SURVIVAL KIT

by Donna Freitas

  Krupa was waiting by the school entrance when I arrived. “Rose, how are you?” she asked, her brown eyes pooled with concern.

  “Really glad to see you,” I said, and I held out the bag with his jacket.

  She peered inside. “Wow. So this is a done deal.”

  “I guess. I don’t know. I’m too upset to talk about it right now.”

  “Okay. Let’s just do this. We’ll make it quick and get it behind us.”

  I loved how Krupa said us, as if Chris had broken up with her, too. I glanced left, then right, feeling anxious. “Ideally without attracting too much attention,” I muttered as we began to navigate the packed hallways, thick with athletes, the bag bouncing against my hip with every step. A few of the cheerleaders nodded hello but I pretended not to see them. I hoped that luck would be on my side and Chris wouldn’t be at his locker—I didn’t want a scene. Instead, I found Tony standing there, a giant wall blocking my way, and I almost turned around right then.

  “You can do this,” Krupa whispered, and gave me a little push.

  At least there was no sign of Chris.

  “Hiya, Rose,” Tony said after flashing Krupa a big smile. “What did you do to our captain this time? He was upset all weekend. You two and your little spats.” He laughed, and if I had to bet, Tony was thinking that by football practice this afternoon he’d be yanking at Chris’s arm, trying his best to pull us apart so they wouldn’t be late. Tony’s big hazel eyes were full of teasing, but then he saw my face and his expression changed. “Are you okay?”

  “I have a favor to ask,” I said, and took the bag from my shoulder, offering it to him, hoping he would just take it so I could leave.

  “That’s Chris’s jacket,” Tony said. “Why would you give it to me?”

  I stretched my arms out farther, my muscles growing tired from holding it up. “He asked for it back. Would you make sure he gets it? Please.”

  “You’re broken up for real?” he asked, plainly surprised by this, and when I didn’t respond he began to shake his head side to side. “Don’t put me in the middle of this. Besides, you guys always fix things.” Tony stepped away as if suddenly afraid to be caught near me, giving me a clear path to Chris’s locker, so I pushed past him. A sudden hush fell over the other football players standing nearby, watching us, their eyes like tiny knives sliding into the soft skin of my back. Reaching into the bag, I removed the jacket, folded it neatly, and placed it on the floor in front of locker 49, the number Chris wore on his football jersey, and left it there like a tribute.

  “Let’s go,” Krupa said, pulling me away. “Everything is going to be okay,” she encouraged as we headed down the hall. “And remember, you are not alone. Don’t forget. You have me.”

  “I know.”

  “And just think,” she went on, steering us toward our locker, “before long, football season will end and it will be all hockey, all the time on the weekends for you and me.”

  “Oh goody,” I said, mustering a laugh.

  “Look on the bright side: we won’t have to worry about running into football players at the rink, right? And I’ll do my best to—” Krupa stopped suddenly, mid-sentence, switching gears. “Um, we should get to class.” She yanked me in the other direction so of course I needed to see what she didn’t want me to.

  Chris Williams was across the hall from us, his expression unreadable. He shook his head at me, whether in anger or sadness or something else I wasn’t sure.

  My eyes sought the floor.

  Gently, Krupa urged me to follow her. “Rose?”

  I breathed deep, in, out. “Let’s go or we’ll be late,” I said, and just like that, another day of school officially began, as if nothing had changed, nothing at all—nothing except for me—and for the rest of that week I tried to get used to it, the fact that I was no longer Chris Williams’s girlfriend, but a different girl, a different Rose, and in truth, I had no idea what this meant.

  10

  FAN OF YOUR EYES

  On Saturday afternoon I found myself alone with Will Doniger. Silence stretched between us, the only sound from the bumping of his truck as we drove along back roads, the seat bouncing our bodies with sharp jolts as the wheels hit yet another pothole. The inside of the cab was intimate, as if made for conversation. We were sitting barely a foot apart, but it may as well have been miles. Will was face front, both hands on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead, which allowed me to study him with impunity. The white T-shirt he wore made his tan from all that yard work look even deeper, his jeans were frayed in places and dirt was smudged across the knees, and there was a leather cord tied around his left wrist. His hair fell in waves to just below his ears, so it had that perpetually messy look that only a guy can carry off well. He hadn’t said a word since we left the house. Maybe he was angry about my bailing on him last Saturday or maybe he was just a quiet guy. Either way, he seemed comfortable with not talking.

  I sighed, long and loud, glancing over at Will to see if he noticed or might try to strike up a conversation. He didn’t, and I turned my attention to the scenery outside the passenger window.

  The Touchdown Diner appeared on our right, with its familiar painted signs that advertised three pancakes for three dollars and eggs, toast, and hash browns for two. I couldn’t quell the sadness that accompanied the possibility that Chris and I might never go there together again. With this thought the silence became overwhelming.

  “So,” I began, trying to think of what in the world we might have in common to discuss. “How long have you been doing the landscaping thing?” This was the reason our paths crossed so I figured it was a good enough place to start.

