Tuesday morning, I skipped football. I wasn’t going to leave Justine home alone with John. Justine woke up at seven, which for her, was extra early. She showered, dressed and got ready for the day. We had breakfast together in silence. She didn’t ask why I had skipped football this morning and I didn’t offer. I had three bowls of Wheaties Fuel and Sis had one bowl of Lucky Charms. I wondered what her mental state was while she had showered. I sensed a new awkwardness between us, which confirmed that she had figured out the gist of yesterday’s atrocity. We couldn’t figure out how to start a conversation without bringing it up, but neither of us wanted to talk about it, so we said nothing. I wanted the awkwardness to go away as soon as possible. I wasn’t sure if it would take minutes, hours, or days.
What if it takes longer?
I couldn’t take it if the awkwardness between my sister and I never went away. I hated my home so much and I had thought I couldn’t hate it any more than I already did. I had been wrong.
The silence between us hurt my brain. It dragged on well past breakfast. She went upstairs to finish doing her hair. I sat on the couch, my mind unwillingly going over everything that happened yesterday. Even though I had fixed the bathrooms and told her to avoid John, my actions felt inadequate. I had planned to watch TV, but half an hour later, I was still sitting there thinking when Sis came down. She walked over to the couch and sat next to me. She didn’t move for a second.
“You make me feel safe,” she whispered, and all at once she laid her head on my leg and started crying. Man, I love my sister! For the second time, the idea of killing John crossed my mind, but my sister needed me more than John needed to be murdered so I pushed those thoughts away and stroked her hair.
“One year for me, and two years for you,” I said. She knew I meant how long till we could move out. We’d been sharing that comment for a few years. She just cried harder. I hadn’t expected her to react like that. Why . . . Oh! I swore a few times in my head. I had just helped her realize that after next year, she’d have to live here without me for another long year. We needed a distraction, and we needed to get out of this house, at least for today.
“Want to see if Luiz and Kendra are up for going rock climbing?” I asked.
She sat up and wiped away the tears with her hands.
“Yeah,” her voice cracked, and she laughed at herself in the strange half laugh, half cry that only a girl can pull off.
We made a few calls. Luiz couldn’t come, but Kendra could. I called the other jeeks and both Ethan, the math genius, and Kevin, the coder and computer whiz, wanted to come. A half hour later, Kevin picked us up in his new Hyundai Tucson that his dad had just bought for him. The license plate read BSD4ME. Both he and his dad were software developers—like father, like son.
Sis and I had backpacks filled with our climbing gear and we also had a rope bag. Kevin stayed in the driver’s seat but Ethan got out and grabbed Sis’s gear. The speaker system rocked a Creed song from Kevin’s smart phone. We threw our stuff in the back and I conceded the front seat to Ethan and sat in back with Sis and Kendra. I sat on the right, Sis sat on the left, leaving Kendra in the middle. Ethan looked a little disappointed in the front seat. Maybe he was hoping to sit by Kendra. While I didn’t like how her hair was currently in two braids, she was still looking as hot as usual. She wore a sporty tank top and some tight spandex dancer shorts that ended mid-thigh.
Oops. I was staring.
I looked up to see Kendra’s blue eyes watching me stare.
Double oops. She just caught me.
I turned away and pretended I hadn’t been looking. As my sister’s best friend, Kendra was off-limits for me, but not for Ethan. I’d ask him later if he was interested.
Rock climbing doesn’t get much better than in the Rocky Mountains. It took half an hour to get to the trailhead in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Green leaves topped trees lining the creek and sticking out from natural cliffs—the man-made cliffs had been cut bare to make way for the winding road. We went up and hit a climb called The Slips. Being July, the runoff had already come and gone, so the creek was not life-threatening like it was in the spring, allowing us to walk over the rocks without even getting wet. The trail to The Slips was short and wound around a crag for a few hundred yards. With so many small rocks in the path, we took care to avoid them and step on the carpet of dried pine needles that had fallen from tall spruces. A couple squirrels darted across our path. The hum of cars disappeared, replaced by the rustling of pine needles and the sound of water running under the rocks in the now-hidden creek.
Once at the cliff face, Ethan and I donned our harnesses first. He put on his climbing shoes while I hooked up my belay device to one end of the climbing rope. When we were both ready, he lead climbed the easier route on the right, clipping into bolts every eight feet or so while I belayed him. Lead climbing has some danger to it. You have to climb above the bolts you clip into. That means if you are eight feet above your clip, you can fall sixteen feet before the rope catches you—more if the rope has a few feet of slack.
