It’s weird not having Treat around either. Keith’s still mad about it, and I mean crazy angry. “He stabbed us in the back like Caesar did to whoever he did that to,” Keith says, and I say, “You mean Brutus,” because we just read that in my English class too. Keith looks confused but he nods, and I know he’s talking about betrayal. It’s just, I feel more sad about it now than betrayed because Treat isn’t a bad guy. Not really.
One time in English, right after Winter Formal, Treat passed around pictures from the dance, saying how lame it was but he had to go because he’d been voted Freshman Ice Prince or something. And there he was next to Cherise in his black boots, black pants, and black T-shirt, one of those joke ones that’s just a picture of a tuxedo, no real jacket or tie. It made me smile and feel kind of happy for him. There was another picture with the whole winter court, including Astrid, which you might think would make me jealous, but that feeling didn’t come until I flipped to the couples picture with Treat and Cherise squeezed next to Edie and Dylan.
Worst of all, me and Edie are just math buddies now. It’s been that way all winter and into spring. She won’t even walk to the staircase with me after class. There’s always a poster that needs to be put up for a UN Club meeting or flyers to get at Dylan’s locker, or something else super important. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to walk with her, and talk to her, and look at her, but at some point back in January I figured the least I could do, as her buddy, was stop making her come up with excuses. So I started bolting for the door every day as soon as the bell rang, even before Edie had time to gather her stuff and stand up.
.
It’s a Friday in spring, just after baseball season has started, that I wait for Edie just outside the door after Algebra. She looks surprised when I step up next to her. She’s headed for the stairs, so she can’t make an excuse this time.
I hold up a note I’ve folded into a tiny square. “I need you to deliver this to someone for me.”
She takes the note without looking at me, flipping it over since there’s no name on the front.
“It’s for you,” I say and she nods, serious-faced, and keeps walking. “Me and Keith used to do this thing with Treat where we’d put stuff out into the air to make it honest and true. I guess I was doing that in these letters I’d been writing to my uncle even if I’d never actually—”
“Okay,” she says and slides the note down into a front pocket of her jeans. “I’ll deliver it to myself after school, when I have time to read it.”
I take a breath. “Okay.”
We’re at the bottom of the stairs, stopped, and I’m out of things to say.
Edie nods. “Now is the time to go,” she says, grins just a little, and steps away without looking back.
The thing about Astrid ever being my girlfriend was that it was all hypothesis, like how Mr. Krueger says cold fusion is hypothesis: “Even though it’s possible, if we’re honest about it we know it’s not going to happen anytime soon, if it ever happens at all.” But the stuff with Edie, it was theorem. Everything I needed to solve it was right there the whole time. So that’s kind of what the note says. As Edie’s math buddy, I wrote, she needs to know Dylan Long isn’t the right guy for her. Not that he’s a bad person, but if she’s x, he’s x + 3 (because he’s three years older and is going away for college next year), and that can’t be solved. He’ll be living far away and busy with hard classes and maybe his fraternity or Frisbee golf or whatever else college guys do, I wrote. So what you need to do is solve for y. Why you should go out with someone from your own class. Why you should go out with someone who has been friends with you since day one. Why you should go out with me.
.
Saturday morning, with Packy already off for his overtime shift, I make brunch for everyone. And just after, just as I’m washing the dishes and Brendan’s drying, the phone rings.
I’m all soapy hands so Brendan gets it. “Hello,” he says, stays quiet for a minute, then covers the phone and looks right at me with a dumb smile on his face. “It’s a girl, and she asked for you.”
This shock of nerves runs through me so fast and so hard I feel it swirl down my arms and into my bubbly hands. I rinse off real fast and say, “Is it Edie?” as I grab a dish towel. I’m saying it more for myself than Brendan, but he uncovers the phone and says, “Is this Edie?”
I put my hand out for the phone, giving Brendan the You just dropped an easy fly ball look, but he nods real calm, like he’s gotten the out anyway, and hands the phone over. “Yep. It’s Edie.”
