He leads me through a door next to the large window to a small but cozy balcony with a tiny table shoved onto it that’s bookended by two sports event folding chairs. It’s slightly cooler than when I opened the window for Mom, but still a pleasant spring evening. Mitchell pulls out a cigarette as he goes to the railing. He ignites the white stick with an expert push of his thumb and a click from a lighter. He levels a finger at me with the hand holding the lighter before stashing it in his back pocket.
“You don’t get one. Don’t smoke, Audrey. It’s bad for you.” He leans back against the railing and the end of the cigarette glows deep orange for a second. “So, what did you need to ask me?”
I join him at the railing and recap the conversation I overheard between Carolina and her friend, and what Scarlett had said to me just an hour ago.
“…and Serhan’s her best friend, so I….” I trail off.
Mitchell snorts bitterly. “So you naturally thought of me.” He takes a drag on his cigarette and exhales on a long sigh, smoke pouring from his nose and mouth.
“I don’t know if I should tell her or not,” I say. “And I wanted to know what you would have preferred.”
Mitchell turns around and crosses his arms over the top of the railing, face brooding. His cigarette juts from the corner of his mouth and he crosses his feet behind him, and for a moment he reminds me of a cowboy. He pulls the cigarette out and flicks it absently.
“Never thought I’d be anyone’s moral compass, Audrey,” he says. “So I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. The dissolution of a seven-year marriage is in no way, shape, or form comparable to a high school crush.” I flinch back. “But yeah. I would have wanted to hear it as soon as possible. From someone I trusted. I think if I were in your girl’s place, I’d still want that.”
I release a breath. “Okay. Thank you.”
He turns to face me, now leaning sideways against the rail and scowling. “And one other point I’m going to make clear, because I really like you, kid, and I don’t want to see you get hurt worse by this girl than you already have been. I have absolutely no interest in forming a romantic attachment to anyone right now. Letting go of someone and what you used to have with them is hard enough without another person trying to move in and take up that space. You may really like this kid, and she may have acted like she likes you, but if you really hope for something with her, you need to back off first and let her sort her stuff out. The way you were talking about this whole thing just now? It couldn’t be clearer you can’t wait to push down on the gas. If you go to her like that, it’s just going to end in misery.”
“Okay,” I whisper. I drop my head and look at the grubby tile on the tiny balcony. It blurs a little as my eyes mist. I hear Mitchell heave a huge sigh and see the butt of his cigarette fall to the floor and glow a second before he crushes it out with his boot.
“C’mon, Audrey, don’t be like that,” he mutters. “You’re breaking the pieces that are left of my heart. This kid isn’t worth it. If she didn’t drop everything and grab you while she had the chance? Nah. She’s not worth it.”
I blink and try to smile at him, but it comes out wobbly. “Can I hug you?”
He rolls his eyes but smiles a little as he lifts his arms from his sides. I hug him around his middle and press my cheek into the rough fabric of his denim shirt. He smells smoky with a distant scent of cologne, like he had put some on a day ago, and it’s comforting, like the way hugging my dad or Jimmy is. He carefully puts his arm around my shoulders and pats me between my shoulder blades.
“Thanks,” I say as I step back. “I knew you were the right person to talk to.”
“Not sure how you figured that,” he remarks as he opens the door and gestures me through. “But it’s always nice to be thought of.”
He gives me his number before I leave. “If you need to talk again, or need any help, just call, okay?”
“Thanks,” I say once more, saving the number under his first name on my phone. “I will. Have a good evening, Mitchell. Bye, Jake.”
Jake raises an arm holding a green beer bottle. “Bye.”
So the next day after school, I wait by the girls’ locker room, feeling conspicuous and ill at ease. I get a lot of weird looks from the girls trooping out in their soccer uniforms, but I pretend not to notice as I scrawl the outline of my last English paper in my notebook that I’ve braced against my forearm.
Finally, Scarlett emerges with three other girls I recognize but couldn’t name. One catches sight of me, and then another head turns before Scarlett’s follows suit. I lift a hand.
