Perfectly Ernest

Chapter Three

I hiked across the parking lot, wandering beneath one halogen lamp after another. The golden halos of light they gave off did little to scare away the shadows in my mind. Thoughts of loss and betrayal ate me alive from the inside out. I squeezed my hands open and closed, stabbing the soft flesh of my palms with my nails.

My motorcycle was parked at the far end—a good five hundred yards from where we’d been dropped off—but in the bus, on the trip back, the walk down the aisle to my seat had seemed much longer. Some of the guys had donned their headphones, undoubtedly trying to let the tunes drown out the pain of the loss. Others stared straight ahead, bloodshot eyes boring into the seats in front of them. None of them had looks or words for me.

 So I took my quiet spot at the back and read poetry on my phone, like I always did on the bus ride home after games. I’d hoped making the outside appear normal would force the inside to mirror, but that had failed spectacularly with the first poem I pulled up.

It was another Robert Frost called A Late Walk, and it was a doozy of a downer about—as far as I could tell—a guy walking through a garden realizing he has screwed up with his girl. One line particularly gnawed at me:

A tree beside the wall stands bare,

But a leaf that lingered brown,

Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

Comes softly rattling down.

Exactly like the poor bastard in the garden, I’d wrecked everything. Not with a girl—thankfully, I’d learned to keep them at a safe distance over the years—but my twisted, fucking brain had shaken the last leaf from a tree I’d been intent on killing my entire life. I was free.

Thing was, now that my mother’s dream for me was all but dead, I wanted grab all the leaves and try to put them back on the damned tree. Like a kid trying to convince the little brother he’d punched not to cry, I yearned to undo all of the harm I’d caused my friends, the fans, hell, maybe even to the Walrus. But the adult in me knew better. There was nothing left to do but move on.

And at the heart of it, wasn’t that what I’d wanted? To move on? Now, there was nothing keeping me from flying solo. No team. No Junkyard. No expectations. Just me living out my flawed life.

I adjusted the strap on my book bag and stared at the sky as I walked the final few feet to my bike. There were either a million stars out or my eyes were watering so much they turned the single lamp above me into a thousand points of diamond light. In either case, I felt small. And alone.

 Note to self: Quit reading Robert Frost when you’re highly emotional.

I fished in my pocket until I felt the cold, metal clasp of my keychain. I set my bag down beside the bike and pulled out my helmet. It was black, shiny, and sleek—like my motorcycle. The cycle was about the only thing I owned in the world. I’d bought it with the little bit of insurance money that had come to me after Mom died.

A solution sped into my consciousness as I wrapped my hand over the throttle. I could put the helmet on the ground, straddle the bike, hit one-hundred-and-twenty MPH in about a block, find the nearest tree or brick wall, and—

“Ernie?”

“Huh?” I spun around, restraining from throwing my helmet on instinct.

Coach Ramirez poked his head out of the driver’s side window of a turtle-like hybrid car in the parking lot beside my motorcycle. I hadn’t heard him pull up.