  “Four years,” was Will’s distressingly short response.

  “Four years,” I repeated. “Hmm,” I murmured after another long pause. This was going nowhere fast. “So … were you, what, twelve then? That’s kind of young, isn’t it?”

  “I was thirteen,” he replied, further proof that he was not only a man of few words but more like two or three tops.

  “Thirteen is pretty early, though, right?”

  “It was for my dad’s business. I was already used to working for him.”

  I was startled by how easily he brought his father up in conversation—I certainly wasn’t able to do this yet with my mother. “That would make you, what, seventeen now?”

  “Yup. Seventeen.”

  Oh my god. You know things aren’t going well when you resort to basic math as a means to further discussion. Just as I was beginning to despair, Will asked, “You?”

  “Me?” I wasn’t sure what he wanted to know.

  “How old are you?”

  “Oh. Sixteen. This past summer in July,” I said, and automatically thought of how difficult my birthday was without Mom.

  “How’d it go?” From Will’s tone it was clear he knew what I was thinking.

  “Well,” I began, trying to decide how best to answer. “It was sad. Really difficult.” I paused. “No, it sucked actually. It completely and totally sucked. I didn’t even want anyone to notice it was my birthday.”

  “Sounds about right,” Will said.

  I glanced at Will sitting there, relaxed, his left arm stretched out over the top of the steering wheel, his right hand resting on the gearshift, barely a few inches from my knee. He put on his signal and we turned down a dirt road with a canopy of trees on either side. The leaves were already turning bright yellows and oranges and my eyes settled away from him and onto a big maple ablaze with cherry-colored foliage until it disappeared behind us. “Really?”

  “The first birthday is the hardest, but it’ll get easier.”

  I turned to him again. “I want that to be true.”

  “You just have to go through it. The sadness. There is another side.” He looked at me for the very first time since I’d gotten into his truck. “I mean it,” he said.

  “So, are you? To the other side, I mean?” Broaching the subject of his father so directly made me nervous�
�I didn’t want to overstep. But maybe Will was more ready to talk about this subject than I was. At least it was something he seemed willing to talk about, as opposed to our stilted conversation from before.

  “I’m getting there. Doing my best.” He paused. “You seem to have a lot of support. You know, like from your boyfriend.”

  “My boyfriend?” I said, surprised by Will’s comment even as I realized that saying the word boyfriend made me feel a pang of regret—I’d have to practice adding the “ex” before it would come naturally.

  “Yeah. Chris Williams,” he said.

  “Oh. How did you know?” I asked, and immediately felt stupid. Of course Will knew. Everyone at school did. He gave me a face that said something like, Come on, I’m not blind. “Okay, okay. That was a dumb question. People always know what Chris Williams does. Or did. God, that came out wrong. You know what I mean. Whatever.”

  “I see you with him,” he said.

  “You see me—” I started, then realized what he meant. “At my house, when you’re working and Chris picks me up for school. Of course. Do you and Chris know each other well?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. Only enough to say hello in passing. We’re both seniors.”

  I nodded. It was strange to be having a conversation with Will about Chris, almost a relief to talk about him out loud as if everything was still the same.

  “Last week you walked to school,” Will observed.

  My eyes immediately dropped from Will’s face and I studied his hand on the gearshift, the way it tensed when he moved. “You noticed?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, to be honest, actually,” I stuttered, preparing myself to say out loud what came next. “Chris and I broke up,” I confessed, and there it was, out in the open for the first time to someone other than Krupa. It sounded so final. Though I could tell Will was waiting for me to continue, now it was my turn to play the silent one, knowing that he would let the subject drop rather than pry.

  Soon the bumping and bouncing of the truck along the road became our only background noise, the trees radiant, their colorful leaves luminous in the sunlight. It wasn’t long before we turned into the dirt parking lot of the farm, pulling up alongside a long rickety wooden shed with one wall open to the cool fall air surrounded by cornfields as far as the eye could see.

  “We’re here,” Will said, the truck shuddering and coughing before it quieted. Suddenly, he looked at me straight on, his gaze steady and holding mine. Then just as abruptly he turned away, opening the driver’s side to hop out. His stare was long enough for me to notice the color of his eyes. They were dark blue, like the ocean, shimmering and deep and almost impossible to see through to the bottom.

  11

  CAN YOU TELL

  “But these are so ugly,” I said.

  Will and I were standing in front of a large wooden bin that was filled with thick, gnarled roots covered in knots. The ragged cardboard sign attached to one of the planks said “Pink,” the next one over said “White,” and a third said “Blush.”

  “We’re not planting actual flowers. You knew that, right?” Will watched me in between picking through the bin, choosing one root over another, using what criteria I could not imagine—they all looked the same, each equally hideous. “Did you think they would be in bloom?” he asked.

  “No,” I said in a huff, remembering the pictures from the gardening books of just the sort of mutant potato–looking things Will was admiring and discarding one by one and only rarely putting inside the basket I held in my arms. “I knew they would be roots. It’s just that the ones you keep picking look the worst of all.”

