Page 36 of Dropping In

I turn to look at her, heart doing it’s trippy thing when I see her eyes shining with tears. In her hands she’s cupping the ring I asked her mom to make, staring at the wire-wrapped light-green stone like it’s a diamond instead of something she’s probably seen a thousand times.

“Technically, your mom did it.”

The tears fall, and without warning, she launches herself at me, arms wrapping around my neck so tight, it takes my breath. “Choking,” I say, but I don’t care. Being held like this…it’s so foreign, too unfamiliar, and so good. Even when her wet swimsuit soaks into my hoodie, I don’t let go.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for this, Malcolm. It’s beautiful.”

I nod, squeezing just a little tighter before letting go and shifting away from her. She still hasn’t put on a cover-up, and she’s beginning to shiver.

Reaching for her towel, I wrap it around her, watching the way she rearranges the rings she’s already wearing until her right pointer finger is free. When she slips the ring onto it—my ring—it glows brightly against her skin.

“Light jade,” she identifies, stroking a finger over the oblong stone. “Helps people with money, protection, love, and healing.”

“I just thought it was pretty,” I tell her. She laughs, still looking at the ring.

“It is. I like colored stones like this.”

“I know.” Now she looks at me. I gesture to the number of other rings stacked on her fingers. Most of them are silver with small stones wrapped or laid in them. Rose, purple, blue. She smiles and it hits me again, that ache in my heart that lets me know its full, because of her.

“I think my dad’s dying. Or just really sick.” The words come out of nowhere, pouring out of me like someone turned on a broken faucet and a stream of water gushed out, purging the pipes until they’re dry.

A vise tightens around my chest, and my knuckles are losing color because my hands are gripped so tightly together.

“What happened?”

I unlock my hands, wiping my palms against the thighs of my shorts, my eyes focused on the sand in front of me. “He’s lost a lot of weight, so much that his clothes don’t fit right, and his skin just kind of hangs.” I use my fingers to pinch the skin under my chin and tug it so she can see what I mean. “My dad’s a vain motherfucker—always working out, always boasting to all of his friends how much he weighs, how much he lifts, how much he ran or swam that day. So losing that much weight…”

“It’s not normal.”

I shake my head. “Then, today, he made me drive him to his dealer’s house.”

Nala doesn’t wince, though I know the first time I talked about his drugs she got a little scared. In her world, incense is the only thing that’s smoked. Her mom doesn’t even keep Advil in the house, and my dad’s been using hardcore pain killers for years. Sometimes coke, sometimes other things I don’t identify, because it all amounts to the same thing: a meaner version of who he already is.

“He spent like twenty minutes inside—too long for him to just be picking up the prescription he had in his hand when he came back to the car. Especially since on the way there he was about ready to climb out of his skin, and on the way back he was so relaxed he passed out.” I scrape my hands through my hair.

“Should you take him to the hospital?”

I shake my head. Just the idea terrifies me. Never, in my entire life, have I disobeyed my father without consequences. Some choices were calculated, things I did knowing full well I would be punished for them, and some were accidents, things I never could have predicted would set him off as badly as they did.

Those were the worst beatings, the ones that came out of nowhere, so fast and furious that I rarely had time to defend myself against the first few blows, and they were often the most brutal. Even when I started fighting back, if he could catch me off guard, my father maintained the upper hand until I got far enough out of his reach.

Taking him to the hospital and making someone aware of his drug habit seems suicidal.

“Mal, he can’t be mad at you for caring. Especially if it keeps him alive.”

“Wrong,” I tell her. “He can be mad at me for caring. He can be mad because I’m a scared little pussy,” I explain when Nala frowns. “He can be mad at me for taking him somewhere without his permission, for costing him money, for wasting his time, and subjecting him to questions he doesn’t ever want to answer.” My hands shake, and I fist them, hating this weakness I have. “So yeah, he can be mad at me for caring. And he will be.”

Nala’s small hand touches my arm, cold on my heated skin. When I notice that she’s still only wearing a towel, even though the sun has completely set and the air is freezing, I curse and yank off my sweatshirt, tugging it over her head.

“You’re going to need a hospital if you don’t start wearing a wet suit.”

She smiles, but it’s small, not anything like the one she gave me when I first got here. We sit back down, and I see her look at her ring again, a little of the ice fading from my insides when I watch her stroke the stone gently.

“Why did you give me this?”

I think about not answering. It wouldn’t be the first time I blatantly ignored one of her questions. But then I remember her smile, and how it fills me up to see it, every time. She’s not like my sister…what I feel for her isn’t like what Brooklyn feels for her. I can’t explain it, other than to say Nala Jansen is the person I show myself to more than even Brooks and Hunter at times. With her, I feel safe.

“I’m not going to be around a lot longer,” I tell her. Her body stiffens, and I reach out and put my hand over hers. “Jacks and I—our videos are getting seen, and qualifying tournaments are coming up. If we do well…we might go full time on the circuit.”

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