A few times a day a bus would come through, and people on their way from Seattle to Salt Lake City would spend five minutes in Eula. They were bowlegged cowboys in their tight Wranglers, women in tube tops with jagged teeth and big hair, and black people. They got off the bus, blinking, dazzled by bright bits of cottonwood fluff that hung in the air, stretched, and walked stiffly into the bathroom, whose graffiti-covered metal doors opened directly onto the parking lot. Or they went into the station, used the pay phone, and bought a Twinkie from the vending machine. Some of them stayed sleeping on the bus, their hair forming flattened blossoms against the windows, like pressed flowers. They were people who were going somewhere but didn’t own a car. Enrique had never known an adult who didn’t own a car—even those who didn’t have a house to live in—and he had never met a black person.
There was a different type of person at the bus station, too, men who weren’t getting on or off a bus. Enrique knew, because he saw them again and again. (An old man in sunglasses and a white Miami Vice blazer was there nearly every day.) These men would sit in the station pretending to wait for a bus, or browse the businesses along the street. But again and again, they’d return to the bathroom off the parking lot. Enrique sat on the curb under a tree late into the afternoon, daring himself to go in and see what they were up to.
“DISAPPOINTED?” THE NOTE said.
No, Liz wasn’t disappointed. She couldn’t care less. She had put the entire affair behind her, figuring only a junior high prankster would have sent her to the Rollerdrome to find a Baggie full of water and a soggy note. YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE I LIKE. It had creeped her out, and this new one was nearly as creepy. In a few months she would graduate and never again have to deal with any of these stupid boys, or these stunted, depressed teachers, or these ammonia-smelling halls, or that bleak landscape visible through these grated, prison-like windows.
But an unsolved mystery was an unsolved mystery, and with little else to stimulate her, as her schoolwork was easy and Abby had been in Salt Lake City since February, Liz couldn’t help taking it up again and looking it over. How would any junior high boy know that she had applied to Stanford? Of course, now it had gotten around, but back in November, when her secret admirer had placed the note in the Stanford section of the college catalog, only Liz’s and Abby’s families had known. Had Winston told one of his friends? Liz had given Eddy Nissen plenty of opportunities to confess and had at last, shortly after the Rollerdrome incident, teasingly prodded him, “Come on, Eddy, tell me who you like.” Eddy blushed and looked away, causing her heart to race—it was Eddy! She could tease him now! What a thrill, to keep him at arm’s distance! But then his blue eyes swam shyly back up to meet hers, and he said, “Trisha Morton. But don’t tell anyone, Liz. Her parents don’t know.” Liz swallowed, and her throat had made an embarrassing click. So Eddy was secretly seeing Trisha. It made sense. Trisha’s father was a Methodist pastor who would never let her date Eddy, a Mormon.
Liz turned haughtily from the memory. Which other of Winston’s friends could it be? Did she care? How she longed to ask Abby that question face-to-face, not during their hour-long phone conversations, and receive the disdainful answer: Of course you don’t care, Liz. Some Eula boy? Please.
So, with indignation, Liz decided that she must solve the mystery once and for all. She couldn’t let some stupid Eula boy waste any more of her time. She had to root him out and turn him down in the hall at school in front of his friends.
This note—“Disappointed?”—did not lead her to any sort of mailbox; there was no key sending her to a locker or card directing her to a library book. Even so, it didn’t take long for Liz to figure out another way to answer.
The Eula High Gazette, of which Liz was assistant editor, featured a classifieds section on its back page. Here, for a dollar donation, students could post anything they liked, as long as it was free of profanity and under twenty words. “Ten-speed for sale. $20. Call 467-4531.” “Binky loves Carlos, 4-EVA.” The paper was distributed in homeroom every Friday, but—and this was what made it perfect—only to high school students. A junior high boy could get a hold of a copy easily enough, Liz supposed, but he would have no reason to, as the paper covered only high school events and sports. It was a good, if not foolproof, way to shake a junior high pursuer.
