Whatever Life Throws at You

by Julie Cross

  I wring my hands in my lap. I’ve been planning this adventure for a few weeks (and it’s involved lots of sneaking into Savannah’s desk and file folders and other James Bond–like missions), but I’m still petrified and afraid I’m gonna chicken out.

  “It’s a boyfriend-related activity,” I say. “But he’s not actually involved in it.”

  Lenny manages to lift her eyebrows, revealing her curiosity, and lets out a frustrated sigh at the same time. “Please tell me you aren’t going to a free clinic for birth control or something, because I can totally hook you up with a doctor who won’t give details to Daddy if that’s what you need.”

  I stare at her face for an entire minute, trying to decide if I can really explain my mission. I finally conclude that the free clinic theory is worse than the truth. “There’s something I need to get from Brody’s mom, and she lives in the suburbs.”

  Surprise fills her face. “Did he ask you to do this?”

  I shake my head. “He doesn’t talk to her. She’s kind of shunned him.”

  “Oh boy.” Lenny sinks back into her seat. “Okay, fuck it. Let’s do your activity. This should be interesting, at least.”

  It’s raining when we reach Brody’s mom’s apartment in Evanston. I know from what he’s told me that they used to live in Chicago, so she’s moved since he left home. I don’t know why or how Savannah had her address, and since I snagged it without permission, I couldn’t exactly ask.

  Lenny and I are both soaked through to our tennis shoes, having walked four blocks after getting off the El train. Her teeth are chattering as I hit the buzzer on the outside of the building door. “She better be here, or I’m going to be extremely pissed at you,” she says.

  “Yes?” a female voice says through the intercom.

  Before I can answer, a man pushes past us and holds the door open. Lenny takes it and nods for me to walk through. I hesitate but eventually follow her, because I’m not exactly sure what to say to the woman on the other side of the intercom to get her to let us into the building.

  We take the stairs, traveling up to the third floor, and knock on apartment 3-B. A few seconds later, the door opens a couple inches and a woman slightly older than my dad, with dark Hispanic features and long beautiful hair, peeks through the space.

  “Hi,” I say, and then freeze until Lenny elbows me in the side. “Are you Jason Brody’s mother?”

  I hear her gasp from behind the door, and then she opens it all the way, her eyes fluttering shut. “He’s dead, isn’t he? I knew this day would come—”

  “What the hell,” Lenny mutters under her breath.

  “We’re not cops or whatever.” I shake my head, trying to keep up with this odd turn of events. “We’re in high school.”

  “But we know your son,” Lenny adds.

  “If he needs money, I’m not helping him,” she says firmly, her fingers curled around the edge of the door, ready to close it. “I can’t help him. I have two other children who haven’t screwed up their lives. He’s on his own now.”

  Already my anger is hitting a boiling point. Obviously, she has no idea who her son is and what he’s been doing for the past months. Or years, maybe? “He doesn’t need money. And now I see why he hasn’t called you to ask for this information himself.”

  With great reluctance, the responsible teacher’s aid in her winning out, I’m sure, she opens the door even more, allowing us to step inside the apartment. It’s full of worn furniture, but everything looks nice and neat. There’s a definite scent in the air of home-cooked meals and freshly laundered clothes—things I’m sure Brody misses, especially knowing the state of his bare apartment and fridge full of meals cooked in someone else’s kitchen.

  Lenny and I stand in the living room, watching her close the door and turn to face us, foot tapping like she’s got somewhere better to be. It breaks my heart. How awful of a son could he have been and still turn into the kind person I know?

  “Brody—I mean Jason,” I say, “wants to take his GED, but he needs proof of his dyslexia diagnosis so he can take an oral exam.”

  “And now it makes sense why he didn’t want to ask you for it,” Lenny concludes, stealing the words straight from my head.

  She folds her arms across her chest, but she’s not fooling me. I can see this request has surprised her. “That’s all?”

  I blow air out of my cheeks. “That’s all.”

