sweet for dessert. You pack all this stuff up in the basket.
And then you get a nice tablecloth. I’m sure your mom
will have something around. Don’t use a white one—it’ll
get dirty and she’ll shoot you if all the stains don’t come
out. Iron it if you have to. Fold it up all nice and neat
and put it on top of the food in the basket. Like a cover.
Then you take it over to this girl’s house and you say, ‘I
decided a picnic would be more romantic.’ Take her to
some nice quiet spot out in these woods with a pretty
view. Looking back down over the town, or overlook-
ing the river. Most people think the river is a nice view.
I don’t, but she probably will.”
I sat a minute, letting the sheer brilliance of her plan
sink in.
“A picnic,” I said when I could find my words again.
“Ooh. That’s good.”
“Wait. There’s one more thing. You got any kind of
flowers growing in your yard at home?”
“My mom has rosebushes all along the back fence.”
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“That’ll do it. Go out and pick the nicest, most perfect
rose you’ve got. Just one. Make sure you cut the stem real
nice and long. And break the thorns off it so she doesn’t
stick herself on them when you hand it to her. Put it on
top of the food, right under the table cloth. And when
you uncover everything, take the rose out and hand it to
her and tell her, ‘Here. This is for you.’ Then go about
setting up your picnic just so. She’ll like that.”
We sat for another silent moment.
Then I got up off the porch and fell to my knees in
front of her. Literally. Fell to my knees. And there had
been no forethought about it.
“Please don’t go,” I said. “You help me so much.
Nobody else tells me these things. Please?”
She sighed and turned her face away.
“We’ve been through this before,” she said.
“No we haven’t. I told you I thought you should stay.
Thought it. Just words in my head. Now I’m telling you
how I really feel about it. You know things I don’t know,
that no other grown-up I know seems to know. Or at
least that they’re willing to tell me. What would I do if
I couldn’t come ask you these things?”
I was hoping I’d broken through to a new place be-
tween us. But when she answered, I knew I had only hit
a wall that would prevent me from getting there.
“You’d figure it out on your own, trial and error, like
everybody else. Now get up off your knees, boy.”
I did as I’d been told.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry. I’m going to go running with
the dogs now. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Yeah. Go run.”
But before I could get a step away, she stopped me
with a kinder thought.
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“You let me know how that picnic idea turns out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I will.”
It was always a give and take with Zoe Dinsmore.
But then I couldn’t let myself get too confused about it,
or think too hard. Because the dogs and I were running.
And I didn’t want to smack into a tree.
* * *
I had been avoiding going over to Connor’s house for a
few days, and not really talking to myself about why. But
I knew I couldn’t go on that way much longer.
I jogged by his house on the way home. Didn’t even
bother to go home and clean up and change out of my
running clothes first. I thought if I waited too long, I
might talk myself out of going.
To my surprise, Connor was outside.
He was in the backyard, in just a pair of long khaki
shorts, sunning himself on one of those cheap folding
lawn-chair-type lounges. The kind with the plastic web-
bing. I could see the vague shape of him through the fence
when I was still halfway down the block.
I walked up his driveway and sat down in the grass
beside him. The skin of his chest was pasty white, and I
worried about Connor getting a vicious sunburn. I could
see every one of his ribs, but without any appearance of
sinewy muscle stretched over them. Just skin and ribs.
He looked like a guy who’d been sick for a long time.
First he said nothing at all.
Then he made a face and said, “Phew! Mind sitting
downwind of me?”
“Sorry,” I said.
I moved to the other side of his lounge.
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Under different circumstances I might have gotten a
little ticky about a comment like that. But he was mad at
me for not coming by, and I knew it. And he was going
to lash out at me, and I should’ve seen it coming. And I
deserved it.
“I guess it’s bound to happen,” he said. Then a long
pause. Then, “Running in all this heat.”
“What’re you doing outside in the sun? Seems un-
like you.”
“It was my mom’s idea. She thinks I’m getting too
pale.”
“Oh,” I said. What else could I say?
I sat there with him in silence for a minute, cross-
legged on the grass. Then I noticed the garage door was
open. And there was only one car in it. His mother’s car.
And it was Saturday.
“Where’s your dad’s car?” I asked, not realizing it
was a big question. Mistakenly thinking it was harmless
small talk.