“Was that your brother?” she says.
“Yeah, for about five more minutes until I kill him.”
She laughs and so I do too, and then we both breathe a couple times.
“I read the note,” she finally says, and the whole world outside the phone line stops. Now it’s just my ear, Edie’s mouth, and whatever she might say next, which is, “It’s good.”
I start wrapping my wrist in the phone cord. “Thanks.”
“It really got me thinking about a lot of stuff.”
My cheeks tingle with how nice she sounds, with what she might mean by stuff. Then my mom’s head pokes into the kitchen from the hallway. “Brendan! If you want me to drop you off at Kyle’s, let’s get a move on.”
Brendan tosses his dish towel on the counter as he walks toward my mom. “Reece is talking to a girl.”
“The car,” my mom says like she didn’t hear a word Brendan said, but Colleen’s behind her asking if I’m talking to a girl from her class.
“Hold on a second,” I say into the phone.
My mom turns to watch Brendan and Colleen, I guess to make sure they’re heading for the front door; then she turns back to me. “Lock up if you go out anywhere with . . . ,” she says, her eyebrows up, her face frozen.
“Edie. You know . . . ,” I say, all casual, raising my eyebrows too because my mom really doesn’t know.
My mom smiles. “Oh yes, Edie,” she says nice and loud. “Be home for dinner.” She blows me a kiss and is gone.
“Sorry,” I say.
“That’s okay,” Edie says.
“You know, Filibuster’s playing tonight—”
“I can’t,” she says. “That sounds really fun, but I’ve got a date.” The world goes quiet again, library-on-a-Friday-night quiet, but Edie breaks it quick this time. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing on my date?”
“Do I want to know?”
“Solving for y,” she says, and I can just see her standing in her kitchen, that grin she gives only to me.
I laugh and Edie does too. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she says soft and smooth.
“Now is the time to go?” I say.
“Now is the time to go,” she says, soft and final, and we hang up.
I’m so happy I don’t care there’s still a mess of dishes and they’re all mine. I hit it hard and happy, wash-rinse-dry-return. My head is going to all kinds of happy places—first I’m just walking Edie to the stairs after class and holding her hand; then we’re sneaking in a quick kiss at the bottom of the staircase before she heads off for her next class; then we’re sitting side by side on a planter in the Bog, her thigh pressed up against mine, maybe her hand on the back of my neck, sort of tickling it.
The front door whines open and I almost drop a plate. I didn’t hear anything until just now, just as someone is stepping into the house. Packy comes around the corner. “Good,” he says. “You’re here.” I nod because where else would I be? “Where is everybody?” Packy says, and I tell him. “Good,” he says again. He looks me up and down. I’m wearing shorts and a black TSOL T-shirt.
“What are you doing home?” I say.
“Put on some shoes,” Packy says. “We’re going somewhere.”
.
In the truck, Packy won’t say where we’re going. We
get on the 91 freeway, then the 57 south, so not LA. I’m guessing that if he’s about to drop me off at Salt Mining Camp or Saint Bendover’s Torture Academy for Boys, he’d look grim or be talking about when he and Mom would come back to visit me. We’re not talking, though, and I don’t even turn on the radio. Half the time I’m wondering where we’re going, and the other half my mind is on that date with Edie and Dylan, trying to solve it so y comes out the right way.
Finally, I say, “Will we be home by dinner?”
“I think so.”
“We will?” I say. “Both of us?”
Packy looks around like who else do I think is in the truck? “Don’t worry about dinner.”
“I’m not worried. It’s just, there’s a gig tonight and I promised van Doren I’d be there.”
“The kid with the crap haircut?”
“Crop.”
Packy smiles. “I know. I’m just busting your chops.”
We exit the freeway into traffic that leads us into this huge parking lot, an ocean of asphalt with Anaheim Stadium rising in the middle of it like an island. Cars and vans and trucks and buses are everywhere, and people are funneling in from all directions like the stadium has its own gravitational field.
