Just Like That

by Gary D. Schmidt

  Captain Hurd and Matt laid out only one string of traps—“Just to say we did something,” said the Captain—and Matt warned her not to step too close or get her hand tangled in the lines—“You can’t believe how quick you can get drawn overboard if you get your hand tangled”—and then they began to chug around the islands. Captain Hurd took the wheel and told Matt to go up front with Meryl Lee so she didn’t fall over the bow, and he did, and they stood there together in the cold off the ocean, wiping at their teary eyes and holding on to each other when Affliction chunked into a wave, and Captain Hurd felt something between happiness and envy. Their whole lives, he thought. They have their whole lives ahead of them.

  And they did.

  And maybe that’s what Matt was thinking when he took Meryl Lee’s hand and did not let go, and he looked at her and wondered, Suppose two people start out at very different places, and one heads in a small boat to a small cove in a small harbor from one direction and he’s running because he has to, and the other heads to that same small boat and that same cove in the same harbor from a completely different direction and she’s not running but she goes anyway. How long will it be before they find each other?

  The answer?

  It didn’t matter, as long as they found each other.

  And he thought, Could that really be the answer?

  And Meryl Lee closed her eyes against the wind and she listened to the thrumming of the engine, the chunk chunk of the waves, the churning seawater at the stern, the gulls whose calls came and faded as they yawed into the wind. When she opened her eyes, she pushed her hair back—all to no good at all.

  When they came down from the bow, Captain Hurd asked if she’d been out on the water much.

  “Only with you,” she said.

  Captain Hurd pointed at Matt. “You’d do well to watch this one, then,” he said. “He was born to be on the water.”

  Meryl Lee looked at Matt.

  “How come you were born to be on the water?” she said.

  Matt shrugged. “I guess I don’t stay in one place very long.” And, for the first time in what felt like a long time, Meryl Lee felt the Blank rush upon her, as real and as solid as a wave rearing up over the boat.

  “You okay?” said Matt.

  “Why . . .” she began, “why can’t anything stay in one place?” And Matt suddenly, fiercely, completely, wanted more than anything to say, “I will now.”

  And just as suddenly, fiercely, completely, he wanted to kiss her again—right there in front of Captain Hurd, who had decided to lay out another line of traps after all and Matt should stop fooling around with Miss Kowalski and get to the stern if he was going to be any help.

  Matt went back to the stern.

  But he’d decided. He was going to stay in Harpswell for as long as he could. Especially if Meryl Lee would be . . . Well, he was going to stay in Harpswell.

  * * *

  That evening, deep in the South Bronx, certain elements of the FBI closed in on a beat-up apartment house that no one in the neighborhood ever went near. They moved in pairs, some gathering by the back entrances, some by the ruined front entrance, and some along the alley that ran beneath the first-floor windows and ended in an abrupt and high rear wall. At exactly 8:05 p.m., they stormed inside.

  The exchange of gunfire lasted less than two minutes, though well over a hundred bullets sparked the air.

  Three of those bullets found a huge guy that the FBI had identified as one of the ringleaders. One bullet in his left calf spun him around. One in his right shoulder blade blew him upright against a wall. One in his left ear flew into his brain. His body fell, his eyes went dark, his heart thumped on for twelve seconds, and his consciousness ceased entirely—just like that.

  Soon after the two minutes, the FBI men opened the door to the upstairs loft, where eighteen boys had backed into a corner. The littlest ones were crying. Some of the older ones, too.

  By midnight, most of the identifications had been made—both at Family Services and at the morgue.

  A phone call woke Lieutenant Minot not long after.

  He asked one question.

  “No,” said the FBI man. “No one we can ID as Shug.”

  Thirty-One

  And so, the cold gave way and the sun came up earlier and the snow pulled itself back at the edges to show the grass that was already greening underneath. And Matt finished Oliver Twist and the Captain suggested one of the Horatio Hornblower books and Matt read three of them. And at night he watched Mrs. MacKnockater slowly fall into sleep while he figured out Mr. Wheelock’s algebra and wrote up Mrs. Bellamy’s science labs, and when he finished he would read until the wood stove was low, and he would bank it and turn out the lights and then he would wake up Mrs. MacKnockater and she would startle and say she was only just napping, and he would head up to bed while she went to turn on the lamp in the front hall.

