Page 8 of False Start
This wasn’t part of the plan.
Everyone has cleared out, only Star staying behind, knowing me well enough to suspect when a breakdown is imminent.
“You okay?” She tilts her head to the side.
I shake my head but skate toward her anyway, with no attempt to stop on my part as I crash into her. She’s strong enough to take it, lowering her center of gravity and wrapping her arms around me in an embrace. The tears fall, as if dehydration hasn’t already set in from the buckets I’ve sweat and the pills I snorted. A wailing spills from my chest that I don’t recognize as my own.
My friend holds me, sinking to the ground while letting me have this moment of mourning without judgment or rush.
I cry until it’s no longer sustainable, until the tears burn my skin and my throat begs for water. It’s not enough to make me move; it’s only when the cold floor registers beneath me, when the headache begins to settle in, that I dry my face and stand.
Minutes pass, and I’ve gone silent, my lips splitting and cracking when Star finally speaks again.
“What’s your plan? Come stay with me tonight?”
I look up at her, nodding with no hesitation. I’ve been staying at Lorraine’s dinky old motel on the side of the highway. It’s fine—nothing smells and it’s cheap enough not to leave a big dent in my savings, which is just enough for a couple of months until I can find a job.
In a big city, a BA in social work is a guaranteed promise of a job. Out here in Devil Town, though, where I detoured my entire life for what I can only label as a “call from the universe” to come home? I’ll be lucky to findwork at a coffee shop, let alone in my designated field.
“You still live with your mom?” I smile, remembering how Star’s mother had been the first person to supply us with alcohol underage.
She chuckles like her mind went to the same place, dropping her arm over my shoulder as we skate toward our things still on the benches. “Yeah, but she’s a cranky grouch now. All those White Russians ended up giving her cirrhosis. She didn’t do too well after the liver transplant.”
“That’s… terrible.” I drop to the bench, undoing the laces on my skates and removing each piece of my protective gear. “Are you sure I should come by?”
“Yeah, definitely. She’ll be stoked to see you; she still talks about the night you got hurt.” She slings her bag over her shoulder, always much faster at removing her skate garb than me.
Grabbing my helmet off the bench, she gives it a once over. A giant smile stretches from ear to ear as she appreciates the fact that herTo Punish and EnslaveDecepticons sticker is still proudly displayed on it. It’s been nearly a decade since she first slapped it on there, just moments after I completed my first speed test and became a Jammer for the Devil’s Dames Derby League.
She tosses the helmet in my skate bag and slings it over her shoulder, not taking any arguments from me as I try to convince her to let me carry it myself.
“Girl, you look like this bag would knock you the hell over—no offense.” She side-eyes me. “Is there a story behind why you look like the Grim Reaper, and where that scar on your head came from?” Gesturing to the shaved half of my head, she emphasizes where it cuts its way from my temple all the way past my ear.
I take a deep breath, knowing I can’t hide the truth from my friend, but that she’ll make far too big of a deal about it if I don’t. “Stella…” I try deflecting with the use of her government name.
“You don’t have to tell me now.” She lifts her hand up to stop me from possibly lying, the thing I taught myself to do when the truth is too uncomfortable to stomach or share. “When you’re ready, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I agree with a nod.
I tryto argue my way into showering at the rink, for my own personal need to be clean as soon as possible, but Star is against it, promising me that her bathroom at home would be far more accommodating.
I hate feeling like a burden, but I’m trying this new thing where if someone offers, I won’t turn down their help. Maybe one day, I’ll grow enough spine to ask for it.
A laughable concept to anyone who truly knows me.
Star knows me, and she spent the entire ride back to her house eye-ing me suspiciously.
“What happened to your car?” she finally asks, referring to the once crushed and then half-uncrushed metal near the driver’s side.
“I hit a tree a few weeks back.” I shrug it off like it’s nothing, my fingers wrapping tighter around the wheel of my beat-up Subaru.
“Looks like you tried to become one with it. How the fuck is this car even running?” She laughs, toying with the sound system, only to find that it doesn’t work.
“I know, it’s tragic,” I explain with a huff, “but East End Garage got it running for me with a used engine.”
“Damn.” She gives up, leaning back into the passenger side. “Is that what happened to your head?”
“Stella,” I warn, not ready to fish that bottle from the ocean quite yet.