“We’re going to a ball game?”
Packy looks me over. “Yeah. You still like baseball, don’t you?”
Out the side of my eye I can see him keeping his head turned toward me, driving slow in the stadium traffic and glancing forward to spot-check. I keep my eyes on the stadium. “I guess so.”
The Angels are playing Seattle: an okay team versus an awful one. Inside the stadium, there are plenty of guys my own age hanging out, though none of them are with their parents.
We get in line for hot dogs and the guy right in front of us has his arm wrapped around this girl beside him, his hand inside the back pocket of her shorts. She’s leaning into him hard, and I don’t know how the guy is going to get through nine innings without exploding. Packy’s trying to ignore it by talking to me like I’m five, saying I can have anything I want—hot dog, pop, even Cracker Jacks. It’s awful.
.
When the game starts, I try getting into it, but I couldn’t care less about either of these teams. It might help if the Angels fans would get excited about their team, or razz the other team, but they’re just polite about everything—clapping at the good stuff, groaning at the stuff that almost goes right or goes a little wrong, and being quiet the rest of the time.
“It’s not the Bronx,” I say.
“No,” Packy says. “It’s a nice stadium, though. Clean. Safe.”
He’s right. The plastic of the seats isn’t faded and scratched. Even the concrete looks like you could go five-second rule if you dropped your peanuts. But it’s still not the Bronx. “It’s a boring stadium. They don’t have any plaques. They don’t have a short porch in right or a deep gap in left center. They don’t even know how to razz a guy when he comes to the plate.”
Packy smiles, which makes no sense. “You’re right.”
We spend most of the game just sitting there, staring at the field and every once in a while saying, “Nice play, huh?” “Yeah. Nice play.” Then this guy Lenny Randle comes to the plate and somebody yells, “You’re a bum, Randle!”
It’s what Uncle Ryan would have said, especially since Randle used to be a Yankee and he was terrible, but Packy is the one who said it. Some of the Angels fans look back and up at us, but since Randle’s playing for Seattle they aren’t angry, just confused anyone would yell at some guy who isn’t even hitting .200.
“I’ve seen backstops hit the ball farther than you,” Packy yells out, one of Uncle Ryan’s favorites, and the people right next to us laugh.
We spend the rest of the game razzing Seattle players with Uncle Ryan’s best digs. And we try to come up with good nicknames for the Angels players: Ron “I Wish I Were Reggie” Jackson, Reggie “I’m Glad I’m Not Ron” Jackson, and Bobby “the Grich Who Stole Second.” They aren’t the best, but it’s like Uncle Ryan is there with us so it’s more about having fun than getting it exactly right.
After the game, we’re coming off the last stadium ramp to the parking lot and Packy asks if I want to go find where the players come out. I can see what he’s doing, what Uncle Ryan would have done, and it’s nice. I’d be tempted, too, if it was the Yankees. “We should go. Mom’s probably making dinner right now.”
“Are you sure?” Packy stops walking just outside the main gate. He jiggles the keys in his pocket. “It’s up to you.”
It really isn’t that late, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know it’d just be easier to do what he wants than to argue the whole way home, maybe even get grounded for the night. But I can’t help it. “I don’t want to break my promise to van Doren,” I say, which is true.
“Sure.” Packy takes a couple steps into the parking lot. I’m slow to move, trying to read him and make sure this isn’t a test. “Come on, Methuselah.”
I catch up. “Methuselah?”
While we’re sitting in the parking lot traffic, Packy gets this grin and asks if he ever told me about the time Uncle Ryan hung out with some of the Yankees.
“No.” I look him over. “Is this a true story?”
Packy nods and says Uncle Ryan used to offer to buy beer and pizza for any player who wanted to meet him after the game at Rocco’s in Bayonne. One time, a pitcher named Mike Torrez took him up on the offer and brought a couple other Yankees with him.
Packy’s smiling as he tells it, and I can just see Uncle Ryan there, pushing the mugs across the red-checkered tablecloth because he always liked to be the guy who gave you something good.
