“I knew he was bad news the moment I saw him,” she cried hysterically.
“Why?” I yelled. “Because he has tattoos? Because he sees a therapist? Newsflash, Mom, I see the same therapist that he does.”
She completely ignored me. “He’s just like your father when he was that age. I don’t want you seeing that boy anymore.”
That’s when I totally lost it.
“STOP,” I yelled. “Don’t. Don’t even compare Kellen to my father. He is nothing like my father.”
That seemed to get my mom’s attention.
“Carson – ”
“And don’t even try to tell me I can’t see him anymore because he is the only person on this fucking planet that actually gives a damn about me,” I said through clenched teeth. “So you can say what you want, but I’m going to see him whenever I want to.”
My mom seemed more hurt than upset by my language. Her face softened and her eyes looked sad. I was so mad though that I didn’t care.
“Carson, I just want what’s best for you,” she said.
“You have a really funny way of showing it.”
I watched as the steel returned to her eyes and her jaw clenched right back up.
“Call Bree right now,” she said. “Call and schedule a tutoring session.”
I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to battle with my mom all night either. I figured the only way to get away from her was to make the call, so I did. Not that I had much of a choice since she dialed the number for me and shoved the phone in my face. After a brief discussion it was decided that I’d meet her in the school library the next day after classes.
When I got off the phone I stormed out of the room and slammed my door as hard as I possibly could.
“Carson Reynolds,” my mom screamed up the stairs, “you do that again and you won’t have a door to slam. I’ll take it right off the hinges!”
So I got up, opened my door, and slammed it again because the woman baked cakes for a living and I sincerely doubted she knew how to take a door off its hinges.
I was in no mood to hear about the Pythagorean Theorem, but Bree wouldn’t shut up about it. Since I sat down at her table in the library all she’d talked about was a, b, and c all being squared and something about addition and hippopotamuses. That’s when she really lost me.
Plus I’d been in an irreversibly terrible mood since that morning when I discovered that the door to my bedroom was gone. Apparently my mom could indeed take a door off its hinges. The woman seemed to be full of fun little surprises.
“Carson?” I vaguely heard Bree say, but I was in a world far far away from the hippopotamuses.
All of a sudden there were fingers snapping in front of me and I instantly switched from being pissed off at my mom to being pissed off at Bree.
“Don’t snap at me,” I said. My voice was low and lethal and I hoped it conveyed the message that if Bree ever put her fingers near my face again, I’d bite them off.
She quickly lowered her hand.
“Look, Carson,” she said. “You don’t want to be here and I don’t want to be here, but you have to pass geometry and I have to help you.”
I stared back at her blankly, wondering how many hippopotamuses it would take to crush her cute little car.
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you have to help me?”
Bree looked genuinely taken back by this question. “Because,” she said, then stopped. “Because I just have to, okay?”
I think Bree was just as confused about why she’d agreed to tutor me and until I’d questioned it she hadn’t really thought about the reason. Maybe deep, deep, deep, very deep down there was a small part of her that felt like she owed me.
“I’m sorry for the way I acted last time,” she continued. “It was completely unprofessional.”
“Unprofessional?” I said, snapping out of my daydream. “What about the fact that I was your friend? It wasn’t that long ago, Bree. I’m sure if you try hard enough you can remember.”
“I –”
“Don’t apologize for being unprofessional, Bree. Apologize for being a shitty person.”
Bree looked at me for a second and it was like she was seeing me, her old best friend Carson, for the first time. I wasn’t just some random kid she was forced into tutoring. I was the girl that told that punk, Bobby, to go kiss a cactus and leave Bree alone back in the first grade.
“You’re right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. You didn’t deserve that and I’m sorry.”
I turned away from Bree. I had to. The look she was giving me – it was like years of sleepovers and fieldtrips and passing notes during class were all coming back and hitting her at once, and I just couldn’t be a part of that. Bree might have just then been facing all of that stuff, but I had put those memories in a box a long time ago.
Bree cleared her throat. I could see her shift back into tutor mode, but I could tell the memories had affected her. “So, um, we have an hour left. Why don’t we try to get through some of this homework?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
So Bree and I studied and I really tried to focus on the math. By the end of the hour I thought I might’ve finally understood it a little.
“So if you square a and then you square b and then you add them together then you get c squared?” I asked.
Bree nodded. “Exactly. And if you take the square root of that then you get the value of what?”
“The hippopotamus,” I said.
Bree started giggling hysterically.
“What?” I asked, feeling myself getting defensive.
Bree was laughing so hard her face was turning red. “The hypotenuse,” she said in between giggles. “Not the hippopotamus.”
“Oh,” I said. For a second I wanted to yell at her for making fun of me, but then I realized she wasn’t making fun of me at all and the whole thing was actually pretty funny. Suddenly I was laughing too.
“You definitely said hippopotamus earlier,” I said.
