Swing Out of the Blue, page 21
Trapped outside. Swimsuit and t-shirt. Upstate New York. February.
Zack shivers. Reddens. Pounds on the door.
Through it he hears the laughter.
*
Zack jabbed a pole into the ground. He was sweating profusely through his winter coat. A few paces ahead of him, Kyle laughed and called, “Come on, Zack, keep up!” Kyle disappeared behind a clump of trees, and Zack hurried to follow. They’d been hiking uphill for close to an hour now. Zack felt incredible. Normally, he was too embarrassed to attempt anything athletic, so he hadn’t realized how energizing it could be.
Energizing didn’t mean easy. Zack pressed forward and willed the contraptions on his feet to follow. He’d always pictured snowshoes the way they were depicted in children’s books, like oversized wooden tennis rackets, but these were sleek and narrow with metal grips. Even so, Zack felt clumsy clomping along the path that Kyle was carving. If snowshoes were supposed to prevent him sinking into the snow, they weren’t working. He felt his weight with every step.
“How much longer?” Zack called.
“Almost there,” Kyle promised. “It’ll be worth it. Trust me.” He took off, forging a path between the trees, and Zack followed. It was rewarding to see Kyle happy and shedding some of the emotional armour he wore at school. Kyle and Sophia were similar in that one way: they both felt they had so much to hide. In the wilderness away from the bullies, Kyle was calm and carefree, and it suited him. He led the hike, regaled Zack with stories and cracked more jokes than Zack would have imagined.
Finally, they emerged from the trees. The wind felt fiercer here, and Zack pulled his hood back over his winter hat. Kyle stopped beside a cliff face and waited for Zack. The view was breathtaking. Rolling hills and valleys dominated the landscape, here and there broken by the sheen of sunlight reflecting off frozen lakes. Directly below, Zack could see the outlines of Kyle’s family cabin, a wooden structure that had been winterized and insulated against the cold. Kyle grinned. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“It’s beautiful,” Zack agreed. He worked the water bottle out from the pouch around his waist and drank from it. It was already beginning to freeze. “I can’t believe we came that far.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
The boy cut quite a figure in the snow. In Kingston, Kyle’s height came across awkward and slouching, but standing confidently before a gorgeous landscape, he looked—well, cooler than Zack ever would.
“Thanks again for inviting me.” Zack was glad to get away from Kingston during Reading Week, the break from classes that many Canadians held in mid-February, not in March like civilized people.
“Of course. If Dani brings a friend, why shouldn’t I?”
“Why did he bring Rhea and not Andy?”
“Andy’s with his family. Chinese New Year. Anyway, Dani’s known Rhea forever.”
The drive from Kingston had been painful. With Kyle in the passenger seat, Rhea, being the smallest, had been stuck between Zack and Dani in the back. For two hours, Zack was uncomfortably aware of her body pressed alongside his. He tried to squish himself against the window to spare her, but it was futile. When they finally reached the cabin, Rhea and Dani had bolted off on their own, and Zack could hardly blame them.
“I don’t usually have friends to bring.” Kyle said it without bitterness or anger. “Good people have to stick together. There are so few of us.”
Zack surveyed the landscape again. There were dots on a frozen lake in the distance. Zack wondered if they were playing ice hockey. It would be an obnoxiously Canadian thing to do. “There are lots of good people, aren’t there?”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. Look at KISS, or my engineering friends. Even in your school, not everyone is Polczynski.”
“You’ve set the bar pretty low if not being Polczynski makes you a good person,” Kyle said. “They’re getting worse. Every day for the last week, someone’s shoved me into the lockers hard enough to hurt. Sometimes twice a day, or three times.”
“Still, don’t write off an entire school because of two—”
“It’s not just two. If people stood up to them, they’d back down, but nobody does. They pretend not to see. They’re all the same.”
“They’re probably afraid,” Zack said. “I would be.”
Kyle gave him a look, as if to say, of course you would be afraid. Zack hadn’t stood up for Kyle in the locker room. Did that make Zack a bad person?