  And that’s how his nights were, again and again, and how wonderful they were. He wished that Georgie could have had one night like this. Just one night like every night was now for Matt.

  For Matt, it was sort of like being out on the water, moving with the waves around the islands, moving with the wind and the waves, with nothing but water and gulls and clouds and sky out in front of you.

  That’s what it was like.

  Now when Captain Hurd looked at him, he thought that the boy had changed somehow. Maybe he’d suddenly gotten taller. And when Mrs. MacKnockater looked at him, she thought that Matt had gotten . . . Oh, she didn’t know how to put it. Brighter. Maybe brighter, like the sky was brighter after a long winter.

  After long grief, she thought, Matt was happy.

  March grew warmer and warmer, bringing in an early spring—which, after a flannel-gray February, made exactly no one unhappy. Robins and their worms, trees pushing out those red-gold buds, that first afternoon when the air feels warm, the purple crocuses passing quickly and the first pushes of Mr. Wheelock’s daffodils, the tendrils of ferns unrolling a little over the dark soil.

  And spring brought open windows, and so the high whistles and low coos of birds outside Newell Chapel, peepers in the morning outside Mrs. Bellamy’s lab, the buzzing of quick insects. Spring brought light, so the sun was fully up now when Meryl Lee went to Greater Hoxne for breakfast, and it was still up when she came back from helping Matt and Captain Hurd stow away gear on Affliction, and she could even see a little bit left in the sky when she sat down to write Mrs. Connolly’s two-hundred-and-fifty-word explications of Renaissance sonnets—as if anyone could figure out a Shakespeare couplet.

  Spring brought Mrs. Saunders’s announcement that she hadn’t been working her Famous Women of History class hard enough. She gave them two days to write “extensive timelines” for their subjects, which she would assign.

  Meryl Lee’s subject was Florence Nightingale—who at least hadn’t been beheaded.

  And then one warm morning, so warm she could hardly imagine working on Jonathan’s scarf, she thought the Yankees would be into spring training now and Opening Day wouldn’t be far away and Holling would have loved to be at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day—and suddenly, she realized that the Blank had not come. She had thought of Holling, and the Blank had not come.

  For a moment, she almost felt . . . guilt.

  Or something like it.

  As if the Blank should come.

  As if the Blank should always come.

  But it hadn’t, and in the warm and blue day, guilt faded.

  Holling would have loved to be at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day, and Meryl Lee smiled.

  But spring did bring one other thing to Meryl Lee. It came when she felt Coach Rowlandson lean over her after dinner one day: “Are you planning on playing spring soccer?” she asked.

  “Umm,” said Meryl Lee.

  Coach Rowlandson looked at her. “The skills are different from those of field hockey, so don’t let your past . . . experiences . . . influence you.”

  “I’m not sure I’d
be any good at it,” said Meryl Lee.

  “I’m not sure either,” said Coach Rowlandson.

  “So why ask . . .”

  “Because Julia Chall has decided not to play this spring—don’t ask me why—and I need to put together a team if we have any chance of competing with St. Scholastica’s and that means bodies out on the field. Sticks down, Kowalski.”

  “St. Scholastica’s?”

  “Can I count on you?”

  “Coach Rowlandson, I was really—”

  “Did you know Mrs. Connolly is looking for an assistant during the transition to headmistress? That girl will type, file, sort correspondence, and run errands for Mrs. Connolly. I understand the position will require two to three hours most days in Mrs. Connolly’s office. I was thinking of recommending you,” said Coach Rowlandson.

  A long pause. All the sounds of spring stopped.

  “You wouldn’t do that,” said Meryl Lee.

  Coach Rowlandson leaned forward. “In a single short heartbeat,” she said quietly.

