A Heart to Heal

“Huh?”

“First one to the end of the gym and back gets ice cream.”

Simon just looked at him. Who’d been keeping this poor kid under glass? Max chose to ignore the uncertainty written on the boy’s face and pretend his silence was a bargaining tactic.

“Okay, then, two ice creams and you get a three-second lead,” he conceded. Max allowed himself a sly wink at the guidance counselor. “Ms. Browning said she’d buy.”

“I never...”

Simon started pushing on his wheels. Max whooped. “One...two...three!”

* * *

A sweaty, crazy hour later, Heather had fed every dollar bill and coin she had into the school vending machine as she, Max, JJ and Simon sat on the school’s front steps eating ice cream.

“There’s a whole basketball league,” Max explained to Simon. “And hockey. I’ve even seen a ski team.” She watched Max look Simon up and down. “You’re kinda skinny for the hockey thing, but I saw the way you shot today. Wouldn’t take long for you to hold your own pretty nicely on the court.”

“You outshot me,” JJ offered, licking chocolate off her fingers.

“I’ve always had a chair.” Simon said it as if it was a weak excuse. The embarrassed tone in his voice burrowed into Heather’s heart and made her want to send Jason Kikowitz to Mars.

A red van pulled up, and Heather saw Brian Williams wave his hand out the driver’s side window.

“My dad’s here,” Simon said, tossing his last wrapper into the trash bin and angling toward the wheelchair ramp. At the top of the incline, he paused. “Thanks, Mr. Jones. That was fun.”

“Max,” Max corrected, making a funny face. “Nobody calls me Mr. Jones. Want to go sailing next week?”

Heather watched Simon’s response. His eyes lit up for a moment, then darkened a bit as he heard the door click open and the whrrr of the lift extending out of his parents’ van. “I don’t think my folks would go for it.” Simon’s lack of optimism stung. Heather knew that despite his spot on the Gordon Falls Volunteer Fire Department—or maybe because of it—Simon’s dad was a highly protective father. She’d had a highly protective dad herself—she’d had her own share of medical challenges in high school—but even she had reservations about how far Brian Williams went to keep his son away from any kind of risk.

Max had caught the boy’s disappointment. He waved at the van. “They’ll say yes. Can I come meet them?”

“Um...maybe next time,” Simon said, quickly darting down the ramp.

“Hey, slow down there, Speedy!” Simon’s dad called as the lift platform rattled onto the ground. “Watch that crack there or your wheel might get stuck. You’ve got to take your time on ramps, remember?”

Heather heard Max mutter a few unkind words under his breath. JJ got to her feet. “Speaking of speed, my shift starts in half an hour and I’ve got to run home first.” She gave Heather a hug, then pecked her brother on the cheek and snatched up the sweatshirt she’d been sitting on. “Dinner still on for next Thursday?”

“You bet,” Max said, still staring as Simon was swallowed up by the van’s mechanism. His irritation jutted out in all directions, sharp and prickly. “Does he know how much he’s holding Simon back?” Max nearly growled. “Have you talked to him about it?”

“Hey,” she said. “Cut the dad a little slack here, will you?”

“You know what half of Simon’s problem is?” Max jutted a finger at the van as it pulled away. “That. I was trying to figure out what made Simon such a walking ball of shy and I just got my answer.”

Heather swallowed her own frustration. People were shy for lots of reasons, not just fatherly protectiveness. “So after two hours with the boy, you’ve got him all figured out? Is that it?”

“It doesn’t take a PhD in counseling to figure out they keep that kid under lock and key. He’s afraid of his own shadow, and somebody had to teach him that.”

“Aren’t you coming down awfully hard on someone you hardly even know?”

“Simon’s not sick. Okay, his legs don’t work so hot, but I get how that goes. He could be so much stronger than he is. He could be doing so much more.”

It needed saying. “He’s not you, Max. Not everyone needs to come at this full throttle.” When that just made him frown, Heather tried a different tack. “What were you like in high school?”

“A whole lot different than that. Even as a freshman.”

“I can imagine that.”

