13 and Counting

by Lisa Greenwald

  You’re the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we’d know each other a long time.

  We crack up after we say it.

  “Remember when we first saw that and thought it was honestly so weird?” Ari asks me. “But truthfully, it kinda makes sense now. Don’t you think?”

  “Totally,” I reply. “I think about that all the time.”

  “I wonder why it stayed with us so much,” Ari considers. “Like, we saw tons of stuff that day when my mom thought it would be fun to take us to an art gallery. Um, no thanks. But for some reason, that one thing stuck in our minds.”

  “I know. I don’t get it. But I still love it.”

  “I do too,” Ari says. “Okay, start thinking of names. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay. Smooches.”

  “Smooches.”

  I keep cleaning after that even though Ryan only joins me for the last twenty minutes.

  “Why are you so lame about this project?” I ask him.

  He throws a soft basketball against the wall. “Because I don’t care about a stupid mural. You’re lucky I’m even helping at all.”

  “You’re so rude, Ryan.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I keep sorting toys into a giveaway pile and a garbage pile and when I reach the top shelf where all his old Hess trucks are, I pause.

  “Are you saving these?” I ask him. “Maybe you can just put them on a shelf in your room. Like a cool display. They may be worth money one day, you never know.”

  He stares at the trucks and then back at me.

  “What?” I ask him when he doesn’t say anything.

  “Just donate them. I don’t want them.” He grabs a bunch and shoves them in a big, black garbage bag.

  “You used to love these,” I remind him.

  “Well, I don’t anymore. I don’t play with trucks. Get over it, Kay. Things change and people move on. That’s it. Stop being so dramatic all the time.”

  I fold my arms across my chest, about to say something, but I stop myself. I don’t think we’re talking about Hess trucks anymore.

  I sit down on the floor and pull my knees up to my chest. “Are you sad about Dad?” I ask him.

  “I just said stop being so dramatic! God! Why are you like this? You’re the one who’s sad about it, the one who won’t go to his dumb wedding.” He throws the last of the trucks in the bag and then stomps up the stairs. “Get a life.”

  I wonder how long it will take him to learn that it’s better to express your feelings and get them out instead of just pushing them way down deep.

  He’d feel so much better if he just talked about stuff.

  Maybe I should suggest God as a listening ear for him. Or Mrs. Etisof could be helpful, too.

  Either way, talking to someone would do him some good.

  36

  ARI

  Me: U guys guess what?

  Alice: ?

  Zoe: what

  Hana: What? Tell!

  Me: we r getting a dog 4 real

  Me: & best part is it’s a rescue from right near camp

  Alice: OMG

  Hana: what r u going to name it

  Me: IDK still thinking

  Zoe: r u open to suggestions? ☺

  Me: possss

  Mei: miss u guys

  Alice: dittttoooooo

  Alice: don’t be mad but we r all going to golfy’s for a camp reunion

  Alice: I didn’t want to keep it from u

  Me: oh ok ☹

  Zoe: we still love u ari obvs

  Hana: not even a question obvi obvi

  Me: k good

  Me: but still ☹

  I slump down in my chair at the table after reading all of those texts. The dog happiness fades away a little bit. I mean, it makes sense that I wouldn’t be invited to Golfy’s for a camp reunion but it still sort of stinks.

  A minute later, Jason’s sitting at the table with me, taking one of my mom’s apple-crisp muffins out of the basket and biting into it.

  “Hey, where’d you come from?” I ask him.

  “Across the street. Duh.”

  I shrug, half smiling. I stare at him as he eats his muffin. His hair is sticking up in a million directions. He has a constellation of crumbs in the corner of his mouth. The neck of his T-shirt is so stretched out, like he’s always pulling on it, and he has a scab on the knuckle of his right thumb.

  This is Jason.

  I don’t even know what to say, or how I ended up here, really.

