by Alex Flinn
“What do you expect?” Sophie said. “She has to show off her boobs to make up for the rest of her body.”
I looked up then, right at Sophie, to let her know I’d heard her.
Sophie glanced back at me, laughed, and looked away. She started walking again.
When she did, she stumbled. “Ugh!”
She leaned down. Her shoe had come off. She went to get it, but it was glued, somehow, to the floor.
“Yuck! What is this?” She put down her foot, and that, too, stuck to the floor.
Beside me, I heard Kendra chuckle. I looked at her, and she was staring at Sophie real hard, like she was concentrating.
Finally, Sophie pried her shoe off, but not before she got her other shoe and foot stuck. She and the girl walked away, talking about how gross the place was.
When Amanda came back a minute later, they were playing a fast song again.
“Hey, do you guys want to dance?” she said.
“Sure. But watch out. The floor’s sticky there.”
But the weird thing was, Amanda was stepping right on it. It wasn’t sticky at all.
I looked at Kendra. She smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “Be careful.”
9
Things that happened in ninth grade:
Ninth grade was the year college scouts started looking at Amanda.
It was the year Nolan got busted for smoking weed on a field trip to the planetarium.
It was the year I started the Caveman Diet and worked out ninety minutes a day, gained ten pounds but not an inch of height.
It was the year the Gay-Straight Alliance wanted a day of silence for gay bullying, but the school decided people should be able to do it for whatever cause they wanted. One girl chose lobster empathy. I couldn’t make this up.
It was the year I was chosen Rookie of the Year but didn’t make varsity. I was too short.
Oh, and it was the year my parents got separated.
Matt and I knew it was coming. Or we knew something was, anyway. For one thing, Dad was actually home a lot more than usual. In a typical week for, oh, most of my life, Dad worked late at least four nights, worked one weekend day, and had an important, work-related golf game on the other. Lately, he’d also started going to the gym at five a.m. so he wasn’t home in the morning either.
But then, for a month, he started coming home semi–on time several days a week, and he and my mom locked themselves in the bedroom after dinner.
“Do you think they’re doing it?” Matt asked when we were clearing the table.
“I can’t imagine them ever doing it.”
“They’ve done it at least twice.”
“Mom must have made an appointment.”
“Listen at the door,” Matt said.
“To see if they’re doing it? No thanks.”
But just then, something broke in their room. I heard Dad yell, “Shit! Why’d you do that?”
“Must’ve been an accident. Like that e-mail Julia accidentally sent you.”
“I told you, she was just updating me on—”
“I’m not stupid,” Mom said. “I’d have to be stupid to trust you after that e-mail. Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
“She was just—”
“I don’t even care if you think I’m stupid. I just can’t do this anymore.”
“Fine. I’m going to the gym.”
“Will she be there?”
“For God’s sake, no.”
Two days later, they sat us down in the family room before dinner or, I should say, instead of dinner, because dinner never happened. Mom said, “Your father and I need to talk to you boys.”
“We need to talk to you boys like adults.”
“They’re not adults, David,” Mom said.
“They’re fifteen and seventeen. You always coddle them.”
“Because you don’t coddle them at all. You don’t even go to Chris’s games.”
“Just because I’m not like Tim Lasky, with all this free time.”
“God, can you stop it?” Matt had his hands over his ears and was yelling.
Both my parents shut up and looked at Matt.
“It’s obvious you’re getting a divorce. We’ve heard all about the e-mail, the girlfriend, not to mention the fact that he’s barely been home for—oh, the last ten years.
“I can’t believe this,” Dad said. “I work to support this family, and I get . . .”
He kept talking, but I stopped listening. He hadn’t denied the part about having a girlfriend. I felt like he was cheating on me, on our whole family, not just Mom.
But I also felt like I hadn’t really lost anything. Nothing was different. It was like I’d always known he wasn’t part of us, but I’d avoided the knowledge. Now it was there, unavoidable, and it was a little bit of a relief not to have to pretend anymore.
He finished his oration, saying, “At some point, I realized I haven’t been happy in twenty years. That’s a hard thing to realize.”
It wasn’t a surprise that he felt that way, only that he said it. Did this guy really have no clue?
I said, “Really, Dad? Twenty years?”
That was when I walked out. Dad was screaming after me. I don’t know why he cared. So was Mom, but the blood was rushing through my ears, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I looked back to see Matt applauding me.
I said, “I’m going to see the people who have time for me.”
And I took off, running. I wasn’t wearing shoes, and the Laskys lived maybe three miles away, so I ran on the street, ran across the neighbors’ gravel driveway, across the grass. I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I ignored it. There was no one I wanted to talk to. Even though I was barefoot, I could tell I was fast, faster than I’d ever been, and I sort of wished I’d turned on my app, but if I did, it would ruin the pure anger of it, and that was what was pushing me. What a jerk, blaming me, blaming Mom, blaming everyone but himself.
I’d run as far as the park when Matt caught up to me in his car.
“Hey, you want a ride?”