When Ethan reached the top, he clipped in before threading the climbing rope through the steel anchors and chains that had become as permanent a part of the cliff as the rock itself. Then he tied the end of the rope to his harness.
“Take!” Ethan yelled.
“Gotcha!” I yelled back and Ethan unhooked his clips and moved to a sitting position, his hands holding the rope. He pushed off the rock wall. I felt his weight as he dropped a few feet, the rope stretching.
“Lower!” he called down.
“Lowering!”
I lowered him the rest of the way down pretty quickly.
Now that the rope was up, the girls could climb top rope. Top rope climbing is pretty safe, so it all comes down to how easily you get freaked out. People get scared with little reason. Unlike lead climbing, there was very little danger if done right—and we did it right. The only dangerous part of top-rope climbing is trust. A partner belays you. If you fall, and they don’t belay you, you can fall all the way to the ground.
Ethan hooked up Sis and prepared to belay her. He made sure her harness was tight and the strap was double backed so the harness wouldn’t come loose. Her gear checked and ready, Justine moved to the rocks. She dipped her hands in the chalk bag that hung from her harness.
“On belay?” she asked.
“Belay on,” Ethan replied.
“Rocking.”
“Rock on!” Ethan laughed. We were supposed to say “climbing” and “climb on” but our way just sounded cooler. While Sis climbed top rope, Kevin belayed me as I lead climbed a more difficult route just to the left.
Sis scrambled to the top in a few minutes. Girls make great climbers because they are smart enough not to rely on upper body strength alone. They have smaller feet, and they don’t weigh much. My lead climb was hard, so Sis was already down and Kendra was starting up when I reached the top. I clipped in and threaded the second rope through the anchors before tying it into my harness.
I was about to call down to Kevin when I felt a familiar tug on my chest. Kendra was at the top of her climb and looking over at me smiling, but the tug came from back toward the road. This was the first time I felt like it had a direction. It was time to ask Kevin to lower me down but I hesitated. I took some time to examine the trail, trying to look through the tall spruces to see if someone was there.
“You all right up there?” Kevin yelled after a minute.
“Yeah,” I called back. A couple of climbers were coming up the trail.
It was just them watching me, I thought, trying hard to convince myself, but I could tell the tugging originated from a location higher up and a lot farther away.
“Looks like we have company,” I yelled down. I watched the other group of climbers approach for a second before I yelled, “Give me a second.”
I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I took a deep breath. Then another.
“Jake,” I heard Kendra call over.
Her voice triggered some kind of trance. My eyes remained closed, but I could see Kendra and myself as if I were floating in the air ten feet away from the cliff—an out of body experience.
“Lower!” Kendra yelled, and then she jumped from the wall. Her harness wasn’t connected at her waist. I wasn’t sure why it was left undone, but it was. Her hands, damp from sweat and no sign of chalk on them, slipped from the rope. She tumbled. Her head hit the rock face knocking her unconscious and leaving her hanging upside down.
I watched her harness slide to her knees, catching there.
I yelled, “Get her down quick!”
The harness slid to her shoes and caught again as Ethan lowered her about eight feet—nowhere near far enough or fast enough. Her feet slipped out and I watched Kendra fall, head first to the rocky ground.
Then the trance ended and I found myself back in my body, against the wall and holding the rope. I glanced over at Kendra and she was still there looking at me. Her harness was not latched and her hands didn’t show any sign of chalk.
“Kendra,” I whispered, then gulped, afraid my vision would come true. “Why is your harness undone?”
She glanced down and tightened her grip on the rope.
“Put some chalk on your hands,” I suggested.
Hesitantly she let go with her left hand and reached to the chalk at her back. Then she switched hands and chalked her right hand.
“Lower,” she yelled.
“Lower,” I yelled down, too.
Kevin lowered me while Ethan lowered Kendra. We both made it down and off the rope in seconds, without anyone falling to their death. Shaking a little, I took off my painfully tight climbing shoes. I grabbed the cooler and lifted it over my head and guzzled some water, working extra hard to keep my shaking arms from splashing water all over my face.
“Give me some of that,” Sis demanded, pulling the cooler away as I drank. Water splashed down my chin and down the front of my dust-covered white shirt. She laughed. It was a hot day, so a little wetness was just good fun. It took the nerves away that my strange premonition had left me with.
We climbed a couple of hours till everyone rubbed their forearms, too tired to climb anymore. We made our way back down the trail to Kevin’s Hyundai Tucson sometime in the mid-afternoon.
“I’m going to be so sore tomorrow,” Kendra continued to rub her forearms as we drove back. She sat in the middle again between Sis and me. I should have thought to let Ethan take the back seat.