  I like him. At least I thought I did. But then right now, the like doesn’t feel quite so strong. I guess it’s good people don’t get married at thirteen. There’d be no way for me to make up my mind. And my opinions change way too often.

  “So what’s up? We’re going to visit your grandparents today, right?” he asks after slurping some orange juice. “Where’s your fam? Why are you sitting alone at the table?”

  I look around. To be honest, I hadn’t realized I was alone here. I got so lost in that group text about the Golfy camp reunion and then Jason showed up and now here we are.

  “No clue where anyone is, truthfully,” I say. “You don’t have to come with me to visit them, ya know.”

  “Dude!” Jason yells. “I want to! Zeyda’s my man.”

  I laugh a little, realizing again why I like Jason. “Okay, sounds good.”

  We put on our shoes and head over there.

  “It’s gonna be fab that you can walk over here in the summer and swim in this pool,” Jason says as we walk into their development.

  “But we have our own town pool,” I remind him.

  “Yeah, but still. This one looks sick.” He nods for emphasis.

  “It does? It’s covered up. Jason!” I swat his arm. “Stop being dumb.”

  We walk up the path to my grandparents’ apartment and ring the bell. When no one answers, I knock. Still no answer. I start to get a panicky feeling. What if something happened to them? I don’t want to be the one to discover they’re dead. Maybe that’s selfish of me, but it’s true.

  “See if the door’s unlocked,” Jason says.

  “Should I?” I ask. Sometimes I feel like Jason has all the answers, even though he’s just a dumb seventh-grade boy and really knows nothing. He gives the impression that he has answers, though. I’m not sure how or why. But he does.

  “Yeah. We’re not gonna just stand here forever.” He flicks the top of my hat and shakes his head. “Oh, Nodberg.”

  Then he leans his forehead against mine and pulls away, giving me a quick kiss.

  This boy is an enigma. He can be so dumb and mildly gross when he eats and then so cute and romantic.

  I turn the doorknob and call out a singsongy, “Hello?”

  No answer.

  Okay, they’re dead. And I’m going to be the one to find them and then have to report it to my parents and the police. This is a nightmare. I don’t know why I started coming here alone, without my mom or dad or someone. I always take on too much. Way more than I can handle.

  “Hello?” I call again.

  “Ari?” Zeyda asks in a sort of confused yelling tone.

  I run back to the den and find both of them in their recliners. Bubbie’s asleep, her head back against the cushion, the blue oxygen cord firmly in her nose. Zeyda’s watching some game with the volume low and reading the newspaper at the same time.

  A minute later, their aide Sally pops in, a dish towel over her shoulder.

  “Oh, hi.” She smiles. “I was just fixing them some lunch. Want anything?”

  I shake my head. I feel like I’ll never eat again when I come here. It’s the combination of the oxygen and someone else in Bubbie’s kitchen that really irks me. It’s like no food will ever be appealing in this space for the rest of my life.

  “How ya doing, Zeyda?” Jason pulls over a folding chair and turns to face the TV so he can watch the game with him.

  “All right.” Zeyda offers a halfhearted
smile, like he’s not even sure he’s met Jason before. I guess they haven’t really talked that many times—just at my bat mitzvah and a few visits last year. “You?”

  “Can’t complain,” Jason replies, like he’s suddenly a forty-five-year-old dad of three.

  “Good. And you, Ar?” Zeyda asks, turning to me.

  “Okay.” I choke back tears. I want Bubbie to wake up. I know she’s alive because I see her breathing, but it’s not good to sleep in the middle of the day like this. It feels depressing. Like it’s a sick day. I guess it is a sick day for Bubbie, though. Does this mean all of her days are sick days? I push the thought away.

  “She didn’t sleep well last night,” Zeyda says like he can read my mind. “Truthfully, I didn’t either.”

  “Oh, maybe you guys sleep too much during the day,” I mention. One of our counselors at camp told us that if we skip activities to nap we won’t sleep at night and then we’ll be on a perpetual tired cycle. In all fairness, she was the lamest counselor, but maybe she has a point.

