Выбрать главу

I WAKE UP the next morning with the need to get the hell out of the house. Instead of wandering upstairs and scrounging for some breakfast, I find a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers.

“Out for a run,” I say as I sweep past my mother, who is sitting alone in the kitchen, working on one of her many lists.

“Have fun,” she says without looking up.

I’m not much of a runner. I never do it at home. I think some people do it because it gives them the time to think, but in my life, I have a surplus of time to think.

I stand under the pine tree in our front yard and stretch my legs a few times, then I jog across Rimrock Road and down Michigan Street. I turn right, and in the wide street ahead of me, there is absolutely no movement. I cannot recall ever seeing such stillness before.

I run and run and run. I skip over weeds peeking through the cracks in the concrete. I pass fenced-in yards with old swing sets. The sun feels crisp on the back of my head, and I start to enjoy the burn I feel in my lungs. When I come to a T, I decide to turn left, even though I don’t know how long I’ll be able to go before I get tired. I don’t feel tired yet, and it’s probably been, what, a mile? Two? In the city, every twenty streets is a mile, pretty much. Here I have no clue.

I’m running. Voluntarily. And nobody knows it but me.

There are a lot of things people don’t know about me. There are a lot of things I never tell anyone. In my school, kids don’t tend to text or talk about real things. I mean, we talk about school stuff, or we talk about sports stuff, or we talk about stuff stuff, but nobody is really up for, you know, a text that says, So yesterday my alcoholic dad … It would be like, wtf, smh. Yolo.

You only live once. Doesn’t that suck?

I have a few friends I’ll probably text this summer, but so far we haven’t been in touch. It’s fine. We aren’t that close. I’m not that close to anyone, and I’m fine with it.

And Mom. I love her and all, but the way she brings her work home with her and talks to me like a patient makes me feel like I’m visiting another planet. And I’m afraid of what it would do to her if I said half the things I think.

So people don’t know a lot of what goes on in my head.

One time last year, Kendra Salazar — one of the kids with whom I semi-hang out — convinced me to go to something called “gentle yoga” at this studio on Amsterdam Avenue. I went because Kendra is nice and pretty in a quirky way, and she described gentle yoga as basically napping in unusual positions. “You get these soft blocks, and you put one under your legs,” she said, “and you just, I don’t know. You just be.”

So I tried it, and it was about the most unpleasant hour of my life. Here is sixty seconds of Carson Smith’s brain on gentle yoga: Am I doing this right? Why is my breathing so loud? Why does the instructor keep telling us to breathe? If I forget to make myself breathe, will I die? What if I had a heart attack right now and I died and no one knew because I didn’t make a noise and then they didn’t find out and I was dead on the floor of the yoga studio and they had to do this big cover-up so no one thought gentle yoga was dangerous but it is? Kendra ran her hand through her hair earlier when she saw me. Does she like me? Why? What would she do if she knew the real me, the real Carson? Am I good or am I bad? What if I’m bad? Do people go to heaven if they are bad? Is there a heaven? What would that even be like? And are we that stupid that we think that there’s some God up there who is keeping track of our rights and wrongs like Santa Claus and making a list and checking it twice? But what if there is? It would totally suck to be this guy who thinks there’s no God and be all cocky about it all your life and then you die on the floor of a yoga studio one day and poof! You go up to heaven and they’re like, so, um, Mr. Smith, sorry to let you know this, but you know those televangelists you thought were so stupid? They were right, and while yes, you were mostly kind and good, you didn’t believe in God enough, so I’m going to click this lever…. No! No! Bam! Dude, you’re in hell. Hell is gentle yoga and quieting your brain for sixty seconds. God, I want some fried chicken right now. Give me fried chicken! Or give me death! Right here on the floor of gentle yoga!

So yeah, I’m not really the Zen guy I could be, I guess.

My legs start to get a little tired, so I turn right, back toward Rimrock Road. It’s a bit of an uphill climb, and I feel it in my lungs. Then I’m in the home stretch. I see Michigan Street, and I pump my arms to make up for my ready-to-give-out legs. I’m just a block away, and then I’m crossing the street and at the finish line of our house and I don’t know how far I’ve run but I know it feels incredible, the ache in my quads, the burn in my throat. This is running Carson, the new Carson, the —

Falling Carson.

My left foot flops into a crevice I don’t see, and I topple forward. My knee scrapes hard against the street, leaving a trickle of blood that looks like it could have come from a raw steak.

“Are you okay, son?”

I look up. A man with white hair is standing above me, and in my bleary state I think, God? But when he lowers his right hand to me and I see a wedding ring, I realize it probably isn’t God.

He helps lift me to my feet, and once I’m standing, I reach down and feel my raw knee. It’s wet — very.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just hanging out on the ground like usual.”

When he laughs, his freckled cheeks rise, and I think back to yesterday in my dad’s room, the photo of the guy posing with my dad and grandparents. “That may be your story, but I’m not buying it. Sure looked like a fall to me. Was sitting right out there.” He points to the front porch of the house next door to ours.

“Pastor guy neighbor,” I say, my mouth extremely dry.

He nods. “I thought you might be Matthew and Renee’s boy,” he says, as a smile spreads across his very round face like marmalade on toast. “The last time I saw you, you were yay high.” He puts his hand low against his leg.

“I think I saw your picture yesterday,” I say. “On my dad’s wall. It was the first time I ever saw a picture of my grandfather.”

He nods in that way that adults nod to let you know that the general topic is sad. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll just —”

But it’s too late. He old-man hobbles toward his house, so I shrug and follow him.

His house smells like mothballs and pinecones. Like old people and comfort. He places a towel on the beige couch and sits me down, and then he hands me a glass of ice water that disappears in one gulp. He brings me a refill. I inhale the second glass of water, still trying to catch my breath.

He walks away and comes back with a first aid kit. He dabs some alcohol on my knee, which stings so badly I have to close my eyes. When I open them, he’s covered the cut with ointment, and he is placing a bandage over it.

“Thank you,” I say. “Really. Thanks. I better get going.”

He looks up at me. “Sit. Stay a while. I could use the company.” He sticks a chubby, lily-white hand in my face. “John. John Logan.”

I don’t really want to stay. I mean, he seems like a perfectly nice guy, but he’s at least fifty years older than me, and there’s this whole drama with my dad that I don’t want to get any closer to. But his hand is there, so I shake it.

“Carson,” I say, and then I remember that he’s known my name ever since I was “yay high.”

“Your mother told me she was concerned you wouldn’t find things to do this summer. I told her I’d be happy if you took care of my lawn, and she said you wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do with it.”