by Jenn Bishop
Zack was chewing his roll then, so he couldn’t answer right away.
I didn’t know how he could do it. Just jump right in, squeeze his way into this table, and fit in like he’d been here forever. He even had Mom swooning over him. And that’s not easy. Trust me, I’d tried.
“I read a book by her, too. By that Juno lady,” I piped up.
Haley stifled a laugh and looked at me funny. “Really?”
It felt like everyone was staring at me. Mom and Dad and Haley and Zack and his dumb lip ring. Somehow he was still chewing on that bite of roll. I didn’t think it was humanly possible to chew a roll for that long. “I read it at the school library one day.”
Mom stood up to clear the plates, and Zack got up to help her.
“It’s okay if you don’t know what we’re talking about,” Haley said to me quietly.
“But I do know,” I said. “You and Mom aren’t the only ones who read!” I pushed my chair—no, not even my chair, because Haley was in my chair—back hard. It squeaked on the floor.
“Quinnen!” Mom sounded annoyed.
“Sorry.”
Haley whispered. “If you had actually read it, you’d know that Junot Díaz is a guy.”
I saw Zack turn his head when she said it.
I could feel my cheeks growing redder and redder as I put my plate in the dishwasher. It scraped against the little poky things that held in the dishes. Just because I don’t get an A+ in ELA doesn’t mean I’m not a reader, I thought. How can they know everything I’ve read? They can’t prove it.
Even though Mom and Zack had the dishes under control, Haley and Dad stayed to hang out in the kitchen. It seemed like Mom and Dad were playing Twenty Questions with Zack—only Zack didn’t seem to mind. Nobody asked: Hey, Quinnen, do you have any questions for Zack? Nobody asked: Hey, Quinnen, how was baseball practice this afternoon?
So I shouldn’t have been surprised that none of them noticed when I grabbed my glove and ball and went out through the garage into the backyard.
It was that point in the summer when the days were still super-long. Even after dinnertime, the sun wasn’t close to setting. I tossed some balls high into the sky to warm up my arm. I loved the thwump the ball made when it hit my glove. Steady and predictable. No matter what, baseball was always there. Okay, sure, it disappeared in the winter, but it came back every spring. Like clockwork, Dad said.
I could see into the kitchen through the window over the sink. It looked like they had mostly finished cleaning up. Now it was just Mom in the window. She gave me a little wave. I nodded to let her know I could see her, but I didn’t take my hand out of my glove. When I got bored with tossing pop-ups, I dragged out the backstop to practice pitching at a target. Blam. Blam. Blam. Three strikes. You’re out.
My arm felt a little stiff, so I sat down on the grass to try some of the new stretches Coach had taught us. Upstairs, the light in Haley’s bedroom turned on. I guessed someone had already come by to get Zack. I reached my right arm over my back and tucked the other arm under and around, locking my hands together. I could do this stretch easy at practice, but some of the other kids on my team needed a strap.
My hands were still all locked together like that when I looked up at Haley’s window again.
I was wrong. Nobody had come by to get him. Zack was in Haley’s room. Zack was alone with Haley in her room.
And they were kissing.
Right in the window, where anybody—okay, I—could see.
He was kissing my sister. Zack with his dumb lip ring was kissing my sister.
And until today, I didn’t even know about him.
I thought Haley told me everything. I knew about every quiz she took in school and how she did on it, every time Larissa said something that hurt Haley’s feelings, every time Haley was upset or worried or sad or happy or mad. I thought I knew my sister, inside and out.
But I didn’t know about Zack.
Haley hadn’t told me.
I reach into the cupboard for my favorite granola. The box feels suspiciously light. Too light.
“Brandon,” I mutter.
I glance over at the world’s biggest eater, sitting at the kitchen table with Mom. Dad is standing at the counter with his laptop, answering emails and scarfing down a bagel before heading off to work. Mom is quietly reading the paper while Brandon’s playing some game on his phone, with the sound all bleeping and blooping, and drinking coffee. He’s sitting in Dad’s chair. Haley’s chair is empty.
