Table of Contents
Titlepage
Dedication
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About Bywater
To: 14
Love: 16
“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
—James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village”
PROLOGUE
I am ducking, dodging, shooting, and . . . and . . . and yes, scoring! It’s a direct hit! I watch as shrapnel of snowflakes run down my opponent’s face, leaving telltale trails on his cheeks, and clinging beads on the edge of his woolen hat. My head swells, my chest puffs . . .
. . . and welcome to Central Park, somewhere between the North Meadow and The Loch, blanketed by multiple feet of snow still coming down, and thousands of kids still pouring in. It is I think every child’s fantasy come to life. We are snow-day’d off from school, having a free-for-all, blizzard-induced snowball fight of the century.
Ça envoie du pâté! It is pretty freaking awesome! There have to be hundreds of kids here already, and more keep pouring into the park from every direction.
It’s sort of like Ned Stark woke up, looked out, and proclaimed, “winter is coming,” and from everywhere in the city White Walkers are stampeding, and the park is the wall, and we, we are the sea of hooded, hatted, masked, scarfed, gloved, ducking, weaving, bobbing, bumping, drift impaling, packing, loading, and throwing Night’s Watch, here to save Manhattan from those who would do her harm.
Okay, maybe that’s not exactly apt.
Maybe, perhaps, I am indulging in just the teensiest bit of hyperbole.
Because, in truth, given our movements are somewhat constrained by our goose down vs. synthetic down layers, we are more like “winter is coming, the parody,” in which an open air arena is filled with hordes of drunken, reeling snowmen rather than any kind of lean, mean fighting machines, and those white, packed fluff bombs tossed at each other are way more likely to hit the person located three people over, rather than their intended target.
Whatever.
Because despite our layers of pants and assorted puffy-synthetic challenges, we, the spectacular septuplet—a.k.a. Jimmy-Imani-Ari-Vikram-Joe-Ava-and me, Sid “do-not-call-me-Sidonie” Rubin a.k.a. our side of the maybe sixty or seventy kids within our bombing radius—are killing it.
Septuplet? Not fierce five? Ava? Joe? Aha! As always, I thank you my friends for being right here with me, but unfortunately—shifting right!—now is not a good time to stop and explain. I do promise to get back to you right after I bend, pack, and fire.
Which may take another minute or two. Because, before I can squat to scoop more snow, a movement to my left intrudes upon the edge of my vision, and I somehow manage to flex back and stay on my feet, all while pirouetting about three inches in a left-leaning spin, in time to clear for Jimmy’s unleashed perfect spiral.
And go.
Dropping down, I quickly pack snow into a shape close enough to being a ball if no one scrutinizes it too closely. Rearmed I rise, moving my arm so it is positioned to throw. I deke. I feint. I fake. And then I make my fatal mistake. I spare one moment to steal a look at Ava. And wham! I freeze.
Ava caught my little side-eye glance, and in response a coy, come hither grin begins curving as she crosses her wrists, her gloved hands bobbing with her fingers formed in the letter “s” position, a move better known as the “making out” sign. And that, that is all it takes.
In spite of the cold and my soaking wet gloves, my down-encased body is now a kiln with an inferno blazing inside. Hot enough to melt, well, I suppose ice. But really anything. Especially me.
Only I don’t melt. I just stand here with my boot-encased feet rooted to my spot, snowball melting in palm, until a wet-incoming scores a direct hit. To my face.
Did you know the Swedes have more than ninety-five ways to describe the act of rubbing snow in one’s face?
Before I can fully wrap my brain around this tidbit of awesomeness, not to mention suck the once-again-loosening mucus membranes back into my nose, Jimmy’s right arm thrusts me out of the path of another incoming, launching me backward, right into Ari, who stumbles into Imani, who then goes flying, tumbling down the slope and into the ravine.
Ava, the only one of us who can actually see our version of the Three Stooges unfold, is laughing, which, were it anyone else would have pissed me off no end, but instead has me enthralled from my derriere-on-the-ground point of view. Which leaves Jimmy turning to see what is so funny. And that, that, my friends, is when we hear the scream.
It’s Imani. Only this isn’t an “I’m tumbling down, save me” scream. Oh no. This scream does not match that tumble.
For just a millisecond, all other sound drops out. Jimmy looks at me and I look at him and as random as it sounds, my first—and only—thought is, uh-oh, here we go again.
I don’t know why I think that. I also don’t know how I know this scream is different from all others, but I know it is. And so does Jimmy.
I scramble back to my feet, racing down one step behind him. And for just a second I glance back and see Vikram and Joe giving chase.
But not Ava.
Ava is standing there, perched at the top of the slope, looking down at me. Only this time, instead of her look turning me hot with lust, it sends a chill down my spine. But I have no time to stop and sort it out. Imani needs me. And I am already running two steps behind.
ONE
But not Ava. That thought echoes through my mind as I slip and slide my way down the slope. Which might make this a most opportune time to, as promised, bring you up to speed.
It all began with my hunt for my Mystery Dream Girl, a.k.a. my MDG.
