Chapter Text
It doesn’t take an astrophysics PhD to know that space and time can be weird sometimes.
Not that Dunk had that PhD anyway.
Dunk suppressed a sigh as he sat forward, craning his neck sideways to catch a glimpse of the old mural along the highway underpass as it slid by his window. The mural had been vivid only two decades ago, seen by eight-year-old eyes just as bright and hopeful as the small town of Sacreola itself. But now it—and the memory, and the eyes—were all a little faded and jaded. Space and time will do that to you.
Once the mural was out of sight, he leaned back into the passenger seat of his mom’s white Camry and let the sigh loose. The oversized comfort of his university hoodie settled around him like a hug, as if it could sense the disorientation of returning to this fold in spacetime. Every time he visited Sacreola the change of pace always hit him like whiplash, especially after life in the speed-of-light fast lane of Boston.
And especially now. Why would an almost-graduated PhD student and self-claimed “astroguy” stop off for a few months in the middle of nowhere in western Kansas? Why wasn’t he seizing the day, pushing past graduation to secure his tenure-track spot at the next big university on the next crowded coast? What the heck was he doing here now? Dunk had no good answers.
He had plenty of bad ones. All of them too painful to think about at the moment.
“The Kohls is new, but it’s okay. If we have to have a department store move into town, I’m glad it’s Kohls. It’s got the best clearance deals on clothes, and the people are always so happy there…”
Dunk couldn’t resist a small smile as the stream of his mom’s steady conversation babbled past along with the scenery. Main Street rolled by outside his window, along with his elementary school, followed by a string of new condos he didn’t remember from last time.
Everything about Sacreola was always changing, and nothing at all.
Most of his old haunts were still stubbornly sticking it out, weathering economic downturns and new department stores with stalwart optimism.
The faded magnetic letters on the sign in front of Lucky’s Diner still boasted Tuesday night karaoke. And there was the salon where he and his best friend Pond had bought their own tubes of hair dye and managed to color their hair together for all of two hours before their moms found out and made them strip it back to normal again.
“I have to swing by the library sometime this afternoon to get ready for the book sale,” his mom was saying. “You could come with me, you know. The Library Friends are all dying to meet you. Marjorie thinks you should give a presentation on your research for the high school kids sometime…”
But Dunk’s attention was lost again, out the window, as the car rolled through the turn onto Glenn Street and north toward his house. There was the cemetery at the corner where his Honors English class had filmed the three witches scene from Macbeth, followed by the police station and the fire department and the sports fields. Beyond the soccer field in the back was that small copse of shade trees where Danny had sat through one of his eighth grade games just to ask for—and receive—his first kiss ever behind the big oak tree.
“Your friends want to see you too. Pond said you have to text him when you get settled and he’ll be right over with a hug the size of Kansas, you better believe it.”
Dunk believed it. He grinned at the easy memory of Pond’s rib crunching hugs, but his gaze was still caught by the familiar scenery passing by the window. The fire department’s tall garage and low brick buildings moved out of the way…
And there it was. Right where he’d left it, all those years ago. Right where he’d found it, almost every afternoon after school, even those cold winter afternoons that turned into evenings before anyone was ready.
The skating rink.
It wasn’t much, then or now, just an oval of concrete underneath the open sky, hemmed in by a ring of white plastic walls with two metal goals at either end. The walls’ plastic was cracking, the goal netting had all but disappeared, and more than one graffiti artist had taken the deteriorating white walls as an invitation to spontaneous creativity. The rink was a little older, a little wearier, a little worse for the world’s wear.
Of course it was. Dunk swallowed at the sudden dry lump in his throat.
A fence blocked the rink from view, and he twisted back around in his seat to face forward again. But he could still see the rink in his mind’s eye, empty just like it always used to be. Asking no questions, expecting no answers. He could almost taste the exhilaration of spinning around that circle under the wild and open sky.
“Here we are!”
Dunk pushed his thoughts of the rink aside for a moment as the tires crunched on the gravel of a familiar driveway. Then the simple two-story house loomed in front of them, and he bent forward in his seat to take in the sky-blue siding and navy shutters and white trim underneath the black roof.