“Hi. Do you have a minute?”
“Yeah, sure,” she says, brow furrowed. She says to her friends, “It’s probably about how I screwed something up on our science project. Go on ahead. Don’t witness my shame. I’ll see you on the field.”
They laugh and a couple slap her on the back as she jogs over.
“What’s up?”
I’ve been practicing in my head all day, and a couple of times before the mirror, to make sure I’m as dispassionately sympathetic as possible.
“I may have some bad news, and I wanted to tell you before you found out in a bad way.”
Panic flashes over her face.
“Are you okay?” she demands.
“What? Yes, I’m fine. I just overheard something… about Carolina. I may have misheard. But if I didn’t, and I’m not wrong, I just wanted you to know. She is (she may be) interested in Serhan. I don’t know if she plans to do anything about it, but….” I trail off before forcing myself through. “But she may… do something, and I wanted you to be prepared.”
She stares at me blankly.
“Oh,” she says and then turns and walks away.
I watch her depart with my jaw hanging open. It wasn’t the reaction I had expected. I was braced for anger, for hurt, for biting dismissal—You’re crazy, you’re jealous!
I stand for a minute, wind ruffling my hair and clothes. I close my notebook, finding the thicker poly cover amidst the, at this point, mostly used pages, and swinging it around the spiral binding. The sturdy cover is a slate blue that reminds me of Mitchell’s shirt last night, of Scarlett’s normally bright, bright eyes. I tuck it under my arm, up against my rib cage, and walk to catch the bus.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT TURNS out I don’t need to fabricate a plot to get me to my neighbor’s door (who, I would like to point out, has yet to post his last name anywhere around the house or emerge during daylight for more than a minute. All highly suspicious, if you ask me). Sam’s class needs to raise money for their eighth-grade field trip to Chicago next year, so Saturday I help him go door-to-door to sell fruit and frozen cookie dough.
“Come on,” I say, marching to the end of our road, passing the thumping bass line of the twenty-somethings’ rental. “We’ll start here.”
Sam lags behind me. “Why?” he whines. “Let’s start on the rich streets and get done faster.”
I ignore him and bang (cheerfully) on my nameless neighbor’s door. No response. No surprise. I try a couple more times while Sam sighs heavily behind me and crouches down to poke at a bug on the overgrown driveway. The porch has scattered, gently used odds and ends on it, like he went to a garage sale and grabbed random items to display. But, given the neighborhood, it doesn’t look any shoddier than the other properties.
Trying to look natural, I slide a foot to the side, past a flower pot full of dirt and a lone butterfly stick, and crane my neck around to look in the window. Nothing. The blinds are down, and what looks like a heavy curtain is drawn over them. The place is more tightly locked up than Fort Knox.
I frown and step back, and my heel catches on something at the edge of the porch. I lose my balance and shriek as I fall back, arms pinwheeling.
“Audrey!” I hear Sam yell as I land—hard—on the ground. Thankfully, it’s not a high porch, just a foot off the ground, but my tailbone and back don’t seem to appreciate the brevity of the fall
. Wincing, I sit up.
“It’s okay, I’m okay,” I say as he stands worriedly over me. “Ow. What did I step on?”
Sam looks behind him. “It was a statue of a rooster.”
“Was?”
“Well,” says Sam, bending over and picking up part of it. “You kinda… beheaded it.”
My stomach sinks. “Oh no. No! Can we glue it back together?”
“Uhhh….” With difficulty, he holds up the head, which is in three distinct pieces. I cover my mouth with my hand.
“This is terrible.”
“Eh, it’s not any worse than what it looked like whole,” he says, studying it.
“No, Sam! I destroyed someone’s property. I’m so horrified.” I climb to my feet, barely noticing the sore muscles and twinges. “Oh! Now he has to answer the door. I was almost killed on his yard.”
But he doesn’t. I’m starting to think he may be genuinely not home this time. Finally, I run to our house to get paper and leave a note under the broken rooster, explaining why we were there, that it was an accident, and please let me replace or reimburse him for his loss.
