Five Things About Ava Andrews

by Margaret Dilloway

  “This is how it works. I throw it to someone.” She tosses it to Cecily, who, instead of catching it, turns around and lets it hit her on the bottom. “You don’t catch it. But we all cheer.”

  Everyone’s applauding and hooting. “Yay, Cecily! Woo-hoo!” Ryan shouts. “You’ll get it next time.”

  Cecily throws it at Chad, who hits it with his head. Again we cheer. I worry about what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll do it wrong anyway.

  Then Chad throws it to me.

  Without thinking, I crumple to the ground as the ball hits my chest. “Yay, Ava!” the class shouts. “Way to go! You’ll get it next time.”

  Cecily gives me a hand up. I throw the ball to Ryan, who lets it bounce off his chest. We shout again, and my voice is loud in a way it hasn’t been since Zelia moved. “Go Ryan!” I yell. “Woo-hoo!”

  I don’t have to be good at this game. I’m not supposed to be good at this game. It’s okay to mess up.

  “I want you to approach improv like this game.” Miss Gwen does a weird shimmy that knocks the ball across the room. Chad runs to get it. “The more you mess up, the more fun it is. And everyone will support you no matter what. Nothing bad will happen.” She smiles at me and I smile back.

  For the first time in my whole life, I’m almost not afraid to do something wrong in front of other people. The knotted-up thing in my stomach relaxes. Loser Ball is the best ball game of all time.

  Chapter 13

  On Monday, Mr. Sukow assigns us a long-term project. Ads. We’re supposed to write a commercial for a product, and then perform it for the class. Oral presentations, my worst nightmare. I want another option. Why can’t I just write a script? Or a story about the product?

  “They should be thirty seconds long, and they should convey what they are and why you should buy them.” Mr. Sukow hands us the rubric, a sheet telling us what we need to do to get an A. Besides those things he just named, it also needs to be typed up in a specific script-writing Google app on our Chromebooks so we can share it with him. It’s due in five weeks. “You’ll work on it occasionally in class, but otherwise work on it at home. You may use video if you choose, but this will take extra time.” He pauses dramatically. “Do not, I repeat, do not leave it all until the last minute.”

  “Why are you encouraging us to be capitalists?” Ty pipes up from behind me. “What if we don’t want to encourage people to buy products they don’t need?”

  “Because you actually do need these. Everyone does.” Mr. Sukow puts a large cardboard box on his desk and begins pulling out the products. “Besides, would you rather do two dozen grammar worksheets or this fun project?” He grins. Ty’s kind of a smart aleck, and it bugs some teachers, but Mr. Sukow seems to like him. I personally think Ty could turn it down like ten notches.

  Mr. Sukow dramatically pulls each item out and sets them on the desk. There’s a sponge, a coffee cup, a long-handled umbrella, and a brown paper napkin.

  “Ugh. Those are boring,” Ty pipes up.

  “That’s the point.” Mr. Sukow folds the plain brown napkin in half. “That’s the challenge. To make these boring objects appealing. Got it?”

  I stare at the rubric. It does say, Make object sound interesting. How do you do that with a paper napkin?

  “And you’ll be working with partners,” Mr. Sukow says in a cheerful tone, as if this is the best idea anyone’s ever had in the history of ideas.

  The classroom starts buzzing. That changes everything. Cecily turns to me and points, then points at herself. I nod, smiling, my hopes soaring. This will be fun. Like working with Zelia. Cecily can do the presentation and I’ll just write it.

  “Assigned partners,” Mr. Sukow amends, and everyone groans. “And you will tell me what grade you think the other deserves, so make sure you all pull your weight.” He starts pointing at people, telling them who’s with who.

  “Napkins,” he says. “Ava.” I hold my breath, hoping he points to Cecily next, but he says, “Ty. You’re partners.”

  “Noooooo,” Ty groans, and for once I pretty much agree with him. He’s no prize, either. But I would never say that out loud like he did. Obviously Ty’s never been to Cotillion.

