Bitter End by Jennifer Brown
“So you played football at Pine Gate, too?” I asked.
He nodded, dragging a leaf up the length of his thigh and back down again. “Yeah. And baseball. Pretty much every sport. Been playing since I was six.”
“Six? Wow, you must be really athletic.”
He shrugged, tossed the leaf to the ground. “Okay, I guess. I’m sick of it. Don’t really want to play anymore.”
“Then why don’t you quit? Just not try out.”
He let out a bark of laughter and hopped off the table, bending and stretching his legs one at a time. My side, where he’d just been sitting, felt drafty. “I’m just considering myself lucky that moving got me out of football this year. My dad would kill me if I didn’t try out for basketball,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. “It’s your life. He can’t force you to play if you don’t want to.” I wondered what it must be like to have parents who cared enough to force you to do things you didn’t want to do. Would I hate it? Or would I just be glad for the attention?
Cole kicked at the foot of the table a few times, then all of a sudden brightened. “Hey, hang on,” he said. He jogged out of the shelter to his car and rummaged around in the backseat. He jogged back to the shelter holding a worn football. “Think fast,” he said, tossing it to me. I caught it just in time. “C’mon, I’ll show you a play,” he said, grabbing my free hand and pulling me off the table.
I couldn’t help giggling. “I can’t play football,” I said, tripping after him into the grass.
“Sure you can,” Cole said. “Watch.” He grabbed my shoulders and squared them up so that my back was facing him. “Okay, now you hike it to me on three, and then you run like a bat out of hell that way. We’re gonna call the area past the water pump the end zone, so right before you get to the pump, start looking back. I’ll throw it to you for the TD.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “I can’t do all that….”
He pushed my shoulders down toward the ground, leading me to a snap position. “Sure you can. Just do it.”
I bent over. Cole yelled, “Thirty-seven… ninety-two… three!”
I didn’t even look back. I shoved the ball backward between my legs and took off running through the grass, laughing the whole way. The air, just a few minutes ago making me shiver, now slid across my skin, giving me energy. As soon as I got to the water pump, I looked back. Cole pulled his arm back and launched the ball to me.
It was hard to see the ball in the dark, and I stumbled backward a little bit, squinting into the sky. In a flash, there it was, coming right at my chest. I reached out with both arms, maybe even closed my eyes a little bit, and, miraculously, caught it.
I squealed, pausing only long enough for it to register that I was holding the ball, and turned and ran past the water pump. “Touchdown!” I yelled, then did a goofy little dance, spiking the ball, then pointing my fingers in the air above my head and wiggling my hips. “She scores!”
Cole was practically doubled over, he was laughing so hard. “Throw it back,” he yelled.
I bent over and picked up the ball, then lobbed it as hard as I could toward Cole, trying to remember Coach Hennessee’s instructions from freshman PE—fingers on laces, snap the wrist. The ball soared almost past Cole. He had to jump to catch it, pulling it out of the night sky like a lightning bug.
“Hey!” His eyes lit up. “She’s gorgeous, writes poetry, and can throw a tight spiral. She’s perfect!”
I tossed my hair. “You should see me tackle,” I teased, then crouched in a sumo pose, flexing my arms out on each side menacingly.
“Oh yeah?” Cole asked.
“Bring it, Nancy,” I growled in a deep voice, cracking up.
“Let’s see you try, baby,” he said, and then started running toward me, narrating in a breathless commentator voice. “Cozen finds a hole in the defense. He’s at the fifty, the forty, the thirty… looks like nobody will stop him now….”
I adopted my own commentator voice. “What’s this? A defender on the ten-yard line… there’s no way he’ll get through….”
I ran at him full-tilt, my arms outstretched, but a few feet before I reached him, Cole tossed the ball over his shoulder. It bounced on the grass behind him. He took two long steps toward me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and pulled me down, swiveling so we both landed on our sides, his shoulder absorbing the fall.
“Hey,” I squealed, “I was supposed to tackle you!”
“You never stood a chance,” he said.
We both rolled onto our backs, half-laughing, half-gasping for breath. One of his arms was still underneath me, feeling comfortable under my waist.
After a while, he turned his head toward me, the grass poking shallow little indentations in his cheek. “You are full of surprises,” he said.
I shrugged. “Trust me, I didn’t know I could throw a football like that. I didn’t even think I was going to pass PE freshman year.”
He sat up, wiggling his arm out from under me and crossing his legs beneath himself. He pulled a blade of grass and fiddled with it. “It’s not just that,” he said. “You write, you plan graduation trips, you make a mean cup of coffee, and you aren’t afraid to stand in the way of someone who’s running at you full-tilt and could probably cream you. You’re really amazing.”
I was expecting to feel myself blush. Or feel that awkward feeling. Or embarrassment. But I didn’t. I felt comfortable, lying in the grass, looking up at Cole and the stars beyond him. Something about him felt comfortable. “Thanks,” I said, and for the first time, I didn’t feel like I really needed to say any more.