  She spins around and takes off down the hallway. Literally sixty seconds later, she returns holding out a manila folder full of white papers labeled: Jason’s School Records. She moves toward the door, opens it a couple inches, and waits. Lenny heads for the exit, but I stay put. “Don’t you want to know where he is? Or what he’s doing? You don’t care?”

  Her mouth forms a thin line. “I can’t care about him at the detriment of my other children. When your oldest child brings gangbangers into your home, steals from you, and leaves you in fear for your family’s lives so much that you have to move and disconnect from everyone you knew before, get a new job…It changes my ability to forgive.”

  Lenny looks at me and mouths, Gangbangers? I shrug because I’ve really not heard anything about that part. Brody never said anything about being in a gang. I think she’s exaggerating, but either way, he didn’t try to intentionally hurt anyone, so some part of her has to be worried about him.

  “And I’m too afraid to even ask why, at nineteen years old, he’s associated with high school girls,” she adds with a shake of her head.

  I’m so pissed off I can’t bite my tongue and leave like I know I should. “My dad is a pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals. He coaches your son. And Lenny”—I nod in her direction—“is the daughter of the Royals’ first baseman. Brody’s a pitcher. A major league baseball pitcher. Possibly Rookie of the Year. Do you not read the papers ever? Or turn on ESPN?”

  Her mouth falls open and, after a lengthy hesitation, she nods. “He’s playing baseball. I guess that makes sense.”

  I scowl at her, remembering how Brody said she’d look down on it, like he’d taken the easy road. “Yeah, he’s playing baseball. He’s also an incredibly selfless, hard-working person who has a very hard time believing that people might actually think highly of him.”

  “I wonder why that is?” Lenny says.

  We make an awesome tag team.

  I reach in my purse and hand her a white envelope. “Tickets to the game tomorrow. We’re playing the White Sox for the division championships. Your son is pitching.”

  There’s really nothing left to say, so we both head out the door and run the entire four blocks back to the El train. It’s not until we’re sitting down that Lenny says, “That was a very purposeful activity.”

  “And successful.” I pat my stomach where I’ve stuffed the folder under my shirt and jacket to keep it from getting ruined in the rain. “I can’t decide if I want her to show up at the game or not. Maybe she doesn’t deserve to see him.”

  “Do you think he was really in a gang?” Lenny asks.

  I shake my head. “No way. He had rough friends and his mom probably called them gangbangers, but I don’t think he’d be able to get away from them so easily, right?” As if I actually know how gangs work.

  After Lenny and I get checked in at the front desk of our hotel, we head up to our room that she booked for us, and I nearly faint when I see the fancy two-bedroom suite. “Wow, are you really that much of an attention seeker, Len? Trying to piss off Mom and Dad?”

  She laughs and tosses her suitcase on the bed in one of the bedrooms. “I think you’re under the impression that my parents pay any attention to what I charge on my credit card and that my mother could ever fathom the idea of not booking a luxury suite when staying in a hotel.”

  After I’d begged to see the playoffs in Chicago, it had actually been Dad’s idea for me to invite Lenny. Lenny agreed to let him pay for the flight if she could pick up the hotel tab. Of course, we fly for free on the team’s chartered fligh
t.

  I text Brody and give him the room number, telling him I have a surprise for him. I’d been afraid to tell him about my mission but hadn’t thought it’d be a problem once I’d already done the task.

  Lenny lets him in and, after whistling at the size of our suite, he takes in our soaked clothes. He laughs and reaches over to squeeze water from the ends of my hair. “Guess the shopping didn’t go to well?”

  “Actually…” I pick up the folder from the coffee table and hand it over to him. “We didn’t go shopping.”

  He doesn’t even open it, just sees the label on the side and his jaw tenses. “Where did you get this?”

  I suck in a breath and step back. This isn’t the happy kind of surprise. Lenny throws me a wary glance and heads for the bedroom she’s already picked out, closing the door behind her.

  “I…uh…I went to see your mom. I knew you didn’t want to call her, and I just wanted you to be able to take your test.”

