Demon Derby

1
Once upon a time, whenever I saw a tall building, I wanted to jump off it.
I wasn’t suicidal; I’d just always been a thrill seeker. But things changed. Instead of leaping off buildings and other assorted obstacles, I started taking a daily walk.
One day I walked to the Ice Dream Hut for a peanut butter shake, because I figured I deserved a treat. Besides, I thought the creamy frozen goodness might distract me from how crappy things were. At least, that was what I hoped.
On the way home, I found myself standing under a leafless maple across from the high school when the last bell rang. School wasn’t something I missed; I’d rather be working on a trick, or on wheels, or maybe training at the dojo. There was a certain rush in mastering a new move. I missed that. I missed sitting at lunch with a crew of assorted friends, planning a new freerunning video or talking a little smack. Geometry and American lit and endless memorization of historical factoids I’d never use again? Only a masochist would miss those things. So the longing I felt looking at the squat brick building surprised me more than a little.
Within seconds, the doors flew open, spilling out a deluge of my former classmates. Homeschooling wasn’t so bad; my parents generally left me to my own devices, and it kept my compromised immune system away from all the germs. But when the gangly, curly-haired figure of my best friend, Kyle, appeared in the stream of exiting students, I had to swallow a lump in my throat before I shouted his name.
“Hey, Kyle!” I clutched the half-empty foam cup to my chest and waved my hand overhead. “Over here!”
“Casey!” He crossed the full length of the parking lot at an easy jog, his hands clutching the waistband of his cargo shorts. At the end of October, South Carolina was still plenty warm enough for shorts, and I wasn’t complaining. Kyle wasn’t the intentional-droopy-pants type, more the too-skinny-to-find-clothes-that-fit type. “What are you doing here and why are you bald again?”
He was still shouting. The constant screeching came off as obnoxious but wasn’t really his fault. He had permanent hearing loss in his right ear from a bad skateboard spill a couple of years ago. I’d been there. I still had nightmares on occasion that prominently featured his bleeding head.
I ran a hand over my smoothly shaven scalp. “My hair came back patchy. It was either resort to a comb-over to hide the bald spot or embrace the hairlessness. It doesn’t look stupid, does it? If it does, I can pass it off as part of my costume for tonight.”
“No way. I told you before; you’ve got a nice head. So what’s up? ” The question came off insistent this time, and I realized I’d worried him by showing up out of the blue like this. I’d never come to meet him at school before, so he’d probably assumed the worst the moment he saw me.
“Chill, okay? I just happened to be passing by.” I fixed him with a mock glare. “Why? Am I intruding on a rendezvous with someone you haven’t told me about yet?”
He threw an arm around my neck and pulled me close. It wasn’t a romantic hug; we’d never been like that, even though everyone assumed “best friends” really meant “secretly in love with each other.” As if. It would have been like making out with my brother, except I didn’t have one.
Maybe I imagined the hesitation in his voice before he said, “Nope.” But we’d been friends for ten years, so I was pretty good at reading him.
“Come on, spill it.” I pushed away and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “If I’m messing with your mojo, I need to know.”
He grinned down at me, his mouth opening so wide that it practically cracked his face in half. He had the biggest mouth, like Steven Tyler huge. One time, he put a cue ball in it. “Nothing to spill. I got my favorite lady in the whole world on my arm. And if I had a second-favorite lady, I’d bring her to my first-favorite lady to be preapproved.”
“As you should.”
“Naturally.” He paused again, his face screwing up into an expression of concern that didn’t sit well on him. Kyle had been the carefree type until my diagnosis. Now he erred on the side of caution, especially where I was concerned. It was a far cry from the guy who used to race me up streetlights at night for kicks. “Can I walk you home?”
I took a sip of my half-melted drink, shaking my head. “Seriously, Ky. Why are you trying to get rid of me?”