“What about Iftin?” he asked.
Kyle’s expression softened at her name. “She’s a good one,” Kyle admitted.
“You like her?”
“Not that way,” Kyle said, though Zack wasn’t certain he believed the boy. “She’s cool, but she’s not popular either. The moment you have status, you’re terrified of losing it. You become one of them whether you want to or not.”
“Does that make you evil, though?” Zack asked. He was friends with Sophia and Andy, and soon he’d be president of a dance club. Surely he had some social status.
“You know what I read somewhere? There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander. If you’re not helping me, you’re helping them.”
It’s something you can do better, Zack told himself. There’s always something you can do better. Then he realized Kyle wasn’t talking about him and the locker room. If you’re not helping me, you’re helping them. Zack remembered the story Rhea had told him moments before Zack’s stupidity destroyed their friendship. His anxiety rose, but he forced it down. “I—I heard—there was a Christmas party—Rhea was t-trying to b-break up a fight—but—”
Zack expected sullenness or anger. He didn’t anticipate Kyle’s bark of laughter. “Is she still mad about that?”
“N-not mad, I think, but—”
“Nothing happened,” Kyle said. “I know she was trying to help. She just doesn’t get it.”
“Doesn’t get what?”
“That breaking up a fight isn’t helping. Not when it lets a bully escape the consequences. That cousin had picked on me my entire childhood. Rhea thinks she’s protecting me, but she’s just reinforcing that the bully can attack me and get away with it.”
“Hey,” Zack said kindly, “It’s a long weekend. Forget about bullies.”
Kyle nodded agreement. “Where do you want to go now? There’s an ice festival in town.”
“It’s too cold for an ice festival.”
“Then I propose—”
“Wait.” Zack’s breath caught in his throat. Two figures had emerged from the trees and were hiking steadily toward the lookout. They were bundled in warm jackets and scarves, but they had removed their hats, so Zack could see their faces. One was an older woman, probably in her seventies, but the girl beside her ... “What’s she doing here?”
Kyle looked at Zack like he was stupid. “The Bleiers? They’ve had a cottage on this lake for decades. The grandparents live in Ottawa.” Zack, Kyle and the others had passed through Ottawa on the way to these hills in western Quebec. “I’ve never seen the kids in the winter before. Their parents moved somewhere in the States for work, so—”
“Not somewhere in the States. Rochester.” Marja was the same height as her grandmother, about a head shorter than either Zack or Kyle. She had dark hair, high cheekbones, brown eyes and an aquiline nose. She was still built like an athlete. “She went to my high school.”
Kyle leaned on his hiking pole. For a moment, he looked cocky like his half-brother. “You scared of her?”
“I’m not—”
“What happened?” Kyle teased him. “You asked her out and she rejected you?” Zack shook his head. “I wouldn’t blame you.” Kyle dropped his voice to a whisper. “You ever see her in a swimsuit?”
“Once,” Zack croaked. He could still picture her sitting on the lip of the hot tub, ready to strike. Her bikini top had been red. One of its straps stuck out from the towel around her shoulders—Zack’s towel—while she ran for the lodge.
“Imagine seeing her day in, day out, every summer—”
“Shut up,” Zack whispered urgently. “It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like?”
Before Zack could answer, Marja was striding purposefully toward them. Fear tickled the back of his throat.
She stopped a few paces away, standing confidently. Her back was straight, her dark eyes piercing. “Zachary Emerson. What the hell are you doing here?”
Blood rushed to his head. Pounding on the door. Laughter. Words wouldn’t come. He looked at Marja stupidly and prayed Kyle wouldn’t laugh. How could Kyle stand there so calmly? Marja must have been a bully around the lake, too.
Kyle was relaxed today, though. “Hi, Marja. I don’t usually see you in the winter.”
“I’m living in Ottawa now.”
“What possessed you to move to that wasteland?” Kyle asked.
