“Okay. Cool.”
Yeah. Cool.
Paisley slips under the barricade tape and immediately runs into Gwen who grabs her and brings her over to Silver Lake.
I watch her go with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I put my hand on my neck and briefly look into the sky before turning to William. “Can we hold off on the tandem rides for a sec?”
He’s still holding all of Paisley’s pads in his arms. Usually, William would start to bitch and moan and give me a song and dance about how all the times are set so that so-and-so-many people can get a ride but this time he doesn’t. This time he just nods.
“Thanks.”
I turn around and slip under the tape myself. Standing back up, I meet Ruth’s glance.
“My dear boy,” she says, her voice full of sympathy.
That’s how I feel. Like a boy. Like being twelve again, distraught and afraid. But I go on, step by step, on past the folding tables. My heart feels like it’s pounding out of my chest.
I stop next to one of the blinking pines. “White Christmas” stops playing over the speakers, and Paisley comes onto the ice. I hear steps behind me, very clearly, as everything is quiet, and Wyatt creeps into view.
He doesn’t look at me. He’s looking at Paisley. But he asks, “All good?”
It’s ayou-don’t-have-to-do-thisall good. Adon’t-torture-yourself-manall good.
“All good.”
Wyatt can hear what I say next. Though I’m just talking to him in my head—Can you stay here next to me until it’s over?—he can hear it. He nods and stays put.
That’s how things are between us. We stay put.
Ed Sheeran starts up. “I See Fire.”
Paisley begins to move. Just a second ago she was stiff as a rod on our snowboard, now she’s dancing on the ice, gracefully, elegantly,as if she’d never done anything else. She doesn’t just skate across the ice. No, shehypnotizeseveryone who’s watching. Everything about her, every step, every facial expression, the smooth movements of her arms, is art. The way she throws her head back, strokes her cheeks with her hands. She looks like she’s suffering, like she’s screaming. She radiates so much feeling, so many emotions, that my whole body breaks out in goose bumps.
The bridge begins, and Paisley outdoes everything else. She jumps, does a double, a triple, and lands flawlessly. Then she moves into a dance, brushes the ice with her palms, turns, falls to the ground, and covers her eyes with her hands to match the lyrics. She rears up, falls to all fours, digs her hand into her hair and pulls, really pulls, smacks the ice. For one moment, I think she feels, she really feels everything she’s showing. It’s all soreal, goddamn, is it real.
At the end of the song, I lose myself. I lose my heart, I lose everything I spent all these years erecting around myself. Every bit of protection. Every ounce of control. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters, becauseshe’sthere, and she is everything.
I lose myself. And fall in love.
I forget why I even wanted to stay away from her, why I had priorities.
But then I hear them. The screams. Suddenly, without my being able control them.
They’re loud. They’re in my head, but loud. It’s like they were right next to me. And then Paisley just disappears. Everyone disappears. I’m alone at Silver Lake, alone with my mom while she’sscreaming, screaming, screaming,in truth, she had only screamed once, and real loud, but in my head it’s thousands of times, over and over.
The ice turns red. It turns red and I remember what I’ve been running from.
28
Cinderella Story
Paisley
I googled “cassowary.” It’s a bird with a red-blue neck and golden eyes. They’re beautiful, but shy, and if someone comes too close, the birds kill them.
I get it. I get it and can even understand the reference, but I don’t like it. I’m a cassowary, and I don’t like it.
Knox watched my program. I know it because my eyes have developed a Knox radar and in between jumps I was able to locate him.