“With my dad, I guess.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“No idea.”
“You didn’t ask your mom?”
“I asked. She has no idea.”
I just sat a minute. Wondering if I should say more
or not. I was beginning to get a sense of the weight of
that whole thing.
“How long’s he been gone?” I asked after a time.
“Three days.”
He didn’t go on to say, “If you’d come by to see me,
you’d’ve known that already.” Then again, he didn’t need
to. It went without saying.
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My mind was spinning around in circles, wondering
what that meant. Wondering whether I should ask.
But Connor stopped my mind in its tracks.
“When were you planning on telling me?” he asked.
His voice sounded stiff. Rehearsed, almost. And like we
didn’t really know each other very well. Like the voice
you use with a stranger you sit next to on a bus bench.
“Tell you what?”
“That you’re dating Libby Weller now.”
“Oh. That. It’s pretty new. How did you even know
about it?”
“I watched the two of you walk by my house holding
hands yesterday. You must know I have nothing better
to do than sit up in my room and stare out the window.”
I was stunned. Not so much by the fact that he’d
seen it. And said it. More by the fact that it had never
crossed my mind. I’d been so busy holding Libby’s hand
took us right by Connor’s house. How could I not have
thought of that? How did a girl’s hand have that kind of
power over me? When you stepped out of the thing and
looked at it from a distance, it didn’t make much sense
at all.
“It was our first date,” I said. “I was going to tell you.”
“Well, I figured. When I saw you were here just now,
I waited. I waited for a few minutes. You know. For you
to say something like, ‘Hey. Big news!’ I mean, it is big news. It’s sort of huge. And I’m your best friend.”
“You are,” I said. I couldn’t think what else to say.
“Did you figure I was so miserable and my life was
such a mess that it would break me into a million pieces to
hear that something good happened to you for a change?”
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Now, I like to tell the truth. More and more as I’ve
gotten older. But I was pretty attached to the truth even
back then, if only because it stressed me out to have to
juggle chunks of fiction and keep track of what I’d said.
So much easier to stick with the facts. But this was one
of those situations where the truth simply would not
do. Because the truth was, yeah, that’s exactly what I’d
figured. And that would’ve been a pretty cruel thing to
go and say.
“No,” I said. “It’s not that at all. I just … I just wanted
to wait and see if we even liked each other. If there was
even going to be a second date. I think I just didn’t want
to tell anybody I was getting my hopes all up. Because
then if it came to nothing, I’d have to tell them. And
they’d see how disappointed I was. And then they’d be
all disappointed for me. And that’s worse than anything.”
I paused, in case he had thoughts he wanted to voice.
While I waited, it bothered me just a little that it was so
easy for me to make up such an intricate lie. But then
I thought back over what I’d just said, and there might
have been a grain of truth to it.
He wasn’t saying anything. So I added, “You know
what I mean about that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
He didn’t sound all that sure.
We sat in silence for a weird length of time. Quite a
few minutes. I was getting tired of baking in the sun. I
wanted to go home and take a shower. Make plans for a
romantic picnic.
I looked over at Connor, and saw that his chest was
broken out in beads of sweat.
“Don’t stay out too long,” I said. “You’ll burn to a
crisp.”
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“Oh,” he said. A little surprised, as if I’d wakened
him. “You going?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Okay.”
“But I’ll come by again. Sooner. I mean, I won’t let
so much time go by this time. That’s what I mean.”
“Okay.”
I pulled to my feet. Stared down at him for a minute.
His eyes were squeezed closed.
“Think your dad’s coming back?”
I hated to ask. The last thing I wanted to do was upset
him. But how weird would it be to act like it wasn’t a big
deal, or like I didn’t even care?
“No idea,” he said. “And don’t say ask my mom, be-
cause she has no idea either.”
“Oh. Sorry. I hope he does. I mean, I hope he does
if you hope he does. Do you hope he does?”
I was making a mess of things and I knew it.
“Yeah. I hope he does. I don’t know what my mom’s
going to do without him. She’s pretty broken up about it.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Not your fault.”
“Still sorry.”
Then I didn’t know what else to say. So I just said
goodbye and jogged home, thinking. Well, actually, I
was trying not to think. But that didn’t go my way at all.