Max shook out the mane of shaggy dirty-blond hair that gave him such a rugged look. He was tanned and muscular—the furthest thing imaginable from Simon’s pale, thin features—with mischievous eyes and a smile Heather expected made girls swoon back in high school. She found his not-quite-yet-cleaned-up-bad-boy persona as infuriating as it was intriguing. Max Jones just didn’t add up the way he ought to, and she didn’t know what to do with that.

Max tossed an ice-cream wrapper into the trash bin with all the precision he’d shown on the basketball court. “Truth is,” he said, his voice losing the edge it had held a moment ago, “I was a lot closer to the Kikowitzes of the world than to geeky kids like Simon.” He shot Heather a guilty glance. “Let’s just say I’ve shoved my share of kids into lockers. And, okay, I’m not especially proud of it, but I think I’d rather be that than go through life like Simon.”

Heather tried to picture a teenage Max prowling the halls of GFHS, picking on kids and collecting detention slips. It didn’t take much imagination. “Football team? Motorcycles?”

He laughed, and Heather reminded herself how such charming smiles shouldn’t always be trusted. Sometimes those dashing ways covered some pretty devastating weaknesses. “No,” he corrected her. “Basketball and my dad’s old Thunderbird. Well, before I rolled it my junior year, that is.”

“You were a terror in high school.” She nodded over to the black car with flames and the HTWELZ2 license plate. “It boggles the mind.”

“Very funny. You have no idea how much work it takes to make a car like that look so cool. No way was I going to drive around in some suburban-housewife minivan.” He looked at her, hard. “I’m still the guy I was, and if people can’t take that it comes in a wheeled version now, it’s their problem.”

It was an admirable thought, but his words came with such a defiant edge that Heather wondered how many times a week Max chewed someone’s head off for an ill-phrased remark or just plain ignorance about life with a disability. Bitterness did that to some men. “Maybe that’s just it. Maybe Simon hasn’t figured out who he is yet. I had no idea who I was in high school—I just bumbled around most of the time trying to stay out of the sights of all those mean cheerleader types.” She borrowed Max’s measurement. “I suppose I’d say I was a lot closer to Simon than thugs like Kikowitz.”

“Thugs like me?” Again the disarming smile, the penitent hoodlum with his hand over his heart.

“I don’t know too many thugs who would round up a bunch of wheelchairs to play basketball with a geeky kid and two hapless ladies.” She was going to say girls, but hadn’t she chided Max for the label earlier?

“Don’t call my sister hapless. She was in the army, you know.” He wheeled a careless arc around the front walkway, ending up a foot or two closer to her than his earlier position. “So let me guess—4-H Club? Junior Librarians of America? Church choir?” He did not list them with any admiration—that was certain.

“Art, mostly. I kept to myself a lot. And not choir, but church youth group.”

“I knew it.” Max executed a spin while he rolled his head back. “One of those.”

“Hey, cut that out. I had a...good time in high school.” That was at least partially true. Some of high school had been great, but she’d learned her sophomore year what Simon already knew: high school wasn’t kind to sick or injured kids.

Max stopped his maneuvers. “No, you didn’t.”

Heather froze.

“Girls who had awesome times in high school do not come back as guidance counselors. You want to help people. And you want to help people because you don’t want anyone to go through what you did.”

“Where do you get off making assumptions like that?”

Max threw his hands in the air. “Hey, don’t get all up about it. Do you know how many physical therapists I’ve had since my accident? How many counselors and docs? Pretty soon it gets easy to recognize the type, that’s all.”

“Oh, yes, JJ told me you used to tear through a therapist a week back at the beginning. A paragon of empathy.” That wasn’t particularly fair to throw back at him, but for Heather, his attitude struck an old nerve. “Look—” she forced herself to soften her voice when Max’s eyes grew hard and dark “—I want you to help Simon, and I think you might actually be able to. But not if you dump him into some labeled box based on your own experience. Simon’s had his disability his entire life—he’s never known anything different. You need to respect who he is, not who you want him to be, or this will never work.”

Max didn’t reply at first. He looked down, fiddling with a joint on his chair. “Okay, I get it.” When he raised his eyes again, the edge in his features was replaced by something else. Determination? She couldn’t quite tell. “What do you want to happen from all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if you want Simon to be happy, to be less of a target or to be able to punch Kikowitz out. What’s the end goal here?”

