Motocross Me (12 page)

“He’s still in a medically-induced coma. He had brain swelling, and they are draining the fluid. They don’t know how much brain damage, if any, he may have.”

“So there’s a chance there won’t be any damage?”

“The Lord will heal him,” she smiles. “And my baby will be back home soon.”

I have nothing to say to that; words were never my specialty. A door in the hallway opens and Ash comes out wearing nothing but flannel pajama pants. He’s almost to the kitchen when he notices me. In the same micro-second it takes his face to register surprise, he covers it with a blank stare. Mrs. Carter makes a plate of food for him and he takes it, kisses her on the forehead, and goes back to his room.

So Shelby and Ash don’t want anything to do with me. I feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach by a big platter of lasagna.

I stand. “I guess I’ll get home now.”

“Wait.” Mrs. Carter glances down the hallway, the lines on her forehead growing longer. “Could you go talk to Ash?”

I lift an eyebrow, wanting to ask if she’s out of her mind. Why would I talk to someone who so blatantly ignored me a minute ago? She pats my hand.

“He’s really upset about all of this – he won’t talk to anyone. I know he’s fond of you so maybe you can talk to him?”

“About what?” I plead with her. Please don’t make me talk to him. Please, please,
please.

“About anything.” Her glossy eyes stare past me. “He’s not himself…make him be Ash again. I need my boy to be strong.”

I can’t tell anyone no. It must have been genetically programmed in me while still in the womb. I’ve never been able to say no to anyone but myself. So I palm my forehead to gather my thoughts, take a deep breath and head to his room.

The door is half-open as I knock and look inside at the same time. Ash sits on a futon, reading a tattered paperback book. His sandy-colored dreads are pulled back as usual. The dinner plate is already empty. “Hi Hana,” he says to the pages of his book. I look down the hallway and see Mrs. Carter watching me with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

“Can I come in?” Where is all of that confidence I had practiced just a minute ago? Right now I sound like a mouse asking to enter an alleyway packed with feral cats.

He lowers the book to his lap and looks at me for the first time tonight. He’s going to tell me no, I just know it. Or he’ll ignore me like Shelby and make this horribly awkward. I bite my lip.

“You are the reason my brother is still alive.” He rolls out his arm as if presenting the Queen. “Of course you can come in.”

I sit next to him on the futon that doubles as his bed. So, technically I’m in a boy’s bed right now. His room is small, probably no bigger than my walk-in closet at Dad’s house. Books line his walls, along with motocross plaques, and a few framed photos of him on a dirt bike throughout the years. One of them is a picture of teenage Ash before the dreads. He’s almost identical to Shelby, squinting into the sun, dirty-blond hair in his eyes.

A small desk and laptop are in the corner. His computer wallpaper is a picture of his dirt bike covered in mud with a six-foot-tall trophy next to it. I’ve been in a few guy’s bedrooms before, mostly by accident, and Ash’s room is lacking the one thing they all had in common – posters of bikini babes.

He puts down his book when he sees me checking out his room. “Like it?”

“It’s simple.”

“I’m simple.” He focuses on me now, the smirk of all smirks on his face. I can’t stand another second of looking into his eyes – the ones that
are fond of me
– so I divert my attention elsewhere.

And I see the sticker. It’s on his nightstand, right next to his cell phone. The small white sticker is taped over to make it stick to the wood. My name is written on it in Molly’s handwriting. It’s from the day Molly made the breakfast burritos extra spicy and I requested a normal one. She put my name on the sticker so I’d know it was mine. Before Ash’s race, I had stuck it on his helmet. I think I said it was for good luck. Truth is, I just didn’t feel like finding a trash can. I figured it fell off somewhere on the track. Guess I was wrong.

“Busted.” Ash says under his breath.

“You kept that?” I look at him, eyebrows raised while I wait for an explanation.

“It’s a good luck charm.” His face does something that resembles a smile. A smile! The first one since Shawn’s accident. His tough I’m-almost-an-adult-and-can-handle-anything exterior is in danger of breaking away. That sticker is the first piece.

One second passes where I feel insanely awkward. Then I can’t help myself. “Freaking A, dude.” I lunge toward him and wrap my arms around his bare chest. He stiffens at first, then gives in and hugs me back with one arm.

