I stop wiping. Look up at Joe. “Yeah. Okay. Deep breath. Get centered.”
“Right. That’s what I’m going to do right now,” he says, walking toward his office. “That’s what you be better be able to do tomorrow.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Surprise Package
I don’t know how it happened—it all just...happened. Rosie has zero period madrigals, I have zero period WriteLight, we’re just down the hall from each other. By the time of the Harvest Festival, we were with each other a lot. I started getting to zero period a few minutes early every day, hoping to see her before she went to choir. And then I noticed I wasn’t the only one going out of my way to just happen to meet up in the hall. And then, one day Rosie came in all upset. Her mom had promised her the car, then ended up needing it herself. Rosie didn’t know how she was going to get from school to Sofia’s in time for extra practice on this song they’re working on.
“I can chauffeur you,” I said.
She laughed. “See what I mean, Eddie? Another SAT word.”
So, I took Rosie to Sofia’s that day, and home the next, and then pretty soon almost every day, her mom only dropped her off in the mornings and I took her home. I liked hanging around with Rosie, and I started seriously liking her. But then I got scared.
Sophomore year, I had this girlfriend, Diana. We had a pretty good time for two or three months, but then things got too intense for me. I know it’s usually the other way around—the guy wants to do more stuff, sex stuff, and the girl backs away. But Diana kept pushing for more, and I didn’t want more. After we broke up, I got worried. Like maybe the bad shit I’d been through as a kid messed me up for normal sex. Well...I guess I’ll just stop hinting and say it.
Back when I was nine and Mario was seventeen, Max was sent off to Iraq with the National Guard, and Mario and I went to live with our aunt. And then our aunt’s boyfriend, Denton, started...it’s hard even to write, but...he started molesting me. Sex stuff. When Mario found out, he took my mom’s car, which was up on blocks and off limits, and we drove two hundred miles up to our aunt and uncle’s place in Redville. So, after the bad shit sex stuff, I guess you can see that I might be worried about having regular normal sex. And when I didn’t want to do everything Diana wanted, well, I went back to the shrink for a tune-up.
This guy is not the kind of psychologist who has you talking forever about old stuff. I mean, yeah, we talked about some old stuff, but mainly he gave me ideas and exercises to help make things better. I won’t go into detail about the exercises because that’s all too personal. But after a month of seeing the psychologist and practicing the exercises, I ended up feeling like I was just a normal guy who’d been with a girl who was too pushy for him.
But back to now. Me and Rosie are at the big Harvest Festival, and it’s like still being little kids. Riding the Ferris wheel, eating pumpkin spice cookies, throwing baseballs at the leaded bowling pin things that seem never, ever, to fall down. We wander over to the pumpkin tent to check out the winners from the pumpkin carving contest.
I point to the pumpkin with the white third place ribbon pinned to it. “That’s Imani’s,” I tell Rosie.
“Really? Imani carved that?”
“Well, maybe it’s mostly William’s pumpkin, but the pest poked out the eye holes.”
“Mom told Zoe if she was going to put her name on a carved pumpkin for the contest, she had to do all the work herself.”
“Look at this,” I say, pointing to the blue ribbon. “No way was that done by anyone under twelve.”
“It’s a great pumpkin, though, with its evil smile and that small haunted house carved into its cheek...Mom should have let me help Zoe,” Rosie says, pointing to Zoe’s pumpkin. It could have been a winner if they’d handed out booby prizes.
We decide to get some kind of consolation prize for Zoe, for honesty. I don’t have much money left and neither does Rosie, so we choose the easy ping-pong toss into the goldfish bowl. We win two of them.
“You can have one for Imani,” Rosie tells me.
“For what? The cheater prize? Take both of them. One of them will probably be dead by morning anyways.”
Around ten or so, some guys line up at the booth with the leaded bowling pins. I think some of them were those guys carrying the P8RIOTS signs at the Black Lives Matter demonstration last month, but I couldn’t say for sure. They’re wearing Make America Great hats, and their tough guy camo jackets with American flag patches on their sleeves. One of them yells, “Hillary!” hella loud and throws the ball with all his might at the bowling pin pyramid. He misses, and the next guy to throw yells out, “Ragheads!”, rears back and heaves the ball. This one hits, and the top pin falls over. Two older guys with orange Harvest Festival vests go over and say something to the camo jackets. Rosie gives me a nudge.
