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The gunshot is much louder than I expect, and the muzzle flash is brighter. Then, strangely, my chest burns, and I double over, hugging myself. How did the front hallway get so hot? My hand feels wet as it comes away from my side and I look at it, wondering why it's covered with dark blotches. I've got to sit down, and suddenly the wooden floor rushes up beneath me. The gun has grown too heavy to hold. I know I can't lose it, but if I'm on the floor I guess it's okay to let it slip out of my hand, as long as it stays right beside me.
My eyes burn in the brilliant light, so bright I can hardly see the scene around me any longer. There are too many people in the room. Why are they shoving at me, banging on my chest? I need to sleep - just let me sleep. I can work out what's going on la
ter, if they'll only let me alone. But I can't sleep - the gunshot goes on echoing inside my head, a double thud-thud, thud-thud, Bri-an!
I'm falling. Not the kind of falling you do in dreams, sliding down and suddenly waking up safe before you fall too far. I feel impossibly heavy, yet I'm falling up, toward the ceiling. Except I never actually pass through the ceiling - it just seems to rise with me as I fall higher and higher.
I hear faraway voices.
"Sucking chest wound. The bullet's taken at least two lobes in the right lung."
That's a woman's voice.
"Pupils dilated. He's going into shock."
That's a man, with a high, almost hysterical edge to his voice.
"Get me some Ringer's and a tube set, now."
That's the woman again.When I look down, trying to work out what's happening, I see only the white light, brightening until it becomes impenetrable. I try to reach through it, and suddenly golden light blazes around me - not the electric light I remember from the living room, but the sunlight that fills the upstairs domed room of my father's wood shop. It's as if I've flown there somehow, out of the house and into the shop building - flown out of time, too, because I'm not alone. Amanda sits cross-legged in front of me, strumming her guitar. Amanda - who I haven't seen since that horrible day in August, seven long months ago. And in spite of the burning in my chest and my confusion, joy surges up inside of me at the sight of her.
She hasn't changed one bit. She's wearing that full crepe skirt that drapes across her legs like rippling water, and her long blonde hair drifts down over her face as she fingers the guitar strings. Beside her rests the conch shell that calls to her from unseen oceans.
She looks up as if no time has passed at all, and smiles as she says, "So it's true, Brian, isn't it?" Her voice hasn't changed. It still has that lilt to it that makes her words almost sing, even when she's only speaking.
"What?" I ask. I realize my own guitar rests across my knees. Without lifting it to actually finger a chord I stroke the strings, just letting them hum softly underneath her stronger melody.
"Remember? We wondered once whether our whole life really could pass before us, just as we're about to die," Amanda says.
I shiver, remembering the day last summer when we talked about death. Her father had stopped a suspicious driver who turned out to be a mule carrying drugs to be sold in another state. Amanda's father could have been killed, because the courier was armed and dangerous. It was just luck that the mule didn't think the police could make his plates - he figured he could just take the speeding ticket and go on down the road instead of getting arrested. In the end, it was a big bust for her father, but it scared Amanda. She might complain when he was working long hours or out with the guys, and she might be furious with him when he fought with her mother, but she'd light up like sunrise when he made time for her. And she was so proud of him for being a good cop who caught real bad guys. She'd just never realized that being a hero could mean you ran the risk of being killed.
"Yeah," I say. "I remember."
"Well, it does," she says. "But do you think we get the chance to change anything?"
My hand flattens the guitar strings, silencing them. "Change anything?" I repeat stupidly. "What do you mean?"
But time is tilting, and Amanda can't hear my words because I'm falling again, falling up, leaving her bent over her guitar, going on in the memory without me. A different scene unfolds before my eyes, and I slide into it, letting cold January sunlight fill my mind. My teammates crowd my driveway, the six of us playing half-court ball like we do year-round, unless snow and ice force us into the gym. The lane opens up and Julius breaks free of Ricky for a second, long enough for my pass to hit his waiting fingers. Then Julius goes up for a sweeping jump shot and puts the ball in the hole for three.
Stu's cheers drown out the chorused groans from Ricky, Irv, and Ray, but I find myself looking over my shoulder, down my driveway, across the cul-de-sac to the empty house. I'm willing Amanda to be seated on the sun-bleached deck chair on the front porch where she can see us, smiling and clapping for my pass. It must be part of a pattern too hard to break, because I know she won't be there ever again. There's nothing left except the shell of a house, cut off from the living world by locked doors and darkened windows. The police took down the barrier of yellow crime-scene tape last fall, but it's as if some ghost of it remains, warning us that it protects spirits that once lived, watching eyes that are still too strong to resist....
Without Amanda, I keep shooting hoops after the guys leave, going through my regular practice until I lose myself in the driving, rhythmic beat of the basketball's bounces that drown out the sounds that can distract you during a real game - the squeaking of rubber soles on the polished court, the shouts of the players or cheers of the crowd, the zebra's whistle, the trash-talking in a one-on-one street game. One long step, bounce, then it slaps my hand, two quick steps, no traveling, bounce, slapping my hand again, leap, the pebbled texture urging my hands to angle the ball, shoot, then the rattle off the backboard for a sweet layup.
Each bounce makes a hollow, empty, echoing sound like the isolated thump of a heart that has lost its reason for beating. Once on the concrete driveway, a second time on the concrete, the third bounce off the backboard, loud enough to drown out one, two, three gunshots. And the whisper of the ball swishing through the hoop covers the sighs of the dying. If I pause to listen for those other sounds, the ball comes back to me, each bounce smaller and softer, until it rolls reluctantly over the uneven concrete, as if apologizing for those hollow bangs, hiding its guilt by begging me to pick it up again and forget everything in a perfect shot.
Except I can't make that shot, not like Julius's soaring hook. Layups, yes. An occasional three-pointer from the sideline. Most of my free throws, and nearly all my passes. But not the perfect pressure distance shot that makes fans freeze in awe and makes reporters and college scouts check your jersey for a name. Not the shot I know Dad wants to see swish through the net, the one that makes everyone point to me and say He's the best. Dad says it anyway, and wants it to be true. But I know it's not. And the basketball knows it too. Its driving rhythm takes on words:
Good - but not
good - enough.
Good - but just
se - cond best.
The ball sounds regretful, but final.
Copyright ©2005 by Elaine Marie Alphin