It’s got to be the moon. You may think I’m crazy, but this type of crap only happens to me when it’s waxing. I wouldn’t even be surprised if I lose the hair from my chest in a couple of weeks, when the moon fades away to a sliver.
Although I guess it does make me manlier for the moment.
You can see how I need Enrique to distract me. He’s entering Lansfeld High School this year with me, and has lived next door for the last year. From the beginning, he didn’t fit in too well at Walters, but things changed for the better when he got raging acne and started wearing a mohawk. When I say things changed for the better that’s kind of sarcastic. He went from not fitting in to totally standing out. These days when he’s not running, he’s burning me weird punk rock CDs, and I think he could care less what other people think about him.
How can I put it? He’s the yin to my yang. If I didn’t have Enrique, have Jonathan and Karen, I don’t know what I’d do.
Enrique goes back inside as I start pushing the mower across the lawn. A minute later he brings out his stereo and some lawn chairs, and starts blasting some rock en español. Soon his brother Andres comes out too, and life becomes bearable.
They sit there watching me, and they cheer me on every time I clear the push mower of another stuck stick. At least I’m amusing someone, and the music makes the mowing go faster.
Maybe they feel bad about laughing at me, because Enrique brings me a Mexican Coke. Mexican Coke could be considered a controlled substance; in the United States, it is too powerful to be sold over the counter.
It’s cold and syrupy and full of caffeine. It calms my teeth and my nerves, although I won’t be surprised if I have trouble sleeping tonight.
Chapter 4: THE ACCIDENT
It would be nice to say it all happened during some big competition. That I went down pulling in a gold, a silver, or even a bronze. But it didn’t happen that way, and I replay it now, lying in my bed. We rented a house on the cape. It’s the summer before eighth grade, and the night is dark and cool. The moon is big. Enormous. Not a crescent, not a waxing gibbous, but full. Gloriously, achingly full. It pulls me out of bed, and I dress in the dark before I know what I’m doing.
Outside I feel loose, I feel strong, I feel ready to take on the whole world, but all there is in front of me is dark and empty beach.
That’s normal.
It’s only two in the morning, and everyone else is asleep. The air is cold as my bare feet slap against the wet sand, and the moon exerts its pull far above me. But you don’t want to hear about the moon. You want to hear about what happened to my knee.
I’m running, just thinking about how cool the wet sand feels under my feet. But the moon is huge. I want to bring my head up, to stop, to stare. I feel the hair rise up on my arms, on the back of my neck. My teeth are so loose I wonder they don’t fall out. It’s too much for me—I should be at home, should be in bed. I need to go back to the house, but instead I close my eyes and keep running, trying to blot out the pale light from up above that somehow keeps pulling at me through my closed lids.
I close my eyes for just one short moment and run on, blind.
I am stronger than the pull up above me. The moon will not control me.
But the pull of the moon gives way to a shock on my foot, and I try to twist around it but it’s too late...or maybe too early. Because I twist and fall at the same time, blinded by the moon, alone on a deserted beach where no one can hear me scream.
I don’t remember who finds me, who calls my parents or who calls the ambulance. My memories are nothing more than snapshots of crawling and dragging myself along that beach. Memories of grunting and pulling myself along the wet sand, punctuated by screams of pain that deepen as my throat grows raw with each new cry into the night.
Somehow, I get to the hospital where I stay for a week.
It is all and all quite an eventful summer. A summer that stays with me.
But I keep more than the pain, the scars and the injury. More than the memories.
Because I go back, you see. When I can walk again with a brace, I have my mother drive me back out to the cape, and we comb the beach until I find it.
It’s still a beautiful piece of driftwood.
If you look at it from one angle you see the face of an old man. From another angle you see two people, intertwined. We take it home and keep it. It is on my wall for awhile, before I take it down and throw it across the room in a fit of rage. Now it’s in the corner of my closet. I’m sick of looking at it, even if it is a beautiful piece of driftwood.
A beautiful piece of driftwood that ruined my life.
Lauren, my physical therapist, is pretty sure I’ll never run again. And if the blink of an eye on a night of the full moon can take running away, what else am I in danger of losing?
Chapter 5: KAREN’S BLOODY HANGNAIL
It’s dark already, cool and stormy, when the doorbell rings.
“I’ve got it!” I yell as I walk carefully to the door. I know who I want it to be, although what are the chances?
I look through the peephole. It’s Karen, alone.