Zack smiled in spite of himself. He had never been to Ottawa, but Andy had been raised there, so Zack heard about the city loudly and often. From what he could gather, Ottawa was home to several shawarma restaurants, a market, a famous canal and precious little else. Most often, Andy bragged that a Queen’s alum had founded a swing dance school there. Ottawa was also the nation’s capital, but that was secondary. A dancer knew his priorities.
“Wasteland?” Marja said. “Strong words for a boy from the Jail Capital of Canada. I went to the prison museum once, but it wasn’t any different from the rest of Kingston.”
Zack watched with trepidation, but Kyle took the teasing in stride. Kingston did have a lot of prisons. The Kingston Penitentiary, by Lake Ontario, had been particularly notorious before it closed. “I wanted to get out of my parents’ house,” Marja continued, “and my extended family’s in Ottawa.” She turned to Zack. “How do you two know each other?”
Ice grips his lungs. Zack shivers. Reddens. He struggled to breathe. He felt like he was back there in a swimsuit in the snow, pounding on the door while the others laughed.
Kyle sensed his discomfort. He stepped in front of Zack protectively and declared, “Zack teaches swing dancing at Queen’s.” Marja stifled a laugh. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” Marja’s eyes were suddenly far away. “Just ... people really can change.” After a few moments, she added, “Zack, you haven’t said a word to me yet.”
I never say a word to anybody. His mind was running blank. He was at once chilled and sweating. You can be better than this. You’re not in high school anymore.
A greeting was on the tip of his tongue when Marja said, “You’re not still mad about that prank, are you?”
Zack froze. The panic returned, and he couldn’t look at her. “What prank?” Kyle asked.
“I’m not proud of it. I was only sixteen.”
“I’m sixteen,” Kyle said coldly.
Marja had no ready answer, but she was spared by her grandmother’s arrival. Mrs. Bleier was bright and sociable, fussing about how much Kyle had grown and hugging Zack warmly. After several minutes, she abruptly said, “Let’s keep moving. It’s too cold to stand still. I have hot chocolate waiting at our cottage. What do you say?”
After a day together, they invited him. Zack felt his heart racing and his face going white. Every fibre in his body urged him to run from Marja and her family. It wasn’t just the one prank. Almost daily in junior year, Marja would walk through the cafeteria and deliberately greet everyone but him, or whisper insults with her friends and laugh as he walked by.
They’re all the same, Kyle had said. He was wrong, wasn’t he? Could Zack prove that to him and might Marja help? Zack had a resolution to uphold, after all. He didn’t have to be afraid anymore.
At least, he didn’t have to show it.
“That sounds amazing, Mrs. Bleier. We’d love to.”
As Marja and her grandmother started toward their cabin, Kyle whispered to Zack, “We don’t have to go.”
“I know.”
“How bad was the prank?”
“She locked me outside in a swimsuit in February.”
Kyle whistled. “That’s, like, Polczynski evil.”
“She said she’s not proud of it. Maybe she’s changed.”
Kyle stifled a laugh. “Seriously?”
“My dad always says that people can learn and grow and get better. Every day, you look for something to improve.”
“You know what my dad says?” Kyle said darkly. “Leopards. Spots.”
There was some truth to that, but Zack couldn’t concede it. If Zack truly wanted to mentor Kyle, what better way than to show him the world wasn’t so neatly divided into good people and bad ones? Just seeing some shades of grey might make a difference. “Marja isn’t a leopard,” he told Kyle. “She’s a human being.”
“I like cats better than most humans,” Kyle grumbled.
They tramped through the snow for most of an hour before they reached a rapid stream. Marja’s grandmother led them to narrowest part and leapt over it gracefully. Kyle followed, but his jump cracked the snow on the opposite bank, and a chunk was carried off downstream. Kyle grabbed a tree for purchase, scrambled onto solid ground and took off after Mrs. Bleier. Zack swallowed hard. The crossing was wider now, and he wasn’t sure he could make it.
Marja took a running leap and landed on the opposite side, where she stood facing Zack across the stream. Kyle was out of sight. Only one figure there. First hint.
Marja watches. Dark eyes glinting. Zack searched for a narrower crossing but couldn’t find one. He felt every pound of his weight, every drop of his sweat. Marja held out her hands. “Jump. I’ll catch you.”