“What is this for?”

 I’m eye level with his nipple, but whatever. “I don’t know.”

Our hug lasts a few seconds longer, and I let my head rest on his shoulder. He has a muscle there that I’ve never noticed on other guys. God, I’m such a pig. Here I am thinking about the gargantuan amount of sex appeal emanating from him and how I never noticed it until now, and Ash is mulling over something deeper than physical attraction.

“He wasn’t supposed to be riding.” He pulls at the rip in his pants with the hand that isn’t around me. “I told him to wait. I said I’d watch him. He didn’t listen.” He lowers his head and rubs his eyebrows. “And then I heard you yelling.”

I grab his hand to silence him. I know what happened. I don’t want to hear it again. My hand feels cold on his.

“If you’re trying to blame yourself for this whole thing,” I say, making up the words as I go along, hoping they come out right. “You can’t. It’s not your fault.”

He’s silent for a while. My cheek gets sticky pressed against his bare skin. I peel my face off him and sit back. He moves his arm from around me and stretches it. “Hey while you’re at it,” I ask, staring at the outline of his six-pack abs, “Can you put on a shirt?”

He laughs, and pulls a shirt off a hanger in his closet. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He slips the black T-shirt over his head. “You have a boyfriend. That was totally inappropriate of me.”

“Huh?” I blurt out, like the idiot that I am. Of course he thinks I have a boyfriend. I pretty much told him that the other day.

Fully-Dressed Ash is much easier to look at than Half-Naked Ash. Now I can think without that clouded fuzz in my mind that only allows me to see muscles and smirky half-smiles. And right now Ash looks at me from across his room, hand behind his head. He probably wants to know why I just yelped
“huh?”
like some ghastly Scooby-Doo impersonator.

I confess while staring at his floor. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” His carpet is dark blue with a bleach stain under the window. “I never really did.”

The wall creaks as he leans against it. I steal a glance at him. He doesn’t look upset. If anything, he’s amused. “Okay,” he says, the cynical amusement still on his face.

“That day,” I begin,
the day you asked me on a date
…I shake the thought away. “I wasn’t officially dating anyone. I mean, not yet.”

“What about now? What are you
officially
now?” He’s like a cop interrogating me. I look right in his eyes, hoping it proves my good character.

“Nothing.”

He doesn’t say anything. Why won’t he say anything? I blew my chance of dating Ash a few days ago, and now I just humiliated myself for nothing. He’s going laugh any second now, tell me it’s too bad I didn’t choose him and then give me the finger and say
see you in hell
.

Okay, it probably won’t be that dramatic.

My heartbeat quickens. I don’t want to be rejected by him, in his own room. My fingers twist into knots. “I should go.” I don’t mean it, but I say it anyway. I’m pretty sure no one ever means those words in situations like this.

“Maybe I’ll ask again one day.” Ash leaves the wall and stands in front of me. “When my brother is better.” He holds out his hand and helps me to my feet. “Once I find a way to pick up the pieces of my shattered ego and all.”

If I say anything it will come out the wrong way, so I keep silent and let him walk me down the hallway and out the front door. Shelby is still in her room, and Mrs. Carter is no longer in the kitchen.

He takes me to my truck where I’m finally able to find my voice.

“I’d like that,” I say. We’re face to face now. Well, I’m face to chest. A bright yellow-green light flutters past my face and disappears. “Did you see that?”

He nods. “Fireflies.”

Several more fly all around us, lighting up for a brief instant then turning dark once more. The one by my head lights up again, but this time it’s in front of Ash. He swoops it his hand and catches it. He cups his other hand around it, encasing it in a little ball. We watch it light up, go dark, then light up again in the circle between his thumbs. The little glowing light only lasts for a few seconds, but those few seconds are mesmerizing.

“They’re romantic,” I say.

Ash nods. “We used to squish off their tails right as they started glowing-”

My lip curls. “Ew.”

“-and then we’d smear the goo on our arms and it would keep glowing for a few hours while we played ninjas.”

I roll my eyes. “That’s not romantic.”

