The Long Way Home

The elevator took forty-one seconds to come, and I counted every one of them with the pass pinched between two fingers.

It wasn’t a real pass.

It was a blank one I’d slid off the corner of Nurse Haviland’s desk on Tuesday while she was arguing with the copier. ELEVATOR ACCESS, TEMPORARY. Under Reason, I’d written sprained ankle (L) in handwriting I’d practiced three times on a napkin, and under Authorized by, a scribble that could have been anybody’s name if anybody squinted.

Nobody squinted. At Sierra Vista Central, you could get away with almost anything if you looked bored while you did it.

The doors dinged open. Behind me, the stairwell by the science wing was jammed with backpacks and Stanleys and somebody’s speaker playing something with too much bass.

And Chandler, halfway up the stairs, one hand on the rail, looking at me.

His eyes went to the orange pass in my hand, dropped to my sneakers, and then flicked back to the stairs I was skipping.

Heat shot up my neck, stinging all the way to the tiny gold studs in my ears. Chandler didn’t write people up. He didn’t tell on anybody. He just remembered.

The doors closed before either of us did anything about it.

I caught my reflection in the polished metal wall, pale and wide-eyed above my ponytail, and looked away from it. I leaned my shoulder against the steel and let my left leg go loose for exactly one floor.

I’d gotten very good at making things look official.

That morning, I’d gotten to school before him and hung his Carhartt on the hook inside his locker. His combination hadn’t changed since sixth grade. I’d folded the corduroy collar down so it lay flat, closed the door, and walked away before anybody could see me standing there.

Neither of us was going to mention it. He would know it was me, and I would know he knew, and that would be the whole conversation.

The elevator dinged. I straightened up and walked out into Hall A like I’d never needed it.

That night, the group chat didn’t sleep.

It was called HALL A MENACES, because Stetson had named it in eighth grade and nobody could figure out how to change it without him noticing. By ten, it had two hundred new messages, and I read all of them lying flat on the blonde wood floor of my bedroom, because the floor was the only surface that didn’t make my thigh ache worse. Above me, the fairy lights threw soft yellow across the gray walls, and my teal comforter hung off the corner of the bed like a dropped towel.

Maekynzie: emory just told me the song i sent him was “fine”

Maekynzie: FINE

Maekynzie: i am going to scream into the sun

Emory: fine is my highest rating

Emory: i’ve called my own mother fine

Maekynzie: that is not the flex u think it is

Tinsley: leave the chat. both of you. it’s for your own good

Stetson: noelle what are u doing tmrw after practice

Noelle: WHY

Noelle: why are u asking like that

Stetson: no reason

Stetson: fine it’s a small reason

Stetson: my car is lonely

Noelle: UR CAR HAS NEVER BEEN LONELY A SINGLE DAY IN ITS LIFE

Chandler: 👀

Stetson: chandler i can see u typing and i want u to stop

Stetson: also @sloane u alive?? ur never this quiet

I stared at my name. He’d noticed. Stetson could be in the middle of asking out the love of his life and still catch that I hadn’t said a word in two hundred messages.

Sloane: alive. go to bed.

Stetson: u go to bed

Stetson: 😴

At 11:30, I turned off my fairy lights.

At 1:15, the pain woke me up.

It was different at night. During the day, it hummed. At night, it dug, deep in the center of the bone, like someone was pressing a thumb into it from the inside. I’d started setting an alarm on silent for 2:00 a.m., labeled water, so if anyone saw my phone it wouldn’t look like anything. Two ibuprofen, then back to sleep, if I was lucky.

I’d stopped counting how many nights I’d done it.

I wasn’t lucky. I reached under my bed, past a lost sock and an old knee brace, and found the soft cooler bag I’d hidden there on Sunday: two ice packs from the garage freezer. I swapped them every morning before anyone else was up.

I pressed one against the front of my thigh through my pajama shorts and bit the inside of my cheek until the cold burned worse than the bone.

Across the room, Bernard lifted his head from his rug. The tag on his collar made a tiny click against his chest as he stood.

“Don’t,” I whispered. “Go to sleep.”

