It wasn’t until later, when the birthday cake was on its way out from the restaurant kitchen, that I could say something to Andrea. Everyone else was looking at the cake and so I leaned over and said, “That present was awesome.” It still wasn’t what I really wanted to say, but it was better. She smiled a real smile and then started singing “Happy Birthday” along with the waiters and my family.
My family. There they sat, in front of everyone else in the seafood place, a group of people wearing pastel Princess paper cones on their heads, singing vigorously as the elastic sawed into their chins. Grandma’s hat was a little askew, giving her kind of a tipsy look, and Dad’s was on too far forward.
“He’s a unicorn,” said Andrea, leaning over to help me blow out the candles, and Chloe, who was doing the same, asked excitedly, “A unicorn? Where?”
My laughter blew out the last candle.
Chapter 18
April
Tyler Cruz
Sometimes it stinks when you get what you ask for. When I talked my parents into letting me stay for the basketball season, I’d been on cloud nine. They arranged it so that my mom would stay with me while my dad moved up to Seattle. Now we’re all here, basking in family togetherness, and I have to live up to my end of the bargain by being cheerful and giving Seattle a fair chance.
Anyway, now I kind of wish that they had said no to my brilliant proposal. Now that I’m here, I kind of wish that we’d gone ahead and moved right away. Basketball is what I’m best at doing. It’s how I stand out in the crowd. No one here knows that (even though they might be able to guess, since I’m 6’ 4”). Our team in Phoenix had a great season and I guess I’m still glad I waited, but I don’t really know how to define myself here without basketball. Maya told me that it would be great to start over fresh, but it’s actually kind of hard. I keep having these little introductory conversations with people, but I haven’t made any actual friends yet. I told her this the last time we talked on the phone and she reminded me, “You’ve only been there a week. Keep trying.”
I woke up to my mother’s voice, as always. The curse of being an only child is that they focus all their energy on you. There isn’t anyone to engage in diversionary tactics with you or take the heat.
“Tyler!” she called. “I need your car today. Dad’s wouldn’t start, so he took mine. I’ll drop you off at school.”
Wonderful. Today we were going on a biology field trip to the Seattle Aquarium. That meant that my mom was going to drop me off and pick me up right where everyone would be meeting the buses for the trip. I knew it would do wonders for my social standing.
For someone who likes to get other people up in the morning, my mom is always running late. She always has a number of things she absolutely has to do after she’s said that she’s ready. I used the time to nap in the car, which, of course, ticked her off no end when she finally did climb in the front seat.
“The least you could do is help me get out the door! It was your breakfast plate I was clearing in there!”
I didn’t bother to point out that I had been going to leave it there and use it for a snack when I came home from school. Her idea of efficiency and mine are not the same.
Sure enough, Mom dropped me off in the back where the buses for the field trip were parked. I could see a crowd of kids and biology teachers. The kids were filing onto buses and the teachers were checking them off a list. No one seemed to notice when I got out of the car and Mom was in such a hurry that she didn’t wave good-bye and honk her horn like she usually does. So far, so good.
I saw my teacher and headed for her bus. Ms. Carl said, “You’re late, Tyler. There’s no room on my bus anymore. I think Mr. Walsh has a few seats left on his.” She pointed me toward another bus and I headed over to it and climbed on.
Rows and rows of faces stared back at me. “Hurry up and sit down!” the bus driver barked. “We’re going to be the last to go.” Who knew bus drivers were competitive? I started walking down the aisle.
Where was I going to sit? This could get embarrassing. It would be way too weird to ask some guy I didn’t know if I could sit by him, and a girl might think I was trying to hit on her. I’d been a little self-conscious about my “player” reputation since Maya called me on it back in the fall, and I thought maybe that might be a good reputation to ditch. Besides, the only girl I really wanted to impress lately was . . . you guessed it. Maya. Sitting by a girl would probably be the lesser of two evils.
There was a girl I didn’t know sitting alone. “Anyone sitting here?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said, sliding over.
“What does that mean?” I said, not sure if I should sit down.
“My friend Michaela might be coming.” She looked up at me. Like I said, I’m six four and she was sitting down so she really had to look up. “Sit down, though. It’s fine. If she’s not here yet, she probably isn’t coming. She’s been sick and wasn’t sure if she would be here today or not.”
I shoved my backpack in the overhead rafters and sat next to her. “I’m Tyler Cruz.”
“I’m Julie Reid,” she said. “You must be in a different class than me. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Ms. Carl didn’t have room on her bus, so she sent me over here. And I’m new. I moved here a week ago.”
“Really?” she said. “Where are you from?”
I’d had this conversation so many times in the past week I’d gotten sick of hearing it. “Phoenix,” I said. “My parents got jobs here, so we moved.”
“I’ve never moved. I’ve lived in the same house my whole life.” She smiled shyly. “Pretty boring. So what do you think of Lakeview? Are people being friendly?”