He tossed the piece of grass to the side and plucked another one, running his fingers along it. “How come you didn’t title your poem?” he asked me.
I rolled over onto one elbow and plucked my own piece of grass, my belly pressing up against Cole’s knee. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I didn’t think about it.”
“What title would you give it now?” he asked.
I thought about it. Plucked another piece of grass and rolled it into a ball between my thumb and forefinger. After a while, I said, “Maybe I’d just call it ‘A Poem Without a Name.’ Could be kind of symbolic. Like, the relationship described in the poem is over. It’s done. It’s no longer got a name. I don’t know. That’s cliché.” I wrinkled my nose.
“Was it about you?” he asked. “Like, a breakup or something?”
For a split second, I considered just getting it over with and telling Cole about my mom. And not the edited version, either—not the one in which she died and is now an angel looking down at me and we’ll someday be reunited, but the real version. The version that’s ugly and embarrassing. But the moment passed, and I shook my head.
“Nah, I just wrote it,” I said.
“I like it. You know what I would title it?” He pitched another piece of grass and leaned back on his hands, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I would call it ‘Bitter End.’ Because maybe it’s not over, you know? Like they’re sticking it out until…” He held up his hands, a cocky grin on his face.
“The bitter end,” I finished for him, nodding my head. I pursed my lips. “Hmmm.”
He poked me in the ribs with his finger. “What do you mean, hmmm? Come on, you have to admit that’s a pretty good title.”
“I don’t know,” I said, giggling and curling away from his finger. “How about this—if your song ever makes it big and, like, wins a Grammy or something, I’ll let you title it.”
“Deal,” he said. “Hey, speaking of. Weren’t we gonna teach you a song tonight?”
I brightened. “Yeah!”
He stood and reached down to pull me up, and then held my hand all the way to the car, loosely, as if we’d done it a million times before. “Get in,” he said. “I’ve got the perfect place for guitar lessons.”
CHAPTER NINE
We both slid into Cole’s car and he took off, pulling out of the shelter and winding through the park, p
We bumped along the lake road, past the closed swimming beach and the boat rental dock, and then pulled onto a grassy, gated road. Cole pulled up to the gate, put his car in park, and reached down below the dash to pop the trunk.
“Here?” I asked.
He nodded. “Well, not here, here. In there. The spillway.” He pointed at the gate. A rusted red-and-white sign hung from the middle of it: DANGER: NO TRESPASSING. DROWNING RISK.
The sign needn’t have hung there. Everybody already knew the risk of hanging out at the top of the spillway. There to drain excess water and keep the lake from flooding during rainy periods, the spillway gates could open at any time, releasing a rush of water down the thirty-foot concrete drop into the pool below.
Legend had it that sometime in the seventies, a drunk girl had climbed over the gate and immediately fallen to her death, going head over heels down the steep concrete slab and drowning at the bottom. Shannin always claimed it was just urban legend, and nobody ever seemed to know who the “drunk girl” was, only that she’d gasped and cried for help and there was nothing her friends could do but watch from the top of the spillway and call out her name.
The only kids who crossed the spillway gate were the kids with a death wish. One wrong step and you could tumble one way down the concrete or the other way into the lake itself. Or if a gate opened, the rush of water would take you down into the water below whether you wanted to go or not.
And if a park ranger caught you up there, you’d be in huge trouble.
“Cole, I don’t think…” I started, but Cole had already gotten out and was banging the trunk shut, his guitar case in one hand. He came around to my side and pulled open the door.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his other hand. When I hesitated, he bent to look me in the eye. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said. He slid his finger down my cheek, and I got butterflies. “Besides, it hasn’t rained in weeks. The spillway isn’t going to open up anytime soon. Worrywart.”
He winked at me, and suddenly I was overcome with a surge of boldness. This is what life is about, right? I told myself. Taking risks. Going for it. Not being like Dad—a husk of a person shifting this way and that in the wind, with no real place to land. Life was about staring down a tackle. Standing at the top of the spillway. Climbing gates with danger signs. I grabbed his hand and got out.
“Who you calling worrywart?” I teased, shutting the car door with my hip and darting to the gate. In three pulls, I was straddling the top of it, looking down at Cole. “What’s taking you so long?” I said, and swung my leg over the top, pushing off from the fence and letting myself fall to my feet on the other side, barely able to believe I had just climbed that gate. I brushed my hands off and planted them on my hips. “Well?”
Cole’s face split into such a wide smile, even his dimple disappeared into a deep groove. “Here,” he said, and pushed the guitar case to the top of the gate, where it balanced and then slowly tipped in my direction. I stretched until my hands were around the neck, then pulled it down. Cole took the fence in two pulls and landed within inches of me, our faces so close our noses could touch. “Let’s go,” he said, his hand snaking over mine to take the case. I felt numb, but deep down my whole body was buzzing with adrenaline.
We high-stepped through the tall weeds, ducking under low branches in the grove of trees that separated us from the concrete ledge at the top of the spillway. When we came out on the other side, I held my breath, both hands pressed against my stomach, my heart pounding.