He ran a hand through his hair, looking over his shoulder. The rest of the crew was descending the school steps--Willow and Luke on their skateboards, Lupo and Benji trotting alongside. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they were doing; we’d always gone out to work on our moves a few days a week after school. Mackinaw University, where my parents worked, was only a few blocks away, and it was full of accessibility ramps and handrails, benches and tall walls perfect for boarders and freerunners to practice on. Kyle was a competitive boarder, and I’d gotten into freerunning in junior high. Freerunning’s a bit like gymnastics, but instead of practicing set moves in a gym, you find your own obstacles wherever you want and freestyle your way across them. There’s something about treating the world like a playground to be explored that always appealed to me.
But now Kyle obviously didn’t want me to come, and I tried not to take it personally. Getting sick had turned me from a jumper-of-random-objects type into a frail-patient type in a matter of weeks. But I was in remission now, and I hated that nothing had changed. I still slept all the time. I watched TV. I did my schoolwork at the kitchen table, and then I went back to bed again. The old Casey was gone, and I’d started to worry she wasn’t ever coming back.
It was that fear more than anything else that made me push away from Kyle and greet the rest of the gang with a grin. “Hey, guys!” I said. “Mind if I tag along?”
Kyle fixed a pleading look on me, but I ignored it, sucking down the rest of my drink while everyone else cheered like my showing up was a major accomplishment. Maybe it was. Maybe instead of waiting for my old life to come back, I had to go out and get it.
We wandered down the street. Everyone was talking and goofing off just like old times, except that I didn’t know what three quarters of their jokes meant, and I could either fake laugh along with the crowd or follow in stony silence. All overprotectiveness aside, Kyle seemed to pick up on how I was feeling; he trailed the group alongside me with his hands shoved into his pockets. We didn’t talk, but then again, we didn’t need to.
They went straight for the main parking structure without bothering to consult us, which was fine, because I don’t know where I would have chosen to go had they asked. Pre-diagnosis, my mind had been full of new challenges to try and buildings to scale. But now I didn’t even know where to start. Going back to precision jumps from brick to brick was depressing, not to mention boring as hell. But a full-on wall climb? I rubbed the patch of tender skin at the base of my neck where my PICC tube had been and tried to convince myself that it was adrenaline, not fear, building in my belly. As soon as I took my first step, the nerves would fade like they always did, and it would be just me and the obstacle. The way it should be.
As we climbed the stairs to the third floor of the parking garage, which was usually deserted by this time of day, I told myself to chill but failed to listen. The worried looks Kyle kept flashing me didn’t help. Luckily, Luke popped his board up, snatched it out of the air, and dropped back to walk with us. It gave me something to concentrate on other than the urge to smack my best friend upside the head.
“So . . .” Luke was looking at me like I’d gotten topped with wings and a halo when I wasn’t paying attention. Another person who thought chronic illness made you nigh-angelic. I was always tempted to spit on those people just to see how they’d react.
“So, what?” I asked, trying not to huff. Despite the doctor-prescribed walks, stairs still tired me out.
“You’re coming back to school senior year, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We decided I’d homeschool for the rest of junior year. I have a lot of ground to make up if I want to graduate on time. And the idea of staying in that hellhole another year without you guys?” I shuddered. It was only half theatrics.
He winced right along with me. “No kidding. Well, do you think they’d still let you do Spectacle? I’m putting together a sketch, and I need your mad ninja skills.”
Spectacle was the school’s spring talent show. I’d been in major demand for skits ever since freshman year, when I’d pretended to beat the crap out of the JV offensive line in mock combat. The best part about that sketch had been the costumes. I’d been dressed like Princess Leia, and the football players had worn Stormtrooper uniforms.
“You still got the moves, right? I mean, after . . .” Luke waved his hands, like he’d decided to finish the sentence in sign language because he couldn’t bear to say the c-word out loud. Because if he said the word “cancer,” he might get it. Wuss.
“I don’t know if they’d let me in or not,” I said. “You’d have to ask.”
“Will do,” he replied.
