Free Jumping Off Swings by Jo Knowles Page B

the corner near the park, I look out over the playground where Caleb and Dave and I first met. Where I first saw Ellie that day after it happened.
    The swings and slide and other playground stuff are covered with snow. I stand there like an idiot, wondering how this all happened. Cars go by me, splashing slush at the backs of my legs. My right hand is throbbing inside my pocket. I pull my other hand out and open my fist. The note is squeezed into a tiny ball now. I hurl it over the playground fence. It lands in the snow near the merry-go-round and disappears. I’m numb but stinging all over at the same time, and all I hear is my own voice in my head.
What have I done? What have I done?

“W HY DID YOU DO IT? ”
    My mom’s in her studio with her back to me, dabbing her brush to make leaves on a fallen tree, only the color is red instead of green.
    She stops dabbing but doesn’t turn around.
    “What did I do?” she asks calmly.
    I force myself not to grab her brush and throw it across the room. “The
note
? To
Ellie
?” My lip and jaw throb when I talk.
    She sets her brush down and turns toward me on her swivel stool. She jumps when she sees me.
    “What
happened
?” She starts toward me.
    “Nothing. Don’t get up. We have to talk.”
    “You’re bleeding!” she says, reaching for my face.
    I lean back. “I’m fine! Forget it! Just tell me about the note!”
    “What note?”
    “The one you gave to Ellie? The one you
shouldn’t
have given to her? God, Mom. Do you have to interfere with
everything
? You act like Ellie and Corinne are your kids. They’re not! They’re
my
friends!”
    The concern for me drains from her face. “If they’re your friends, you should be trying to help them! Ellie obviously needs to talk to someone —”
    “How did you know?”
    “I can put two and two together. And I overheard her say something to Corinne that gave me a pretty big clue. I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first.”
    I sink into the chair she uses for models in the once in a hundred years she uses one. When I was little, I used to curl up in this chair and fall asleep to the rhythmic sound of her brushstrokes.
    She rolls toward me on her stool. When she sees my face up close, she flinches.
    “You need to get some ice on that. Who did it?”
    “It doesn’t matter. Stop changing the subject. You should have seen her, Mom. She looked . . . devastated. Holding that letter in her hand and crying? With everyone staring at her and thinking she was nuts?”
    “I don’t understand. Why did she have the note at school? I thought she’d read it at home.”
    “Well, you thought wrong. She read it in homeroom this morning. Corinne thinks
I
told you. She won’t even talk to me.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    “I’m sorry, honey. I was only trying to help.”
    “Well, you didn’t.”
    She sags in her own stool.
    “Is Josh the father?”
    I look into her watery green eyes and nod.
    “Everything’s so messed up now,” I say. “But maybe it’s what Ellie needed. Maybe now she’ll do something.”
    “Like what?”
    “Get an abortion?”
    She bites her bottom lip and nods. “Has she told her parents?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What about Josh?”
    “He just found out.”
    “How’d he take it?”
    I look out the tiny window in the studio, wondering how long it took him to walk home. “He’s pretty messed up.”
    “Poor kids,” she says. She leans closer to me again. “Speaking of messed up, let’s take care of your face.”
    But when we get up, we hear a car outside.
    “It’s them,” I say quietly. “What should we do?”
    “Let them in?”
    I follow her through the door that leads back to the house and into the front hall. My mom opens the door before Ellie and Corinne reach the steps. The wind brushes their hair across their faces as they squint up toward the porch light. My mom steps back to let them in.
    Ellie and Corinne glance at my face, but they don’t talk to me. I take