She thought carefully before she answered. “I want Simon not to be afraid of who he is or what Kikowitz might do to him. He’s brilliant, you know. Simon’s one of the smartest kids at our school. I want him to enjoy coming here, not dread it.”

Max didn’t appear to have an immediate answer to that. After what she hoped was a thoughtful pause, he said, “You want him to be able to take risks?”

“He needs a few outlets, I’ll admit that.”

Max pivoted to face her. “Then we go sailing. You, me and Simon on Saturday afternoon. That way we both can convince the geek there’s more to life than Math Club.”

“Don’t call him a geek. And how did you know Simon was in Math Club?”

“Puh-lease. I saw two calculators in his backpack. The dock behind Jones River Sports, two o’clock. You’re in charge of permission slips and snacks.”

Heather tucked her hands into her pockets. “Who said you could take over here?”

“Eleven therapists,” he called as he started down the ramp, clicking the remote starter on his car to send it roaring to life as he descended. “Actually twelve, if you count the one who lasted ten minutes. And four nurses. And there was an intern at Adventure Access who—”

“Okay!” Heather shouted as Max somehow made the engine rev before he even got into the car. “I get the picture.”

Chapter Three

Max checked his watch again Saturday afternoon. Since when did he get nervous about stuff like this? Chronically late, he didn’t have a leg to stand on—if he could stand—about anyone’s punctuality. Still, Simon’s dad seemed like the guy to show up ten minutes early, not twenty minutes late. And where was Heather? He wheeled the length of the dock again, needlessly checking the ropes that tied the Sea Legs to the dock, frustrated with how much he’d managed to invest in one kid’s sailing lesson.

It was the look in Simon’s eyes that did him in. That heartbreaking eagerness at the mention of going sailing nearly instantly squashed by a dad’s harping voice. Parents were hard enough to take at that age as it was. To have all that other stuff loaded on top, then compounded by kids like Kikowitz?

Kids like he’d been?

The faces of all the kids he’d ever bullied had haunted him last night. He saw Simon’s face every time he shut his eyes, and it was making him crazy. Sleepless, fidgety and just plain nuts.

The sound of tires on gravel hit his ears, and he looked up, expecting the Williamses’ big red van. Instead, a small tan sedan pulled into the parking area and Heather climbed out of the nondescript little car. Shoulders slumped, head slightly down, Heather’s body broadcast what he’d begun to suspect: Simon wasn’t showing.

His understanding—and annoyance—must have been clear on his face, for all Heather said when she walked onto to the dock was “I’m sorry.”

Max grunted. It was a better choice than the nasty language currently running in his head.

“I’ve been on the phone with Brian Williams, trying to convince him Simon would be safe, but—”

“But hooligans like Max Jones can’t be trusted with his precious son—oh, I can just hear the speech.”

She set down the loudly patterned tote bag she was carrying and eased onto the dock’s little bench. “It’s not about you.”

“Oh, not all about me, but I can just imagine what Simon’s dad thinks of someone like me.” He flipped open the equipment locker’s lid and tossed the third life jacket back inside.

He was picking up the second one when she put out a hand to stop him. “So I guess we’re not going, huh?” Disappointment tinged her words.

Max looked up, life jacket still in his hand, surprised. “No, we can still go.” He’d just assumed she’d ditch the day with Simon not coming. Sail alone, just with her? He’d have to go so slow and be so nice.

“I sort of want to know how this whole rigging works.” She gestured toward the specially modified sailboat, covering her tracks with a “professional curiosity” that didn’t quite pass muster. She frowned and crossed her arms when she reached the back of the boat. “Sea Legs? Really?”

“I thought that was particularly clever, actually. Much better than my first choice.”

Her brows knotted together. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“The Crip Ship. JJ thought that a bit confrontational.”

Heather laughed. “Max Jones? Confrontational? Imagine my surprise.”

Max spread his arms. “Got me where I am today.” He tossed her the life jacket. “Hop in. I’ll hand over your bag and cast us off.” Wheeling over to the bag, he picked it up. It weighed a ton. “There had better be decent snacks in here.”

“Homemade brownies, watermelon and some of the firehouse root beer.”

Max handed over the bag as he rolled on board after her. “Someone ought to call Simon and tell him what he’s missing.” He pulled the ramp up and stowed it in its special spot alongside the keel.