In front of Brandon is an empty cereal bowl. How many bowls did he manage to scarf down before I woke up this morning? Three? Five? Thirty?
I pull the box down to confirm what I’m pretty sure I already know. I reach inside and pull out a plastic bag with only crumbs in it.
Sighing loudly, I crumple up the bag and toss it in the trash can. Nobody looks up. Not Mom, not Dad, not Brandon, either. They’re all lost in their own worlds, their own little bubbles.
I peek inside the cabinet to see what cereals Brandon hasn’t finished off yet. The only thing left is an old box of Cheerios. After pouring myself a bowl, and adding what’s left of the milk in the fridge—barely a few spoonfuls—I sit down in my seat. At least he left me that.
“Hey, Quinnen?”
I look up when Brandon speaks, my mouth full of stale Cheerios. “Yeah?”
“Some of the guys are coming over pretty soon. It’s kind of a team thing, you know? You think you can give us some space?”
I’m still hanging on the first part—some of the Bandits coming over to our house, maybe even Hector—when the last part hits me. I’m not allowed. Not invited. At my own house.
I look for Mom to raise her eyes up over the paper. To step in and say that this is my house, too. That it was my house first. But she just flips the page. Worse: Dad keeps typing away like Brandon didn’t say anything to me.
“Dad?”
He stops typing and glances at the clock. “Shoot. I’m going to be late.” He wraps the last bit of his bagel in a paper towel. “Have fun today, kiddo.” He ruffles my hair and gives Mom a little kiss on the top of her head, and then he’s gone.
It’s just me and Mom and Brandon. Dad always used to stick up for me. Always. We used to be a team.
“Quinnen? You understand what I’m saying?” Brandon looks up from his cell phone.
“I understand,” I say, and pop another spoonful of stale Cheerios in my mouth.
—
I’m putting my cereal bowl into the dishwasher, peeking out the window at Brandon, Hector, and the other starting pitchers hanging around the picnic table in the backyard, when Mom gets up from the table. “Hey, Quinnen?”
“Yeah.” I close the dishwasher.
“I’m sorry to spring this on you at the last minute, but you know how I’ve been reading a lot this summer?”
I nod. This summer? Ever since Mom decided not to go back to work last September, all she’s done is read. Sometimes I wonder if she’s actually reading those books, or if she’s just flipping the pages, thinking about Haley and all the books she wanted to read that she’ll never get to.
She picks up something from the top of the microwave. “I signed us up for a mother-daughter book club that Mrs. Hennigan from down the street is hosting. The first meeting is next Wednesday.”
She hands me a book: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. The cover has some girl’s feet with all the toenails perfectly painted. So, it’s about God and feet?
“No way. I’d have to read the whole thing in a week?”
“It’s okay if you can’t read it all in time for the meeting. It was a bit of a last-minute decision.”
Why didn’t Mom even ask me if I wanted to do the book club in the first place? Mrs. Sanders would have asked. She wouldn’t just make Casey do something like this.
I turn the book over to read the back cover, and flip through some of the pages. Periods? Training bras? “This book is gross! You want me to read it and then talk ab
out it with a bunch of strangers?” I push it back into her hands.
“Not strangers. Friends. And me.” Mom takes the book from me. “Calm down, Quinnen.”
“You don’t get it. I don’t want to talk about books with you or your friends or their daughters. I’m not Haley.”
Mom cringes. She hardly ever says her name anymore. Nobody does. It’s like they want to pretend she never existed.
“Quinnen,” Mom says. But then she just stands there.
She could never talk to me about books. Or training bras and periods. Girl talk was what she did with Haley. They would sit around and paint each other’s toenails and fingernails. Like the girly girl on the book’s cover.
“I’m not doing it.”
I hustle out of the kitchen and stomp up the stairs and into my room. I close the door tight. I figure Mom’ll come up after me. She always does. She never leaves me alone.