So she placed a notice, centered neatly in a box, among notes of encouragement to the baseball team and birthday greetings, to appear in that Friday’s Gazette:
Disappointed?
How could I be when I don’t know who you are?
Be a man. Declare yourself.
The response came that afternoon, in the form of another typewritten note dropped into Liz’s locker.
DECLARE MYSELF?
I thought I had. But I’m glad I didn’t.
When I thought you were disappointed, I couldn’t sleep.
When I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t dream of you.
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!!!
Liz couldn’t suppress the thrill. Someone had lost sleep over her.
THAT FIRST INSEMINATION didn’t take; after a week, Wanda did the stick test and a tiny pink minus-sign appeared. Good thing she had kept up the ovulation chart in the meantime.
Despite this disappointment, Wanda enjoyed leading a quiet life, her days beginning and ending under her little clowns.
The advance the Weston-Sloanes had given her had dwindled, despite the babysitting jobs she had. She needed another, and she found it advertised on the bulletin board at the grocery store. Wednesday and Sunday nights she began to babysit the five Jarrett children while their parents attended church meetings. They lived a ten-minute walk from Wanda’s in a big ranch house where all the surfaces were sticky. In the backyard stood a trampoline covered in pine needles next to a sandbox in which several dolls were partially interred. The younger children seemed unimpressed with Wanda—only obeying her the third time she said something—while the oldest girl, an eighth-grader named Lucy, stayed in her room. “She’s pretty grown up,” Mrs. Jarrett told Wanda the first night. “Best to leave her alone.” Lucy’s wavy red hair, cut in a bob, formed two curtains through which a narrow triangle of her freckled face was visible. Wanda caught glimpses of her walking swiftly through the side rooms of the house on bare feet, a notebook covered with drawings braced under her arm, her chubby legs jiggling under a long skirt.
After Wanda put the younger ones to bed on her third time babysitting, Lucy came to the living room and curled up into the far corner of the sofa. They watched TV in silence until Lucy said, without turning toward Wanda, “The last babysitter got eight dollars an hour.” Her sneer appeared to be unintended; she had to clear her lips from her braces in order to speak.
Wanda, who only got five dollars an hour, nodded.
Lucy opened her notebook and began to draw. “She threatened to quit, and they offered it, just like that. I was there.”
“Thanks,” Wanda said.
“You’re welcome,” Lucy replied.
IN THE WEEK she had to wait before she could post a response in the Gazette, Liz decided that simple demands wouldn’t work with this boy. He obviously enjoyed their cat-and-mouse correspondence too much. Perhaps he clung to it out of fear he would never touch her. She would have to play his game and gently draw him out.
To my sleepless friend:
I’ll be in Chandler tonight. Will you?
This was a tactical move. Maybe it wasn’t as subtle as he had been, but it was the best she could do. There was a boxing match in Chandler that night and, as much as she despised the sport, she would go watch Winston compete. Any of Winston’s friends who were on the boxing team would be in Chandler, as would, coincidentally, many of the brains, since there was a debate competition that night at Chandler High. The baseball players, on the other hand, would be stuck at a home game in Eula. Anyone who fell in-between these teams could certainly drive the fifteen miles to meet her in Chandler, so long as he had a car. In short, Liz could learn much fro
m the response.
The note arrived in her locker between fifth and sixth periods that afternoon. Perhaps not having had time to make it to the typewriter, he had hand-written this note in small, straight letters:
I won’t.
The population of boys had been effectively reduced by half, so long as her secret admirer was telling the truth. And she sensed he was. There were rules to this game.
These same rules required that Liz go to the boxing match, as she said she would. So, that night at the Chandler Field House she spread her things onto a few folding chairs to keep anyone from sitting beside her and glanced up from her work only occasionally to gauge which Eula boys were here and, hence, out of the running. After several matches, Winston jogged over in shorts and padded mask with towel hanging from around his neck. “I’m up next. Afraid you picked a bad night, though. It’s like spic city here.”