He releases the little bug and brushes dreadlocks out of his face. We’re only inches away now, close enough for him to do something sweet like kiss my forehead. He opens the truck door for me. I climb in, still grasping onto hope that he may do something,
anything
sweet. He glances back at his house and the pain returns to his eyes. He isn’t thinking about forehead kisses or whispering romantic nothings in my ear. He’s thinking about his brother who, at this moment, is in a coma at the local hospital.

“Drive safely, Hana.”

Chapter 11

A week later, I come home from the mall and find Marty’s Jeep in our driveway. It’s blocking my entrance to the garage so I pull around to the front and carry my new dress inside. It’s a strapless satin thing in baby blue – the color of the unhappiness I feel in attending another one of Mom’s receptions. It was also the first thing on the sales rack that fit me. I have never been more unenthusiastic about shopping. Except maybe for that year Mom’s bridesmaid dresses were puke green.

It’s Friday afternoon and Mom thinks I’m leaving early tomorrow to spend the weekend with her and attend her reception on Sunday. I haven’t even packed. My plan is to leave Sunday morning, stay as little as possible and then make the drive home that afternoon. It would be eight hours of driving and two additional hours of partying misery. If this doesn’t show her how much I disagree with her lifestyle - nothing will.

Voices drift in from the kitchen. I roll the garment bag into itself and tuck it under my arm. If I’m lucky, I’ll make it up the stairs without Molly noticing. If she sees me, she’ll want me to model the wretched thing, spinning around like a child for her amusement. She would probably throw in some more guilt trips for not allowing her to shop with me today.

I turn the handle on my door, taking care to be quiet. Dorothy’s voice catches me off-guard. “We want to donate our pay this weekend. We ain’t got much money but that’s the least we can do.”

I lean over the banister and listen to the voices below. Why are they donating their paycheck? Curiosity takes over and I toss the dress onto my bed and rush down stairs to find out. They’re all seated at the dining table around an empty pizza box. Molly takes notes in a spiral. She sketches something like an advertisement or flyer.

“Dad, what’s going on?”

“We’re organizing a fundraiser race for the Carter’s,” he says. Molly asks if I got a dress and I pretend not to hear her. “What’s a fundraiser race?”

“It’s something we do when a valued member of our motocross family gets seriously injured. We hold a race and donate all of the money,” he explains. Marty and Dorothy nod in unison. “Our last fundraiser race was for Davie Hicks who is now paralyzed for life.”

“We raised enough to pay for his hospital bills and get him a motorized wheelchair,” Marty says. Dorothy adds, “And we set up a college fund for him. Just because he’s paralyzed doesn’t mean he can’t get an education.”

“So now you’re raising money for Shawn’s medical bills?” I think of their shabby home and how Shelby was so embarrassed about it. Ash won’t even accept free admission in the track. Will they even accept help? Sure they accepted Molly’s dinner, but you’d be insane to turn down her cooking. The last time I counted the money at the races it was over fifteen thousand dollars. Most families feel awkward accepting that much money.

“They lost their insurance and poor ol‘ Rick’s been taking day labor jobs to supplement the engine repair shop.” Dad says.

Molly fills in the bubble letters drawn at the top of the flyer. RIDERS DOWN FOUNDATION. Further down on the page is Shawn’s name and a square. Inside it she had written, PHOTO HERE.

Marty frowns, his eyes far away. “It’s a damn shame,” he says. “Those are some good kids.” Everyone agrees.

“I’ll donate my pay too,” I say, taking a chair next to Molly.

“That’s sweet of you, but you won’t be working that day.” Molly pats my shoulder.

“What?” Like I would miss this. She’s out of her freaking mind.

She shakes her head. “You’ll be in Dallas.”

I pace my room staring at my cell phone. I have to call Mom and let her down. There is no other option. Mom is good at disappointing me. She’s fantastic at it. She totally forgot about my eight, twelfth and fifteenth birthdays.

When Felicia’s cousin asked me to his junior prom, Mom promised to take photos of us in front of the fireplace but then never came home from work. Things went downhill after Grandma died. Mom has been letting me down for sixteen years. But somehow, it feels different when her shoe is on my foot.

It’s not like I want to disappoint her on purpose. But I can’t miss this race. Mom will get divorced within the year and remarry again so what’s the big deal if I miss one lousy reception? My face burns thinking of the slap she’d give me if I ever said that out loud.