Breaking the Fall Read Online Free Page B

was off-duty, stuffing toast into the slots. The television news was on. That meant you never had to talk in the mornings. You could always become absorbed in the national weather.
    I was wondering, though, how my mother might look to a man her own age. Whether she was pretty. She had dark, very curly hair, almost nappy hair, and long, thin arms. At a Christmas party once, champagne-bright, she had said she was part everything: Cherokee, Irish, Armenian, Spanish.
    She watched the toaster, and the toaster made a click, and then a wrinkle of heat danced above it, as always when the toast was about to pop.
    My mother played a lot of tennis, and watched videos of tennis stars talking about how to serve. She would practice in front of the television, serving with an imaginary racket. She was always happy when she came back after playing at Strawberry Canyon. Before I hurt my leg, she and I would go to the courts and hit the ball back and forth, informally. I think we were both sure the other would win if we kept score. She played a lot better than I did, although I wasn’t bad. Sometimes I would win a compliment from her on my backspin.
    â€œNew dress,” I said.
    â€œSkirt,” she answered.
    I held the swinging door open with my weight and, after a while, it seemed to want to shut. It continued to grow heavier as I stood there, “It looks nice,” I said.
    She looked at me for the first time, with the slightest of smiles, and I saw that she was, really, pretty. “Silk/wool,” she said. A little laugh again, remembering, perhaps, the store, or the price. “Sinful.”
    You didn’t have to see it on the five minutes of local news beside the toaster. She was on her way. Seattle had been wonderful for her. She didn’t even look tired. She was going places.
    My goal for today was to avoid Jared, and my second goal was to talk to Sky again, because for all my faith in her—and that’s what it was, faith—I had spoken to her only from time to time, just to say hello. She had watched me play baseball, when I was still playing, including one or two real terrible plays, one of my Face Specials, my eye socket as a sort of secondary fielder’s glove.
    Today would be an important day. That was what I promised myself. All I had to do was talk to Sky, and Jared—surely I could avoid him.
    He was waiting for me somewhere. I would see him soon, leaning against a telephone pole or slouching out of a 7-Eleven. He wouldn’t call out. He would smile, and he would shake out a cigarette for me, and I would take it.
    I couldn’t help it. I wanted to impress Jared. I wanted that more than anything. But I wanted something else.
    I wanted that fear again, that fear that finally turned to light.
    I wanted to feel alive.

7
    The new school was right across the football field from where the old one had blown up. The old school had been a craggy, castlelike building, ugly but impressive, as though a high school might be attacked by something supernatural, a dragon or a giant.
    The new Wilson School was a series of low buildings with flat roofs, gray and off-gray. You saw the backboards of the basketball court and the big yellow loop of the track around the football field before you saw the buildings. If these walls collapsed they wouldn’t hurt anyone. You’d shake them off like so much bulletin board material that had just happened to fall down.
    Some people liked sitting in the buildings, but everyone with lungs and blood in their bodies stayed out on the football stands. There was always something to watch. There were fights, and you could watch the drug corner across the street—even on the days when the cops staked it out, expensive cars cruised by.
    Before school I sat exactly as I always did, smoking with Jared. Jared stubbed his cigarettes out on the heads of the bolts that held the bleachers together. That way the yellow paint didn’t get charred.
    â€œThe same