There was the wrap-around porch with the swinging loveseat his mother had purchased years ago from a neighbor’s estate sale. Above it was Dunk’s own bedroom window, open to the afternoon’s warmth, with the sheer blue curtains drifting in the late summer breeze. There past the porch was the huge oak tree, the one whose longsuffering arms had cradled a treehouse and a rope swing and bird nests and too many hopes and dreams and secrets to count.
The car rolled to a stop at the end of the driveway, and time stood still.
The engine shuddered off and the familiar silence fell, broken only by birdsong and distant traffic and the twangs of the cooling metal under the hood. He shook himself out of his sentimental stupor and reached for the door handle—
His mom’s warm hand closed on his left arm. Dunk glanced back in surprise to catch his mom’s classic “he’s-all-grown-up” gaze, the one where her eyes go all misty and her mouth’s corners tuck themselves tight into an almost-smile and her nostrils flare a bit with a shaky breath of too much emotion at once.
Dunk knew those eyes well enough from his own mirror.
“Welcome home, honey.” His mom’s voice was somehow softer and rougher at the same time.
He grinned and leaned sideways to fall into his mom’s tight hug.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Then he pulled himself free and angled his legs out of the car door, shutting it behind him.
“Hey,” his mom called as Dunk sprang up the porch steps. “You’re going to leave that suitcase in the trunk and hope your old mom drags it upstairs for you?”
“Sorry.” He winced. The suitcase was heavy. He still had sore muscles after dragging the thing on its broken rolly wheels all around too many airports. “I’ll get it later,” he promised, spinning back around again as the sound of his mom’s chuckle followed him through the screen door.
The smell was the same; the fridge magnets were the same; that 80s era carpet was still green. But that was all Dunk stopped to take in before he was a teenager again, dashing up the stairs to his room.
In thirty seconds he was on his knees inside the closet, pawing past old t-shirts and through boxes of shoes he had never managed to wear as often as he’d thought he would when he bought them…
There. His thumb brushed a rubber wheel, and then he felt the cold metal of an axle against his knuckle. He grabbed the wheel and tugged until the whole thing came free of the closet’s mess. Then the other one followed from right underneath it, and his two skates clattered onto the wood floor at his feet.
For a long second, Dunk did nothing but stare at them. Black boots with red laces, pink and black wheels all in a line, scuffed from so many hours of solo skating after school, battered by all those tricks that didn’t quite work out as planned.
The plastic had every right to be in shambles by now, but somehow it wasn’t. The wheels spun underneath his thumb, satisfyingly free of grit despite the closet’s dusty corner. The bearings still had it together, at least.
His legs, on the other hand…
Only one way to find out.
Another quick rummage in the dark produced the helmet his mother had always forced him to wear, the white one with the turquoise swirly pattern around the brim, the plastic faded and cracking a little with age.
Dunk gave it a wry grin, marveling at his own newfound appreciation for his prefrontal cortex. Thank God for mothers to keep underdeveloped brains alive long enough to appreciate their efforts.
He tucked the helmet under one arm and scooped up the skates under the other, then trotted back down the stairs again.
His mother was in the kitchen. She tossed a grin over her shoulder at the noise of Dunk’s descent, then her eyebrows lifted at the sight of the skates and the helmet. “Oh wow, your rollerblades. I didn’t even know those were still up there—”
“I’m going to the rink,” Dunk announced breathlessly, already heading for the door. “I’ll be back for supper, I promise. When does Dad get home?”
“Probably just after five, but he was going to try to be early today, so watch your phone, and I’ll text you. Oh and Pond, you were supposed to tell Pond—”
“I will,” Dunk promised as the screen banged shut behind him.
He tumbled down the front steps, his head flinging back to haul a deep breath of almost-fall air into his lungs, his every nerve alive with forgotten energy. The rink was still there, and still empty. And maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t forgotten him either.
“Wear that helmet!” came his mom’s faint call through the screen.
“I will!” he chuckled, snapping the old plastic of the buckle underneath his chin as he flew along the familiar sidewalk toward freedom.