  My mind flashes back to improv. Miss Gwen told us that when we get a suggestion, we always have to say thank you. “Be grateful for it, or the whole audience will feel bad,” she had said. “Even if you think it’s the most horrible suggestion in the history of all time.” Then she made us each practice saying thank you.

  Ty being assigned to me is like getting one of those bad suggestions.

  “Thank you!” I say, ridiculously loud, before I think about it too much, and the class snickers like I’m being sarcastic. But I’m not. Ty swivels in his seat to look at me. I try to smile at him.

  A sneer wrinkles his pale face. Then he tosses his head onto his desk with a thunk. “Kill me now.”

  I sink way down into my seat. I wonder if it’s too late in the year to switch out of English class or change schools. Or move out of the country.

  After the last bell, I’m walking out of the building when Cecily catches up. “So I take it you and Ty aren’t exactly friends.”

  “That’s an understatement.” I’d spent the rest of the period looking up napkins. Which did not tell me anything new. Except that there haven’t been any new napkin inventions in forever. I mean, what else could they do to a napkin?

  All I want to do is go to my grandparents’ house and have a giant bowl of ice cream so I can put this day behind me. I have to turn right, walk through the park, and I’ll be there in no time. I begin to veer, expecting Cecily to keep going straight. “Bye, Cecily.”

  She doesn’t change direction. “I’ll walk with you through the park. I’m not getting a ride today.”

  Oh. A little shiver of happiness zips through me. I smile at her and she smiles back. Am I making a friend? My stomach jumps. What should I say?

  We continue on in silence through the school parking lot. Cecily doesn’t seem to mind my quiet. I relax a little.

  Ryan’s in the park, jumping around on the grass like a golden retriever that’s been turned into a boy, his hair flopping back and forth. If he had a long, feathery tail he’d be wagging it. “Aaahhh! Free at last.”

  Chad runs circles around him. “I thought this day would never end!”

  Around them are some other boys I don’t know. They’re all talking and laughing. Looking at these strangers, I close up like a clamshell inside.

  “Hi, Ryan! Hi, Chad!” Cecily calls out. They wave and smile.

  I try to smile at them, but I can’t make myself meet their eyes. Instead I find myself getting sweaty. Eye contact is a thing Mr. Matt is trying to work with me on. He says it makes me have a fear response and the only way to get over it is to . . . (drumroll) make eye contact.

  Obviously not going to happen.

  Anyway, I’m not sure whether Ryan and Chad actually like me or if they were just being nice during improv. They sure don’t want to talk to me right now—they’re with their real friends. Who definitely don’t want to hang out with me. They haven’t even smiled or looked over.

  “You!” Ryan races over. “New girl!”

  “Ava,” Cecily corrects him, like she did during improv.

  Chad pants, his hands on his thighs. “Dude, stop moving so fast.” There’s a noise like a full, churning garbage disposal, and Chad claps his hand over his belly.

  “Was that you?” Cecily asks.

  “I thought someone was flushing a toilet!” Ryan giggles.

  I turn red on Chad’s behalf. If my stomach did that in front of people, I would have to go hide forever.

  “It totally sounded like that.” Chad doesn’t look the least bit embarrassed. “Oh, man. I’m so hungry.”

  Ryan regards the rest of us. “Anybody want to go to Fosters Freeze?”

  Fosters Freeze is a couple blocks away. They sell soft-serve ice cream and burgers and things like that. For all of elementary school, Zelia an
d I wanted to walk to Fosters Freeze on our own, but our parents said we had to wait until we were in middle school.

  Then, of course, Zelia moved away, so I thought my dreams of getting a dipped cone after school were dead. I’m probably supposed to ask my parents’ permission or something first, but won’t they just be happy that I’m doing things with real people? Nobody else is trying to ask their parents.

  “Yeah!” one of the other boys bellows, and like a wave they all start moving toward the store, Ryan and Chad and Cecily with them. Only I stand still, undecided. What if they really didn’t want me to go after all?

  “I gotta get home,” I say to the air, and walk in the opposite direction.

  “No Fosters Freeze?” Ryan calls after me. He sounds disappointed, maybe.