  He stopped his search and cocked his head to the side. “Would you like to choose them instead?”

  My eyes flickered to the ceiling. “No. I don’t know how to tell the good from the bad.”

  “Okay then.” Will continued to sort through the bin, adding roots to our pile until we had twelve, four each of the different colors.

  “That’s it? A dozen?” I stared at them, trying to decide whether or not these deformed objects could really turn into beautiful flowers come spring.

  “I thought you wanted my help,” Will said.

  “I do.”

  “So trust me.”

  “But we didn’t talk about numbers.”

  “Twelve is more than enough. These will grow big, though the first year you won’t see too much. In three or four you’ll have more flowers than you know what to do with.”

  “Four years,” I cried. “I can’t wait that long.”

  “You’ll have to be patient,” Will said.

  “I want them to bloom in May. I kind of need them to,” I added in a whisper, realizing how high the stakes felt for this one task.

  “Oh, they will. You’ll have plenty. But the following year you’ll have even more. That’s all I was trying to say.”

  “Really?” I asked, still wanting more reassurance.

  “I promise.”

  “Okay.” I began to breathe again, feeling mostly relieved. “What’s blush anyway?” I asked as Will traded one root for another from the bin with that particular sign attached to it.

  “A color.”

  “But what does it look like?”

  “It’s a shade of pink.” Will seemed pained to admit out loud that he knew this.

  I smiled a little. “What kind of pink?”

  “Shades of pink are not up for discussion,” he said, and I almost wanted to laugh at his sudden discomfort. He grabbed the basket from me and walked up to the register, emptying everything onto the counter.

  “Hi, Will,” said the girl ringing up our stuff. Between her tone and the looks she was giving him it was obvious she was flirting.

  “Hey,” he responded, his voice flat and devoid of any real interest, placing the last root on top of the pile. Will took off, leaving me standing there with this girl staring at me, and not in a friendly way, eventually returning with two giant bags of compost and dropping them at my feet.

  “Do we really need those?”

  He gave me a wry look. “Peonies love this stuff.”

  “But—”

  “Just trust me,” he said. His blue eyes widened. “Okay?”

  I nodded.

  To the checkout girl he said, “We’re taking all of this,” and drew a circle in the air with his index finger to include the bags at our feet.

  She smiled sweetly. “Sure, Will,” she said, before glaring at me again. While I paid, Will began shuttling our stuff out to his truck.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked once there was nothing left.

  “All set,” I said, and walked out. Will followed behind me, each footstep loud as his sneakers crushed through the gravel in the parking lot.

  “Glad to see you wore the right clothes,” he said, and I turned around. He was looking over my boots, jeans, and the long-sleeved T-shirts I’d layered on today.

  “Uh, thanks, I guess.” I didn’t know what to make of this appraisal.

  “Good for digging,” he said, and I did a double take.

  “You want to plant these right now?”

  “May as well,” he replied, and headed to the driver’s side while I hoisted myself up into the passenger seat. He opened the door and got in. “If we wait another week,” he said, reminding me of how I’d canceled last Saturday, “it might be too late. I know it seems warm out now, but frosts can happen quickly.” He turned the key and started the engine. “And I’m assuming you actually want these to grow.”

  “Yes. I do,” I said under my breath, and we drove the rest of the way to my house in silence.

  Later when Will handed me a shovel from the back of his truck I looked at him, concerned. “Aren’t these kind of big for gardening tools? Shouldn’t we start with some trowels?” I said.

  “Not if you want to plant peonies,” he said, removing another shovel and walking around to where I stood in the driveway. “They need a lot of space to thrive,” he added,
and started across the backyard.

  “Wouldn’t they be nicer in the front?” I called after him.

  Without turning around, he shook his head. Shovel in hand, I did my best to catch up, which wasn’t easy since the blade kept scraping along the ground. Once I was by Will’s side he started talking again. “I have an idea for where to put them. If you don’t like it, we’ll try somewhere else.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly.

  Will took the path that led to Mom’s rose garden and stopped next to it, dropping the shovel to the grass. “This is what I was thinking,” he said, going on to list his reasons. “There’s plenty of room for the roots to spread out. The soil is already rich because of the roses and other flowers nearby—ideally we would have composted ourselves if there was more time but we’ll have to make do. They’ll get plenty of sunlight all day and peonies love bright light.” Will sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but before I could say yes he told me his last reason. “And your mom and I used to talk sometimes,” Will said in a quiet voice.

  I looked up, startled.

  He hesitated, as if instinctively he knew I needed a moment to process what he’d just told me. “Sometimes we’d sit at the table on the patio over here, or occasionally on the bench. I know it was her favorite place. And I used to see you and your mother out here together, so I thought—”

  “About what?” I interrupted.

  His brow furrowed with confusion.

  “What did my mother talk to you about?” I asked, more specific this time.

  He looked away. “My dad. When he got sick and then, you know, afterward.”

  “Oh. All right,” I said. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”