  “I don’t know,” Zeyda says, like he’s too tired to debate the issue.

  I want him to tell me that I can wake Bubbie up, the way he used to do when I was little and I’d sleep over and they’d still be asleep first thing in the morning. He doesn’t, though, and I’m too scared to ask. I don’t want the answer to be no.

  So we sit there, and Jason watches the game with Zeyda. I think it’s a rerun of a baseball game, which also seems kind of depressing.

  Sally brings over a plate of cheese and crackers and I nibble on a corner and pray that Bubbie wakes up and is alert right away, exactly like the Bubbie lioness I know and love.

  This isn’t Bubbie, sleeping in the middle of the day, with the oxygen whirring and whirring endlessly.

  I think back to the God conversation Kaylan and I had.

  Please, God, let her get better.

  Let her get back to her old self.

  I want to come here in the summer and sit by the pool with her, and go to Martin’s for breakfast. I want her to meet our dog (whatever his name is), I want her to write me letters at camp this summer and I want to write back.

  There’s so much more we have to do.

  37

  KAYLAN

  “OH, I’M SO HAPPY YOU’RE here,” I say to Mrs. Etisof as I open the door. “Mural painting day! Mural painting day.”

  She smiles and hangs up her jacket. “But you still haven’t told me what you want. I have all my supplies, but I’ll need to know what you have in mind before I begin.”

  “I know,” I reply. “Ryan and my mom don’t care. So I think it’s really my call.”

  “Well, what’s been on your mind?” she asks me, setting up all of her paints on the dresser and sitting down on the couch in the basement.

  I think for a minute. About the Ari and Jason thing, and the Cami weirdness, about the list and God and unicorns and unicycles and my dad getting married. I have a lot on my mind, too much to mention, really.

  “Um, friendship. And the universe and life, I guess,” I add, laughing.

  “You’re so young to be thinking about such heavy things.” She laughs too. “You must enjoy life, my dear.”

  “Oh, I am,” I reassure her. “I just like to think about deep stuff.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Unicorns, too, though,” I tell her. “I think a lot about unicorns.”

  “You do?” she asks.

  “Yup. Because they’re pretty, but also the concept of that far-fetched, hard-to-find sort of miraculous thing.” I pause. “I’m trying to find my unicorn.”

  “We could do a unicorn mural,” Mrs. Etisof suggests. “Something subtle with pale colors, maybe a rainbow, too. Something that gives the feel of a whole, wide, expansive universe just waiting to be explored.”

  “Ooh,” I say. “I like it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Can you add two girls on unicycles, too?” I start to wonder if this should be our list in mural form. Not everything, really. Not the spicy chip, or the race, or the movement. Just a few of the things. “Actually, can I show you some of my and Ari’s doodles? We doodled every day for a bunch of months. Maybe we can incorporate some?”

  “Sure. I’d love to see them.” She smiles. “I’m going to start with the background and then we can discuss again when I’m ready to add the details.”

  I nod and then I sit there and watch her paint for a little while until she says, “Hon, you can go do what you need to do. It’s hard for me to work with someone watching me. I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings.”

  I shake my head. “Not at all.”

  When I get up to my room, I decide to call Ari and update her on the mural situation.

  “Hey,” I say as soon as Ari answers.

  “Hey,” she replies, and I can tell by the sound of her voice that something is off.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Eh, nothing. I don’t feel like getting into it.” She pauses. “What’s up?”

  “Mrs. Etisof is painting the mural now. I just wanted to see if you wanted to come over and check it out. Also I wanted to continue discussing Be Me and make up our unicycle practice schedule.” The more I talk, the more I realize how intense I’m sounding. I’m starting to stress myself out.

  “I don’t feel like it today, Kay,” she replies. “I’ll see you in school tomorrow and we can work on the unicycle thing and also the Be Me. I have ideas on that but I’m too tired to discuss it now.”