“Look. Isn’t that Jason? The guy from your yoga class?” she asks, nodding in the direction of the pin-ball throw.
I take a closer look.
“Yeah, that’s Jason,” I say. “Figures. Puffed up ‘Patriot’ guys slinging hate at leaded pins. They so piss me off.”
Rosie says, “Somebody draped slices of raw bacon through the handle of Sofia’s locker last week. Fatima’s, too.”
“Bacon?”
“You know. Pork? Pork is forbidden to Muslims. Unclean,” she says.
“Oh, yeah. I guess I heard that.”
“It totally freaked them out. I pulled the bacon off while Brianna got soapy paper towels from the restroom. We washed it all off, but it was soooo gross. I love bacon, but handling those slimy pieces?? I won’t be hungry for bacon for a long time.”
“So did Squeaky Voice Jason do that?”
“I don’t know. Somebody said they saw two guys in camo jackets rushing away.”
Pooling the last of our money, we get a soda to share, then leave. I drive us a little ways up the Angeles Crest Highway and park in a turnout where we can get a clear view of the stars. We’re mostly just talking. Like, what else can you do when your girlfriend’s balancing two occupied fish bowls on her lap?
Right in the middle of trying to find the North Star, Rosie yells, “I’m late! I’ve got to call home before my parents freak out!”
She’s balancing the fish bowls and poking around in this canvas bag thing that she carried her little sister’s carved pumpkin in—the booby prize-winning pumpkin.
“Here, let me hold the fish for you.”
I take the bowls, careful not to spill the water, and Rosie dives into the bag with both hands. I don’t know what all she’s got in there, but it’s still pretty full even without the pumpkin. Finally, she gets frustrated and dumps everything out on her lap. And yes, the phone shows up, but so does a six-pack condom package. She quick grabs it and stuffs it back into the bag, and even though it’s a pretty dark night, I swear I could read a book by the glow of her face right now.
“I...it’s not mine...I mean...it’s not...my mom... Ohhhhhhh, it’s so embarrassing!”
And I start laughing. I hand Rosie the bowls so I can reach into my back pocket. I pull out a condom package, though mine’s a different brand.
“My mom, too.” I tell Rosie, between gasps of laughter. “I’ve never even ever used one, but my mom...”
And then Rosie starts laughing, too. And we laugh until we can’t anymore, and then we tell our stories. It turns out, both of our moms got pregnant in their teens. Rosie’s mom was only sixteen when she had her. My mom was seventeen when she had my brother. Practically since pre-school, each of our moms has been preaching at us not to follow their same paths. They both say they wouldn’t have it any other way for them, because they love the kids they got so much, but it was really hard, and stupid, and on and on. I swear my mom was sneaking condoms into my pockets by the time I was thirteen. Rosie says it was twelve for her: in her purse, in her backpack, sometimes in that little plastic zip thing that comes in notebooks.
“Embarrassing! Girl Scouts! A condom dropped out of m
y little heart shaped backpack when I was on a Girl Scout hike!”
Later, as I’m driving us down the winding road from the Flats, I say to Rosie, “Maybe we should start using those gifts from our moms sometime.” I hold my breath, waiting for what she might say. Then, right when I think she might not ever talk to me again, in a voice so soft I can hardly hear her, she says, “Maybe.”
I like talking in the car at night, while I’m driving. First of all, you don’t have to look straight at each other. And second, the darkness makes everything seem more private, safer.
The first time she let me borrow her car to take a girl out, Max gave me one of her “Let’s get this straight” talks. “You always walk a girl to her door. You don’t just reach across, push her door open, and tell her good-bye like she’s some hitchhiker you picked up. You get out of the car, go around and open her door for her, and walk her to the door of her house.”
