Page 19 of On the Beat

“You don’t know anything about my love life, either,” he says, gritting out the words between his teeth.

“I know your heart was crushed and you’ve been alone ever since.”

I stand there, thinking that I’ve gone too far, done too much, said too much. That he’s going to have me forcibly removed by whatever means necessary.

“If I’ve been alone, it’s only because a career can’t betray you.”

“Who betrayed you?” I say.I can’t say he’s wrong. Callous and mercenary as it may be, I’m here because I’m putting a career over anything else.

Am I digging for more information to use in my story? Or because I genuinely care?

“I think we’ve had enough of a heart to heart for today, and maybe for the rest of our lives, Isla Romero.” He blinks, the iron grate of a fortress swinging closed and locking. Ryder shoves past me, his arm brushing mine.

Chapter 10: Ryder Black

I can’t do this.

Isla. A journalist. Filming me.

It all brought up memories of Poppy. How she looked at me when I’d confronted her, like she hadn’t done anything wrong. Like she’d done me a favour. She’d never even admitted to being guilty or even to the fact that she’d broke two of my biggest scandals on her blog or that she’d been leaking information about me to the press in exchange for money. How many other secrets had she been keeping from me?

Yet Isla was the complete opposite. With her, her emotions were written all over her face. She’d felt bad for invading my privacy. Yet it wasn’t enough. She’d already committed the crime. How can I forgive her?

I can’t. Betrayal is betrayal, no matter how well-intentioned or how remorseful the betrayer was. Forgiving Isla, a complete stranger, when I could barely find it in myself to forgive Poppy no matter what I had said… Well, it would be like betraying myself. And I am all that I have left. It’s me, and music.

And Paulo, who I’ve reconnected with for a few days and probably is beyond annoyed with me for getting into a fight with his cousin.

So I might as well truly be alone.

I guess it’s always been that way and I never noticed. Growing up, we never had much, and I would watch my mom, when she didn’t think I noticed, pawning off old jewellery or selling our TV or one time even our couch. We sat on the floor and played card games, and my parents did their best to make things seem fun, but I felt like our life was being taken away from us piece by piece. The more that was drained out of my life, the more tightly I held onto my music. It was the one thing I had that no one can take from me, the thing that no one could make their own. Even if someone copied the song I wrote, or bought a CD I burned, it wouldn’t really be theirs. It would still be mine, in a way, like my DNA was infused into every chord and lyric.

I guess I just thought there was a part of me that even my family couldn’t touch, but I guess not. Not since River threw my money into bad deals and gambling debts and drugs. Not since Poppy sold my secrets and scandals to the press instead of coming to me for help, as though my personal life was merely a gold mine of information to her.

I put on swim trunks and a T-shirt, and decide to go swimming. My guitar–the one I bought with Skye’s money–sits in the corner of my borrowed room, looking lonely and unwanted. If music is all I have left, do I still have a choice to make it? I turn my back on it, sliding a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses onto the bridge of my nose, and head out to the beach.

Seagulls squawk overhead, and a few tourists wander along the sand, carrying towels and beach mats. If anyone recognizes me, they don’t show it. I wade into the water until the ocean brushes my shoulders, and I can inhale saltwater just by tilting my head down a few inches. This deep in the water, I don’t feel safe. But I do feel powerful.

When I was nine years old, River and I went out into the woods. It was common routine for us at that time, to go hunting with our dad or fishing or just have fun. We darted over crushed beer cans and fallen leaves, pretending to be cowboys or train robbers or whatever latest superhero was on screen at that time.

On one of these excursions, River dared me to jump into the river. I had done it before, so I didn’t know why he was telling me to do it then. But he told me there was an added difficulty. This time, I had to dive in headfirst and remain there for at least a minute. Under the water, no oxygen except what I entered with, treading furiously and yet unable to rise. He said that if I did so, he would give me his BB gun, his most treasured possession at the time. I agreed. Being a nine-year-old boy who idolized his older brother, who was fourteen, an impossibly far away age, involving girls and his sneaking beers from high school students. Of course, I agreed.

I still remember the goose egg on my forehead, and how I blacked out for a second, how the icy water, freezing even in the dead heat of August, rushed over me, pinning me against the rocks and pebbles, the tickle of the fish against the backs of my arms, and how I counted down from sixty in my head all the while, amidst the pain and the numb tingling in my fingers and toes from the frigid river. I remember everything. River claims to remember nothing. He doesn’t remember how he ran away before the sixty seconds was up, how he hid in our father’s toolshed and pretended to be fixing his bike, while I waited for him to pull me out and he never came.

He never came, and so I dragged myself out of that water, barefoot and unable to find my shoes, rubbing my newly acquired bruises and wincing as I limped all the way back to our trailer park. I dripped a path on the concrete, grateful that at least I had taken off my clothes before jumping in. One day, his BB gun showed up in my room, under the bed, but he never bothered to say anything about it. I still have the gun, though I don’t know why.

River was the reason I broke my collarbone and spent the first semester of sixth grade wearing button-up shirts because it hurt too much to put a T-shirt over my head. To give me the gun outright would be to tell our mother that he was the reason her youngest son had been injured, and River had faced enough tannings and threats from our father to ship him away to military school, for him to ever consider owning up to his actions. He must’ve seen the awkward angle of my arm through the water, or the way I didn’t come back up once I got into the water. Or maybe he saw me make an impact with a rock, and he thought it would be better to leave me and save himself than save me and explain himself.

Then again, I can’t blame him. Twenty years have gone by, and I know I made my own decision, as much as a nine-year-old can choose to jump headfirst into a river based on a dare with a reward.

“Eddie!” A woman’s voice yells. “Eduardo, come back here! It’s not safe for you to be so far in the deep end.”

I turn around and see a Filipino woman in her thirties, shouting at a little boy who must be her son. He looks to be about seven or eight.

She stands on the beach in a one-piece swimsuit and a floppy sun hat, and her son—Eddie—is closer to me than he is to his mother. He seems to be flailing in the water, making a valiant effort but still struggling against the waves that beat against the shore. I will look again towards his mother, but she’s shepherding some other children, giving them juice boxes and unable to focus on all the children at the same time. I strain my neck, looking at the waves coming toward us. The upcoming waves look particularly high, and I paddle toward the beach. Toward the boy. I learned to get over a fear of water the hard way. By developing it and conquering it in one afternoon. This kid shouldn’t have to.

“Hey, kid.” I clear my throat, treading water. “Is that your mom? It seems like she’s telling you to go back to the shore.”

Eddie nods, looking strangely calm for a boy who’s about to be struck by a giant wave. “I know.”

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