And I promise, I shall try for succinctness and key points. But considering who am I, I make no guarantees.
To begin, let us travel back in time until a vision appears. There we are, the fearless five, trapped in the soul-sucking, cinderblock, spirit-bannered, fluorescently lit school cafeteria, suffering from serious latte withdrawal and thus incredibly weakened, vulnerable, and exposed to some kind of undefined attack, when exactly that happens.
Only it is not an attack on the fearless five, but an attack from within. It is our very own Vikram Patel who pushes, pulls, and finally ropes us into participating in the school’s annual robotics competition.
And I could bore you with many details, but instead, I will simply give props to Vik for having a plan that worked. We were sprung from our parental detention, which had led us to our near-catastrophic lunchroom fate, a dire situation brought on by our so-called previous so-called shenanigans.
So, despite some unattractive kicking and screaming—hey, I’m owning it—our participation garnered us rehabilitated status, and we are once again upstanding citizens, and newly sanctioned members of the school robotics team, the Cooper Thoriums. Where we find ourselves invested in surprising, but not really surprising if you think about it, ways.
Talking star quarterback Jimmy “Five Fingers” Flynn into handling the driving of the bots, a position requiring one possessed of most excellent hand-eye coordination, was kind of like a no-brainer. Imani “all the
world’s a stage” Cruz becoming Chief of Construction? Seems way out there until you put it together with all her stage experience. Me? Coding? Big yawn.
But Ari “always larger-than-life” Wilson, leaving boyfriend/coach Vikram Patel to work the business plan side with co-head coach, the impossibly charming, super-chill Marcus Johnston? Now that, my friends, that was an eyebrow raising, savacious move. Savacious because it is both glorious and savage, and genius on so many levels—from the simple, obvious “great for the college application” to the complex layers, designed to remind Vik that she’s her own woman, not to be taken for granted. Savacious.
Okay. I hear you. But you know, savaciousness does deserve a moment. And . . . speeding up . . . getting on with the getting on . . .
. . . and go. We immersed ourselves in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game a.k.a. an MMORPG called Contagion, where we went hunting to trap a trophy thief. We joined forces for a life and death chase through virtual time and place. We came, we saw, we conquered, and no stopping us now, we continued our worldlier conquest at the robotic competition, where, right as we are conquering, it happened.
I looked up and there she was. Right there.
And there I was, gobsmacked.
The rest of my day is a blur. As Thoriums, we did okay. We did not—sadly—win our twentieth anniversary competition, but we did “level up” enough to finish in second place, which I categorize as a miracle given that my mind still remains a bit of a blank.
I know there were awards and scholarships, but my eyes were continuously scanning the crowds, desperately trying to surreptitiously catch one more glimpse of her, but to no avail.
Instead, I kept replaying the scene, our scene, almost in slow motion. I see myself see her, her dark hair and pale green eyes, her hands flying about. I watch myself as I approach, introducing myself, risking everything to ask her if she’d like to get something to eat later on.
She stops briefly as I approach, then her hands begin flying again, and I realize they aren’t just waving. I realize she is signing—but not to me.
I watch as her friend turns around. He introduces himself. His name is Joe. He doesn’t introduce her to me, but delivers her message, “Come back when you can ask her directly.”
The gauntlet had been thrown.
Which I, of course, pick right on up. Don’t even stop to give it a first thought, never mind a second. Miraculously this starts out way better than one would think. Probably because I wasn’t. Thinking that is. It was kind of like a reflex. She threw it; I picked it up.
Nearly as intoxicating as a double dog dare, a gauntlet is not to be ignored.
But occasionally it is to be put on hold. At least until after I can escape the what-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time celebratory dinner with the family, where of course my normally petulant, silent younger brother, Jean, decides to uncharacteristically live it up, rambling on all about how he helped out. Which, he did. He is occasionally useful. Tonight, however, he is not. Useful. At all.
I am convinced the concept of delayed gratification comes from someone who got caught in familial dinner hell.
Mercifully Jean shuts up and the meal ends. We do finally get home. Whereupon I immediately execute the parental kiss-kiss, wave goodnight, race to my room, boot my laptop, sink to the far side of my bed, prop my feet against the wall, interlace my fingers, stretch arms out, bring arms back, stretch neck left—no crack, right—two mini cracks, and get to work.
Step one. Identify the object of my . . . of my what, exactly? I wrack my brain. And not because I can’t complete the sentence, I can. But because I’m not sure I want to. When I hear it in my head, it’s cringe inducing, and yet. Big deep breath. Let it out.
She is the object of my heart’s desire.
Eye roll. Big eye roll. Double circuit. Still there.
Eye rolling can’t make it less accurate. Whoever she is, she is at least my brain and body’s desire, if not my heart’s.
All I really know is she’s like some spectral being who’s taken over a rather large portion of my mind’s eye. I see her whipping her head around to look at me, laughing at something only we know, some private conversation only we are having, and then, just before I can lean over and touch, she disappears from view, leaving me physically aching for her.
