Cassie heads to Lindsey’s house to check up on her little brother Tony, and ends up telling him a lot more than she ever would have imagined about why she and Jesse are no longer friends.

The next day at school, I don’t get much done. I can’t stop thinking about Lindsey, and I overhear too many people talking about her in classrooms and the breezeway. By the time lunch rolls around, the rumors have gotten so colossally outrageous, they have Lindsey dealing cocaine to the athletic staff and that she was the victim of a Mexican cartel assassination attempt.

Gonna go out on a limb and say no.

But I don’t say that to any of the kids I hear talking about her. That would mean, you know. Speaking to people. Not the sort of thing I do voluntarily.

I decide I should check in on Tony again. I didn’t see him at school. While we don’t regularly cross paths since we’re in different grades, he’s usually around the quad with the other skaters—like Jesse—during lunch.

Not today.

So after I get off the city bus after school, instead of taking the right turn toward my neighborhood, I head east toward Smitty’s, a grocery store that has a great deli and bakery department. I pick out a container of mixed fresh cookies, then walk to Lindsey’s.

There aren’t any cars in the driveway when I get there, which sucks. And there seems to be an almost visible cloud hanging over the house, like something you’d see in a Peanuts comic strip. It’s strange, considering how bright and shiny the day is outside.

While I continue moving up the sidewalk, figuring I should at least knock and see if anyone’s here, I see someone pass as a shadow behind the picture window.

I march up to the front door and ring the bell.

Tony answers. He’s got a black hoodie on, bangs handing low over his face. “Hey.”

“Hey, Tony,” I say, and lift the cookies. “These are for you. I know it’s not enough. I was just—I’m not sure how to help.”

Tony sort of shrugs and takes the cookies. “That’s cool. Thanks.”

“So, how is she?”

Normally at school these days, Tony walks with his head at a severe tilt so his thick bangs will sway just right with his teen-boy swagger. Now, though, he lifts his chin and seems to look past me, away at the afternoon sun.

“Not, um. You know. Not great. She had surgery on her back. I don’t know if she’ll…”

“I’m sorry,” I jump in quickly. “I can totally leave.”

He leans against the door frame. “I mean, she’s like alive and whatever. So like that’s cool. But they don’t know yet if she’ll be able to, you know. Walk and stuff.”

My stomach cramps. “Walk?” I whisper. “She might not be able to walk?”

Tony, unable to help being fourteen, shrugs quickly like it doesn’t matter. “That’s what my parents said.”

I see him swallow as he lowers his head again.

He’s obviously trying to keep up his tough skater guy thing, but it’s always been an act, and the act is crumbling. He loves his sister.

“I’m so sorry, Tony,” I say.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. He leans back into the house and sets the cookie package on something—probably the little end table by the door. I remember it from yesterday.

And from years ago.

“So what happened with you and Red?” Tony says suddenly, crossing his arms and looking at me with his one uncovered eye like a pirate.

The question sends a jolt down my body. “Sorry, what?”

“Red. You guys had some kinda fight or something, but he won’t talk about it.”

It actually takes me a couple seconds to connect all the dots. “Jesse,” I say. “You mean Jesse.”

Tony shrugs and keeps staring at me.

I did not see this coming, and it’s not exactly something I care to relive.

When I face Tony again, though, and see the hurt in his eyes—well, the one eye I can see, anyway—I think I get the message.

Maybe Tony cares about me and Jesse, and maybe he doesn’t. Either way, hearing about it beats doing whatever he was doing alone in the house while his sister recovers in the hospital where she may or may not ever walk again.

It would be a distraction, and that’s what he really wants and needs.

Fighting to withhold a sigh, I say, “Can I come in?”

Tony moves out of the way.

I walk inside close the door before sitting on the couch, facing the window. The TV has breaking news, something about Saddam Hussein and Kuwait, wherever that is. Tony snaps off the TV, picks up the Smitty’s box, and says, with a smarmy grin, “Cookie?”

I take one for spite, even as I appreciate that I’m helping to give him his usual snarky attitude back. Even if just for a little while.

“Thanks,” I say sarcastically back.

Tony takes the easy chair, rocking back and forth a bit while biting into a peanut butter cookie.

Before I can start, Tony says, “Is it true Red competed against Stacy Peralta?”

“Well, kinda,” I say. “But that’s part of the story.’

Tony’s eyes—eye—opens wide and he motions for me to continue.

I take a bite of my own chocolate macadamia nut cookie, chew it for a bit, and swallow.

This isn’t going to be great.

“Okay, so, Jesse was a really good skater back in the day. Really good. Especially vert.” I only know these terms from being his friend. And I’m not exaggerating for Tony’s sake. Jesse was ridiculously good in empty pools and halfpipes.

“He’s great now,” Tony says, confused.

“He is. I mean, from what I’ve seen. But back then he was at a whole other level.”

Tony doesn’t look convinced, but takes another bite.

“So, when we were in eighth grade, he got into a tournament,” I go on, then pause to take my own second bite and stall. This whole story is how I got into trouble with Jesse and Lindsey in the first place, so I’m not sure I should be retelling it now. And definitely not to Tony.

On the other hand, as my old grudge flares up, it’s been more than two freaking years. Jesse hates me now anyway, so who cares? I’m telling the story for Tony’s sake, to keep his mind off his sister.

Right?

“Was Peralta there?” Tony asks excitedly. “What about Hawk?”

“Yeah, everyone was there,” I say. “I saw them myself. Cabellero, McGill, Mountain. All them. And, yeah, they were all amazing.”