“I think he knows.” Heather’s voice sounded like he felt. Disappointed and not a little miffed. “This would have been so good for him.”

Max liked the way that sounded. Ever since he’d wheeled into Heather’s office, he’d gotten the vibe from her that he was a poor substitute for whatever mentor she’d had in mind. It bugged him that Heather hadn’t judged him capable of helping someone. Then again, no one was more surprised than him that he’d even cared to take the whole thing on.

He pointed to the bowline. “Undo that knot and pull the line aboard, will you?”

While she climbed up to the front of the boat, Max transferred himself from his chair and into the swiveling seat on rails that allowed him to move freely about the boat. It wasn’t a particularly graceful maneuver, and he preferred having her attention diverted elsewhere. Once settled, he collapsed his wheelchair and stowed it in a compartment. Pulling the jib tight, Max felt the singular, blissful sensation of the boat under way. Even before his injury, nothing felt like pulling out onto the river. Now that gravity was often his enemy, the river gave him even more freedom to unwind his nerves. Sea Legs may be a mildly tacky joke to some, but it was actually close to how he saw the boat. Anything that gave Max speed and movement gave him life. They counterbalanced all the parts of his life that had become slow and cumbersome since falling from that cliff a little over a year ago.

In a matter of minutes, Sea Legs was under way, slicing her way through the Gordon River and catching the perfect breeze that blew through the warm September afternoon. Heading upriver and upwind, he angled the boat toward the opposite shore, ready to “tack” back and forth as the craft moved against the current and into the wind. He watched Heather settle into one of the seats closer to the bow, the breeze tumbling through her hair.

“You’re different here than at school,” he offered, liking how she angled her face up toward the sunshine. “Not so serious.”

She shot him a look. “I take my job seriously. Don’t you?”

Max shrugged and tightened up a line. “I don’t have a serious job. I’m...enthusiastic about it, but Adventure Access is about making fun, so it’s not the kind of job you ought to take seriously.”

Heather brought her knees up and hugged them. He found himself staring at her bright pink toenails peeking out of the blue thong sandals she wore. Funny the details that don’t come out at the office. Max spent a lot of time noticing feet—now that his weren’t much use—and she had ridiculously cute toes that wiggled when she realized he was staring at them.

“Are you serious about anything?” she asked, shifting to tuck her legs underneath her and blushing. Some part of Max was highly entertained that he’d made her blush. What kind of woman wore sensible clear polish on her nails but bright pink on her hidden toes?

“I’ve been seriously injured. Been listed in ‘serious condition’ at Lincoln General.” He tied off the line. “And I’ve been in serious trouble lots of times.”

She looked more disappointed than annoyed. “What does it take to get a straight answer out of you?”

That was a loaded question. His boss and now brother-in-law, Alex Cushman, had asked pretty much the same thing before bringing him on board at Adventure Access. Nobody seemed willing to take a smart aleck at his word these days—they all wanted to see some deep and serious version of him, as if what he’d been through didn’t supply enough credentials. “It takes a straight question. Duck, by the way—we’re coming about and the boom is going to come across the boat.”

“Okay,” she said as she ducked. “Straight question. What did it feel like?”

It was obvious what she meant by “it.” “When you cut to the chase, you really cut to the chase, huh?” He had a couple of stock answers to insensitive questions like that—mostly asked by curious kids who didn’t know better or adults who only wanted gory, tragic details—but opted against using them. He’d asked her for a straight question, after all. He just hadn’t counted on “straight” going to “serious.”

“You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”

“No.” Max was surprised to find he didn’t feel any of the irritation that kind of question generally raised. He actually wanted to tell her. It must be some kind of empathetic-counselor trick. “It’s okay. But it’s not especially pretty.”

She didn’t reply, just leaned one elbow on the bow behind her and looked ready to listen. So he told her.

“I wanted to die.”

* * *

Heather swallowed hard. Max said it so matter-of-factly. As if I wanted to die was like my left shoulder hurt. All her counselor training left her no response to his casual attitude.

He actually laughed—a dark half laugh, but still, it sounded wildly inappropriate to her—and she cringed at the sound. “That’s horrible,” she said, not exactly sure if she meant his feelings that night or his disturbing attitude now.