* * *
My mom was in the kitchen when I got home. And I
wanted her not to be. I wanted to look around and see
what we had in the way of picnic ingredients. But you
don’t just ask your own mother to leave her own kitchen.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
She was leaning her back against the fridge, reading
some kind of women’s magazine. Holding it with one
hand, its pages folded back. In her other hand was a half-
eaten apple that she seemed to be ignoring.
She looked up and blinked at me. As though she’d
expected to look up and see some entirely different scene.
“Lucas,” she said.
I wondered where my father was. It was Saturday,
and the house was quiet, so he must’ve been far, far away.
Golfing, maybe. Or now, in retrospect, I think he might
even have been having an affair. I was getting used to
his unexplained absences, which had been accelerating.
“Who else would it be?” But it wasn’t really as grumpy
as I make it sound. Just a tossed-off comment, meant to
be halfway funny.
“I didn’t see you last night. Your father was out late,
and I think I might’ve fallen asleep on the couch before
you got in. How was your date?”
“It was good. Actually.”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I always thought she seemed
nice, that Weller girl. Are you going to see her again?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Looks that way.” Then I took a big,
deep breath and faced a new path through the world: I
decided to take a chance on letting my mother know my
plans. Not the easiest thing for a fourteen-year-old guy
to do. “I was thinking I’d invite her out on a picnic. So
I was wondering if we have stuff around. For a picnic.
Like sandwich stuff and fruit and some kind of dessert.
Drinks. Because I spent my whole allowance last night,
so if we don’t have what I need, I won’t be able to ask her
out again until after I get my allowance Friday. Which
seems like a really long wait.”
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She smiled in a way that struck me as a bit sarcastic.
Looking back, anyway. At the time I probably just felt
like she was making fun of me.
“Ah, to be fourteen again. Where a week feels like
a lifetime.”
She set her magazine down on the drainboard of the
sink, which I could see was wet. I wondered why she
hadn’t noticed that. She threw her half-eaten apple into
the trash bin under the sink.
She opened the fridge and began to root around in there.
“A picnic,” she said. Like it was just such an amazing
word that she had to say it out loud. Savor it. “What a
nice idea. You really are growing up to be a thoughtful
young man. You know that?”
“Thank you,” I said. But I felt bad. Because I never
would have thought of such an idea. Not if you’d given
me a hundred years to think.
“Where are you going to go for your picnic?”
See? This is why I tended not
to share stuff with my
mother, who would be horrified to hear I had ever stepped
foot into those dark, dangerous woods.
“The park, I guess.”
No answer for a time. Just the sound of her rooting in
the fridge. I was thinking that was a lot of cold escaping.
“Well, I think we’re in good shape,” she said, pulling
her head out and swinging the door closed. “We have
sliced turkey. Ham. Then in the cupboard we have some
canned things—tuna fish and deviled ham. Bananas and
oranges. You know I don’t like you to have sodas, but
if you insist in this case, you can buy your own. But we
have bottled apple juice and orange juice if that’ll do.
And those cookies you like.”
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“Do we have cloth napkins?”
Then I had to look away because of the expression
that came over her face.
“Cloth napkins? My, my! Aren’t we the fancy guy?
This girl must be very special.”
“Jeez, mom. Can you just answer a question the nor-
mal way for a change?”
“Yes, you can use two of the good napkins. But bring
them back! And we have a couple of print tablecloths
I wouldn’t mind you using on the grass. I can always
bleach them.”
“So I’m set,” I said, eyeing her rosebushes through
the kitchen window.
“Looks that way. Is it time for us to have the talk?”
For a minute, I didn’t know what talk she meant. Then
I looked away from the roses and into her face, and then
I did. Horrifyingly did.
“Oh my God, Mom! Please. No! We’re just going to
eat sandwiches. How could you even bring a thing like
that up?”
“You’re growing up,” she said. “Much as I hate to
admit it.”
“I’m going up to my room.”
Before I could even get out of the kitchen, I could
feel my face going beet red. I remember thinking, Right.
That’s why I never talk to my mom about real stuff. How could I have forgotten?
* * *
I was lying on my back, reading a comic book. Or so
it would have seemed to anybody who walked into my
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room. In reality I had been staring at the same page for
probably half an hour.
I was obsessed with the details of making food for a
picnic. Obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about whether she would like sweet pickle relish in the tuna, along with
the mayonnaise. And how much mustard to put on the
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