  Meryl Lee’s eyebrows rose to chipmunk-y heights.

  “I would be happy to play soccer for St. Elene’s this spring,” Meryl Lee said.

  “Practice begins a week from today,” said Coach Rowlandson. “It won’t matter if there is snow on the ground or not. You are the backup goalie.”

  “What does the backup goalie do?”

  “Hope the first-string goalie doesn’t get hurt. Now, have you been keeping up your wind sprints and . . .”

  Later, Heidi, who was planning on playing first-string goalie, said Meryl Lee had made the right decision.

  But Meryl Lee wasn’t so sure—because it was a little hard to imagine Heidi playing first-string goalie, since Heidi had an epic cold. She was sneezing all the time and sniffling all the time and then coming in to sit on Jennifer’s green satin duvet because it was so soft and filling up their wastebaskets with crumpled tissues and then wheezing some and tearing at the eyes and hacking up . . . Well, her cold was really epic.

  And if Heidi couldn’t practice, that meant . . .

  So Meryl Lee asked Heidi how goalies practiced. And Heidi said, “It’s great.” She wheezed. “The goalie stands in the middle of the net.” She coughed. Her face grew red. “Then the players kick soccer balls right at her.” She blew her nose hard. Twice. “As hard as they can.” Coughed. “And the goalie has to catch them or flick them over the bar or”—three quick coughs from deep in her chest—“dive for them.” Blew her nose.

  “Dive for them?” said Meryl Lee.

  “And after the goalie handles a couple hundred shots—”

  “A couple hundred shots?”

  “After that, players kick lots of soccer balls as hard as they can into the corners of the net”—wheezing, wheezing, a cough, a hack—“and the goalie has to dive after those, too.”

  “How many?”

  “A lot”—cough, hack—“and after that there’s the scrimmage.”

  Meryl Lee was not sure that spring soccer was something at which she cared to be Accomplished.

  * * *

  Coach Rowlandson stopped by Netley three times that week to check on Heidi because the first practice was coming soon, very soon. And afterward, all three times, she stopped at Meryl Lee’s room, opened the door, and looked at her with Significant Eyes.

  “Why do you think she keeps doing that?” said Jennifer after the third time.

  “I think I’ll go make Heidi some herbal tea,” said Meryl Lee.

  * * *

  Heidi was not at the first practice because of her epic cold. In fact, she was not even at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls because of her epic cold, since Miss Ames had called her parents and she went home to Rutland for a few days, which led to Heidi swinging her field hockey stick dangerously close to several Netley Dormitory windows when she found out Miss Ames had done that.

  So Heidi wasn’t on the field when Coach Rowlandson made the Lasses run something like two hundred miles and then sprint inside the gym to dribble soccer balls around orange cones five thousand times and then run up and down the gym bleachers a million times.

  But Meryl Lee was.

  And Heidi, who would have loved all of this, wasn’t on the field when Coach Rowlandson took the Lasses back outside and told them it wasn’t so cold and they should stop complaining and now they were going to practice shooting balls at the net. She looked around for her backup goalie, who, as it turns out, was hiding behind Marian Elders.

  “Sticks down, Kowalski,” said Coach Rowlandson.

  Heidi is in big trouble, thought Meryl Lee.

  So she stood at the net, tired from running the length of Massachusetts, freezing, hating Heidi’s cold, hating spring soccer, wondering why Matt was there . . .

  Wait. Was that Matt? That was Matt.

  “Hold up your hands,” shouted Coach Rowlandson.

  Meryl Lee held up her hands.

  Coach Rowlandson took the first shot.

  “You’re supposed to stop it from going into the net,” shouted Matt.

  “Good advice,” said Coach Rowlandson, as the rest of the Lasses lined up behind her.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” said Meryl Lee.

  “Anticipate,” said Coach Rowlandson.

  “Pay them off,” shouted Matt Coffin.

  Then the Lasses began.

  A billion kicks toward the goalie.