And no, I don’t need anyone to point out this was a mere seven hours ago. I am quite well aware. But seven hours is an eternity when it’s driven by her off-colored pale green eyes teasing me, pulling me deeper into a pool I want to willingly dive into.
And seven hours is actually four hundred and twenty minutes. Which, when calculated that way, does add up to at least a “quite a while” if not even “a long time.” Especially when teetering on a precipice.
Coup de foudre. She is a strike of lightning.
I look up through my windows and make a vow. One day I shall find you and tell you ouand je t’ai vu pour la première fois, c’était le coup de foudre. The first time I saw you, I fell head over heels.
Enough. I blink, shake my head, and begin to do what I do best: devise a game plan. Which brings me back to step one. Identification.
I begin scrolling through hours of video from FIRST Inspires Robotics Competition. It’s amazing how many kids, and their parents, needed to get their participation uploaded as soon as they could. It’s also amazing how many of them shoot only their children and no one else!
I am now over an hour in, meaning more than five hundred minutes have passed since she turned and walked away, and I got nothing. Well almost nothing. Some parent I don’t know got a great picture of Jimmy and me, which I have swiped for my wall.
I also mobilized what I think is a surefire backup. You’d think being one of the fearsome five means lots of personalized accessible coverage. And it does. Although Ari’s Mom isn’t really helpful, Imani’s parents and my parents are basically a bust. They’ve shared a couple of clips, some stills, nothing of consequence, but Jimmy’s mom, Reiko, turns out to be a jackpot. Or maybe she’s just, wait for it—knee-slapper alert ahead—the mother lode! Come on, don’t hate me, you know that’s what being giddy gets us.
Sobering up. Jimmy’s mom wanted to stream some of this to her mother, who is in Japan visiting her mother, so she recorded everything, and then, just in case she somehow missed anything, asked Vik’s parents for their three phones’ worth of data!
MDG, I know you’re in there, somewhere.
It took another forty minutes, but when my phone pinged, it was Jimmy, and he had it. He found it on his mother’s phone, “Sending it now.”
And it was even more embarrassing than I thought. You see, I thought having to ask Jimmy to send it would be the embarrassing part, but I was wrong. When I saw the footage, it turns out while Jimmy’s mom was shooting him, she captured him just as he waved over to Imani to get her attention, and then he pointed. So naturally Reiko turned to follow whatever he was pointing at, and there it was, digitally captured for all eternity, the embarrassing part. Me, awkwardly, at least to my eyes, trying to make conversation with this really hot girl, then figuring out she can’t actually hear me.
I am a woman with a goal. There will be no time-out for mortification.
I spot her on the video, which translates to a rapid dozen or so screenshots, and I also spot that guy Joe she was with, and wait for it, behind them, their team, with . . . enlarge, with their logo.
Bull’s-eye!
School name now gotten, and heading over to the old Google-ator, cross-referencing.
While my pages load, a random thought occurs to me. Jimmy’s gone bizarrely quiet here. I don’t know if we’re growing up somehow, or if Imani did her nose wrinkle thing and explained “probably not a good time,” or, most likely, tormenting me in this moment would be way too easy, even for him.
For which I am grateful. This way I get to be holed up in my room, searching for my soon-to-be next girlfriend, without an incessantly chiming Greek chorus of friends to help.
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br /> And there, on page seventeen, she is.
And even in a school photo, on a page filled with school photos, she leaps right out. My eyes lower to read the caption.
Her name is Ava. Ava Kushnir.
Ava.
I breathe it quietly and feel it making me smile. Ava. I like the name Ava. It’s a palindrome.
Which one should not confuse with a semordnilap. Palindromes spell the same word forward and backward, while semordnilaps spell completely different words forward and backward, of which my favorite is stressed-desserts, as I do believe they go hand in hand, or at least hand to mouth. I know, yuk yuk yuk. But I am also quite fond of dog and god for the same reason.
But they are semordnilaps, and we are talking palindromes, which, by the way is semordnilap spelled backward.
Note to self, breathe!
It’s so perfect. Ava is Ava, Shift. Even backward, Command. She is Ava. Four.
And screen grab.
And, save to Desktop, Ava Folder.
TWO
“Sid,” Imani ‘s voice floats behind me, catching me just as I’m following behind my backpack, sliding into our usual booth in what has now become our usual haunt, deep in the rear of Platitudes. “When’s Ava’s birthday?”
“July 28,” I reply, sliding, without thinking. Then I cringe. ’Cause I know. One second too late. It’s a setup.
“I hate you,” I say indiscriminately to both Ari and Imani, now sliding into opposite sides of the booth and way too busy laughing and high-fiving to care. I’m not sure which one annoys me more.
“You,” Ari leans forward, her newly acquired bangs sliding slightly left, “have officially become a Schmoop.”
I look up, catching Ari’s self-satisfied—no, that would be too high-falutin’; this is just old-school smug—look. It’s simple, direct, and deliciously evil. Her smug glances past me, over to Imani, which sends me lunging for Imani’s phone, located on the table conveniently between us. Again, I’m one second too late. Imani has the epitome of catlike reflexes.
Say Her Name Page 1