“No I didn’t, you just weren’t listening to me,” she replied, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Aw, Bree, don’t cry. It’s just a hippopotamus,” I said, completely losing it.
“Shut up,” she said, but she was cracking up too. “It’s really hard to say hippopotamus when you’re laughing.”
“Hippopotamus, hippopotamus, hip – ”
Bree snorted and I choked on a laugh. My lungs felt like they were about to burst. It was one of the best feelings ever.
“Excuse me,” I heard someone say behind me. I straightened up a little in my seat and wiped a few tears from my own eyes.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“I’m new here and I was wondering if you happened to have a map?”
A map?
I looked at Bree and she just shrugged her shoulders, still giggling.
“Does it look like I have a map?” I said, frowning as I turned around in my seat.
Kellen was standing there, baseball cap and all.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just keep getting lost in your eyes.”
I could feel the frown instantly change into a smile.
Bree erupted into hysterics behind me.
“Does that usually work on girls?” she asked.
Kellen grinned. “It worked on Carson.”
Bree stopped laughing. “Wait, you know him,” she whispered to me.
I nodded. “Bree, this is Kellen,” I said. “Kellen, this is Bree.”
Kellen smiled at Bree and I was grateful that he had much better manners than I did. I’d told him the Bree backstory when we watched the sunrise that one morning and I distinctly remembered using some very colorful words to describe Bree. But, like a gentlemanly pro, Kellen didn’t miss a beat.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said before turning back to me. “So what are you guys doing?”
“Measuring hippopotamuses,” I said.
Bree snorted.
“It’s an ess
ential life skill,” Kellen said.
“Math finally has a purpose.”
Kellen and I stared at each other for a minute before I remembered that Bree was still at the table. I turned around and she was just looking back and forth between the two of us.
“Um, so are we done for the day?” I asked.
Bree suddenly looked down. I could tell she was a little embarrassed.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, closing her book. “I think we did enough today. Do you, um, want to meet again on Monday?”
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t really sure what to do with my face. I was supposed to hate Bree, but how could you hate a person you just spent five minutes laughing over hippos with? I smiled awkwardly.
Bree smiled back and it was just as awkward, which was a relief. I wasn’t the only one confused by what just happened.
“So what are you doing here?” I asked Kellen as I put my books in my bag.
“Well,” he said. “I was about to go to the park and play ball with some friends and I was wondering if you wanted to come watch.”
“You play football?” I asked.
“No, basketball.”
I stopped what I was doing. I could feel Bree staring at me.
“Basketball?” I asked, clearing my throat. Basketball was one thing I’d never told Kellen about.
“Yeah,” Kellen said. “But I mean, if you’re busy it’s fine.”
“No, I’m not busy,” I said, closing my bag. “I’m just… not really into basketball.”
“Oh, okay,” Kellen said. I could see he was disappointed.
I wasn’t sure what had come over me recently. I was a chronic disappointer and so I was pretty used to seeing that face and normally I wasn’t fazed by it, but I hated seeing that face on Kellen. I’d do anything to make it go away, even this.
Besides, the Happy List did mention facing a fear and this fear had been a long time coming.
“I’ll come.”
Kellen looked at me questioningly, like he didn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want you to be bored.”
I looked up at him and smiled. “I’m sure. I’d love to watch.”
“Awesome!” he said. I could tell he’d been looking forward to this all day. “I’ll meet you outside. It was nice meeting you, Bree,” he added, waving.
“You too,” I heard Bree say.
I sat there for a few seconds and stared at my shoes. I took a deep breath, then another.
“Um, I guess I’ll see you next week,” I said to Bree. I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t.
I got up and walked towards the exit.
“Carson, wait!” I heard Bree call.
Before I knew it she was standing next to me and grabbing my hand. I looked up slowly, afraid that her eyes would be full of pity, but they weren’t. Bree was looking at me with a fierce determination.
“Do not let him take this from you,” she said.
I knew she wasn’t talking about Kellen.
Bree squeezed my hand and smiled, but her eyes remained fierce. “Go have fun. Take the game back from him.”
It was weird. I used to be the one with all that fire. I used to be the one holding Bree up and convincing her to fight when she was scared. It was strange having the roles reversed now, but I was grateful for it. This was what I’d needed from Bree all those years ago when she’d just walked away.
Bree and I would never be the way we were before, but that was okay. I realized now that even though it was sometimes too little too late for an apology or a hand squeeze, sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes when a person said they were sorry, they really did mean it. And sometimes the person did try to make up for the past, the hand coming when you really needed it most.
I squeezed Bree’s hand back. “I will,” I said.
I felt like I was finally ready to face my fear.
Chapter 29
Facing Your Fear
Fear comes in different forms
Twisting and molding into whatever it is
That makes a person’s heart leap out of their chest
And run for safety
Spiders
The dark
Heights
Death
We all have that sore spot
For me it’s the past
My past
Kellen Jordan was a very positive person until you put him on a basketball court with a bunch of his friends. Then he turned into a trash-talking machine.