Ha! Now the ball’s in his court.
Sam and I cross the poor line to go start hitting up the wealthier houses. Sam was right; no one in our neighborhood would be interested in adjusting their budgets to afford the stuff in the catalog.
After seven houses, we’ve sold stuff at three and are pretty well on our way to meeting his goal.
“How’s school?” I ask as we leave our eighth house, the Uzuns, who bought a whole bunch of fruit and put us over halfway there.
He pulls a face. “It’s fine. Don’t nag.”
“Are your grades up?”
“Yes. It’s fine.”
“That’s a surprise, since I saw you got a D on your last science test.”
He looks at me in outrage. “You snooped through my stuff?”
“No, Sam! You left it on the table before school yesterday while you were putting on your shoes, and I saw it then. I’m worried your grades will drop. What if you end up repeating the seventh grade? I mean, picture it: You’re stuck there while all your friends move on. You’ll be the oldest one in the class. It doesn’t have to be like that. Why don’t we add another study day onto the week?”
“Ugh!” He kicks a rock so hard it flies across the street into a yard in a wide arch, and for a heart-stopping moment, I’m sure it’s going to hit the house. Two damaged properties in one day; the Anderson kids on a roll. It doesn’t, though. It just skips into their yard and stops halfway to the house. “I hate school!”
“Sam,” I start, then stop myself.
“It’s so stupid! I hate the stupid teachers and the stupid tests and the stupid schedule I have every day! I hate having homework! I hate having to write papers! I hate it all!”
He’s worked up, his chest heaving and his eyes suspiciously wet. I stop walking and put my hands on his shoulders.
“Sam,” I say gently. “I’m sorry you hate it. I’m sorry you find it frustrating. But you have to do it. And you have to do it for the next five years. You may never like it, but you need to learn to cope with it. It’s the only way to get to a better life.”
“My life is fine the way it is,” he huffs, pulling away from me and storming off. “Just because you’re too good for us doesn’t mean I am.”
“I’m not ‘too good!’” I say, stung.
“Whatever.”
“We’re adding an extra study night,” I say firmly, running to catch up to him. “It doesn’t have to be as long—forty-five minutes, let’s say to start—but until you improve in school, it’s happening, bean.”
He groans but doesn’t protest. I force myself to act cheerful at the next house. Sam barely looks at them or me, but they still buy a bucket of white-chocolate-macadamia-nut cookie dough.
We only need one more sale before we’re done. That cheers Sam up as he hops down the steep driveway to the sidewalk.
“What about that one?” he asks, pointing at Scarlett’s house, kitty-corner to the intersection where we just arrived. A silver Audi is parked in the driveway.
“No,” I say, my stomach contracting. “Let’s start back for home.”
“Why?” Sam asks.
“Trust me, bean,” I say, turning away. “Besides, why walk all the way over there, when we can just go here?” I head away from Scarlett’s toward a stately pink house. Sam follows me reluctantly.
We strike out at the next two houses, before selling a few bags of oranges to an elderly lady who thinks her grandkids will like them when they come to visit. On the way back home, Sam and I agree the kids would probably have preferred any flavor of the cookie dough to the oranges.
I consider suggesting to Sam that we settle down with his homework, but the second I inhale, he gives me a look like he knows what’s coming and dreads it.
I decide to give him a break. He’s worked hard today already, I suppose.
“I’m going to see if Amber wants to hang out,” I say instead. He looks surprised. “Go pester Jimmy.” I squeeze the top of his head to show I’m joking and pull out my phone to call Amber.
She’s free for the afternoon and would love to spend time together. I take the car and meet her in her driveway, where she’s just finishing washing both her zippy yellow Mini Cooper and the family minivan. She’s sweaty and her entire front is drenched in water.
“You’ve got perfect timing,” she says, dropping the hose into an overturned plastic bucket that still has suds clinging to it. She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead. “Want to make cookies? You pick what kind and get out the ingredients while I grab a quick shower.”