She even had me practice with her. And then, because she’d told me not to treat the girl like a hitchhiker, I got another long “Let’s get this straight” Max talk about how I’d better never, ever, pick up a hitchhiker. If I did, I’d be grounded for life, never get to use her car again, and on and on.
But back to now. I walk around to Rosie’s side of the car and open the door for her. Usually Rosie’s out of the car before I get to her side. “I’m not helpless!” she’d said the first time I tried to follow Max’s rules. Tonight, though, she has to wait because she’s juggling two fish bowls and the big canvas bag. So, I open the door for her and take the fish bowls. We’re almost to the front porch when Rosie stops suddenly. “Oh wait!” she says. “I’ve got to get my French book from Tilly.”
“Who’s Tilly?”
She laughs. “Tilly the Trailer. We take her on a family road trip every summer, but the rest of the time she stays at the side of the garage.”
“But...your book?”
“Yeah, so I usually study in Tilly where it’s quiet and there aren’t any interruptions.”
Rosie turns and walks toward the driveway. I follow, balancing the fish bowls. “Oh, here,” she says, taking the bowls from me and setting them on the back step. “I’ll get them before I go into the house.”
I walk along beside her, down the driveway to the garage, then around to the side of the garage.
“See?”
I’d guess the trailer’s about twelve feet long, but my guesses aren’t always accurate. It’s rounded at both ends and it’s on blocks, to save the tires, I guess.
Rosie opens the door, steps inside, and turns on a sort of lantern. “Battery operated,” she says. “Come in, but duck!”
I step inside and look around. “Cool!”
Everything’s tiny, except for me and Rosie. There’s a tiny kitchen at one end. At the other end is a sort of U-shaped bench with cushions on it. There’s a tiny table, covered with books and papers, in the middle of the U. Rosie’s laptop sits on the cushion that’s under the tiny window.
“My own private study,” Rosie says, pulling her French book from the pile.
We’re standing so close I can smell her hair. I turn to her, pull her close. She leans into me, tips her head to meet my lips. I grip her butt, pull her closer against my hardness. For a second, she leans into me, then pulls back.
“I’ve got to go,” she whispers, her arms on my shoulders, her eyes holding mine.
I kiss her again, wanting more. She steps away, gets her book, and opens the door. Everything’s within arms’ reach in Tilly.
“Oh, the light,” she says, switching the lantern off.
We walk to her back door, kiss again, and again, until she turns the doorknob and steps inside.
There are no traffic sounds now, only the faint sounds of my footsteps as I walk to my car. A light breeze barely stirs the leaves of the aspen near the edge of the driveway. I breathe in the quiet of the night, still feeling the warmth of Rosie’s body against mine. Filled with the sweetness of life.
EIGHT YEARS AGO. MAX’D only been back from Iraq for a couple of weeks, and every night she’d have screaming, sweating, crying nightmares, like she was back in Iraq—gunfire, road bombs going off, buddies being blown to bits. And me? Any blue trucks that reminded me of the pervert’s truck sent me running back home at top speed where I’d lock myself in the bathroom and brush my teeth so hard my gums bled.
On the way home after my second session, I was doodling around on my sketch pad when Max said, “Look. Do you think that’s another coffee place they’re building on that corner?”
“Can’t look,” I told her, turning to a fresh page.
“What?”
“Can’t look. I’m practicing trigger avoidance.”
“What does that mean?”
“Dr. P. asked me about triggers, like all the things that remind me of...Denton. And what he did. He said if I knew the triggers, I could learn how to avoid them. If I don’t look out the window, I won’t see any blue trucks.”
By the time we got back to Tia Josie’s and Tio Hector’s, I’d filled a sketch pad with Simbas—all tough, muscle cat Simbas who’d never be bossed around by some bigger cat pervert. I hadn’t looked out the window even once.
Max picked me up after school the next day and took me to my favorite ice cream place, The Big Scoop. On the way over there, I filled in color and detail on the drawings from the day before. It turned out it was easy not to look out the window.
