The Keeping Score Box Set

by Tawdra Kandle

  My brothers played basketball, and everyone kind of expected me to do the same. It was the bad thing about being the youngest of three boys; everyone expected me to be just like my brothers. But I really didn’t like basketball, not the way I liked football. So I decided that was what I was going to play.

  That summer before eighth grade, I spent most of my time mowing lawns. Simon and Danny, my brothers, had started the business when they were my age, and now I was part of it, too. It was pretty cool to be earning money, even though my mom made me put most of it away for college. She said someday I would thank her. I told her I was going to get a football scholarship and get a free ride to whatever college I chose, but she said it was good to have a back-up plan.

  I liked mowing lawns. Pushing the mower or using the trimmer, I had a lot of time to think. I also met new people, and I liked that. Most of them were older, but that was okay. Some of the old ladies would invite me to the porch for lemonade and cookies. The men would inspect my work carefully and nod approvingly, and that was cool. They told my parents that I was really responsible and did a good job, and I know that made my parents happy, too.

  Sometimes I met kids, but most of the families who had kids my age didn’t hire us to cut the grass; they would just have their own kid do it, which only makes sense. But this one family had all daughters, and I guess they didn’t want girls doing yard work. So I did the lawn, and I met their oldest daughter. Her name was Sarah, and she was in the same grade as me. I guess she’d been in school with us for a while, but I’d never noticed her.

  When we met, she was wearing a bathing suit and heading out to the family’s pool. Now, I’d never noticed girls and what they wore before. I mean, yuck. Quinn never cared about what she had on as long as it didn’t get in her way. But seeing Sarah in this bathing suit kind of made me look twice. She was really pretty, in a different way, and she smiled and waved at me.

  The next time I was at her house doing the lawn, she came out and brought me a drink. It was really hot, and I was grateful for both the break and the ice water. I stood there gulping it down, trying not to be impolite about it, and she started talking. She told me that she knew me from school.

  “You hang out with the girl who has all that curly hair and that kid who—” She stopped, and I knew exactly how she was going to describe Nate. With most people, I’d get mad, but I could tell she didn’t mean it in a cruel way.

  “Yeah. That’s Quinn and Nate. We’ve been friends as long as I can remember.”

  “Wow, that’s cool. We’ve only lived here for about a year, so I haven’t known anyone that long.” Sarah smiled up at me, shading her eyes with her hand. I noticed that her fingers were long and her nails were painted bright pink.

  “Where did you live before?”

  “Chicago. And before that, California. And before that, Texas. My dad is a project manager, so we move all the time.”

  “I’ve never lived anywhere but New Jersey,” I admitted. “But I like it here, so that’s okay.”

  “So . . .” Sarah drew out the syllable. She was rubbing her bare foot absently across the newly mown grass, and she kept her eyes on the ground. “Quinn, you said her name was—is she, like, your girlfriend?”

  “Quinn?” I was so surprised by the question that I couldn’t answer for a minute. “No! No, she’s my friend. One of my best friends. I don’t have a girlfriend. And Quinn’s not like that, anyway. She’s not interested in that kind of thing.” Even as I said it, I wondered. I hadn’t ever asked Quinn anything like that, but she was the least girly-girl I knew. She never said she liked a boy or even paid attention to anyone but Nate and me. None of us was interested in dating or anything. At least, not until now.

  “Well, I guess with all of us starting junior high in a few weeks, we’re going to get interested in it!” Sarah said brightly. “They have dances and everything . . . I can’t wait. I think it’ll be fun.”

  “I guess so.” My tone was doubtful. I couldn’t imagine what a dance would be like, and trying to picture the people I knew dancing with each other was really kind of funny. I decided it would be safer to change the subject.

  “I’m going to play football this fall,” I announced. “It’s going to be awesome.”

  “Football? Really?” Sarah’s smile widened. “I’m going out for cheerleading. So I guess I’ll see you at the games!”

  “Yeah, I guess so—” Whatever I might have said next was lost in a torrent of water as the sprinklers under our feet suddenly turned on. Within seconds I was drenched, and Sarah was shrieking and trying to get away from the spray.

  “Oh, my gosh!” She was wringing her black hair and giggling. “I thought they only went on at night and in the morning! Something must have messed up the timer.” She looked at me, standing there dripping, and her giggles turned to full-blown laughter. “Well, you were pretty hot, weren’t you?”

  I managed a smile. “Yeah, I guess I’m cooled off now.”

  Sarah cocked an eyebrow at me. “Want a towel? We’ve got them around back by the pool.”

  “Nah. I’ll just run home and change.” And I would be literally running home; my brother usually picked me up from this job and took me to the next one. Since he could drive and I couldn’t, I had to depend on him for the houses where we used our own equipment. But if he saw me soaking wet, I’d never hear the end of it.

  “Listen, Sarah, can I push the mower over by your house? I’ll just go get changed and come back to finish up. My brother is supposed to take me to the next client in about forty-five minutes. I think I can make it.”

  Sarah helped me move the mower and then I booked it for home. My mother just shook her head as I grabbed a dry set of clothes and ran back to Sarah’s house. I had just finished the last strip of grass when Simon pulled up.