Uncle Ryan never talked about that day, Packy says, because he’d already had too much to drink at the game and fell asleep at the table right after the players got there. I laugh and so does Packy, and we do again when he gets to the part about the players paying the bill, putting Uncle Ryan in a cab, and paying for that, too. “He had no idea what happened until the next time he went to Rocco’s and the owner told him everything.”
Packy keeps smiling, the best smile I’ve seen on him since I can’t remember when.
I smile too, and when he looks over at me I say, “Tell me another Uncle Ryan story, Dad.”
My dad rubs his chin. “Okay. Do you know about the time he got kicked out of Studio 54?”
I don’t even know what Studio 54 really is, but I don’t care. “Tell me,” I say, and that’s how we get home: story after story, Dad looking somewhere over and beyond all the cars on the freeway, feeling his way up the hill to Yorba Linda and that sign that reads LAND OF GRACIOUS LIVING.
.
Saturday night, I’m still wearing the TSOL shirt, and now I’ve got on some Dickies work pants van Doren gave me since he’s moving on to plaid, and Dad’s old Converse. Filibuster’s playing a great set, the pit’s swirling, Keith’s working hard, and to keep from thinking about Edie on that date, I’m going over the Uncle Ryan stories Dad told me today, trying to decide which ones I’ll tell the guys later when we go out for a late-night breakfast. But in my head, imagining van Doren’s face as I tell the stories, Uncle Ryan isn’t coming off so good. He sounds kind of pathetic, acting crazy after drinking or messing up fun times by getting too drunk. I mean, I know Uncle Ryan was a good guy—Dad wouldn’t love him the way he does if he wasn’t—but he might not sound that way to other people if they hear too much.
At Denny’s restaurant, we’re in one of those circular booths, passing around the two coffees we ordered to share, and everyone’s chattering about the show. Then van Doren gives us some details about playing the Whisky in June and Keith tells a Sascha/Karen story that has the guys laughing and telling him he’s whipped. It’s fun, but I’m clammed up, afraid to tell the Uncle Ryan stories and feeling guilty for not telling them. Then Uncle Ryan slides into the bo
oth beside me, looks at the empty coffee cup by my spoon, and signals the waiter. “I think my cup has a hole in it,” I hear myself say. The waiter steps over fast, his face concerned. I grin and hold up the cup. “It’s been empty for like five minutes.” The waiter rolls his eyes and tells me to hold my horses. Van Doren laughs. Then Keith and the rest of the guys laugh. And then me and Uncle Ryan do too.
.
As soon as Mr. Tomita drops his chalk on Monday, Edie stands up and says, “Come on.”
We walk out the door together and toward the stairs. She wants to know all about the Filibuster show; she’s sorry she missed it. Sorry she missed hearing me introduce them and says it must be a lot of fun.
She says we should get together to study for our next algebra test. “It’s been a hard unit,” she says, and I get the grin that makes the whole of me go warm every time I see it now. “You’ll need the help.”
“I will,” I say.
She glances at the stairs but doesn’t leave.
“Does this mean you solved for y?”
She shakes her head, but there’s a smile with it. “It’s a big one,” she says. “We’ll have to take our time and work on it together. Okay?”
It’s not the answer I want, but at least there’s something to build on, you know? And did I really expect her to just break up with Dylan? Maybe, but not really, now that I think about it. Who wants to be with a girl who would do that? “Okay,” I say.
I know what she’s going to say next, and I say it with her. “Now is the time to go.” She bursts out laughing and I get a little glance back from her as she goes.
.
At lunch, I tell Keith about all of that and he says we should get together after school to start planning my next move. It’s not a bad idea, I say, but we’ll have to put it off until the next day. I’ve got somewhere to be today, somewhere Keith can’t come with me. He’s dying to know, but I won’t say.
As soon as the bell rings in sixth period, I’m out the door. I don’t even go to my locker. I want to run to Treat’s house as fast as I can, and I do.
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