That answered my next question, whether he still wanted to do this. We set down our phones in the center of the room and took up positions in front of the largest wall. I lifted my bat and Chase did the same.
His bat punched right through the drywall like it was cardboard. “Come on,” he said, freeing the bat.
The first swing was hugely satisfying. It was so much better than crying. I smashed windows and door frames. I busted rotted floorboards and broke through cabinets. We didn’t talk much, which was fine because I didn’t want to. I wanted to break things and not think about how broken I felt, and I did. I swung again and again for what seemed like hours until my arms were shaking and I couldn’t grab the bat anymore. Then I sat in a corner and watched Chase until exhaustion finally claimed him too. He lifted the bat to swing once more, then lowered it, breathing heavily as he let it slip through his fingers and clatter to the floor. Then he turned to me. His white T-shirt wasn’t so white anymore, and he was covered in the same sweat and dust that coated me.
“Feel better?”
He looked around and nodded. “You?”
Somehow I did. “Yeah.” I watched him kick through the debris, feeling warmer than the weather and exertion alone could account for. “So what made your day suck so bad that you needed...” I glanced toward the car-sized hole we’d put through one wall. “You never said.”
Chase wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “Ask me again sometime. This is the best I’ve felt in a really long time, you know?”
“Tired, sweaty and probably covered in asbestos?”
“Yeah,” he said, not making a joke out of it at all.
I traced a piece of window frame near my hip. Other people, other families, had lived in this apartment since Chase and his parents, and he’d told me he’d been very young when he and his mom moved, but he still felt connected to it and the father who’d deserted him. I was suddenly reminded that we barely knew each other, and yet he’d let me be a part of something incredibly personal to him.
“Hey, why did you help me today?” I waited until he looked at me. “The smoothie, bringing me here? I wouldn’t even have seen you if you hadn’t called out.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I was a girl crying by herself in a parking lot. I’m cute, but I’m not that cute,” I said, smiling a little, letting him know I was kidding.
Chase walked toward me, holding my gaze. I was so used to the way Nick couldn’t maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds that I felt my face heating even before he said, “You are that cute. Plus, you needed something to break, and I needed not to do this by myself.”
I was the one to break eye contact, dropping my head to look at the bat I had resting across my lap. “Well, thanks. I never knew how cathartic it could be to raze a building to the ground. Part of one, anyway.”
“You too. I would have brought my cousin, Brandon, but people keep flaking at work. I can’t find a shift for us to both be off.”
A different kind of tingling drifted over my skin at the mention of Brandon, overtaking the former. I closed my eyes for a second and leaned forward. All the thoughts I’d pushed away for the past couple hours raked over me. That ache, that empty dysphoria, settled heavy in my chest.
Chase sat beside me. “You okay?” His hand barely brushed my back.
I leaned away from his touch, speaking before I really thought about what I was doing. “You two are close?”
“He’s more like my brother. We grew up together.”
I glanced around the room we’d demolished, seeing it with new eyes.
“Not here. Our parents, they’re siblings. They bought houses here in Mesa only a couple blocks away from each other after my dad left and his mom died.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chase leaned his head against the wall. “I’m not. His dad was a better father than my own ever was. I don’t remember his mom, but mine loves him like he’s her own. We had it all right.” I felt Chase’s eyes on me and I met them. “Sometimes your family isn’t what you want them to be, but you end up with something better. I did.”
I pushed to my feet, dusting myself off as much as I could. Chase stood too and we started picking our way out of the apartment and back down the stairs.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, it’s fine.” If I’d been crying over a lost grandfather earlier instead of a philandering father and secret brother—a brother Chase was deeply connected to—his words might have had their desired effect. “Maybe you’re right. Either way, this helped.” I looked up at him when we reached the broken window in the basement. “Really.”
“Anytime.”
I smiled a little and looked away. Just like with Brandon, I needed to stay away from Chase. If he knew who I was, he wouldn’t be offering me anything.
“Or not.”
“It’s just that between school and softball, I don’t have a ton of free time.” And you have no idea who I am, and the brother I just found wouldn’t want me and the bomb I represent anywhere near you, I added silently.
“Ah.”
“And I live in Apache Junction.” It was a lame excuse considering my house in AJ was only thirty minutes away, but I wasn’t able to tell him the real reason I was blowing him off.
“Dana, it’s okay.”
“Sorry.” And I meant it. I took the bat he held out to me and slid it and mine outside. Before I could consider the best way to get myself up and out, Chase knelt down and laced his hands together for me to step on.
“Don’t be. It was a fun night. For what it’s worth, I hope you get to meet your grandfather sometime.”
“Yeah. I’m rethinking that. I don’t think I want to know the answers to the questions I have.” What I really wanted was to go back and undo that whole day, the results, meeting Brandon, all of it. But I couldn’t.
Chase boosted me easily through the window, then pulled himself through, being careful to avoid the glass that had cut him the first time. We walked toward our vehicles, which were mostly wrapped in the shadow of the apartment building. There were streetlights, but they’d either been broken or else forgotten along with the rest of the neighborhood, because they failed to turn on. The moon was shining, though, and it illuminated more than I wanted to see of Chase because I still had to walk away. I already knew I’d have liked to see more of him, which was all the more reason not to linger. Standing beside my car, this time under a star-pricked sky with my heart still hurting but my body no longer consumed by it, I reached for my door and looked one last time at Chase approaching his.
“You kind of saved me tonight.”
Chase stopped, keys in hand. “Well, I’d have been screwed without your bat.”
I laughed a little and opened my door.
“Take care, Dana.”
“You too.”
* * *
I got home and went upstairs to my room with an excuse over my shoulder that I had a headache. The farther I’d driven away from Chase and the apartment building, the more real the day had become, until my head really was pounding. It got worse as I lay on my bed, sleep not even remotely attainable. I curled onto my side. Every part of me was aching to act, to do something, but for once I couldn’t bring myself to move. There was pain in every direction, and nowhere to retreat. I could hear my parents downstairs, working late, their voices dancing around each other with dips of occasional laughter. The sounds, so normal and carefree, spurred me from my bed.