From the top, it looked as if the concrete went down forever, a straight drop into a pool of green, mossy water at its base. At that moment, I was sure the urban legend was correct about one thing—if something went wrong, you would die and there would be nothing anyone could do about it other than call your name and cry.
Cole stepped over a disintegrating Styrofoam cooler and planted a foot on the ledge. He noticed me frozen, half in the trees, and chuckled. “Eyes open or closed?” he asked, raising his foot to take another step.
“Cole, I don’t think—”
“Closed?” he interrupted. “Okay, but that seems kind of dangerous.” He closed his eyes and put his raised foot down, taking a step forward.
“Cole, don’t, you could…” He took another step, holding his arms out to his sides, the guitar case dangling over the edge of the spillway dramatically as he walked along the ledge. My heart beat so hard it brought tears to my eyes. “Open!” I shouted. “Open!”
He stopped and doubled over, laughing. He sat the guitar case on the ground and came back to where I was standing. He held out both hands. “It’s okay,” he said. “I was looking. Come here.”
His eyes, searching deep into mine, felt like danger and safety all rolled into one. My hands shook as I pulled them from my belly and placed them gently in his hands. He snaked them up to my elbows and gently tugged me through the grass. He walked backward, guiding my shaking legs and unwilling feet over the discarded cooler and onto the concrete. I could barely believe this was me, doing this.
“See?” he said softly, pulling me to the middle of the spillway. “You’re safe, Emily Dickinson.”
He let go of my arms, and we both turned to look out over the spillway. I let out the lungful of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I felt like I might throw up. But at the same time, I felt exhilarated, as if I was just now waking up. Just now feeling alive. As if Cole had brought me back from the depressing silence I was used to living in. Here, there were no brains being washed off anything. Here, there was just… life.
We stood there for a while, pointing out things—a hawk’s nest in a tree below us, smoke rising from one of the shelter houses—the headlights of oncoming traffic washing over us. Finally, Cole sat down, his legs hanging over the lip of the spillway, turned, and opened his guitar case. He shuffled backward a few inches, then patted the concrete in front of him.
“Sit down,” he said, and I did, lowering myself shakily into the U made by his legs, leaning my body back against his and feeling the concrete, still warm from soaking up the day’s sun, underneath us.
He lowered his guitar into my lap, carefully winding the strap around my shoulders, then grabbed my hands with his and positioned them on the strings. I could feel his breath against my ear, his biceps pulling taut against the backs of my arms, his legs curled around mine. Slowly, he guided my hands with his, humming and naming chords into my neck.
We sat there like that for hours, the stars blazing above us—just the two of us, alone in a place that was so frightening and wonderful.
I was so scared and so exhilarated I didn’t know where one feeling stopped and the other began. All I knew was I loved the feeling. And I never wanted it to end.
CHAPTER TEN
I sprawled upside down over the couch, my legs snaking up over the pillows and my head hanging limply toward the floor. I could feel all the blood rushing to my temples. When I talked, I sounded like I had a bad cold.
“We could whitewater raft,” I said. “Watch out, Beth!”
There was a boom, followed by a groan of frustration. Zack burst into hysterical laughter. “You totally walked right into it,” he said, crazily punching buttons on a video game controller.
“Go ahead, laugh it up, Zackhole,” Bethany said, reverting to our seventh-grade nickname for Zack. There was another explosion, and this time Bethany laughed, shoving Zack with her shoulder and jostling the couch so that the top of my head grazed the floor.
Last weekend, while I’d been at the lake with Cole, Bethany and Zack had a Vacay Day at Zack’s house without me. Somewhere
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before,” Bethany said, flopping back on my couch. “I guess I just assumed that you could ski any time of the year in the mountains.”
“No problem,” Zack said, plugging in a controller while Bethany and I picked at the tacos I’d made for tonight’s Vacay Day. It was my turn to host, but I didn’t have the money for pizza. Not if I was going to actually get to Colorado and do anything fun. “We’ll just go in the winter.”
“Hell-o, college,” Bethany said, pushing her glasses back up on her nose.
“Hell-o, winter break,” Zack countered, tossing her a controller.
He held a controller up at me. I shook my head, and he backed up to the couch and sat between us, holding a controller in his lap. I’d shoved my plate of tacos on the coffee table and flipped myself upside down so my feet were by Zack’s head and my head was by his feet. They continued to bicker while my mind drifted to Cole.
The week in the tutor lab had been way tense between the two of us, in a good way. It was tough to focus on noun and verb placement when all I could think about, sitting across from him and staring into his eyes, was being alone with him again. Having his arm resting against my back, brushing up against me, coaxing out the goose bumps on my legs. Sitting on the top of the world, feeling puffs of air against my cheek while we brushed our fingers over the guitar strings.
We were supposed to go see the House of Horrors movie that night, but after Bethany burst into American lit class Monday morning in full vacation panic mode, I knew there was no way I could ditch our planning session two Saturdays in a row. I begged off my date with Cole, made tacos, and sighed as I tried to come up with things we could do in the summer instead of ski.