  “Come on, Ava!” Cecily adds. “It’ll be fun.”

  For a moment I slow down. It’s hot today. A soft-serve vanilla-chocolate cone dipped in chocolate would taste so good right now, and I have a folded five-dollar bill in the inner pocket of my backpack. You always wanted to go after school, my mind reminds me. What’s the big deal?

  No, my gut tells me it’s safer if I don’t go. “Sorry. My grandparents will get worried.”

  I break into a run, my huge backpack smacking my spine like a cartoon anvil.

  I run for exactly thirty seconds before I’m winded and slow down to a walk. No wonder I’m terrible at the PACER.

  I text Zelia, almost automatically.

  Hey, I just did something kind of stupid, I think. I ran away from Fosters Freeze and the improv kids and I’m pretty sure they hate me now. What should I do?

  I wait. Probably she’ll tell me to just go back. But she doesn’t respond—it’s dinnertime there. I sigh and pocket my phone.

  “Hey,” someone calls from the grass. It’s Luke. “Going to Jīchan’s?” He crosses over to me.

  “Yeah,” I say. I can still see the group, walking in a diagonal direction across the park.

  “Text me if they have butter pecan,” he says, then follows my eyes. “Did they ditch you?”

  I shake my head. “I, uh, they’re going to Fosters Freeze.”

  Luke sighs. “Ava. You didn’t freak out again, did you? You have to be tough!”

  My heart leaps and I clench my hands into fists. “It’s a little bit more complicated than being tough.” Luke never even tries to understand.

  “It’s not. Point your body that way and go catch up. That’s it.” Luke puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me so I’m facing the group.

  I turn away. I could explain how I feel for fifty days and nights and he’ll never understand me. “See you. And I’m not texting you. If you want butter pecan, you’ll have to come see for yourself whether they have it.”

  “Fine,” he calls after me, and I stomp off.

  My grandparents’ house is only a few blocks away from the school, less than a quarter mile. My grandfather’s sitting cross-legged on the small green lawn with a big straw beach hat, the kind that lifeguards wear, on his head.

  “Hi, Jīchan!” I wave.

  He’s holding a pair of manicure scissors in his hands and snipping away at his grass. Some people think this is weird, but my grandfather is very particular about his yard. So he’ll sit there and yank up tiny weeds and trim the grass that his lawn mower missed with tiny manicure scissors. Mom says it’s a harmless hobby. Jīchan ran his own landscaping company for years and years, so now the only yard he has to fuss over is his own.

  I step through the picket fence—Jīchan put it up so neighbor dogs can’t pee on his nice lawn—and he looks up. “Ava-chan!” He beams up at me from under his big hat. “I bought Moose Tracks! They had a good ice-cream sale.”

  “Oh boy!” I lean down and give him a peck on his tanned cheek. Nana Linda makes him wear the hat, so I know she’s home.

  “I’ll be in as soon as I finish this row.” He points to some slightly uneven grass that nobody except him would notice. He peers up, listening to my still-hard breathing. “Were you running?”

  “Just a little.”

  Worry passes over his face like a cloud. I have the same condition my grandmother had. That’s how she died. “Your grandmother always missed the days when she could run. Enjoy it.”

  While you can, I add in my head because I know that’s what he’s thinking. My grandmother was more or less okay when she was a kid, and then she got sick as a grown-up. Jīchan means well, but sometimes being around him makes me think too much about my heart, and the bad things that could happen to it in the future.

  The doctor says it’s not necessarily true that I’ll be exactly like my grandmother. They caught my condition early; they didn’t know about hers for a long time because noncompaction cardiomyopathy is kind of a newly discovered thing. They just thought she had a randomly weak heart. I’m much better off than her because they have better medicines and treatments now. I get an echocardiogram that looks at my heart every year and I take baby aspirin to prevent blood clots. I might also get this procedure called an ablation, which will zap away the irregular heartbeats, but that’s in a “wait and see” phase right now.

  That’s what Mom and Dad tell me. And that’s what I have to keep focused on or I’ll want to hide under my covers for the rest of my days.