His eyebrows pinched in that worried way he had, and he ignored me completely. He padded over, lay down against my good side, and let out a long, dramatic sigh.

Thursday’s practice was all squeaking shoes and Coach Mathieson’s voice bouncing off the rafters of Gym A.

“ROTATE! Roxie, you’re in one! Deshazo, front row! Let’s GO, ladies, I want to see it!”

Approach drills. Four steps, jump, swing, land, back of the line. We’d been at it for twenty minutes, and I’d been cheating for nineteen of them: shortening my approach, taking off early, landing on my right foot and letting my left come along for the ride.

Roxie set me. I went.

Getting up was never the problem. My body knew how to fly; it had been doing it since sixth grade. Coming down was the problem.

I’d changed the way I jumped without telling Coach. I’d changed the way I landed without telling anybody. Somehow, I was still calling that playing normally.

When I landed, my left knee buckled for half a second. The spot that had gone white after my match-point kill last Thursday flared bright and hot, then settled back into its hum. I caught myself on my right leg and turned the stumble into a jog back to the line so smoothly I almost believed it.

“Deshazo!” Coach Mathieson pointed at me. “Love the hustle! Ice tonight. I mean it!”

He’d started saying I mean it every day. I’d started nodding every day.

Volleyball ended at 4:30.

Soccer let out fifteen minutes before us on Thursdays, which meant Stetson was usually leaning on his Lexus by the time I got outside, scrolling his phone and pretending he hadn’t been waiting.

By 4:42, I had my joggers on over my spandex and my bag on my shoulder, crossing the parking lot toward the spot where he always parked crooked across two lines. I’d cinched the drawstring on my joggers and double-knotted it to keep them up over my shrinking waist.

The spot was empty.

My phone buzzed.

Stetson: omg sloane i’m SO sorry

Stetson: took noelle home right after practice her mom needed her early

Stetson: chandler’s still there ask him!!!

Stetson: ur the best twin

I stood in the middle of the lot and did the math. Three miles home, downhill for the first mile, then flat, then uphill into the cul-de-sac. On a normal day, I’d have called it a warmup.

A horn gave one quick tap behind me, then went quiet.

Chandler was leaning against the side of his Jeep with his keys hooked on one finger, still in his practice shorts and a Bighorns soccer hoodie, hair damp from the locker room. His Carhartt was tossed across the back seat behind him.

“Your brother abandoned you,” he said. The corner of his mouth had that faint, amused curve he always got when Stetson was being ridiculous.

“He’s in love.”

“Same thing, apparently.” He pushed off the Jeep and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

I looked at the Jeep.

I’d climbed into it probably a thousand times. It sat high. You stepped on the running board, grabbed the handle above the door, and swung yourself up. My body had done it without thinking since the day Uncle Jake bought it.

I put my left foot on the running board and grabbed the handle.

Pushed.

My leg didn’t lift me. It trembled while my arm did all the work, and for one awful second I hung off the side of the Jeep with my face inches from the door frame.

Then I switched feet, hauled myself up with my right leg and both arms, and dropped into the seat so hard the whole Jeep rocked.

I buckled my seatbelt and kept my eyes on the windshield, because looking at him would mean admitting he’d seen it.

Chandler didn’t say anything. He walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and sat for a second with both hands on the wheel before he started the engine.

“You’re taking the long way,” I said, when he turned left out of the lot instead of right.

“I’m taking the Bernard way.”

“The what?”

“Dashiell’s drills.” He glanced at me, then back at the road. “Second handler, stranger approach, leash transfer. Miss Davison said we have to run them every week. Bernard’s basically a dog.”

“Bernard is entirely a dog.”

“So he’s qualified.”

He stopped at my house long enough for me to grab Bernard. The second I opened the front door, Bernard came barreling out like a white freight train, collar jingling, and hopped into the back seat like he’d won a prize, immediately curling up on Chandler’s Carhartt. Pops must have stopped at the store on his way home from the base, because his Silverado wasn’t in the driveway yet. Nobody saw me go in, and nobody saw how long it took me to come back out.