“No way!” Tony breathes.

“Everyone,” I add, “except Jesse.”

Tony frowns.

“He sort of panicked,” I say. “And froze. It took him forever to start his run, but then he couldn’t even stay on the board. He just kept falling. Even from where I was sitting, I could see his face, he was totally messed up.”

“From bailing?”

“No, he wasn’t hurt. Not like that. Just…crushed. Like, spiritually.”

Tony nods slowly as if trying to process the very notion of such a thing.

“Yeah. So then after the competition, he and I met up behind the concession stand and…look, Tony, I’m telling you all this, okay, but you cannot tell anyone else, because this is how we ended up not talking anymore. Okay?”

He nods quickly. I think he’s good for it.

Of course, that’s what I thought about Kristy Strong in eighth grade.

Still holding the half-eaten cookie in my hand, I continue: “So Jesse basically broke down—”

“Crying?” Tony says, like he can’t believe it.

I nod. It was surprising to me too, at the time. “Yeah. He told me he just totally panicked. Something about the crowd. Like it was one thing to just be skating a pool or a ramp with his friends, but with hundreds of people watching, he got freaked and just couldn’t do the routine. Plus he’s up there with his idols, you know?”

“Wow,” Tony said, then reared back. “But wait. So what? How is that a fight?”

“Right, well, that’s why I’m telling you that you cannot ever say anything that I’m saying, to anyone, ever, because…that’s what I did back then.”

Tony finishes his peanut butter cookie in slow motion, waiting for me to go on.

“The competition was on Saturday, and Monday at school, there was this girl, Kristie Strong. We knew each other, but we weren’t great friends or anything. But she just happens to be the first person I run into that Monday morning. Everyone at school knew Jesse was in the competition, right? So she asks how it went. And I, stupidly, told her the truth. I wasn’t thinking really clearly, to be honest. I thought about Jesse all weekend, and I was hurt that he was hurting. You know? I mean—we were close.”

I shut my eyes and rub my forehead. I can feel all this like it happened yesterday.

“I called, I went over…he didn’t’ want to talk to anyone all weekend. So I tell Kristie what happened, just to get it off my chest. And she seems really, like, invested. She’s really sad for him. Then the bell rings, which sort of snaps me back to reality, and I tell her—I specifically say—do not tell anyone any of this. And Kristy says she won’t.”

“Oh, shit,” Tony says.

“Right. She did. She told freaking everyone, Tony. I mean, she may as well have gotten on the PA system and made an announcement. I don’t know what her deal was. To this day, I don’t know. And I never found out because her family moved out of town a week later.”

“Suck!” Tony says, reaching for another cookie.

“Yeah. Okay, but then, of course, Jesse finds out. Someone says something to him, makes a joke or something, and he comes running at me during lunch that day, and just unloads. Like, total meltdown. Yelling, screaming. At one point, I thought he was going to shove me.”

My heart rate picks up just thinking about it.

“Called me a fucking bitch,” I go on, unable to stop the words now that the story is coming out. “Just awful shit. So, to be fair, I’m just, like, scared to death and start yelling back at him, not even meaning to. I couldn’t think—it was so sudden and so unlike him. It was scary.”

I set the remainder of my cookie aside. I can’t finish it.

Rubbing my hands on my jeans, I say, “So now we’re both screaming these terrible things at each other until a couple of teachers finally show up, break it up, and send us to the office, where he gets suspended for two days.”

“And you?” Tony says, leaning forward like he’s hooked on every word.

“No, not me,” I admit. “I don’t know why. Maybe because they knew he started it, or because I’m a girl, or because he was a skater…you know how people are with skaters.”

Tony snorts and nods. Skaters around town aren’t exactly accorded a lot of patience from the public. Some of it is earned—there’s a segment of the street skaters who definitely don’t give a care about, say, property damage. But most of them just want to be left alone to skate in peace, though the cops and other adults in town aren’t about to let that happen if they can stop it.

“And…that was that,” I say, as a familiar sense of helplessness washes through me. “It was stupid, I know. But we just both got out of control. I mean, I meant to apologize the next time I saw him, but he wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t even look at me. We’ve barely talked ever since.”

“Dude,” Tony says.

“Yeah.” I peer at him. “But he…never said anything? To you guys?”

I’m referring to the skaters Jesse and Tony hang out with that I’ve seen at school.

Tony shakes his head. “Nah, man. Never.”

I sit back into the couch, thinking at first that that’s good—at least he doesn’t walk around talking shit about me. I don’t talk shit about him, either. When high school started just a few months after our fight, we were able to blend into our own groups and not really have to deal with each other all that much.

All the same, there’s a sense of finality to Tony’s confirmation that Jesse doesn’t talk about me at all. I mean, if he did—even if it was bad—it would mean I mattered somehow. Clearly, I don’t.

I’m surprised at how much that bothers me all of a sudden.

I give myself a shake. No reason to let this bother me right now while Lindsey’s in the freaking hospital.

“So. Anyway. Is there anything I can do for you?” I ask Tony.

The question seems to remind him, too, of his sister’s situation. His shoulders slump. “No,” he says. “I’m just supposed to stay here until Mom or Dad comes home. I don’t even know when that’ll be.”

“Well…we could do something,” I suggest. “Play a game, or—”

Through the picture window, I see Jesse skate along the sidewalk, tail-grind, and pop his board into his hand, heading for the front door.

“Or just play the hide part of Hide and Seek,” I mutter.