The bus pulled out of the parking lot. “Yeah,” I said, wondering when the polite conversation would die and we would be able to read our own books or do our own homework or something.
People who haven’t been new at a school don’t get it at all. They have no idea how many connections they have all built up over the years. Even though some of the past history isn’t good, it’s still history. Just try starting all over without knowing anything about that history and trying to fit in. It’s a joke. I hadn’t told Maya all this in our e-mail or occasional phone conversations, though. I wanted her to think I was making progress, even though today, with the rain coming down thick and gray and no one I knew in sight, I was tempted to chuck it all and give up. Until basketball season came around, anyway.
“I would love to be able to start all over like that,” Julie said. “Then no one would know about me or anything.”
I laughed. “What on earth could you have done?” I asked. She didn’t look wild at all.
“I have these two brothers,” she said. “Everyone thinks I’m going to be like them when they first meet me and then they’re surprised when I’m not. You have to understand. They’re not just jerks. They’re criminals.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Everyone knows about them. You’d have heard about it sooner or later.”
“Bad news travels fast here too?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess that’s the way at every high school. But I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t know why I brought it up. Sorry.”
She was cute, in a quiet sort of way.
“So tell me about Phoenix,” she said, turning to look at me directly.
“It’s hot. And it’s really big. My high school was bigger than this one.”
“No, not that kind of stuff. What did you do there? How long had you lived there? Did you leave a lot of friends behind when you left?”
She was the first person to ask me the second layer of questions—the ones that come after “What’s your name?” and “Where did you move from?” Sure, she’d asked me those too, but she had bothered to ask more. It was kind of nice.
I told her about the heat that bakes through you in Phoenix, and how we would run across the hot tar on the pavement
in our bare feet as it melted in the sun. I told her about the way the desert looks, how you can see much more sky than you can here, where all the trees get in the way. If a thunderstorm is coming, you can see it for miles, and the clouds turn black and purple, which they don’t seem to do here, even though it rains. I told her about the difference in the rain—here, it keeps things green and lush; there, it rescues plants and people, then lets them wait and sweat it out before it comes again.
I talked about the people I knew and had left behind, my best friends and even a little about Maya—how I didn’t see her often and now I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again. Arizona and Washington are pretty far apart. It felt good to say my friends’ names again and remember that they had existed for me and me for them. I told her about camping with my dad and how I’d like to go camping here, but we’ve been too busy to get a new tent or find any cool places. I told her about my old house and how it had a huge cactus in the front yard that we used to string Christmas lights on during the holidays. I told her how I can’t figure out which world feels more unreal right now—the one I left behind or the one I’m stuck in now.
The bus trip was an hour long. We talked for almost the whole ride. She kept asking questions, and I kept answering. It was easier to talk to her than I would have thought. Maybe too easy. I didn’t shut up. “Sorry I talked so much,” I said, as the bus pulled into the parking lot of the aquarium. “You probably had no idea what you were getting into when you let me sit here.”
She laughed. “It’s been fun to hear something new.”
As we climbed off the bus and began to herd through the doors, some guy fell into step behind us. “Hey, Julie,” he said. “Who’s your new boyfriend? You sure get around, don’t you?” He started laughing.
Julie’s face turned bright red. I turned to see who was talking to her. One of the football players, I think. Some guy named Everett, who I could tell the first time I met him had serious attitude. “Didn’t take you long to figure out who was easy, did it, buddy?” he said to me, laughing.
I looked him in the eye. He was bigger than me, but shorter. I could take him. Besides, who was he to talk to Julie like that? “Doesn’t take me long to realize who’s a lowlife, that’s for sure,” I said, glaring pointedly at him. “Get lost.”
He didn’t like that. He got right in my face. “I should take care of you right now,” he hissed.
I didn’t say anything. I also didn’t back down. We kept on standing there, glaring at each other. People were starting to gather in interest when Ms. Carl saw us. “What’s going on here, boys?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” I said, but I didn’t turn away. I waited for Everett to turn away first, and he did. I looked around. Julie was nowhere to be seen.
“Come with me, Tyler,” Ms. Carl said. “The tour is starting and you need to take notes.” She basically babysat me for the rest of the tour, probably thinking I was going to start a fight. I didn’t care. I did what she told me, marching through the exhibits.
Finally, at the end of the tour, I was able to ditch her. I wandered by myself for a few minutes, pretending to read the plaques and informational displays.
“Hey,” said a guy next to me. “You new here?”
I turned around. “Yeah,” I said. He was tall, even taller than I am. I wondered if Everett had sent one of his friends over.
“You play basketball? Some girl heard me talking a minute ago and said there’s a new kid who plays basketball. I figured you must be him.”
“Yeah, I used to play for my high school team in Phoenix.”