But I wait and I wait. This time she doesn’t come.
—
Brandon, Hector, and the three other starting pitchers are still out in the backyard an hour later when Mom knocks on my door. I’ve got my bedroom window open so I can listen in. “I’m going to run some errands. Do you want to come along for the ride?”
If I didn’t think I’d get in trouble, I’d shush Mom so I could hear them better. These guys know even more about baseball than Coach Napoli. There’s so much I could learn from them.
“No thanks,” I say. “I was hoping the other guys would leave and then I could hang out with Brandon and Hector.”
Mom opens the door. “Didn’t Brandon ask you to give him some space when he’s with his friends? You need to respect his wishes.”
“Yeah, but…” I don’t think Brandon would mind if it was just him and Hector.
“I know Brandon’s staying with us, but your whole summer shouldn’t revolve around the Bandits.” Mom taps her fingers on the door. “You need to find something else to keep yourself busy.”
Something else to replace baseball. I wish she would just come out and say it. But nobody says what they really think anymore. If we did, we’d talk about Haley all the time. At least, I would.
“I’ll see if Casey wants to come over.” Casey can keep anyone busy.
“All right.” Mom closes my bedroom door softly behind her.
I watch through the front window as Mom’s car pulls out of the driveway and heads down the road, and then I go downstairs. In the living room, there’s this whole wall of bookshelves. Most of the books are Mom’s and Dad’s, but a few years ago Haley started putting her old books down here to make room for her newer ones upstairs.
When I was little, Haley used to read to me. Not just the books that were for kids my age but also the parts she liked from her books. She wanted to be a writer and work for a big magazine in New York City. People thought she wanted to be a writer so she could be famous, but I know that wasn’t it. Haley wanted to see the world. She wanted to get out of here.
Haley’s books are organized by author. Such a Mom thing, but it was a Haley thing, too. I run my finger along the spines. Alcott. Avi. Babbitt. Balliett. Bauer. Birdsall.
Blume.
She has three books by Judy Blume. Forever…and Deenie and—there it is—Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. I pull it out. It’s smaller than the copy Mom tried to give me, and it looks different. This one is purple, and it has a bra on the cover.
Haley read this book. Did she read it when she was my age? I try to think of all the books I ever saw her read, but there were too many of them.
If Haley read this when she was my age, then how old was I when she read it? Haley was six years older than me, so five. I was five when Haley read it.
That was a really long time ago.
There’s a knock at the front door. I don’t want to put the book back yet, so I shove it under my T-shirt and go to see who’s there. I open it and find Casey, the mind reader.
“I got a new Xbox game and I wondered if Brandon wanted to play now that his Xbox is here.”
“Hi, Casey,” I say. “I was about to call you.”
“Oh, right. Hi. Anyway, is Brandon around?” He peeks around the room like I’ve stashed Brandon somewhere and his feet might be sticking out from under the curtains.
Sometimes it feels like ever since Brandon came here, I’ve been invisible. Even to Casey.
“He’s out back with some of the Bandits. You didn’t hear them when you walked over?”
“Nope.”
We head out back through the sliding glass door in the living room. It’s probably okay if Casey does the bothering.
“Why are you holding your stomach like that?” Casey asks.
It turns out most of the guys have left anyway; it’s just Brandon and Hector sitting at the picnic table now.
“I pulled a muscle.”
“A stomach muscle? How did you do that? You don’t even play— I mean…”
“Forget about it.”
Casey forgets about it, all right. He runs right over to Brandon to show him the game. I don’t think he’d notice if I disappeared into the cornfields behind my house.
I walk over to Hector. He’s staring at this white sheet of paper covered in numbers. Stats for the batters he’s going to face tomorrow? I wonder. “Hey, Hector.”
He looks up at me. “Hey, Quinnen. Are you coming to my game tomorrow?”
“Of course,” I say. “Are you nervous?”
Hector nods. “Always a little nervous before the first game in a new place.” He points at my stomach. “What’s that under your shirt?”