  “Okay.” I’m quiet then, waiting for her to say more, but she doesn’t.

  I stay in my room for a while, debating about calling Cami or June for plans, but I don’t really feel like doing much of anything.

  Mrs. Etisof paints for a few hours but then she stops. “I need to let this base coat dry before I add more,” she tells me. “But have no fear. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be at school tomorrow,” I remind her. “But you can always come in. You know where we keep the extra key.”

  She laughs. “I do.”

  At school the next day, Ari and I meet in the gym early to practice the unicycling. Mr. Kohnmi meets us there.

  “Girls, I have some bad news,” he starts.

  We stare back at him, waiting to hear more.

  “The administration said no about adding unicycling to the PE curriculum,” he says. “They don’t think it’ll get enough kids active at the same time. And it’s too costly to purchase so many unicycles. Not everyone has their own, like you!”

  “But we had it all planned.” I try to stay respectful but something in my tone comes out annoyed and impatient. My art of persuasion clearly didn’t work in this case.

  “We tried to get it through, but the administration wasn’t into it.” He shrugs. “I’m sorry. Sometimes plans don’t work out. Sometimes schools aren’t as innovative as we’d like them to be.”

  “Is there anything else we can do, though?” Ari asks, totally in a genuine way but also sounding a little rude.

  Maybe we shouldn’t have these meetings so early in the morning. We’re not really morning people.

  “Not really,” he says. “Girls, this isn’t for you to worry about. I’m happy to help you practice for your New Year’s resolution or whatever this is, but please, enough questions about school matters. Get started. Okay?”

  We nod, and Ari hops up on the unicycle. She’s actually pretty good at it now and she can circle around and around the gym with no trouble. She can even do it with her arms folded across her chest, like she doesn’t need them for balance.

  “Amaze,” I say. “Ari, you can join the circus. For real.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Okay. Your turn.”

  Something’s up with her. She looks messy—her hair is in a bun, like she didn’t have time to wash it, and she’s wearing the same faded gray hoodie she wore last week when she hates to repeat outfits too often.

  I nod and hop up on the unicycle, steadying myself with
one foot on a pedal until I’m all the way balanced.

  I’m not as good as Ari but I do make it around a few times, which is good enough for today.

  “Think we’re ready to add Hula-Hoops tomorrow?” she asks me.

  “I think so. You?”

  “Def.”

  She turns to Mr. Kohnmi. “Can we meet again tomorrow morning? Same time. Same place. But with Hula-Hoops?”

  He shakes his head a little, laughing. “Knock yourselves out, girls.” He sounds defeated.

  We thank him and walk back to our lockers.

  “I don’t think he gets us,” I tell Ari.

  “I don’t think so, either.”

  I wait for her to tell me what’s on her mind but she launches into an entirely different conversation.

  “So for Be Me, aka our new movement.” She laughs. “I think we need to get the lunch table girls on board today and see if they’ll let us take pictures of them looking super casual and natural and then we hashtag #BeMe and ask the administration if we can hang them around school and then it’ll catch on and then we can photograph everyone.” She looks at me. “What do you think? It’ll be great to have them on board from the start, since they’re like our friends and stuff, and they can help us get things going.”

  “Um.” That’s a lot to take in. I just think it’s funny that she’s all about including the lunch table girls now when she’s barely hung out with them this year. I don’t want them to feel like we’re using them or whatever.

  “You hate it?” Ari asks, after I don’t really say anything.

  “I don’t hate it,” I tell her. “It’s awesome. I just feel like you don’t really like the lunch table girls so it’s a bit awk to ask them to be all into this and stuff.”

  “Who said I don’t like them? I love Amirah. And Marie and I have our own thing . . . I mean, not like you and me. But we still have something.”

  “You never hang out with them outside of school.”

  “So?” she asks. “We hang every day at lunch. Don’t do this, Kay. Like the second I have a good idea, you have to pick it apart.”

  I pull back a little. “I’m not.”