“Me too,” replied everyone simultaneously—everyone except me. I didn’t think anyone noticed that I kept quiet. I didn’t want to bring any attention to the fact that I’ve never been sore. Good thing Luiz wasn’t here. My smile fell away as Luiz’s comment about being locked up for some pokin’ and proddin’ flashed through my mind.
The conversation continued, but I checked out—which means I stopped listening, forgot where I was, and let myself get completely lost in a memory.
It was the start of the second half of the first game of the playoffs last season. There was an early snow that melted during the day, leaving the field muddy. The second half kickoff came my way. I stepped into some mud just as a tackler jumped on me and my right shoe sank. Another tackler arrived, pulling me to the ground. The problem was, my foot was stuck in a few inches of mud. I screamed as pain exploded from my ankle. The mud gave way just in time to prevent the bone from breaking, and mud catapulted twenty feet into the air.
I tried to get up, but I couldn’t put weight on it. It was my first sprain ever, but I knew it was bad—season-ending bad. I needed help off the field and didn’t play the rest of the game. I couldn’t walk the rest of the night. Luiz had to drive me home and help me inside.
When Kevin sprained his ankle our sophomore year, he ended up not playing for six weeks and missed more than half the season. It should have been the same for me. But it wasn’t.
The day after the game, a Saturday, it didn’t feel much better. However, I could walk on it by Sunday. I sat out practice on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but by Thursday, I couldn’t even tell my ankle had been sprained. I told Coach it must not have been as bad as I thought. But . . . I was lying.
I played on Friday night like nothing had happened.
Part of me was happy to play again, but another part wished the injury had put me out for the season because I didn’t want to be a freak. Maybe it was instincts, but somehow I knew that my fast healing had something to do with my biological father—the guy who raped my mom. That was when my nightmares about meeting him started—the ones where he tells me I am a freak.
“Remember that, Jacob?” Ethan asked. He was laughing. So was everyone else. His phone now sent a Maroon 5 song over the speakers.
“Huh?” I said, feeling stupid because I had no idea what they were talking about.
“Man, you weren’t even listening,” Ethan complained.
“Yeah, someone was having an out-of-body experience,” Kendra said looking at me. “Where did you go in there?” She pointed at my brain.
Sis’s smile faltered immediately, assuming I was thinking about what John had done.
“I was just remembering my sprained ankle last season,” I said quickly to save my sister from spiraling into her own John-centered emotional abyss.
“Uh . . . OK,” Kevin replied. “So laughing our heads off reminds you of past injuries. Good to know.”
Everyone laughed at me. I hate being laughed at, but somehow I forced out a fake smile. A few minutes passed, and everyone moved on to who was dating whom over the summer and if the relationships would last into the school year.
When Kevin pulled into our neighborhood just after four, I suddenly remembered that I didn’t want to be home—not even a little bit.
“Hey let’s keep up the fun. What are we doing after dinner?” I threw out as we passed the houses that were newer and nicer than mine. The big tree in front of our house stood out because it was the biggest in the neighborhood. All the other houses had new yards and trees only a few years old.
“Are you skipping the weight room today?” Kevin asked.
My sister tensed up and cast her eyes my way. My mom wouldn’t be home yet and I couldn’t leave her alone with John.
“Rock climbing was our workout today,” I replied. Sis blinked and then smiled, and I could almost feel her relief.
“I’m up for something,” Kendra replied, looking at me.
“Yeah, we are,” Sis jumped in with some extra enthusiasm, glancing at Kendra then at me.
“I got some dinner thing with the family tonight,” Ethan replied.
“I’m out too,” Kevin added. “Call Luiz. He worked the day shift and is probably dying that he missed climbing.”
“OK. We’ll catch you later,” I said as I got out of the small SUV.
“Thanks for the ride,” Sis added.
I expected Kendra to follow, but she stayed in the back seat.
“See ya, Justine. See ya, Jake,” Kendra said as they drove off.
“Wait, didn’t Kendra say she was up for hanging out tonight?” I asked with too much interest.
“Yeah. She said to call her after dinner,” Sis told me, a teasing smile on her face. I was about to question my sister about that smile when something pulled at my chest and distracted me.
Who’s watching me now?
Kevin’s Tucson turned the corner and the sound of its engine faded out. There were no cars coming or going the other way. Two girls, not yet teenagers, were playing down the street. One of them laughed, but they weren’t looking this way.
“Did you forget something?” Sis asked.
“No. Let’s go inside.”
As I closed the front door, the pulling sensation on my chest snapped like a broken string.