I check to see if Brandon or Casey is looking. They’re still busy, so I slide the book out and hand it to Hector. “It was my sister’s.”
He looks at the front and back covers, flips through some of the pages. “You like to read?” He hands the book back to me.
“Not really. My mom wants me to join this book club. A mother-daughter book club. I’d rather eat a turd.” I can’t help sticking my tongue out of the corner of my mouth after I say it.
“What is a turd?” he asks.
I laugh. “Um…like, in the toilet,” I say. “Poop.”
“Caca?”
“Yeah,” I say. Some Spanish, it turns out, is very easy to understand.
Casey grabs the book out of my hand.
“Jeez, Case!” I try to snatch it back, but he’s too quick.
“Whoa! Sexy mama!”
“Gross. Come on. Give it back!” I say, blushing.
“Whatcha got there?” Brandon asks. Casey holds up the book to show him. I want to crawl under the picnic table and never come out. “Nice. I remember when my sister read it. ‘Dear God. It’s me, Margaret. Can you help me buy a bra?’ ” He says it in this stupid falsetto.
Where is my feisty sister when I need her? Haley would swoop in here and dazzle Brandon by saying something clever. Or at least grab the book out of his hands and smack him with it. Okay, maybe she wouldn’t have done either of those things. But she wouldn’t have stood there laughing at me, either.
Now I don’t have anyone to stand up for me.
Even Casey isn’t on my side anymore. He’s on Team Brandon.
My eyes are starting to tear up when Hector stands up fast.
Casey looks on like maybe there’s going to be a fight, but Hector doesn’t touch Brandon at all. He snaps the book right out of Brandon’s hands before he even knows what’s going on.
“Stop it,” Hector says.
He’s usually so calm. The surprise of it makes the rest of us get real quiet.
“Stop being a turd,” he says.
Casey falls over laughing. Big belly laughs. He can’t even stop himself, he’s laughing so hard. He’s going to get grass stains all over his white shirt. “He called…” He can only get that much out before cracking up again. He looks up at Brandon. “He called you a turd.”
Brandon rolls his eyes, like it’s not funny at all.
I’m not surprised. Turd
s don’t usually have a sense of humor.
“Thank you,” I whisper to Hector as he hands Haley’s book back to me.
“Haley, come on. I can’t be late!” I yelled up the stairs. My baseball glove was on my hand. I was ready for my game. All I needed was for Haley to be ready, too.
“Haley!” I yelled again.
“Coming!” she finally shouted back. I heard her door slam and the slapping of her bare feet on the hardwood floor.
As she came down the stairs, I could see why it had taken her so long. She had changed her clothes. Earlier, she’d had on her normal T-shirt and shorts, but she’d replaced them with a jean miniskirt and a tank top that looked like it was a size too small. Plus she had put some kind of glittery makeup all over her eyes.
“Why are you all dressed up?” I asked. “It’s just a baseball game.”
“I’m not,” she said, grabbing her car keys off the hook by the door and slipping into a pair of flip-flops. “Come on. Didn’t you say we needed to go?”
Yes, you are, I wanted to say back. But I didn’t.
The whole ride to the baseball field, Haley’s phone kept buzzing and buzzing inside her bag. “Who keeps calling you?” I finally asked when we were stopped at a red light.
“Probably Zack. He’s going to meet me at the game.”
“Zack’s coming to my game?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Is that a problem or something?”
“No,” I said quietly. I stared at the car in front of us. There were a lot of bumper stickers on the back. There was even that funny one boasting about how the driver’s kindergartener is on the honor roll; Mom really liked that one. But it didn’t seem so funny right then.
“Real convincing,” Haley said.
“Why do you like him so much?” It was something I’d been thinking about since that night two weeks earlier when he’d come over for dinner. He called Haley on the phone all the time, but I couldn’t figure out how they could talk so much. Didn’t they see each other every day at camp? What did she have to tell him? What we ate for dinner? What toothpaste she used?