“What did you say?”
“It’s all beaners. I don’t know how we’re supposed to compete against dropouts with nothing to do but train all day every day. And half of them have full beards by the time they’re twelve. Just don’t expect me to score a knockout tonight.”
Liz studied Winston’s face. Blows had blunted its delicate angles, and the training had drawn its dimples into creases. Meanwhile, his shoulders had become as round and hard as veined stones. “When did you start talking about Hispanics that way?”
“I dunno, sis. Maybe around the time you became a boring, self-righteous bitch.” He squinted a smug smile at her, then inserted his mouth guard and headed for the ring.
She gathered her things, hoping her brother would see her leave before his match.
A new possibility occurred to Liz over the following days. Cordy Phillips, the student body president, and one of the only boys she would actually consider dating, was a member of the baseball team. He wouldn’t have been able to go to Chandler on Friday. It began to come together. Cordy would have had every reason to keep a crush secret. He had been dating Sarah Fagan—a friend of Liz’s—since junior high. There was talk that the two would marry that summer before Cordy left on his mission. This might be his desperate last lunge at the girl he had always secretly loved, before settling for Sarah, who, despite having thick, honey-colored hair and being bright and well-spoken, tended, in class, to hunch her shoulders and twiddle her fingers like an old woman knitting a scarf. It all fit. Before putting his future at risk, Cordy wanted to slowly test the waters, see if Liz was open to his advances. It was sweet.
Liz planned her next posting carefully.
To my sleepless friend:
Why not meet me for Lunch at Church on Monday?
There would be a meeting of the student body council during lunch that Monday. Cordy would have to tell her, again, that he couldn’t meet her and, wittingly or not, declare himself. The friendly, offhanded tone was meant to put Cordy at ease. They were friends, after all. She would never ridicule him or tell Sarah. She might even give him a little consoling hug in some private recess, which would turn into a clinging, groping make-out session before she pushed him off. What are we doing, Cordy? I can’t do this to Sarah. I’m sorry. Liz would tell only Abby, and they would share a sigh of pity for poor Sarah. Cordy would tell no one, but treasure the memory forever. He would call it up when he made love to Sarah, when they conceived their children.
No answer came that Friday, but this wasn’t a surprise. Cordy realized he was cornered and was taking the weekend to consider how much he was willing to risk. But when there was no answer Monday morning, Liz began to wonder if he would now drop out of their little game and return to the script of his life that his parents and Sarah had written. It took a lot to turn your back on everyone, to have a Big Plan.
Or might she go to Lunch at Church that afternoon and find him there, sitting alone, his eyes fluttering up to her, then back down, his face glowing with shame and desire and surprise at having found himself willing to skip the student council meeting—and the rest of his life—to be with her?
But then, when Liz opened her locker to drop off her books before heading to lunch, there it was. She unfolded the paper.
I can’t. I’m not allowed.
Sarah hasn’t allowed him, Liz thought. Life hasn’t allowed him.
But then, as if Liz had been shut in a closet and her eyes were only now becoming accustomed to the dark, the note’s true meaning became apparent. Only two people at Eula High weren’t allowed to go to Lunch at Church: her brother and Jay.
Jay.
It all fit. It couldn’t have been anyone else. “I’m like your eyelashes,” he had said, “too close to see.” And he had been right.
If she had looked up at that moment, she might have spotted Jay himself, half-hidden in the phone booth under the stairwell.
This time Liz didn’t wad up the paper, but folded it carefully up and held it for a moment, as if it were a card she was about to play, to end in victory or defeat a high-stakes poker game. A faint depression appeared along her jaw, then her pale cheek was smooth again, and she hooked the silk drape of her hair behind her ear and set the note delicately on the shelf in the locker. It was maddening how, at a moment like this, a face could reveal only the depth and not the nature of an emotion. She was moved, but how? And then, still frozen before her open locker, Liz moved her lips. She said something to herself, and her eyes became glassy with sadness, or fear, or love. What had she said?
