Page 33 of Heart of Stone
Jade had moved the truck back into the parking lot. Jack was watching the whole thing, swinging a baseball bat from his hand, just waiting to jump in. Colt and Slade were standing with their arms crossed as they watched the sniveling assholes crawl back into their beat to hell jeep holding bloody noses and mouths.
The jeep limped away without any headlights or taillights.
Amy walked up to me and pressed her fingers against the blood rushing from my shoulder. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re bleeding again.”
Jade climbed out of the truck. Everyone stood silently and looked at me.
“Friends of yours?” Slade asked.
“Same assholes who left that gash on my face. I won money from them, and they’re still having a hard time accepting it.” I hadn’t turned around. I didn’t need to. I could see in all of their faces that it was bad.
“God, sweetie, I’m so sorry,” Amy said quietly.
“We can put it in the back of the truck,” Colt suggested.
I turned around and walked back to the bike. It was in a several pieces, mangled well beyond looking like a motorcycle. It was a tweaked heap of chrome, metal and rubber. I bent down and picked up the side view mirror. The glass was shattered. I stared into it, seeing my own reflection in the fragments. I closed my eyes for a long moment. Just like Amy, I’d never had a lot. I had my brothers. I had Amy. And I had my bike.
“Fuck!” I heaved the broken mirror clear across the parking lot. It clinkered into a hundred pieces somewhere in a distant corner of the lot.
Amy walked up to me. She didn’t say a word as she wrapped her arms around me. I pulled her against me and held onto her like she was all I had left in the world.
TWENTY
AMY
My mom was humming. It was a completely familiar sound. When I was young, she always hummed show tunes when she was doing dishes or folding laundry. I always thought it was funny that the few times she was cheery enough to hum or sing was when she was performing boring chores. It had something to do with her mind being focused on easy tasks instead of on the bad stuff. Hearing it now, aSound of Musicmedley, apparently, it sounded weird, misplaced, as if I’d woken up in a different life.
I walked out of my room. Mom was in the hall closet moving stuff around. She heard my footsteps and peeked her face around the open door. The new meds seemed to have finally leveled out, and she was feeling better. Or at least I hoped so. She hadn’t done anything too crazy, and she wasn’t always sleeping. To me, having her semi-normal was like waking up to a pony on Christmas. If she stayed steady like this, I’d be thrilled and relieved. The occasional humming of show tunes would just be the icing on top.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
“What are you doing, Mom?”
“Just thought I’d spend some time rearranging the closet.”
“Great.” I moved to walk past her.
“Oh my gosh,” she said as she pulled a dress out of the closet. It was the lavender dress she’d sewn for my eighth grade promotion. “Do you remember this?”
“Of course I do. I loved that dress.”
She held it up against me. “Guess it’s a little out of style and a bit too short now.” She lowered it and smoothed her fingers over the silky purple fabric. “Your dad was so mad at me because I spent so much on the material. He just never saw the beauty in things.”
“No, he didn’t.” We were having a regular, lucid conversation. These moments had been so scarce lately that I felt like I was standing on a floor made of tissue paper and I’d fall through it soon and land back in crazyville. The sad thing was— these moments, fleeting and rare as they were, almost made it harder when she returned to her other self. They reminded me of the mom who I’d once known and loved to spend time with. I had hope for the medicine, but I also knew it was always a wild roller coaster ride with my mom. I never knew what was waiting around the next turn of track.
“I’m going to make some coffee,” I said.
“Already made.”
I looked at her and raised a questioning brow.
“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. No snail poison, I promise.”
“Good to hear.” I stepped into the kitchen. My gazedrifted to the window just in time to see Hunter heading down the street. He walked everywhere now, refusing rides from anyone. He looked sad and lonely like a little boy who had lost his dog. He loved that motorcycle and losing it had crushed him. I had no way to make that better for him, and I hated that. He was on his way down to theRanger. He still hadn’t found work but spending time fixing the boat seemed to make him feel better.
Mom came in behind me. She caught me watching Hunter. Even with everything she was going through, she knew how strong my feelings were for Hunter. When I was a teenager, Mom and I had gotten into more than one all out scream-fest about him. She constantly prefaced her side with how badly she felt for the boys and she'd do her little tongue clicking thing but nothing else that would actually help them. Then she’d remind me that I was ruining my reputation by hanging out with them. My retort had always been that my reputation remained solidly crappy with or without the help of the Stone brothers. But as we grew older and as my mom’s mental health deteriorated, she’d given up on the fight. Her arguments, she knew, had never made a bit of difference. The Stone brothers were always going to be a part of my life.
“Where’s Hunter off to so early? He looks tired. Those boys. That father sure left behind a mess.” She was extraordinarily normal this morning, and it was slightly scary. The words ‘the calm before the storm’ kept floating through my head.