I decide on peanut butter with a Hershey’s Kiss the second I open her pantry and see a large, unopened bag of the chocolates in Easter colors, with a big orange discount sticker on the side.
“We need to eat these,” I say mock seriously when she comes down, wet hair pulled back into a thick ponytail and a shirt that’s a little too tight for her body type. “They’ll go bad if we don’t.”
She nods with a similar gravity. “It’s in the best interests of everyone if we bake them into delicious cookies.”
Amber chats happily as we bake, recounting her last cello lesson, funny things that happened in the classes we don’t share, and amusing things her family said/did. They’re planning on taking a two-week trip to her grandparents in Alaska this summer. It sounds amazing.
The cookies are so good, we both eat two while they’re warm and the chocolate is melty. Amber has a date with Steven that night, so I pack up the half she gives to me on two separate plates and wrap them in cellophane.
“Are you sure you don’t want more?” she asks as I balance them on one arm and fish my keys out of my khaki’s pocket with the other. “We made plenty.”
“This is fine,” I say. I have specific uses in mind for both.
“Hey,” says Amber with hesitation. I freeze in my tracks and stare at her, standing next to the stove with all its dirty cookie sheets. Amber is nothing but quietly assured. “I was thinking…. You can say no, of course, but Steven has a friend, Brenna, and I thought it would be fun… if you would like, of course, but it may be fun if we all four go out sometime.”
“Er—”
“I don’t want to push you into anything,” Amber says in a rush, holding up her hands beseechingly, “and I don’t mean it as a way to get over Scarlett, or to rush into anything, but… I just thought it would be nice to spend time together. And we’re going to be going to college soon. Developing these sort of social skills is a must for a college girl. Brenna got into Northwestern, and she told Steven it was in large part because she was so self-assured around other people.”
“She got into Northwestern?” I ask swiftly. I had known Steven was a senior but hadn’t really thought of it in context of colleges and applications. “I’ll think about it.”
She nods. “Okay. I thought, if nothing else came of it, you might be able
to get some tips about the admissions process.”
It’s a thought that sticks with me all the way back home. It’s the part that appeals to me most; being with Amber is always great, of course, but forcing myself to small talk with someone I don’t know in a high-pressure social situation…. Ugh.
As I drive up, I can see the note I left still fluttering under the broken pieces of rooster on my neighbor’s porch, so I take one plate inside and put it in the freezer to save for whenever he gets home (not only will it preserve the cookies, but Jimmy and Sam won’t look for it there, especially since I have a decoy plate for them).
The next week is a blur of schoolwork and I mostly forget about my neighbor. There are only three weeks left in the school year, and everyone’s focused and panicked and hyper, except the seniors, who are just hyper and emotional. I only see Scarlett from a distance. Occasionally we catch eyes and both smile a little at each other. I ask Mr. Nwaogu daily who won the science project, and he gets more and more irked as he tells me, “I’ll let everyone know soon. Go take a seat.”
Finally, on Friday, he looks at me significantly as the bell rings. I sit straight up, excitement thrumming through me.
“Congratulations to the pair who will be going to Chicago this July,” he intones, looking down at his computer. He adjusts his glasses. “To Mr. Reese and Ms. Risatti. Congratulations.” He leads the class in tepid applause.
I fall back in my chair, numb from the top of my head to my toes. The lovely fantasy of beaming college admissions officers fades away.
No. No. How did this happen?
I’m not stupid, I know how it happened: I let myself get distracted. I settled for a substandard project because I was too busy mooning over Scarlett, a girl who doesn’t even want me, to focus on the important things. I took the first project I looked at and called it good without thinking it through, without really trying.
I’m as bad as Mr. Nwaogu.
We should have gone with the lasers.
I’m so furious at myself I can’t focus the rest of the class. I keep clenching and unclenching my hand around the pen I’m holding. I look at it and picture myself the same way: encased in a protective surface so everything pings off me, not bothering the core as I work and work until I’m spent up and dry….
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