It was cold for late October. Adam held the top edges of his jacket together, leaned forward, and exhaled sharply. Most of the kids were huddled by the bleachers that offered a modicum of protection from the snap of the wind. Adam paced a short path between two pine trees at the end of the field, counting his steps. Twenty-four steps plus a turn in each direction. His toes had gone numb.
Soon enough the bell would ring and they’d trudge towards the school, accepting the relief of warmth at the price of more hours spent flopped in desk chairs being exhorted to pay attention. For most of the kids, it was barely a fair trade. Adam had other reasons to dread his return to the building.
He’d left Angela crying in the girls’ bathroom. She’d locked herself in a stall and resisted all of his pleas to talk to him face to face. If the bathroom floor had been less grimy he might have crawled under the stall door. Might have. He had some dignity left. He left her there, angry, sad, silently yelling at him that he’d ruined her life. Her unspoken words pierced him like darts.
She wasn’t in 4th period English.
She wasn’t in 5th period pre-calc either. When the bell rang he flew out of his seat, racing to the door, flying down the hallway. He didn’t know where he was going but there was no way he was sitting through 45 minutes of Mr. Castonway droning on about the Reformation. Wan afternoon sunlight illuminated two squares at the end of the hallway. He took them for targets and kept his body moving.
The temperature had dropped further and the cold air buffeted him. Sensible thoughts raged around his mind—it was probably just hormones, she was just having a hard reaction, he’d be there to help in any way he could, he’d pay for his half of the procedure. The words did nothing to cross the giant canyon in his chest. A baby. They’d made a baby. His baby. How could he be so powerful and so helpless at the same time?
When he was ten his mother had almost adopted a dog. She’d always be clear that they were never going to be a dog-home, “I do NOT have time for that,” she’d snapped at him whenever he begged her. One day Linda from next door walked up the drive with a pup that looked like a sea otter tilting its adorable head, and he saw his mother weaken. All evening, she vacillated in tense silence, warning him away from her. He watched her staring out the window above the sink, her face opening and closing, lost in two radically different futures that flicked back and forth in her mind. The forcefield between realities quivered. He’d never felt more hopeful or more lonely. The next morning Linda told them that a homeless couple had shown up and claimed the dog.
He realized he was walking to her house. This was a ridiculous thing to do in this weather. She lived about 6 miles from school, in the wrong direction from where he lived. He kept walking. His mind was a kaleidoscope of images. Angela on an exam table. A young boy playing fetch with a dog. His mother, exhausted, with her head dropped on folded arms on the kitchen table.
It was dark by the time he reached her house. A car was in the driveway, and a light was on in the kitchen at the back of the house. Her father would probably shoot him if he knew what was going on. And then maybe strangle Angela. He’d laid hands on her before. The window of her bedroom was dark. What was there to do when he could do nothing?
Her light flicked on, and he saw her, moving back and forth in the room. Back and forth—as if she were rearranging things. Or pacing. He stood in the driveway and held his gaze towards her, willing her to look out and see him. He imagined himself as she might see him from the window, his height foreshortened by the angle from the second floor, standing with his hands in his pockets in her driveway, splashed by light from the streetlamp. Staring up, not moving. Planted. Someone who could not be wiped away or forgotten. The cold had deepened in the fallen evening. His feet were unfeeling stumps in the ground. He would stand here until she saw him, until she accepted that he was there. She could cut him down, and he’d still be there. She could try to forget him, and he’d still be here.
Snow began to fall, thick flakes that accumulated rapidly. Her window went dark. His limbs were stiff and doughy, like his thoughts. With slow movements, he shuffled to the grassy flat of the yard, now white with an inch of fluffy snow. He lay down, spread himself wide, and moved his arms and legs back and forth, making a snow angel, cradled on the frozen ground.