“No. No thanks.”
“You’re not crying or anything, are you? I can’t let you embarrass the family like that.”
I started to tell him to screw off, but then I noticed he was crying. I stopped. I said, “Nah, I’m okay.”
“I brought your sneakers.” Matt held them up, wiping his eyes with his arm.
I took them. “Thanks. I’ll put them on for the run home. Want to come with me?”
“Nah, I’m going over Brittney’s.”
I nodded and took off again.
When I reached the Laskys’ a few minutes later, Amanda was already at the door.
“Hey, your mom told me you were on your way over.” She looked down at my feet, which were covered in dirt and leaves, but made no comment.
I wondered if Mom had told her why, but I didn’t want to ask.
“I was just about to call you, actually, to see if you wanted to go to the batting cages.”
I knew Mom had told her then. We never did stuff like that on weeknights, and she seldom went to the batting cages with me during the season. There were already a ton of practices. She probably thought I needed to hit something.
I said, “I’d rather go to the playground.”
She smiled. The playground at the elementary school was our happy place. Unlike the park playground, which was always packed with moms who looked at us weird for swinging on swings, the school playground was empty at night. We knew how to get in through a crack in the fence. It reminded me of the old days of Chris and Amanda, playground buddies.
“Are we running there?” she asked.
My feet were actually throbbing. “Can we walk?”
“Good idea.”
The night air was cooler now, but still, I was sweating. The moon was a sliver, and the sky was bright with stars. We snuck through the fence and started swinging.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Amanda said.
I said, “
Don’t get me started.”
Don’t Get Me Started was a game we’d play where one of us would bring up a topic that was super annoying: boy bands, the Kardashians, people who turned on their flashers when it rained, and the other would see how long they could rant about it. I held the record of thirteen minutes, on the topic of Kendall Fisher commenting when I ate Chinese food with a fork at the food court, then offering to teach me to use chopsticks because she said I used them wrong (which was why I’d been eating with a fork). Then it had sort of deteriorated into a general rant about white girls who think they’re Asian because they read manga. I hadn’t even been trying.
Amanda made a shooting motion toward me and said, “Start.”
“They’re splitting up. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, which isn’t a surprise, actually. I mean, the guy was barely home. I’ve spent way more time with your dad. I’ve spent so much time I should be starting to look like him by now. Your dad was there when I hit my first home run. Your dad helped me with my math homework.”
“Okay.”
I pumped a few times, looking for the right words.
“He said he hadn’t been happy in twenty years.”
“He said that?”
“Right? That’s my entire life, Matt’s entire life, and I’m thinking, ‘How is that my fault?’ I mean, did I suck my thumb too long? Did I not get potty trained early enough?”
Amanda kicked her legs higher. “You were awfully fixated on that Spider-Man toy.”
“Hey, hey, hey, watch it. That was a Pose and Stick Spider-Man toy. That was the ultimate Spider-Man toy in the whole world.”
“I stand corrected.”
“We wouldn’t even be friends if it wasn’t for that toy,” I said.
She laughed. “That might be true. That would have been tragic for you, really.”
“Just for me?”
“Yup. Just for you. I would clearly have been besties with Nolan.”
Then she leaped off the swing. She flew through the air a moment, then landed with a thud on the ground. She clutched her arm, screaming, “Ow! My arm!”
“Amanda, are you okay?”
“No. I think it’s broken.” She clutched her arm.
“Shit!” I jumped from the swing and ran toward her. She looked like she was crying, holding her arm. “Can you bend it?”
“No. No. Oh, wait. . . .” She pushed herself up on the arm. “Yeah, I can.” She stood and ran for the monkey bars and hoisted herself atop them. She crawled to the center. “Bet you can’t get me.”
“Asshole. Of course I can.” I ran for the bars myself. I was shorter than her, and not as agile, but they were made for little kids, so I pulled myself up and sat next to her. We were over everything, level with the moss hanging from the trees.
I said, “What would have happened if you hadn’t saved Spidey that day, and we’d never become friends?”
“Clearly, I’d have become a very proper girl who dressed in pink every day and did nail art and knew how to use a flat iron.”
“What’s a flat iron? Is it for clothes?”
“It’s for hair, idiot. See how you’ve corrupted me?”
“Yeah, it’s a tragedy, really. And I probably would’ve been a big, tough guy without you.”
“So you’re saying I made you shorter? Yeah, I think that was genetics, buddy.”
“It’s my dad’s fault.”
“Oh, and I’d have been skinny,” she said.
“You don’t need to be skinny.”
She punched my arm. “You’re supposed to say I am skinny.”
I punched her back. “You were supposed to say I’m tall.”
We sat there a moment, silent, listening to the coo of doves on the electrical wires. It was such a mournful sound. Then I started thinking about getting down from there, or rather, getting down without looking like a total idiot or actually hurting myself. This was an issue every single time we did this.
Amanda spoke first. “Do you think they were ever in love? I mean, they must have been, right?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, they were college sweethearts. They met at a frat party. She once showed me a whole album of love notes he sent her.”