  “That one took you long enough,” he grumbled after we loaded the equipment. “What happened?”

  “Sprinklers turned on,” I told him. “Had to wait until they could turn them off until I could finish.” I knew my mom wouldn’t say anything; she was cool that way. I made it to the next client and got back to work. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and how she had looked when the water had soaked her shorts and T-shirt.

  I didn’t see her again until the first day of school, when she came over to me in line. Nate and I had been there for a little bit before Quinn got to school. The whole thing was weird. First when Nate got there, he asked right away if I’d seen Quinn. Well, that wasn’t weird—Nate always wants to know where she was, but there was something different about it that day. He tried to brush it off and said he hadn’t seen her since he got home from vacation and wondered if she’d had a good time at the shore, but I swore he turned red when he said her name.

  And then to make things even more bizarre, when Quinn did show up, she was wearing, like, a dress. I hadn’t seen Quinn in anything but jeans or shorts since we were in kindergarten, except when her mom made her wear a dress on picture day. I was shocked.

  But when I said something to tease her, to make her feel better about having to wear a dress—just so she understood that I knew her mom must’ve made her wear it—she got mad. She shot me a snappy comeback, but I could tell she was really annoyed. Who knew why? Nate told her she looked pretty, and that seemed to make her feel a little better.

  And then before I could really check out what was happening, why Nate was acting so off, I saw Sarah. She was wearing some kind of dress, too, but it just kind of floated around her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her for a minute, and then Quinn made some kind of snarky comment about Sarah and how she was dressed. I realized as I stood there, too, that Sarah seemed a lot older than Quinn did. I wondered if she thought I looked younger than the boys in our class.

  Quinn changed the subject, and she and Nate started talking about their vacations. I kept quiet. My family didn’t take the kind of regular vacations Quinn and Nate’s family did. My mother said that with three boys who were heading to college, we
needed to save everything we could. We mostly took day trips and what my mom called backyard vacations.

  And then I heard my name, and when I turned around, Sarah was standing next to me, smiling. I tried to play it cool, be nice without doing anything to make Quinn and Nate suspicious. We were just rehashing the whole sprinkler episode when the bell rang, and the crowd of kids around us surged into the school.

  I lost Quinn and Nate, but Sarah stuck with me. I felt bad, because I had promised to help Nate at his locker. But by the time I found them, we were at my homeroom, and Nate was going in the room with me. Quinn made another comment about Sarah and about her being my girlfriend. I didn’t like how that made me feel. On one hand, she wasn’t my girlfriend. But part of me wouldn’t have minded if she was. On the other hand, I didn’t want to hurt Quinn’s feelings, and I had the sense that inviting any girl into our little circle was going to do just that.

  The two weeks I spent with my parents in the mountains of Pennsylvania were a roller coaster for me. I would wake up in the morning, bursting with excitement over my newly-realized love for Quinn. And then by lunch time, I’d be brooding and depressed— sure that she could never see me as more than her best friend from childhood. I spent hours trying to remember whether Quinn had ever acted interested in any boys in our class, and I spent an equal amount of time remembering how often she had chosen to be with me over other people.

  By the time we got home, two days before school began, I was nervous and jumpy. My parents turned to their fall-back position of worrying that this was some new symptom of my disease, but I explained that I was just anxious about the new school. They bought that. My mom told me long stories about her life as a teenager, and my dad just kept patting my shoulder, telling me it would all work out.

  I didn’t call Quinn before school began because we never did that. If I had called her just to talk, she would have known something was up. So I suffered in silence by myself until my mother dropped me at school on the morning of the first day.

  I scanned the lines of kids milling around in loosely formed lines, but there was no sign of Quinn. After a few minutes, Leo came up behind me and gave me his signature light punch on the arm.

  “Hey, Nate. You ready for this?” He spun his finger around in a circle, encompassing the whole school, the kids, everything.

  “I think so,” I said. “Just another school, right? Hey, have you seen Quinn?”

  “I don’t think she’s here yet. At least I haven’t seen her.” We both looked around, checking it all out. It was weird to be with older kids, people we hadn’t seen since they’d left our elementary school. They looked a lot older than I remembered. Leo eased back until he was leaning against the brick wall of the school, and I moved to stand with him.

  A few minutes later, Leo caught my eye and tilted his head. “There’s Quinn.” I turned and saw her mother’s car, and then Quinn coming around from the passenger side. My heart began to pound. This was the first time I’d seen her since I really knew that I loved her, that I was in love with her. I couldn’t remember how to act, what to say or where to look.

  She looked so pretty. She was wearing a skirt that was made out of jeans material, and a pretty blue top. Her hair, always so curly and unruly, was partly pulled back into a clip so that I could see her face, her eyes bright as she caught sight of Leo and me.

  She smiled, and my breath caught. She was beautiful. The girl I loved, the girl who would always have my heart, was really and truly beautiful. I wanted to run and jump and shout and do all those things I’d never been able to do, just to show the world how I felt.

  I smiled back as she approached us and blurted out the first thing I could think to say. “Hey, Quinn. You look really pretty.”