Liz had realized that she needn’t go to church for lunch now. She had no plans, no one to eat with, and what she had whispered was, “Abby, come back.”
. . . .
MAYBE IT WAS the blood that was at last coursing with some speed through Enrique’s veins, as his biking time cut into his reading and television-viewing time, that set off the growth spurt. That spring he shot up a full inch in height and became longer in the face. Enrique certainly didn’t look athletic, but neither did he look teddy-bearish anymore. His jeans were too short now, but this was easily disguised. The more daring kids at school were “pegging” their jeans by folding them over at the cuff and rolling them up, so Enrique joined them. His wrists, with bony knobs now, appeared from the cuffs of his shirts, and his cheeks, having lost their fullness, no longer reflected a sharp point of sunlight when he smiled. At last, Jay and Enrique were recognizable as brothers.
Mr. Dodd, who taught history and coached track, seemed to notice. While he had always appreciated Enrique as a good student, now he began to tease him in the familiar way he did the more athletic kids. Enrique encouraged this by smiling wryly and ignoring it, the way he had seen the older boys do when Mr. Dodd harassed them in the hallway. In addition to being the coolest junior high teacher, Mr. Dodd was also the easiest. His class was final period, and he seemed to enjoy easing his students into the leisure of the afternoon. While other teachers got after kids for slumping in their seats—Mrs. Neeley liked to creep up and swat a nearby desk with her grade book, causing the offender to jump—Mr. Dodd encouraged it. He dragged his own chair from behind his desk and reclined in the corner, balancing on the back two legs. One day Mr. Dodd conducted an ungraded, verbal pop quiz on the Civil War. He spat out questions to his students, who were supposed to either answer quickly or say “Pass.”
“Angie, who led the march to the sea?”
“Sherman.”
“Wally, the Battle of the Merrimack and the what?”
“Pass.”
“Cindy?”
“Monitor.”
“Good.”
This “test” bore a clear resemblance to tennis, which Mr. Dodd coached for the city league over the summer.
“Enrique,” he said, “how fast can you run the 440?”
“Pass,” Enrique responded without missing a beat. The class laughed.
Mr. Dodd didn’t relent, but served again, still in his quiz-voice: “Enrique, are you going out for track-and-field this year?”
“No,” he said.
On his bike ride home, Enrique revisited thi
s little exchange. Mr. Dodd had, by joshing Enrique, shown the class that Enrique was in with him. While in previous years this would have so excited Enrique that he would have spazzed and missed the ball, now, after a good six months’ practice being a man of few words, Enrique was steady enough to volley back and had made the class laugh. On top of this, Mr. Dodd was inviting Enrique to be on his track team. Enrique would never join, of course. Despite progress in some areas, Enrique was still secure in the knowledge that he was not athletic. He could see himself running around the track, heavy in the foot and light in the hand, swishing over the finish line long after everyone else, causing Pete Randolph and his gang to laugh from their perch high in the bleachers.
One day Enrique lingered after history class, chatting with Tommy Hess. Over the year, Tommy had become well-liked among their classmates, verging on popular. He was an expert at the well-timed caustic aside, which teachers never punished him for because of his goony good nature. Mr. Dodd came up and said, “Tommy’s going out, aren’t you?”
“For track? Sure,” Tommy said.
Mr. Dodd spread one hand, and used the extended thumb and pinkie to pull the two curtains of his hair out of his face. They promptly fell back exactly where they had lain before. “So, how about it, Enrique?”
“I’m not the most athletic guy, Mr. Dodd,” Enrique said.
“Track-and-field is perfect, then. You can sign up for as many or as few events as you like. I see you in the 440. I’ll bet you have good lung capacity. Just sign up for the one event, if you want. You can spend the rest of the track meets just hanging out on the grass.”
“My brother told me it’s pretty fun,” Tommy added.
“Do it as a trial membership,” Mr. Dodd said. “Come to practice for the first week or two. Train a little, and if you like it, you can compete; if not, you can quit.”
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