  I pat my grandfather’s hat. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Might as well tell me to stop breathing.” He chuckles, but catches my hand and squeezes it.

  I step into the small living room and kick off my shoes. The room’s kind of dark, with most of the light coming from a picture window by the dining area, which overlooks a valley dotted with houses. The walls are lined with photos of my mom, her mom, and Jīchan. New photos of Nana Linda with all of us are there, too, plus Nana Linda’s children and grandchildren. I bet strangers are confused by the variety of people in these.

  Nana Linda’s relaxing in her recliner, crocheting a hat and watching some kind of farming documentary. “Hi, munchkin.” She hits the lever and pops herself upright, standing up and adjusting her crocheted vest and colorful leggings. “How are you?”

  I let her pull me into a hug and she kisses the top of my head. Nana Linda’s my step-grandma. She and Jīchan got married seven years ago. Nana Linda has six grandchildren courtesy of her own grown-up children, and thus has plenty of grandma experience, but none of them live in town.

  Jīchan is seventy and five years younger than his wife, but Nana Linda actually seems like the younger one. She has silver hair that used to be bright red when she was young, styled into a sleek bob, and her makeup’s always on point. A yoga and dance teacher, she moves like a much younger person. She smells like coconut, like she’s just been to the beach.

  I think about improv and how scary and fun that was, and then about how I have to work with Ty, and how I just ran away from those kids instead of going to Fosters Freeze.

  But I don’t tell her any of this. “I’m okay.” Telling her all my thoughts after I’ve been doing nothing but playing them over and over in my head feels exhausting. Not to mention how Luke made me feel. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.

  She arches a brow. “Just okay?”

  I nod.

  She puts her arm around me and we walk like a three-legged race into the kitchen. “Let’s have some ice cream and you can tell me about it.”

  Nana Linda only eats ice cream when I come over. She says it’s a way to limit her ice-cream intake. Too bad for her because I’m here almost every day. They also have a TV plan with more channels than we have, so I record this one anime show we don’t get and watch it here.

  To change the subject, I ask her how she is, and she tells me a little bit about the Yoga for Seniors class she leads at the rec center. “I got a woman who uses a cane to be in warrior pose for a full minute!” she says proudly. That’s a pose where you basically do a lunge with your legs, and have your arms out horizontally, and you have to hold it until your thighs collapse out from under you. At least, th
at’s what I do.

  “Wow. That’s great.” I sound fake because I’m still thinking about Fosters Freeze.

  “So everything’s just okay. But tell me about improv.” Nana Linda opens the freezer drawer and gets out five different flavors of ice cream. They always have too much. “Which kind?”

  “A little of each, please.” I need to make her think about something else. “Improv’s okay.” She’ll ask me about my feelings forever and try therapy on me. I get enough therapy with Mr. Matt. I wash my hands, soaping them up really well to my elbows. My arms always smell funky after school from leaning on the desks that other people have been using all day.

  Finally, I hit on inspiration. Something that will make her get fired up and forget all about me and my feelings. “Do you hear what’s happening with Navegando Point?” I tell her about the redevelopment and how all those stores are already closed. Social issues always do the trick.

  Nana Linda’s expression grows stormy and I know I was correct. “I thought it got canceled because it’s a historic site.”

  “I don’t know about that part, but it’s definitely on. I mean, otherwise stores wouldn’t have closed, right?” I dry my hands and arms. With any luck, she’ll forget all about asking me personal questions.

  “Right,” she says, and looks thoughtful. I take the ice-cream bowl and go sit down in the dining area that’s open to the kitchen. Nana Linda opens her laptop.

  Jīchan hangs up his hat by the front door as he comes in. “What’d I miss?”

  Nana Linda whirls to him. “They’re going to tear down Navegando Point and put in a huge, ugly, awful hotel and fancy shops and ruin the harbor!”

  “Slow down.” Jīchan holds up his hands.

  “Well. We need to do something about it.”

  My stomach roils as though I’m on a boat. Uh-oh. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to bring up.