Chapter Eight

“So? Did you get it?’ Frankie asked as she glided up and dismounted at the bike rack. Mac was bent over double, and Frankie watched as she tried to mate the key on the lanyard around her neck with the lock securing her wheels. “You know, that works better if you take it off first.”

Mac said, “Get what?”

Frankie made a noise that fused frustration and excitement, and threw up her hands. “The envelope! Did you get the envelope I left for you?”

Dante rode up and popped her front wheel off to lock it up with her frame. “Dudette, Charlie’s gonna see you bending over like that and consider it an invitation.”

Mac straightened, her face flushed. She started to say, “If he ever—” but stopped as Charlie rolled up right then, dressed in his stupid baggies and a shammy from some mountain bike club.

“Hello, Ladies, and I mean that in the most respectful way, Dante.” Charlie locked his bike next to theirs.

“Kiss, kiss, lover!” Dante blew him a couple of air kisses, which Charlie dutifully ignored.

Charlie continued, “You want to do another ride up to Hudson, Frankie?”

“Depends if you’re ready for more humiliation, Chaz,” she answered. She looked over her shoulder at Mac and tilted her head toward Charlie. “We were going to do a dawn ride yesterday but he was a no-show. Apparently he’s not yet able to clear the trail logs. Or maybe your shoelace got wrapped around your crank and you fell?”

“I got no problem with my crank,” Charlie said, leering. As he reached to pop off his front wheel, his sleeves pulled back, revealing fresh bruises on his arms.

“You get some decent road rash to go along with those?” Dante asked. “At least you got the brain bucket goin’ on,” he said, knocking on his helmet. “You wouldn’t want an even more messed up noggin.”

Charlie jerked his head away and scowled at him, but Dante was unfeigned.

He said, “I’ve got a fresh tube of Brave Soldier if you promise not to use it all.” He held up the ointment and waggled it in the air.

Frankie said, “I wish that stuff could’ve repaired the inside of my knee like it did the outside.”

Charlie waved them off and struck a pose like a veteran’s statue. Quoting the Brave Soldier web site, he said, “My wounds are the price paid for adventure or for victory!”

“Well, I hope you’re having some of the adventure, cause it looks like those baby heads claimed victory.”

“Baby heads?” Mac asked.

Frankie patted her back and smiled. “See? There are purists left in the world. You are a true roadie, Mac.”

“Baby heads,” Charlie said. “The rocks in the trail the size of, you know, a baby’s head. And I am clearing them. Usually.”

Dante made a face. “I don’t know why you bother with the trails if it’s so brutal.”

Charlie slung his backpack over his shoulder and winced. “It may be rough, but I only get cardio on the road. The trail’s great for wind sprints and skills.”

“You better keep working on those skills, then, dude,” Frankie said, pointing to Charlie’s latest injuries. “And you better not let Otis see those. It’s obvious you didn’t get them riding pavement and then he’ll know the trails are keeping you from your road miles. The ones he assigned to get you ready for our road trip.”

Mac didn’t even have the energy it would take to care about any of this. She just felt monotone. No thoughts. No interior monologue questioning it. Just a flatline of apathy. She shook her head to clear it. “I gotta get to class.”

Frankie trotted a few steps and caught up. “What?”

Mac barely looked up. It was nothing she wanted to talk about. “It’s only…I don’t know. Just…why bother?”

“What are you saying? The trip? The one you’ve been talking about for six freaking years? Your dad is finally letting you leave the house and now you’re all like, ‘why bother’? Did you even open the envelope?”

“No.” Mac was too exhausted with everything to gather enough curiosity to look at it.

Frankie growled in frustration. “Mackenzie! When are you going to open it?”

Mac stopped in the hall outside the main office and shifted her backpack to her other shoulder. “You obviously want to tell me, so just say it so I can get to class.”

Frankie sighed and shook her head. “For weeks you’ve been wallowing in all this self-pity and when I try to do something that might make you happy, what do you do? Ignore it. If you want to know, open the damn envelope.” She stalked off down the hallway.

* * *

For the first time since they were little, Frankie and Mackenzie stopped talking. Days turned into weeks, and Mac still refused to open the envelope.

Mackenzie began to think of it almost as another person, mocking her, propped on her dresser as it was, taunting her. She willfully ignored it. She was stronger. She would win.