Then Chandler drove to Vista Ridge Park, skipped the shady spots under the cottonwoods where everybody parked, and pulled into the one right next to the paved path, in full sun, the one nobody ever used.

He didn’t explain. He just turned off the engine.

My whole body went cold.

He’d seen the elevator pass. He’d seen me skip the stairs. He’d seen me hang off the side of his Jeep. And now he was parking thirty feet from the trail instead of two hundred, without a single word about any of it.

He was collecting pieces. And once Chandler had enough of them, he would put them together, and then everybody would know.

“Okay,” Chandler said. “Drills.”

The park was quiet. The sun was low and gold through the trees, casting long shadows across the soccer fields near the entrance. The air smelled like water and fallen leaves and, faintly, somebody’s barbecue on the other side of the ridge.

The drill went badly, in the most Bernard way possible.

The plan was simple. I would hold Bernard’s leash. Chandler would approach from the side, calm, no eye contact, the way the evaluator would with Dashiell. Then I would hand him the leash, and Bernard would walk ten feet with Chandler without looking back at me.

Bernard had his own plan.

Chandler approached, and Bernard lost his mind with joy. He flashed that ridiculous, open-mouthed Sammy grin, leaped straight up, and tried to climb into Chandler’s arms, all forty-eight pounds of him. He’d been our fifteenth birthday present, a year ago this month, and he still hadn’t figured out he wasn’t a lap dog.

“So,” Chandler said, from underneath a face full of fur, “he’s not scared.”

“He’s never been scared of anything in his life. Except the vacuum.”

“So he’s the opposite of Dashiell.”

“He’s the opposite of everything.”

By the fourth try, Bernard sat, wiggling, while Chandler approached, and let himself be handed over. He walked ten feet with Chandler. Then he spun around, sprinted back to me, and sat on my foot.

“That’s actually good,” I said. “That’s exactly what Dashiell will do.”

“What do you do then?”

“You go back and try again. You don’t take it personally.”

He looked at me a moment longer than he needed to.

“Noted.”

Then we walked the trail.

Or, they walked. Bernard pulled toward the creek at his usual speed, kicking up dust on the hard-packed dirt, and Chandler went with him in long, easy soccer strides. Within fifty yards, I was falling behind. Every step sent a jolt up from my heel into the bone, and I was breathing too hard for a trail I used to jog without thinking.

I didn’t call out to him. I would rather have sat down in the dirt.

I didn’t have to. Up ahead, his stride shortened, just barely. He reeled Bernard in and let him sniff a fence post that didn’t deserve that much attention, and by the time I caught up, Chandler was walking at exactly my pace, as if he always had.

I hated him for noticing. I hated myself more for being relieved.

He didn’t look at me or say anything.

I wanted to shove him into the creek. I also wanted to hold on to his arm. I did neither.

The creek was low, sliding over flat brown rocks, and there was a wooden bench beside it under a cottonwood tree, carved all over with initials. Somebody named KR had loved somebody named MT in 2009. I sat down. The wood was rough and splintered and solid under my palms.

Chandler sat down next to me. Bernard flopped at our feet, belly up, one ear inside out, tail thumping against the dirt.

We sat down so I could catch my breath. We didn’t get up for an hour.

We talked about school. About Mr. Grzywacz, and whether he had ever smiled, and if so, under what circumstances. About Dashiell, and how he’d walked right up to Chandler’s sneaker on Saturday like it was nothing.

“Emory’s in love with Mae,” Chandler said at one point, rolling a pinecone between his palms.

“Emory would literally die before admitting it.”

“He’d write a song about dying before admitting it.”

“And he’d call it fine.”

He laughed, low, chin tipped down, and his shoulder bumped mine. The bench was small. That was the only reason.

“Stetson and Noelle,” I said.

“One accidental hand brush away from being a Hallmark movie.”

“They’d hate that.”

“They’d love it,” he said. “And then they’d hate that they loved it.”

The creek was loud over the rocks. The cottonwood leaves were just starting to turn, flashing gold when the wind moved them. Bernard snored.

