Apology by Jon Pineda (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

Too many times to count, he would pray that the chains on their bicycles would snap. Not so that there would be an accident, but so that he could find his old friends outside his house, crouched beside the bicycles’ pedals. He would imagine himself running into the garage to bring out his father’s tools. Wrenches and grease. Pliers too. All of it he would use to find a way to make it right again, so that they could ride off from where he would be standing in the road, a smile on his face, his friends telling the others that he was not bad, that no harm would befall them for treating him as they used to treat him. He was still their friend. He was still a boy.

He had found a tear in one of the arteries.

Some evenings he would sit on the steps of the front porch and watch the others race down the street. They were so fast. He had tried to bring out his bicycle, to race too, but they were gone.

He wondered if that had ever happened. The boys vanished so quickly, they had made it a point to leave him. His part of the street grew quiet. He didn’t blame them. How could he blame them?

Whenever he thought he wanted to be part of the games, he would think instead of what was expected of him. The quiet books in his room, the endless words that waited to live inside his head.

That was the pact he had made with the sky and the empty streets of his childhood. Each night, the conversation of his adult self whispering to him, telling him that it was all going to be okay, that he was going to make it right, he only had to do something extraordinary, and for the rest of his life. That was it. There would be more emptiness because that was the way it was.

He remembered the feeling of emptiness. A hole in the landscape of who he was.

It was there for him each night he dreamed, there for him when he woke in the night screaming. His mother would come into his room and quiet him, and he would fall asleep hearing her sing, or what he thought was her singing. He didn’t know if it was his mother or the girl. Things he learned were meant to fill the days.

A seam had come undone inside the boy. It filled the screen with red. More gauze and siphoning. The red bloomed again. Someone called out a series of numbers. The speaker’s voice was even, almost calm, but the numbers suggested the blood pressure was dropping. He studied the screen, using it as a guide.

He could not get the bleeding to stop.

If he could get the bleeding to stop, it would be a start.

He felt padded gauze dab his brow. He realized he was sweating more than was normal for him. He had waited too long. The bleeding would not stop.

He wanted to go back to the moment. He wanted to stand among the machinery of that evening and listen to her squeal with excitement. Instead of taking aim, he would hold back. He would do everything the same as he had, except for one thing: the ball would never leave his hand. He would hold onto it. As long as he held the ball to his chest, he would never have to see the emptiness of his life. He would never have to run away.

Someone suggested they had lost him too many times, that it should be called.

“No!” Mario said. This wasn’t a game to call. He knew the boy’s parents were in the waiting room. He could feel them on the other side.

“It’s for me to say when this is over,” Mario said. “Does everyone understand that?”

Teagan had made everyone a gift—tulips of construction paper. She kept asking if she could give Micah the gift she had made for him.

“Then when can I, Tommy?” she said, but Tom did not answer her again.

Rachel had not yet arrived. Tom kept pacing, his face unchanged.

“Did you get her on the phone?” he asked finally.

His mother only nodded.

“Tommy,” Teagan said. “You go get Micah right now. You tell him Aunt Sissy said to come here.”

“Sit down,” Manny said.

“I can’t,” Tom said.

“I’m not talking to you,” his father said. “Sit down, Sissy.”

He walked over to Teagan to get her to take a seat in the chair next to them, but Teagan jerked away. When she did, most of the paper flowers tore apart. They fell to the floor. Tiny ovals littered the ground around her.

Teagan made to scream, but no sound came.

It was as if her voice had disappeared from her throat altogether.

Then a deep breath filled the void.

Tom looked at his sister; her face shuddered. It was obvious this one mess had devastated her. It was more than he understood. She threw her head back and wailed. A sound that came from somewhere inside her.

They could only watch.

When he walked into the waiting room, Mario spotted Teagan. She was standing in a corner and hugging herself. There were Mr. and Mrs. Serafino on the couch. They were much older, but he recognized them. Mrs. Serafino had her arm around a woman and was consoling her.

When Teagan saw who it was, she ran over to him.

“Look, Tommy, look,” she said.

Mario turned around. Tom regarded him.

He wanted to tell Tom he was sorry.

He wanted to tell Teagan most of all.

But now was not the time. That would come later. He would go to their house and tell them how it had happened, how he wished it had never happened. His entire life, it seemed, was hanging on this apology.

“The boy’s fine,” Mario said.

“What?” Tom said. “What did you say?”

He started crying.

They both did.

Where had the years hidden within him? He was still young, though not accomplished in a career