  She looked down as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing and ran a hand down the skirt. “Thanks, Nate.” For a fleeting moment I had her full attention and her gratitude, and it felt amazing.

  And then I saw her glance up at Leo, who was still standing against the wall. Something flickered in her eyes that I didn’t quite understand. Leo made some comment about how her mother must have dressed her, and Quinn snapped back. She lost the look of eagerness that I’d seen on her face a few minutes earlier.

  I was confused, wondering what had changed. Quinn and Leo had always had that kind of relationship, where he teased her and she shot back at him. I didn’t know why his joking would have bothered her now.

  Leo looked off over her shoulder, and this time it was his eyes that flared. Obviously he saw someone or something that interested him. Quinn followed his gaze, and her face changed again. It wasn’t curiosity so much as it was hurt. I was still confused.

  Quinn snapped at Leo again, something about kick ball which I didn’t quite understand. And then Leo wisely changed the subject, asking about my vacation. I was eager to tell them both about the canoeing we had done, how excited my dad had been when I could handle a canoe on my own; the idea of going out for something like crew gave me hope that this might be something for me, a way to be more normal and able in Quinn’s eyes.

  Before I could tell them too much about it, a girl walked over behind Leo and said hello. Her name was Sarah. I was curious, since I couldn’t figure out how Leo would have met her, but he explained that her family was a client in the lawn mowing business. For some reason, it made Quinn really mad. I could tell that.

  The bell rang, and everyone surged forward toward the doors. Quinn stayed close to me, and I knew she was making sure I didn’t get knocked over by the bigger kids. We found our lockers, and I was able to work mine without any problem. Quinn was grumbling at hers, and then she turned to me.

  “Where’s Leo?”

  I shrugged. We had lost him in the crowd. But since he and I were in the same homeroom, I was pretty sure we’d catch up to him later.

  Sure enough, he was just about to go into the classroom when we got there. Quinn snapped at him again, and he seemed embarrassed about the fact that she referred to Sarah as his girlfriend. Before they could get too far into this discussion, I saw that the teacher had risen from her desk and was beginning to take attendance. I pulled Leo into the room with me, and turned just in time to see Quinn wave to me before she shot Leo another dirty look.

  Leo and I found two desks next to each other, and he flopped down in the chair. “What’s her issue, anyway?” he grumbled.

  I shrugged. “I guess maybe she just didn’t feel like getting teased today. Maybe she’s nervous about the new school.” I waited a beat and then went on. “She did look really pretty today, though.”

  “Yeah,” Leo conceded. “But she was acting like—I don’t know. Girls are just crazy sometimes, I guess.”

  I thought about it for a long time as the teacher went through the typical first day of school spiel. Quinn had seemed all right when she was with me. It was only Leo that was bothering her. And she had clearly been hurt when he didn’t compliment her the same way I had.

  A new thought dawned in my mind, more troublesome than I cared to admit. What if Quinn really didn’t feel the same away about me that I did about her? What if she was in love with someone else? And worst of all, what if that someone else was Leo?

  My palms began to sweat, and my heart pounded again. These were my two best friends. What would I do if Quinn was going to break my heart?

  Eighth grade was a special kind of hell for me. Things were changing, and I didn’t like it.

  First there was Leo. He had always been the more popular one of our little group. His looks and his sports ability gave him more of an in with the other kids than Nate and I had. It had never seemed to make a difference between the three of us, but now it did. Suddenly Leo wanted to go to school dances. He wanted to hang out with the other kids, and although he invited Nate and me along, both of us knew that it wouldn’t work.

  And then there were the girls. It seemed as though Leo was always surrounded with a bunch of giggling, smirking girls who flirted and teased him, wanted him to
eat lunch with them, walk home with them . . . it made me insane. Couldn’t he see how much this was hurting Nate and me?

  Something else was going on with Nate. He had taken to calling me every night, just to talk and check in. The problem was that we spent most of the school day together, and there just wasn’t much to talk about at the end of the day. So I dreaded those phone conversations with their long and awkward silences. What was more disconcerting was that I often caught him staring at me the same way that Leo stared at other girls. It made me uncomfortable.

  One December day, I came home from school and threw my books on the kitchen table. My mother was standing at the sink, and she turned to give me a look.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Tough day?” she inquired, drying her hands as she came to sit next to me.

  I sighed. “School was okay. But it’s so hard, Mom. Leo is just—he’s just weird now. He likes all these girls, and he hangs out with them, and it seems like he just doesn’t have time for me and Nate anymore. It’s not like it used to be.”

  My mother reached over and smoothed my hair away from my face. “You’re all growing up, sweetie. You can’t expect everything to stay the same forever. So Leo is making some new friends. That’s okay. You could do that, too.”

  “I don’t need new friends,” I cried. “I like the ones I have. At least I did when they weren’t acting like idiots.”

  “Why, what’s going with Nate? Is he hanging around with other kids, too?”

  I shook my head. “No. Nate doesn’t hang out with anyone but me. But he’s with me all the time, and he looks at me—” I felt my face grow warm. “I just don’t like the way he looks at me.”