Somewhere in there, Chandler’s phone buzzed in his hoodie pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and set it on his thigh, dark. It buzzed again a few minutes later. He didn’t pick it up.

It was almost six when he stopped rolling the pinecone.

He was quiet for a while, and I thought it was the good kind of quiet. Then he said, in a different voice, low and careful, the voice he used on Dashiell:

“Will you let me take you to get it looked at?”

I didn’t move.

He was looking at the creek, not at me. The neck of his hoodie had slipped slightly to the side, showing the dark birthmark above his collarbone.

“Get what looked at?”

“Sloane.”

My fingers went to my left eyebrow, tracing the tiny white scar tucked into the arch, an old habit whenever I put my walls up. “It’s a bone bruise.”

“You said that last week.”

“It’s still a bone bruise.”

“You forged an elevator pass.” He said it without any heat, just a fact. “You haven’t taken the stairs in a week. You couldn’t get into the Jeep. You’re…” He stopped. Started again. “Let me drive you somewhere. Urgent care. Anywhere. I won’t tell anybody. I’ll wait in the Jeep.”

For a second, I almost said yes.

I pictured it. His Jeep in a parking lot. Him in a waiting room chair, pretending to read an old Sports Illustrated. Somebody in scrubs telling me it was a pulled muscle, or a stress fracture, six weeks off. Something with a name and an end date.

Then I pictured the other thing. The thing I never let myself think about. The thing that made a thigh hot in one spot and nowhere else, made nine pounds disappear, woke you up at 1:15 a.m.

If I went, somebody would say what it was.

And once something had a name, you couldn’t pretend it was nothing.

I stood up too fast. My leg screamed. Bernard scrambled upright.

“It’s my leg,” I said. “I’ll handle it. I don’t need you to rescue me.”

It was the harshest thing I’d ever said to him, and it just sat there between us.

Chandler looked up at me. His mouth opened a little, and then closed.

He stood, picked up Bernard’s leash, and said, “Okay.”

He said it gently. That was worse.

He drove me home without arguing. Without talking at all. The only sound in the Jeep was Bernard panting happily in the back and the tick of the turn signal when we pulled into the cul-de-sac.

He parked in front of my house instead of just slowing at the curb, got out, came around, and opened my door. Then he stepped back and looked at the mailbox while I climbed down, so he wouldn’t have to watch me do it.

I would almost have preferred the watching.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Yep.”

He let Bernard out of the back, and Bernard trotted up the driveway to the front door. Then Chandler was back in the Jeep and pulling out of the cul-de-sac faster than he ever drove, his taillights turning toward downtown instead of toward Uncle Jake’s.

I stood on the driveway and watched the empty street.

He worked Thursdays. Six to ten. I’d known that for a year. It was 6:12.

He’d sat on that bench with me for an hour with his phone buzzing on his leg, and he was going to be late, and he hadn’t said a word about it.

Inside, the kitchen smelled like garlic and onions sizzling on the stove. Pops’ Silverado had pulled into the driveway while we were at the park. Pops was by the island with his sleeves rolled up, humming, in front of the refrigerator that was covered three layers deep with vacation snapshots, volleyball schedules, and Stetson’s car-show flyers.

“Sunshine! Dinner in twenty. Was that Chandler?”

“Stetson ditched me.”

“For Noelle?”

“For Noelle.”

“Good for him. Bad for you.” He turned around, wooden spoon in hand, and his green eyes, the exact same shade as mine, went straight to my hand gripping the stair rail. I let go of it. Too late.

“Long practice?” he said, a little too lightly.

“Approach drills. My legs are dead.”

He looked at me for another second. Then he nodded and turned back to the stove.

He’d noticed. He just didn’t make me say it.

I waited until he started humming again before I climbed the stairs with my hand barely touching the rail.

In my room, I lay down on the blonde wood floor. Bernard padded over and lay down next to me, resting his chin on my ankle.

Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed against the floorboards.

Chandler: Fall Bonfire is Friday. I’ll drive. You don’t have to talk to me.

I read it three times.

I didn’t type anything.