Page 15

Too Bad

Mia

I don’t even bother locking up my bike when I find him.

The January air is bitter cold against my cheeks and nose as I ditch my bike just off the trail, eyes on where Aleks is slumped on the beach. He’s alone, the only one brave enough to sit by Lake Michigan as the wind whips in icy and brutal.

I wrap my coat tighter around me as I approach him, and though my teeth are already chattering, I don’t ask him what the hell he’s doing, or tell him he’s crazy, or pull at his arm until he stands and leaves with me.

I just plop down next to him in the cold sand.

On a winter day like this one, the lake feels apocalyptic — its water deep and dark, white caps crashing, each wave letting out a roar of warning.

Aleks is burrowed into his puffy jacket, the hood pulled up over his beanie, arms wrapped around his knees. He rocks slightly as he stares off into the distant waters, and I can just barely see the tip of his red nose.

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t have any experience with death, with grief of this magnitude.

I don’t know how any words could alleviate a pain so sharp.

Aleks has lived with us for seven months now. He was quiet at first — so much so that the kids at school made fun of him when the year first started up. They assumed he didn’t know how to speak English. He proved them wrong when he perfectly cursed out Ben Harmon before punching him so hard in the nose, it cracked and spurted blood everywhere.

Since then, I’ve watched every girl in our school crush on him, and every boy try to be his friend. He’s dated a few of those girls. I’ve watched him kiss them in front of our house from the safety of my bedroom window. And he’s hung out with some of the guys on his hockey team, but he always seems to keep them at a distance.

For some reason, Aleks is only himself around me and my family.

But now, I worry we may lose him, too.

Aleks doesn’t talk much about home. He doesn’t write to any friends or girlfriends back in Switzerland, doesn’t regale us with tales of growing up playing hockey or share family memories. When we ask, he clips out the straight, often-times terribly sad truths.

His parents were drug addicts.

His birth mother died, and his dad gave him up before he died, too.

He doesn’t remember them.

He doesn’t try to.

But if there’s one person Aleks loves to talk about, it’s his foster mom — Annaliese.

It’s the only time I ever see his real smile, the only time I see him light up about anything he talks about other than hockey. When he tells us about Annaliese, he beams with pride and love. He brags on her cooking, laughs as he recounts her silly dancing and how she’d make a game out of moving pots and buckets under each spot in their leaky roof when it rained. He has a picture of the two of them on his dresser in the guest room where he’s staying, and he never misses their weekly Sunday calls.

My father offered to fly her to Chicago for Christmas, but she declined. We assumed it was because she’s got three other kids still under her care. We understand now that it was because she was too sick to travel that far.

I’ll never get the chance to meet the woman Aleks loves so much.

And sitting next to him, I know she took a piece of him with her when she left this Earth.

I’m sorry.

The words are on the tip of my tongue, but my mouth is too dry to say them. They sound so weak and tired and not enough.

Instead, I just sit next to him. I try to keep steady where he can’t stop moving. I try to stay calm because I know there’s a storm raging in his heart.

“You should go home,” he says after a while. His voice is strained, like there’s a hand around his throat.

“I will when you do.”

“It’s too cold out here.”

“I have my coat.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

“I don’t need a time.”

“I want to be alone.”

“Too bad.”

He finally looks at me with that remark, and I cock a brow at him, daring him to try to argue.

This is how we’ve been since the summer. I learned quickly that Aleks Suter didn’t respond to meek.

He scares everyone else around him — his teammates, our peers at school, sometimes even my parents.

But he never scares me.

Because I see it, that thing he tries so desperately to hide with his scowls and his scars and his bad attitude.

He thinks no one in his life is meant to stay. He thinks he lives a life so terrible, no one could possibly understand or relate. He thinks he’s alone and that’s just how it’s meant to be.

I don’t know why I’m determined to prove him wrong, but I am.

When I don’t budge, his stare softens a bit, his nose and eyes red from the cold wind. He’s only seventeen, but he somehow looks so much older, as if he’s lived a thousand lives he can’t tell a single soul about. His skin is pale, his face long, eyes dull and tired.

He’s still handsome, though.

He’s always that.

With a sigh, Aleks relents, realizing I’m not going anywhere. He still has his hands in the pockets of his coat, but he sticks an elbow out, a silent invitation for me to slide closer and slip my arm through his.

When I do, I have to fight not to sigh myself at the instant warmth. I snuggle in closer to him, laying my head on his shoulder.

I talk to Aleks about more than I talk to anyone else about. Even Jessie, my best friend at school, doesn’t know the things I confide to Aleks. I don’t know how it happened, but Aleks earned my trust.

Sure, I want to smack him upside the head more times than not for being a stupid jerk, for teasing me or just being dumb with his own well-being, but still…

He’s always there for me, and for some reason, it’s just easy to tell him things I never tell anyone else.

I don’t know if he feels the same, but I do know that I like when he talks back to me. I like when he listens, but it’s better when he talks, too. I like when he tells me about Switzerland, when he shows me pictures of the mountains he used to climb in the summers and the lakes he’d skate in the winter when Annaliese found a way to afford them traveling. I like when he confides in me about hockey, when he tells me something is challenging him.

But for the most part, Aleks isn’t the talking kind. He likes to be quiet, and I don’t mind that, either.

So, I settle in, content to stay quiet and just be there next to him.

He surprises me when he speaks.

“I didn’t even get to see her,” he whispers. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

My heart breaks at his admission.

I squeeze his arm, letting him know I hear him. Once again, the words I’m sorry feel too weak to speak out loud.

“I shouldn’t have left,” Aleks says. “I should have stayed with her. I should have been there.”

“No,” I argue, shaking my head and sitting up straight. I wait for Aleks to look at me. “Annaliese wanted you to come here, Aleks. She wanted it more than anything in the world. She wanted you to have your dream.”

“She was always putting everyone else before her.”

I smile softly. “For some people, that’s how they show their love.”

He swallows, and then, the impossible happens.

His eyes flood with tears faster than he can hide them.

And in fact, he doesn’t hide them.

He keeps those endless brown eyes on mine long after the first tears streak down his cheeks, freezing on his skin before he has the chance to swipe them away.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this without her,” he croaks.

“I don’t know either,” I confess. “But I can promise you one thing. You won’t have to do it alone.”

His eyes search mine like he doesn’t quite believe me. But slowly, his brows soften, his bottom lip trembling.

And then, on the wind-whipped shore of Lake Michigan, Aleks Suter breaks.

When the first sob racks his body, I throw my arms around him, pulling him into me as best I can as a girl half his size. He curls up like a little boy, his head on my chest, his arms clinging to me as he cries and cries.

I don’t rush him. I don’t try to comfort him, either. I just hold him and let him feel every heartbreaking second of a moment I know will shape his life forever.

After a while, he settles, the tears drying up as he sniffles and holds tight to me.

“Mia?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re my best friend.”

My heart aches in a way I’ve never experienced when he says it, in a way that tells me maybe this is a moment that will shape my life, too.

“You’re my best friend, too, Aleks.”

We stay on that cold beach until dusk, until Aleks insists we have to go home so my dad doesn’t worry.

But when we get home, I sneak into his room after Mom and Dad are asleep.

I hold him until the sun rises.