“I’m twice your size.”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
Slips off shoes. Zack unstrapped the snowshoes and cradled them under one arm while watching Marja warily. There were words he wanted to say. He couldn’t think of what they were.
“You don’t trust me,” Marja said. Zack didn’t answer. “Why would you, I guess?” She shook her head. “It’s so weird knowing someone hates you.”
I don’t hate you, Zack almost said, but he wasn’t certain it was true. Through it he hears the laughter. One kick from Marja would soak him in the stream. Marja seemed to want to earn his trust, but that could be a ruse. Kyle’s words echoed in his ears: Leopards. Spots.
“Zack,” Marja said finally, “I’m not what you think I am.”
She hadn’t had a towel. Katie had invited him, but Marja was alone in the hot tub. Zack had seen the warning signs. He’d ignored them, but the signs had been there. They weren’t now.
Zack said, with as much confidence as he could muster, “I’m not what you think, either.”
He took a running start and leapt at the tree where Kyle had caught himself. He felt awkward and clumsy, but he managed to grab hold of it with his free hand as his foot scrambled against the ice and mud on the shore. He tossed the snowshoes onto the ground and used his other hand to secure his grip. He had just scraped out a toehold when Marja arrived. She extended her hand, and Zack took it. She looked like she was about to say something, but Zack glared, and she bit her tongue. He placed the snowshoes under his arm again and took off after Kyle’s tracks.
They had walked about five minutes before Marja spoke again. “If it makes you feel any better, I suffered from that prank, too.”
“I heard you got suspended.”
“I lost a friend. Katie felt used. Well,” Marja added, thinking about it, “she was used. I told her to invite you, but before you showed up, I sent her to get something from our room. She had no idea. I thought she’d laugh, but ... she was a good person.”
It was strange hearing the phrase good person from Marja as well as Kyle, each time spoken confidently like they knew what it meant. Katie, at least, had been kind to him. She had sought him out the next morning, swearing that she knew nothing about the prank. She insisted that Zack join her on the bunny hill again, and she sat with him on the bus back to Rochester. Look how I repaid her. Katie had acted remotely friendly, and Zack’s stupid brain escalated it until the crush became overpowering. Soon he was clamming up and staring, hovering near her awkwardly, once even making an excuse to lay an arm across her shoulders. After that, Katie started avoiding him like everyone else.
Marja stopped suddenly. “Fine,” she said. “I get it. That prank was the worst thing that ever happened to you, and you hate me. So, tell me. Say it to my face.”
Zack grunted and tried to step around her. Marja blocked his path. She was smaller than he was, and Zack could probably bowl her over, but he didn’t want that. He was through with fighting. “What’s the point?” he asked.
“Apparently we’re spending the afternoon together. Unless we talk about it, the next two hours will be as awkward as this hike.”
There was something to that, Zack supposed. Besides, how could he help Kyle if he couldn’t even speak to his own former bully? “You want to hear it?” His stupid brain screamed at him for silence, but he forced his words through it. “That wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me. Not by a long shot. It was a drop in the bucket.” Warning bells clanged in his mind. Zack ignored them. “The details were different, but the laughter was the same, and that was the worst part. I could have gotten bronchitis that night and the worst part would still be everybody laughing.” He was breathing heavily. “You weren’t special. You were what I went through my entire life. You can shrug it off if someone hurts you once, but you can’t shrug off every single day. You can’t get over that. It becomes part of you, thinking that you’re worthless, because this isn’t random. There’s a pattern, and I’m the pattern. I’m the common thread.” He remembered what Kyle had said about bystanders. You didn’t need to be MacTavish or Polczynski to be evil. “Katie was different. You weren’t.”
Zack brushed past Marja furiously and followed Kyle’s tracks. Marja kept pace. Finally, she said, “Four years ago, you never would have said all that.”
“So?”
“So, people change,” Marja said. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“At the creek just now,” Zack asked, “how close did you come to pushing me in?”