“Horrible, tragic, devastating—pick your sad word. I’ve heard them all. Everybody was being so kind and vague and optimistic, but it didn’t fool me. People get that look in their eyes, you know? The one they cover up in a second but you still catch it?”

She did know, but she didn’t say anything.

“I think I knew right when I fell that something really serious had happened, but I don’t remember hardly anything from that night. I don’t remember the helicopter ride—which is rotten, by the way, because I think that would have been cool—or the hospital or surgery or really anything until about a day later. And even my memories from those first days are sort of blurry.” Max pivoted the seat and shifted a bit down the rails, adjusting his position as the boat picked up a bit of speed. Heather felt the wind lift her hair and the sun warm her shoulders. It was easy to see why Max craved time on this boat.

“The first thing I clearly remember,” he went on, his voice still remarkably conversational, “is waking up in the middle of the night and trying to get up out of bed—I think I wanted to go find JJ or something. That was the moment when I really, truly figured out that I couldn’t feel my legs. Like the world just stopped at my hips.” He pretended to busy himself with some adjustment to the rigging, but even without a counseling degree, Heather could’ve seen he couldn’t look her in the eye while talking about the trauma. His eyes darted everywhere around the boat but at her, and she could see how hard his hands gripped the tiller. Why even pretend this was an easy memory? What had made her think it would be a good idea to ask?

Max cleared his throat and shifted. “I remember pinching my thigh, hard, and feeling nothing. Zip. Nada. Then all the tubes and nurses and Mom showing up clicked in my head, and I knew. Alone, in the dark, I just knew. And I decided it would be better if I stopped breathing, right there and then. It was like I didn’t even have enough life left in me to get mad. I was hollow, empty...just gone, like my legs.”

He ventured a glance up at her, and she felt the severity in his eyes as fiercely as if he’d grabbed her hand. “So that’s what it was like. Lousy’s not really a strong enough word, if you get what I mean.”

She had a way-more-than-lousy memory like that. The scars running down her left hip and thigh shouted memories that made her feel hollow and “just gone.” Only she couldn’t brandish them like Max did. There had been another man in her life, years back, who pushed his pain out onto the world like that. Mike had forced his illness on people, daring them to cope with the nasty details, almost looking down on her when she couldn’t do it that way. Heather could count the number of people who had seen her scarred leg on the fingers of one hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, not knowing how else to respond.

Max shook his head, his sardonic smile mocking her compassion. “You know, everybody says that. I’ve got enough I’m-sorrys to fill this river twice over. That always struck me as funny, ’cause it never accomplishes anything.”

“Oh, yes, you make it clear no one’s allowed to feel sorry for you.” That came out a bit sharper than she’d planned, but some part of her was having trouble swallowing Max’s nonstop bravado. Sure, he laughed off his huge trauma—and looked down on anyone else who couldn’t do the same—but he wasn’t fooling anyone. He thought all that casual charm hid his dark edge, but it didn’t. Not to her.

“I don’t think Simon wants people feeling sorry for him, either. I think half his problem comes from how much people coddle him.” Max waved his hand around the boat. “See anything life threatening here? Any deep, dark dangers?”

“Only one, and he’s just as dangerous on land.”

Max jutted a finger at her. “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Would you make a crack like that at Simon? Would you give him the respect of thinking him strong enough to take it?”

“Simon is a fifteen-year-old boy who’s sick.”

“No,” Max nearly shouted, jerking a line in tighter so the boat picked up speed. “He’s not sick. That’s just it, Heather—he’s not sick any more than I am. Okay, his legs don’t work right. My legs don’t work at all, but I can do almost anything I want, while he...” Max growled and slid the seat so fast down the rails that Heather felt the whole boat shake when the chair locked into a new position. “Simon and I have been texting each other since the basketball game. His mom cuts up his meat, for crying out loud. The only thing limiting him is his parents. If he’s having social problems, it’s their fault.”

“That’s not fair! My mom had to help me like that after I got hurt, and—” Heather snapped her mouth shut, beyond angry with herself for letting that slip. She angled away from Max, pretending—uselessly—to look out over the water while he took the boat into another turn. She couldn’t go anywhere; she was trapped on this boat with Max Jones and an admission she’d give anything to take back right now. The silence on board was so thick she felt paralyzed herself.