  Afterward, while Meryl Lee and Matt were gathering up the billion soccer balls in the back of the net, Coach Rowlandson said Meryl Lee hadn’t done so badly standing in for Heidi.

  “That is a lie,” said Meryl Lee.

  “Only a little one,” said Coach Rowlandson—another lie.

  “Don’t you think being a goalie jeopardizes my knitting?” said Meryl Lee.

  Coach Rowlandson considered this. “Kowalski,” she said, “becoming Accomplished in knitting and becoming Accomplished in spring soccer are both fine and honorable pursuits. But since we’re not competing against St. Scholastica’s in Knitting Studies, if we have to sacrifice your fingers for the good of the school, so be it.”

  “She was kidding,” Meryl Lee said to Matt on the way back to Netley.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if I play goalie, we’ll lose every game. By triple digits.”

  “It won’t be that bad,” said Matt.

  She looked at him.

  “I mean, it won’t be triple digits probably.”

  Meryl Lee thought about how many balls had flown, run, scooted, flipped, bounced, leaped past her into the net during the first practice.

  “It will be triple digits,” said Meryl Lee.

  And then, because sometimes the world is like this, losing by triple digits didn’t matter much anymore, since Matt leaned forward and kissed her lightly on her cheek.

  She put her hand up and touched the place. “Why did you do that?” she said.

  He shrugged.

  She took his hand.

  * * *

  That night at Greater Hoxne Dining Hall, when Meryl Lee sat down at her table and Bettye set the scrod casserole in front of her, she heard Ashley at her table say, “Did you know that Meryl Lee played goalie today?”

  “Really?” said someone.

  “I heard she couldn’t stop a single ball, but no one could be that bad, could she?” said Ashley.

  Not even Florence Nightingale, Meryl Lee thought, not even Florence Nightingale, angel of mercy though she might have been, could have put up with Ashley Higginson. If Florence Nightingale had found Ashley Higginson wounded on the battlefield, bloody and broken and murmuring, “No one could be that bad, could she?” then Florence Nightingale would have said, “I think I’ll leave you here to die,” and walked away.

  Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, would have beheaded Ashley. She would have let it take three tries.

  Then Meryl Lee smiled and put her hand to her cheek.

  * * *

  Three soccer practices later—
three very long soccer practices later—Heidi came back to St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls. Coach Rowlandson had called Heidi’s house every day to check up on her, probably because Coach Rowlandson wanted to beat St. Scholastica’s more than she wanted the sun to rise in the morning, and the Lasses would not be beating St. Scholastica’s with their backup goalie.

  The Lasses would probably lose by quadruple digits.

  After a week and a half, Heidi returned to St. Elene’s. The first thing she did in Meryl Lee’s room was look at Jonathan’s scarf.

  “How long is that?” she said.

  Meryl Lee unscrolled its length. “Fifty-three inches,” Meryl Lee said.

  “How are you doing as backup goalie?”

  “Umm.”

  Heidi took the sun-bright yellow scarf, folded it quickly, and stuffed it under Meryl Lee’s bed.

  “What are you doing?” Meryl Lee said.

  “I need my eyes for soccer,” she said.

  * * *

  The third quarter evaluations at the end of March did not include comments upon Meryl Lee’s knitting skills, comments that might have included words like “remarkable” and “nimble.” The third quarter evaluations did include comments on her algebraic skills (with words like “adept” and “proficient”), on her writing technique (“at times clumsy, but showing promise of a pleasing style”), on her dissection technique (“bold and incisive”), on her culinary abilities (“inventive”), and on her historical analysis (“sometimes spotty, but often discerning”).

  Overall, not as bad as she thought they might have been.

  Thirty-Two

  Heidi was getting fed up.

  Meryl Lee was driving her crazy.

  It wasn’t her fault, Meryl Lee said. She hadn’t asked to be part of the vice-presidential luncheon. And she hadn’t known when she said yes that the vice-presidential luncheon had a very long history at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy. A very, very long history, said Dr. MacKnockater. A very, very, very long history, said Mrs. Connolly.