It was funny because when we got to the park an hour earlier and Kellen introduced me to some of his friends, they’d all seemed really nice. They’d spent a good five minutes slapping each other’s backs and giving each other high-fives and so I’d been expecting to witness a friendly little game of basketball.
There was nothing friendly about the game.
The amount of swearing, name-calling, and borderline verbal abuse that had taken place since I’d sat down on the rusty old bleachers was kind of amazing. Trey, who had even more tattoos than Kellen, screamed “fuck” just about every five seconds – when he missed a shot, when he made a shot, the one time he looked down and realized his shoe was untied. That boy had found every possible use of the word. It was actually quite impressive.
Mikey, who had to be seven feet tall, liked to tell people they played like a girl, which I found offensive because Mikey ran like a walrus and even though the guy had almost two feet on me I could have totally gone out there and kicked his ass. In heels and black lipstick. While waiting for my black nail polish to dry.
Nate was the token pretty boy of the bunch – clean-cut with underwear model looks and expensive shoes. Nate was good, but he knew it and he was kind of a ball-hog. He yelled “BALL, BALL, BALL!” every time his team had possession and when they didn’t pass it to him he screamed at them for being stupid and taking selfish shots. I thought Nate could use a few sessions of anger management.
And then there was Kellen. Kellen’s particular brand of trash-talking was quite unique. From what I’d seen he basically took a swear word and an animal and combined them into the weirdest insults I’d ever heard, but they popped out of his mouth so effortlessly.
“What kind of monkey’s ass shot was that?”
“Stop being such a piece of elephant shit and box him out!”
“Nate, shut up or I’m going to peg this at your head, you damn ball vulture.”
I was having the time of my life.
Insults aside, the guys were pretty okay. None of them had a future in the NBA, that was for sure. Mikey’s height wouldn’t get him anywhere if it took him a century to waddle to the other side of the court, they didn’t make one-man teams for Nate, and any money Trey made would be going towards his fines for swearing. Still, it was an interesting game to watch.
It did feel kind of weird sitting there and watching Kellen and his friends. At the beginning of the game I got a little anxious so I’d closed my eyes and just listened, letting the sounds of the game calm me down. I could hear the soft thud as the ball was passed from one person to the next, the swish as it sunk through the net, the clang as it bounced off the rim. I hadn’t heard those sounds in years, but after all that time they were still so familiar. It was sort of like going on an extended trip and then coming home after a few years. The surroundings were a little different and the people had changed, but it was still home.
Kellen was dribbling the ball down the court as his team set up for offense and the other team got ready to defend. He looked over at me and smiled. I smiled back.
“Okay,” he said. “Next point wins.”
Kellen dribbled up to the three-point line, faked to Nate, and then passed it to another guy whose name I couldn’t remember. I’d been calling him Sleeping Beauty because he never seemed to be paying attention to what was going on and he looked like he was taking a nap on the court this entire time. Again, Sleeping Beauty failed to make the play, and Trey stole the ball, screaming, “Fuck, yes!
” as he raced down the court and made the lay-up.
“What the hell, Greg?” Kellen screamed at Sleeping Beauty. “Are you ever going to play or are you just going to stand there like a freaking sloth?”
Greg flipped Kellen off and Nate said something about how they would’ve won if Kellen had just passed him the ball. The three of them met by the three-point line and at first I thought there might be a legitimate fight, but they just shoved each other a little before laughing and going to join the rest of the guys on the other side of the court. Trey burst into a horribly off-key rendition of “We are the Champions,” and soon they were all singing, even Kellen’s team. They’d gone from screaming and calling each other names to fist-bumping and high-fiving again.
Boys were strange.
A few minutes later Kellen broke from the pack and came over to me, the basketball in his hands.
“What? No room for positivity on the court?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” he asked as he passed me the ball. I caught it easily. “We were very encouraging.”
“You were trash-talking.”
“I prefer to call it aggressive encouragement.”
“You told your friend to stop making monkey’s ass shots.”
“And then he scored three times after that.”
I smirked. “You’re right, calling Sleeping Beauty a freaking sloth was very encouraging.”
Kellen laughed and climbed onto the bleachers, sitting beside me. “Sleeping Beauty, huh? I’ll have to remember that one. To be fair, Greg is a sloth and that, Carson, is what drugs do to you.”
“He’s on drugs?”
“He started with pot and now we don’t really know what he’s on. We’ve been trying to get him to quit for forever, but it doesn’t seem to be working,” Kellen said, shrugging his shoulders. “You can only help someone as much as they want to be helped and you can’t do it for them. At some point, they have to do it for themselves.”
“Why do you invite him to play then?”
“We keep hoping that one of these days he’ll realize there’s more to life than being high.”
I looked over and saw Sleeping Beauty walking away from the court, a cloud of smoke surrounding him. “Today doesn’t seem to be that day.”
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