“Weird.”
“How about your parents?”
“They were in love. He’s still in love with her. That’s why every few years they start talking, and I think they’ll get back together.”
“Do you want that?”
“I used to, but now I don’t. She says she loves us, but she loves drugs more.”
I nodded.
“I wish he’d meet someone else,” she said. “Then I’d know they’ll never get back together.”
“I’m not there yet.” The monkey bars were starting to dig into my butt. “I still want everyone to pretend they’re happy together, even though we apparently never were.”
She touched my hand with her fingers. I don’t know if it was intentional, but I sort of started a little at the unexpectedness, and she pulled her hand back. But I grabbed it.
“Thanks for coming here with me,” I said.
“I didn’t have anything better to do.”
“Sleep, homework, answering BuzzFeed quizzes about which Hogwarts house you belong in, watching . . .”
Down the street, I saw a flash of red, followed by blue. A police cruiser. Did I mention we weren’t, strictly speaking, supposed to be on the playground?
“Shit,” Amanda whispered. “The neighbors must have heard me screaming.”
“You think?” I whispered back.
“Come on. Jump down. We can go before they see us.”
I gaped down at the black hole that was the playground. In the occasional strobing light, I could see the ground, some patchy grass, mostly hard, brown dirt. This would be where I died. Or broke my leg, then got arrested, then needed my dad to bail me out. Or died.
“I have to climb down. You go.” I started to pull my hand away from hers.
She clutched mine. “Never leave a man behind. Come on. When I count three, jump, and then we’ll split up. You go left, I’ll go right.”
“I can’t.”
“One . . . two . . .” She tugged at my hand. “Three.”
And I jumped, knowing she’d pull me off with her if I didn’t. I landed, mostly on my feet, my whole body jolted like a punch to the gut, but okay, still holding her hand.
She yanked it away.
“Run! Text me when you get home.”
We both ran in opposite directions just as the police car stopped.
When I got home, I saw she’d already texted me.
Same time tomorrow at 9?
I texted back:
Yeah
A moment later, she texted back:
Do you ever wonder if you have a doppelganger?
Clearly I do. It’s Ryan Gosling
No, that’s not true. There couldn’t possibly be 2 such great-looking guys on the planet
But if you had a double . . . what would you do with one?
Send him to take my SATs for me if he’s smarter
Boring
If he was from another country and spoke another language I’d send him somewhere to speak it and really freak people out
What about you?
I’d send her to take my classes in school so I could sleep in
Now who’s boring?
Okay, I’d make her have Thanksgiving dinner with my mom and grandmother. She’d probably behave better
As usual, we texted all night.
10
That summer, I went to camp for the first four weeks so I could be back for football practice. In that time, Mom and Dad separated. Dad moved in with his new girlfriend, Chelsea (turned out Julia was just temporary), and Mom had five garage sales to sell off twenty years of memories so we’d fit in the condo we were moving to.
“Will you still go to school here?” Amanda asked one night at the school playground. We’d been going there every night since I got back. The possibil
ity of getting caught just made it cooler, though we’d found that, if we refrained from screaming, nobody called the cops.
“Mom said she’d try to find a place in the district,” I said, not adding that most of the condos and townhouses were on the other side of the district. I wouldn’t be able to walk or run to her house unless I was planning on joining the cross-country team. But maybe I’d get a car.
“You could always move in with us,” Amanda said.
“Matt too?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You wouldn’t say that if you lived with him. The smells alone . . .” I pretended to shudder.
“Or your mom could marry my dad.”
I laughed. “You want to be my sister?”
“Why not?” she repeated, and even in the darkness, I could see she was looking at me, like she was daring me to say why not. And I wondered what would happen if I just leaned over and kissed her.
It would ruin everything, that was what.
I slapped my arm. “It’s really buggy here.”
“Yeah, I wish they’d spray.”
“Don’t get me started.”
“I won’t,” she said. “Unless you want to talk about . . . why people feel like they have to yell when they talk into their cell phones.”
“Right?” I said. “Like, do they think the person needs to be able to hear them without the phone? And why do they especially do it when they’re someplace like Starbucks, where you want it to be quiet? Do they think everyone is interested in their conversation? Thank God they don’t allow people to talk on their phones on airplanes. You’d have murders. And since people can’t bring weapons on airplanes, you’d have people being beaten to death with copies of SkyMall.”
I went on like this for another minute or so before I started repeating myself.
“How long was that?” I asked.
“Only two minutes, forty-five seconds. You’re losing your touch. What should we do now?”
I reached out and grabbed the monkey bars, using them to swing down, then across, rung by rung. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Just something.”
She scrambled down too and ended up beside me. I tried not to notice I only came up to her nose. I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the park that adjoined the school. The walking paths were unlit, but there was a full moon we could see by. I led her to a giant ficus tree that stood by the canal, its gnarled roots making a pattern on the ground like one of those Irish knots. I walked around, looking. “They’re usually right here at night.”