Lying in her bed after school one afternoon she grunted as stared at it, realizing she was having conversations in her head with a freaking envelope. She heard Lily’s footsteps stomping down the hallway and come to a stop outside Mac’s bedroom door. Mackenzie rolled over and lay with her back to the door, staring at the wall, when Lily tiptoed into her room. Mackenzie closed her eyes, hoping Lily would get bored and leave.

“Kenzie? Why are you always in bed from now on?” Lily asked as she crawled over Mackenzie’s limp body, and tumbled to the other side. She scooched and wriggled for a bit, finding a comfortable position to face her sister.

Mac just moaned and kept her eyes shut.

Lily raised her little hands and pressed them to each side of Mackenzie’s face. “Kenzie? Are you in there?”

Mac heard her sister’s question and marveled at how it echoed Frankie’s weeks ago when she tried to get rid of the alien that had apparently taken over her body. Mac opened her eyes and looked at Lily.

“Peas?” Mac asked. Lily flipped around so her back was against Mac’s stomach.

“In a pod,” Lily answered.

Her sister always fit so perfectly in her arms, and the minute she was cuddled up, they both sighed. Mackenzie buried her face in Lily’s hair.

“I’m sorry about this morning, Brat. I was super mean.” She’d yelled at her again for some stupid thing. Mac had felt guilty all day.

Lily grumped. “Yeah.”

“Super duper mean,” Mac said. “I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?”

Lily grumped again and then shrugged her shoulders and Mac knew she had.

“What kind of kiss?” Mackenzie asked. Lily was still facing the other way, but Mac could tell she had gotten a smile out of her. “Come on, what kind?”

Lily twisted around and looked up at her big sister with a grin on her face. “Ummmmmm...how about…a elephant kiss!”

Mac buried her face into Lily’s neck and blew giant raspberries against her skin. Lily howled with laughter. She clambered out of the bed and ran out of the room still giggling, but Mackenzie stayed where she was, and continued staring at the envelope.

She couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t touched it, hadn’t wanted to touch it, but there it sat on her dresser, propped between the only two framed photos she owned. One was a shot of Mac on her favorite tricycle, her mom leaning down into the frame, and the other was taken on her seventh birthday, the day she rode her first two-wheeler. She lay on her bed, looking at her toothless smile, remembering.

As soon as her father had clicked the camera, Mac fell, bloodying her knee. She hadn’t cried. She never did. Her dad was freaking out, running around trying to find the first aid kit, while Mac sat on the curb, watching the blood drip down her leg. She had been mesmerized, and remembered wondering over those bright crimson tears, my knee is crying blood. As she sat there, calmly watching the droplets drizzle from her wound, it seemed odd that blood would be the same color every time it came out. It should change colors, she thought, depending on why you were losing it.

Mac’s eyes drifted up to a gold medal dangling from a wide, red ribbon. It hung from a nail in the wall above her dresser. Grady had given it to her after he’d won his first swim meet. She got off the bed and took it down, wrapping the ribbon around her hand. She rubbed her fingers over the embossed lettering as she looked back at the photo.

Her father had finally found the first aid kit and tended to her wounds.

“Does it hurt?” he’d asked.

Now, as she stood holding Grady’s medal, looking at the photo, she snorted. Does it hurt?

She hadn’t answered. She hadn’t known how to answer. It hurt, but who cared? She ignored it. She’d been through worse and if she could ignore that, what was a skinned knee? If you paid attention to pain, you had to live with it and she didn’t want to do that.

Grady wanted her to hook up with him. She hadn’t been allowed to say no to her father, but she sure as hell had a choice with Grady. And if he loved her, he wouldn’t force her. He wouldn’t expect her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

Her heart still ached, but Mac had to admit that Frankie was right. She had wallowed enough, and didn’t need any reminders. If he were only in love with her so he could get some, then their whole relationship was bogus…just like the one she had with her father. If he really loved her, he wouldn’t make her do those things.

Mac held her hand over the little tin trashcan next to her dresser and let the ribbon unwind off her hand. The medal dangled from its leash, swinging slowly, like a pendulum on an old clock. Time to move on, it seemed to say. She dropped it, satisfied by the loud clunk it made.