.

Jay pokes Colin right above his cast. “You’re not going to let that little cast stop you from having fun, are you?”

He pulls his eyes from the girl to look at Jay. “Are you kidding me? There’s tons of other ways to get in trouble without leaving the grounds.”

Jay grins and bumps Colin’s good fist.

Mrs. Polzweski organizes her stack of papers at her desk, ignoring the flurry of hushed activity: books being opened, pages turning, and students grumbling, the occasional cough, a pencil being sharpened somewhere. The girl sits, staring ahead, looking like she’s trying as hard as she can to not be noticed.

Where has she been?

In the periphery, Colin sees her thin fingers reach for a pencil that someone has left on the desk. She turns it over and over in her hand, as if the movement requires practice, examining it like she suspects it’s a magic wand.

Colin doesn’t think he’s ever seen such light hair before. When she tilts her head slightly, inspecting the pencil, her hair catches a dusty sunbeam, making it seem almost translucent. The strands twist and spill over shoulders that are hunched forward and wrapped in a shirt that’s too bulky for someone so delicate. She looks like a shadow of a girl. A shadow wearing a cap of sunshine.

As if she can feel him staring, she turns, an involuntary smile lifting the corner of her mouth. Her dimple makes him think of giggled pleas, mischievous promises, and the taste of sugar on his tongue. Gunmetal eyes meet his, and the color is alive, churning like an angry ocean, pulling him in.

He lets himself drown.