  His glare is like pain shooting right into my heart. He throws the folder back onto the table. “You had no right to do that, Annie. Why wouldn’t you ask me first?”

  I had a pretty sucky time walking in the rain to find his mom, so I’m not exactly excited about being yelled at. “Because you would have said no and honestly, you’re being completely stupid, letting her keep you from living your life! One of us had to do something.”

  “You’re right, I would have said no.” He lowers his voice, making him sound more cold and angry.

  I lift up my hands. “Well, I’ve already done it, so the only thing you really can do is move on and take the damn test. And just so you know, I gave her tickets to the game tomorrow, too.”

  He steps farther away from me, shaking his head. “You don’t get it, do you? If you told me not to butt into your life, I’d never go behind your back. I trust you.”

  “If you trust me, then what’s the problem? I did what I thought was best for you.”

  “I trust you to ask me for help when you need it. To accept it when I offer, to understand that I’ll do the same if I need your input,” he says, disappointment and frustration filling each word. “I’m serious about us, and now I can see that you don’t feel the same way.”

  I groan and try to move closer, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “Of course I feel the same way; don’t be crazy.”

  “I’ve never treated you like a kid, Annie, but it’s fucking hard not to when you keep acting like one. Like you don’t care how your actions affect other people. You just take off in a sprint and don’t look back. That shit scares me.” He shakes his head. “That was my life before this—impulsive and destructive. I can’t be that person anymore. I won’t.”

  I stand there stunned, watching him walk out the door and slam it shut. I sink down onto the couch and try to figure out what the hell just happened. Lenny opens her bedroom door and slowly reenters the room.

  “Are you okay?”

  My hands are shaking, but it’s more anger than anything else. How could he think that I don’t care? That I’m not constantly trying to make his life better? I look up at Lenny, my eyes wide. “Did we just break up?”

  Chapter 26

  “Where’s Brody?” Savannah turns around and glances back into the hotel lobby. “I thought he was coming to dinner with us?”

  I bite back an angry and completely invalid response and plop down on the steps in front of the circle drive, not caring if my dress gets dirty. Dad joins Savannah in looking around for Brody while one of the other pitchers in our group starts laughing.

  “I think he’s busy picking up chicks in the bar on the top floor.”

  Lenny glances warily at me, then snaps at the pitcher, “How do you know that?”

  “Some girl just tweeted a picture,” he says, shaking a finger in front of Lenny’s face.

  She pulls out her phone immediately, but I tuck my hands underneath me, forcing myself to steer clear of Twitter pictures of my maybe-ex-boyfriend who’s pissed at me for helping him with something he didn’t have the balls to do himself. Screw that.

  “He’s not coming,” I shout at Dad and Savannah. “Can we go already? I’m starving.”

  Both of them spin around to face me, and Dad says, “What’s with you?”

  I’m scowling at no one in particular, so Lenny hooks her arm through mine, pulling me to my feet. “She’s not cut out for shopping with me, that’s all. I wouldn’t let her stop for ice cream or Cinnabon.”

  “Yeah, it was just one disappointment after another,” I say.

  I don’t think I fooled anyone, but they decide to leave me alone for now. Lenny sits next to me in the car on the way to the restaurant.

  All through dinner, Dad and Savannah keep bringing up Jason Brody and how awesome he is, how impressed Larry Johnson is with the endorsements he’s been getting and his potential for being awarded Rookie of the Year. I just sit there stabbing my steak and stuffing so much food in my mouth, I won’t be expected to chime in.

  It’s not that I’m not hurt and fighting the urge to cry over a tub of ice cream and charge chick flicks from the hotel room TV to Lenny’s parents’ credit card—I am. But it’s easier to let anger dominate. Anger I can deal with. A broken heart is something I haven’t experienced yet. Besides, what are my options? Apologize? I’m not sorry for helping him. I’m not sorry for caring, for defending him to his mom. That’s fucking stupid.

  “Oh, look,” Third Base says during dinner, holding his phone out to Lenny and me. “He’s getting mobbed in the lobby. Maybe we shouldn’t have left him alone?”