We emerged from the stairwell into the open expanse of the parking garage. And despite the fact that I was barely managing not to gasp for breath, I walked straight for the safety wall, propelled by frustration. Every time I tried for a little normalcy, the leukemia thing hit me again. It felt like people weren’t going to see me as anything but a poor little cancer girl for the rest of my life, and it made me want to hit something.
I boosted myself onto the ledge, looking out into the empty space between the parking garage and the adjoining Arts and Sciences building, ignoring Kyle’s worried voice behind me. “Be careful!” he barked. “That’s dangerous.” He must have thought I was stupid. Of course it was dangerous; that was why I was doing it. If I didn’t push myself a little, I might just fade away entirely.
My heart began to thump as my body realized what I was intending, and my hands developed the familiar tremor that comes with a big jolt of adrenaline. But this time the rush held a new edge of fear, a little voice that whispered how stupid this was, that I should be resting, that I wasn’t strong enough. Little cancer girls don’t do stunts, the voice reminded me. They decorate posters and look pitiful. That’s what you’re good for now.
Damn voice. The only way to prove it wrong was to make the jump, and I couldn’t do it while I was distracted. So I pushed away the doubt as best I could, reaching up to run my fingers over the smooth silver of my lucky katana necklace. I could do this. I knew that edge like I knew the back of my hand. Three stories up, a flat expanse of well-manicured grass at the bottom broken by a stretch of sidewalk. The side of the Arts and Sciences building, almost close enough to touch. A single bar atop the safety wall separated me from the air. I stepped over it, ignoring the assorted hoots and yells behind me as different members of the crew urged me forward or back. They’d understand later how much I needed this. I’d prove myself to them. And to me.
I pictured the trick from beginning to end, every detail sharp in my mind--the swing of my arms, the momentum in my core, the press of my foot against the brick, the precise placement of each step. Only then did I push off the ledge.
“Casey!”
Kyle’s panicked yell threw off my concentration, and I felt the swoop of air as he reached for my legs and missed. I would have been offended if I hadn’t been suddenly terrified. Why had I thought this was a good idea? Now that I was airborne, the three-story drop seemed much higher than it ever had before. I’d always felt immortal when I’d been freerunning. But now I knew without a doubt that I was mortal. I felt a sudden urge to grab for the safety of the railing, but I was already committed.
My brain might have been scrambled with fear, but my legs remembered what to do. I planted my foot against the Arts and Sciences building as I fell, pushed off at an angle, and hurtled toward the parking structure again. I bounced back and forth between the buildings like a Ping-Pong ball, keeping my momentum in check as I descended toward the ground. My body was in it just the way it needed to be; it knew all the moves and executed them flawlessly. But instead of that feeling of freedom and triumph I’d always gotten from freerunning, I wanted nothing more than the safety of the ground again. It wasn’t thrilling to defy death anymore.
My shoes touched the grass. I landed just right--knees soft to absorb the shock, body canted forward to transfer my momentum into an effortless run. But my legs buckled underneath me, spilling me to the concrete. My jeans ripped; the skin underneath tore open. I reflexively threw my hands out to protect my face, sacrificing the skin off both palms.
I rolled into the cool springiness of the grass and just lay there, trying to catch my breath. I didn’t know what had gone wrong. Had my mind been too weak, or had my body? Either way, the only thing I’d proven was that I’d lost my edge.
Kyle yelled, “Are you okay, Case? Stay there! We’ll call an ambulance.”
Very few things could have gotten me to my feet, but that worked. “No!” I yelped, shoving myself up. The scrapes weren’t bad; I’d had much worse. It was the failure that I couldn’t deal with. “I’m fine,” I added. “Just a little road rash.”
“Are you sure?” Willow leaned over the side of the building like she might be able to evaluate the state of my knees from thirty feet up. “That was a bad spill.”
“Totally sure.” I plastered a grin on my face and raised my stinging hands overhead in a gesture of mock triumph, trying to make light of the situation. “Next time, I’ll stick the landing.”