At The Big Scoop, I went for a hot fudge sundae, with a sliced, not split, banana. No nuts. No cherry. Hot fudge served on the side in a separate container, double whipped cream. Max got a one dip vanilla cone. After a few minutes of quiet ice cream eating, Max said, “I’ve been thinking about how you’re not looking out the window because you might see something that could trigger a panic attack.”
“I hate panic attacks,” I told her.
“Me, too,” Max said.
More silent tastes of ice cream. Then she said, “On the way over here, I saw a red-tailed hawk spread its wings and take off from its perch on a telephone pole. And then I noticed the first buds on trees in the almond orchards. And I saw the clear blue sky and white fluffy clouds, and I thought about what you were missing by not looking out the window.”
Max licked the dripping ice cream from her cone. I spooned out the perfect balance of banana, chocolate ice cream, and whipped cream, and let it melt together in my mouth. Then Max talked about how we’d each been caught, helpless, in places where we’d had no control. We’d each had different kinds of hurt—different, but nasty hurts that would take time to recover from.
“Here’s the thing, though,” she said. “We can always be on the lookout for triggers, afraid that something will pull us back to the past, worried about the next panic attack or the next nightmare. Or we can choose to stay in the now, being on the lookout for the sweetness of life. I don’t want us to miss the sweetness of life. Do you know what I mean?”
“Like I missed the hawk and blossoms ‘cause I wasn’t looking out the window?”
“Right. We get to decide what to look for.”
Then it was on to all that was good in our lives, the sweetness of ice cream and of Tia Josie’s cookies, the inherent goodness of people. She named every good person she knew, which went on for a long, long time. As Max’s words washed over me, I thought about the one hella bad person I’d known in my whole life, and the hundreds of other good people. Max talked about the beauty of the earth. The sea, the sky, the mountains, the beautiful lettuce and grapes that grew there in the Central Valley. Crops that would soon be feeding the whole country.
“It’s up to us to choose, Eddie. Do we focus on the pain of the past, or do we focus on the sweetness of now?”
On the way home from The Big Scoop, I looked out the window, watching for hawks and noticing the whiteness of the clouds against the bright blue sky. And I decided right then not to let fear of the sight of a blue pick-up truck keep me from seeing the good stuff.
Later in the wee
k, Max took Mario for ice cream and gave him the sweetness of life talk, too. Since then, every now and then, Max and I—Mario, too, if he’s in town—we go for ice cream and tell each other about our sweetness of life moments. But tonight’s sweetness of life moment with Rosie, that won’t be ice cream talk. That moment I’ll hold safe within my private heart.
CHAPTER SIX
You Betcha
The cornhole game is already set up on the front lawn when I get to Brent’s. “ ’Bout time you showed up,” he says.
Cameron tosses a beanbag toward the hole in the middle of the board. Not only does the beanbag not go into the hole, it doesn’t even land on the board. “You suck!” I yell at him.
“Yeah. Okay. Let’s see what you can do, Hook.”
“I can do more with this hook than you can do with both of your hands!”
Cameron laughs. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
Brent’s got a sheet of rules in one hand and one of those heavy-duty metal measuring tapes in the other—like the tape William uses to measure rooms with. “This has to be regulation,” he says, pulling out a few inches of the tape and handing the end to me. He walks toward the farthest board, the tape measure unrolling along with him, and motions me toward the closer board. “Twenty-seven feet. It has to be 27 feet from one end of the board to the other.”
Cameron groans. “Let’s just play. I’ll whip your asses no matter how many feet apart the boards are.”
“Dude! I’ve got to practice on a regulation court! When I play my dad, he’ll have everything measured down to the millimeter,” Brent says.
Brent and his dad don’t have much to do with each other. Brent’s dad is this hotshot bridge engineer who, after three girls, wanted that like-father-like-son thing with Brent, which included the engineer thing. That doesn’t work too well for a guy who got skipped over when the math brains were handed out. Brent’s oldest sister, Britney, is already finishing a degree in structural engineering at Cal Tech. Seems like that would be enough to satisfy Mr. Bruno, but I guess it’s a dad/son thing. I wouldn’t know about that.
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