  “I doubt he’s alone.” I poke my steak again. Stab, stab, stab. “And I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t even going to go to the game. And now that Brody is finally entering during the sixth inning, I’m really wishing I had listened to my angry girlfriend voice.

  Lenny elbows me in the side. “You should probably wipe that scowl off your face before the camera swivels in our direction.”

  My cheeks relax, but I’m still cursing Brody inside my head. Why did he have to throw the one insult at me that I can’t handle—calling me a child? It’s what I’ve been afraid of since we first became friends. Maybe ever since I dropped my notebook in the locker room and got his attention.

  “That’s better.” Lenny passes a giant bag of popcorn from her lap to mine.

  I busy myself stuffing handful after handful into my mouth while Brody warms up. He’s fumbling the ball like I’ve never seen him do before. The popcorn lodges in my throat, my fingers freezing inside the bag—something’s wrong.

  This is worse than his warm-up on opening day. But we’re up by three runs. That’s a small cushion for error, at least.

  Seven pitches later, Brody has walked the White Sox batter, and Dad is now pacing in the dugout. What the hell? Dad never paces. His nervous position is always the motionless statue Dad. Is he angry? Worried?

  Jesus Christ. Can’t I just get one day to be pissed off at my boyfriend and not have to worry about Brody’s or Dad’s jobs? Is that too much to ask?

  Brody’s gaze is locked on the field. He’s not even attempting to glance toward the stands where Lenny and I are seated near the third base line. And he’s definitely not looking toward the empty seats that would belong to his mother, had she decided to come and see her son play.

  No, don’t go feeling sorry for him. You’re pissed, remember?

  Brody’s next pitch is straight over the plate but not fast enough. The crack of the bat against the ball causes my stomach to sink. The ball soars way out toward center. Seconds later, Brody ends up with the ball again and the job of stopping the runner he walked earlier from advancing to third. He completely overthrows and sends Third Base scrambling for the ball behind him.

  The error gives just enough room for the White Sox runner to take off for home plate. Brody darts forward to help the catcher cover home plate, but it’s too late.

  The White Sox score, and they’ve got a runner on second ba
se.

  I stare at the giant stadium screen, my mouth hanging open in shock while Brody’s shitty throw to third is replayed over and over, along with the White Sox runner’s slide into home plate.

  Oh God, what did I do? I rattled him. This is my fault. I know it’s my fault.

  I toss the popcorn back at Lenny so I can wring my hands in my lap.

  Brody takes the mound again, the cheers in the stadium erupting to an ear-damaging level. They stop replaying Brody’s error, and the camera zooms in on his face. There are hints of fear and panic on Brody’s face that I haven’t seen from him before.

  He draws in a breath, gripping the ball in his right hand. I run my palms over my jeans, wiping off the sweat. Brody’s next pitch is a bad attempt at a curveball. Frank throws his hands up in the air and Dad finally stops pacing.

  Oh God. I just screwed over the team. They’re gonna lose this game and then the White Sox are going to advance to the next round…

  Brody shakes off the call from the catcher twice before pitching. It’s right down the strike zone and a little too slow for the batter to miss. He sends a line drive toward the mound. I gasp, my hand flying up to cover my mouth as the ball smacks Brody right in the chest.

  My heart pounds, and panic floods through my veins.

  Brody reacts immediately, obvious pain on his face, but he scoops up the ball and makes the throw to first before dropping to his knees.

  I jump to my feet, looking around for a way down to the field. Lenny pulls me back to reality, grabbing my shirt and tugging until I’m in my seat again.

  “You can’t go down there,” she says in a low voice and with a level of concern that surprises me.

  The umpire calls a time-out, while Dad, Frank, several players, and the team doctor gather around the mound. Brody is rubbing his chest, still kneeling but attempting to stand. Dad presses on his shoulders to keep him in place.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. “This is my fault,” I mumble, not meaning to speak out loud.

  “No, Annie,” Lenny says right away. “Stop it.”