“Are you busy this weekend? Like tomorrow? There’s a three-on-three tournament downtown and one of our guys can’t make it. I’ve got to find someone who can fill in.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I could do it. My name’s Tyler.”
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry about that. I’m Nic Hollist.” He stuck out his hand. Just then, an announcement came over the intercom. “Lakeview High students, please report to your buses. You need to return to your buses immediately.”
“Whose bus are you on?” Nic asked.
“Walsh’s.”
“I’m on Craig’s. We’re meeting tomorrow before the tournament to practice. Do you have a pen?” I pulled out my notebook and he wrote down an address and a phone number. “We’ll see you there and make sure we can all play together. Some other guys have been mouthing off that they’re going to beat us, and I want to waste them.” He grinned and jogged off to his bus, waving.
I looked at the piece of paper. I didn’t know where this street was or even what neighborhood it was in, but I was sure I could find it. Hopefully, Mom’s car would be fixed by then and I wouldn’t have to have her drop me off to play with my new little friends. I couldn’t help but grin. It would be great to play ball again.
I walked down the aisle of the bus again, still alone, but feeling better. Julie was sitting alone again, talking to a girl across the aisle. When she saw me, she sat back and smiled. “Hey, do you want to sit here again?”
“Sure,” I said, jamming my backpack into the rafters once more and plunking down next to her again. “Hey, did you tell some guy named Nic that I played basketball?”
She flushed. “Yeah,” she said. “He was talking to one of my friends about how they needed another guy for the three-on-three tournament and how anyone who was any good was already on another team. I told him that you were new and had played ball before. I told him you were wearing a Phoenix Suns T-shirt and that you might want to play on his team. Was that okay?”
“Yeah, that was fine,” I said. “Thanks. I thought maybe you were mad at me from before, when I said something to Everett. I was trying to be, you know, a good guy and look out for you, but maybe you didn’t want me to get involved in your business. I wouldn’t blame you for being mad.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I was embarrassed. I thought you would think I was . . . well, what Everett said I was. I can’t believe you stood up to him like that. That was really nice of you. I get so embarrassed when Everett acts like that. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. I shouldn’t have left you standing there.”
“What’s the story, anyway?” I questioned. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I used to date Everett last year,” she said. “Maybe dating isn’t the word.” She looked away. “We hung out a lot on the weekends and stuff. Last year I decided that I was going to be like my brothers and live up to their reputation, since being good didn’t seem to change anything. Nobody believed I was good anyway. My parents were always checking up on me, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I couldn’t stay out late or anything. I decided that since I was going to get punished anyway, I might as well earn it. So I hung out with Everett a lot.”
“What made you change your mind about him?” I asked.
“I realized that Everett was even worse than my brothers in some ways, so I decided to quit seeing him.” She paused. “I wanted to go away to school this year, but my parents wouldn’t let me.”
“But would you really leave now if you could?” I asked.
“Not now,” she said. “I have a best friend and school’s going a lot better. She talked me into trying out for the school’s elite choir group and I actually made it. She also helped me find out that you don’t have to punish yourself forever for the things that you do. There’s a religion that I’m looking into that has helped a lot, the Mormon religion.”
“You’re Mormon?” I asked. What was it with me and these chance meetings with Mormon girls?
“Not yet,” she said, looking surprised. “Are you?”
“No,” I said, “but Maya—that girl I was telling you about—is. And I went to her church once, to hear her cousin speak. It was pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” Julie said. I got the feeling there was more she wanted to say, but she didn’t.
We rode for a little while in silence before Julie said, “I am going to leave someday, though. I ju
st know there are places I need to go. Maybe I’ll go to Phoenix. I’d never thought of it. There’s a lot of places I’ve never even thought about and things I never thought I’d do that are starting to seem possible.”
It was almost dark outside. We sat on the bus, looking out at the lights of the cars. When we went over the bridge, it was as though we were rushing through nothing, connected to nothing, with only water on both sides. Then we hit the other side and the land appeared. We were connected to everyone else again. I felt like this past week for me had been me alone, surrounded by nothing on either side, until I touched down over here. It’s different from where I started, that’s for sure. I don’t mind being alone, but I really hate being lonely.
Julie fell asleep on my shoulder as we were driving. I was listening to my headphones and I didn’t wake her up. It was cool to know that someone felt that comfortable around me.
The bus lurched to a halt at a stop sign near the high school. Julie opened her eyes and looked at me, embarrassed. “Sorry about that,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. We were getting close, so I slid my arms into my jacket and noticed a hole in the sleeve. “Stupid coat,” I said. “I’d better get a new one. Where can you get a good rain jacket around here? There ought to be plenty of places since all it ever does is rain.”
“That’s not true,” she said. I was surprised at the spunk in her voice. “People always think that. It does rain a lot. But all the time—that’s an exaggeration. Today was beautiful. And it’s not raining now, is it?” She gestured to the window.
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