“Because . . . ,” Glen began unsurely, “. . . it is?”
“Throw it to me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I need the practice. Please. Throw it.”
Glen flipped the lollipop through the air in Ethan’s direction. It flew end over end toward Ethan’s hand. Then it hit the tips of his fingers, bounced off, and landed on his bedroom carpet.
“Unless you’re Ethan, it’s easy,” Glen said.
Ethan picked it up off the floor and tossed it back. Glen caught it this time, too.
“Throw it again,” Ethan said.
“Somehow I’m missing the point of this game.”
“It’s not a game. I need to learn to do this.”
“Because . . . ? If your goal is to try out for softball, I suggest we practice with a real ball. Seriously, dude. What’s this about?”
“Every time I go into my dad’s office . . . Jennifer has these in her desk drawer. And she always says, ‘Ethan. Think fast.’ And then she throws me one. And I always miss it.”
“Oh. Jennifer.”
“Yeah. Jennifer.”
“How many of these has she thrown you?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see. Three times a week, maybe. For almost a year. So maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“And you haven’t caught a single one?”
“No, I have. I wasn’t being serious when I said never. I catch maybe one in four or five. It’s getting humiliating. She’s nice about it, but now my dad’s been teasing me right in front of her. She says, ‘Ethan. Think fast,’ and he says, ‘Don’t you know by now that Ethan’s a slow thinker?’ It’s starting to piss me off.”
“Yeah, especially since thinking is what you do best. So, let me get this straight. You seriously brought me up to your room so you can practice catching a fudgy pop?”
“If you’re my friend, you’ll just shut up and do it.”
“If this is the kind of stuff I have to do to be your friend, you should’ve warned me when we met.”
They tossed the candy back and forth about two dozen more times. Ethan caught it twice.
Then Glen caught it, held it, and did not appear inclined to throw it back. He cleared his throat. “Listen. Dude. You honestly think Jennifer’s going to change her whole opinion of you because you can catch?”
“No. Of course not. I’m just tired of being embarrassed. Wait. Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘change her whole opinion’ of me? Why would you even say a thing like that? Her opinion of me is not bad, you know.”
“Didn’t mean it was.”
“Well, what did you mean, then?”
Ethan consciously tried to calm himself. He could feel a heat building up behind his ears. He tried to will it away. All he wanted was to sound casual. And, as usual, it wasn’t working.
“I just think she doesn’t see you the way you want her to.”
“She likes me.”
“Yeah. I’m sure she does. But I think she likes you like a kid. You’re her boss’s kid. I’m not trying to be mean, I just—”
“I’m not a kid!”
“I know. I know that, buddy. I didn’t think you were. We’re the same damn age. I just think . . . you know . . . since you don’t look it . . . I just think maybe sometimes people think of you more as the age you look. You know. Instead of the age you really are.”
“She knows I’m seventeen. She sees me as seventeen.”
“She gives you candy.”
“She gives everybody candy!”
It came out as something like a full-throated shout. Glen winced. Ethan was startled by a light rap on his bedroom door.
“Everything okay in there, honey?” His mother’s voice.
“Yeah, Mom. We’re fine.”
He held very still until her footsteps faded down the apartment’s hall.
“Look, I’m sorry, man,” Glen said. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings or anything.”
“I know.”
“Here. Catch.”
Glen flipped the lollipop in Ethan’s direction. A good, arcing throw. Ethan missed it again.
When Ethan arrived at his father’s office, Jennifer was in her usual spot, seated at her desk in the reception area. Ethan’s dad was nowhere around. Nearly one whole wall was a window into Noah’s office, and it wasn’t hard to see that his father’s desk was empty. Ethan couldn’t help being pleased and relieved, but tried to do so in a way that wouldn’t be plainly visible.
“Ethan!” Jennifer said, and her voice sounded delighted. Elated, almost. “Here. Think fast.”
She pulled her desk drawer open, and then the fudgy pop was flying through the air, arcing, flipping end over end in Ethan’s direction. In that strangely compressed moment Ethan thought if he missed it or dropped it—after all that practice—it would just be too depressing for him to live through.
He reached out, and the candy landed in his palm. He closed his fingers around it, fast, and smiled.
“Hey, you got one!” she said.
The phone rang.
“Underwood Financial,” she said in her professional voice, which was strangely different. “This is Jennifer.”
A pause, during which Ethan stared at her. Her perfectly straight hair was so long she had to move it aside to sit down. And her hair and eyes were exactly the same color—the exact color of the buckwheat honey his mother put on the kitchen table every morning at breakfast. Ethan found it hard not to stare at the honey on the breakfast table, too, his mind far away and more drifting than thinking. Once, Ethan’s dad had apparently watched him for a time without Ethan’s knowledge and then asked, “Something going on in that jar that only you can see?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Jennifer said, knocking him back into the moment, “he’s having lunch with a client. Can I take a message?”
He watched her scribble on her pad, occasionally punctuating the silence with “Uh-huh.”
“Okay, thank you,” she said, “I’ll tell him. Right. Bye.”
She hung up the phone and leveled Ethan like a demolition ball by looking directly into his face. His ability to breathe dried up in his lungs, and his skin felt hot.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. You came by hoping to have lunch with your dad.”
Ethan nodded silently. Now that it was clear he couldn’t have lunch with his dad, having lunch with his dad formed a great excuse for dropping by. And it was hard coming up with excuses. The more the drop-ins stacked up, the harder it became.
“Here’s a thought,” she said. “You and me.”
Ethan tried to swallow and failed. His brain raced like a trapped wild animal, wondering what he had missed.
“Um,” he said, and then feared he might not be able to continue. He put force behind the words. “You and me?”
“Yeah. You and me. Giovanni’s. I have the corporate credit card.”
She held it by its edges and tilted it back and forth as if it were a priceless object on display, itching to be sold. It was silver and shiny, and reflected light from the window into Ethan’s eyes.
“Sure,” Ethan said. “Yeah. You and me.”
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” she said as the waiter held out her chair. “You know, just get to know you more. But right now . . .” She looked over her shoulder at the waiter. “Thank you, Charley, but I’m not even sitting quite yet. I’m going to use the little girls’ room before I do anything else. Ethan, will you excuse me?”
“Of course,” Ethan said, half rising again, bumping his thighs on the edge of the table.
She smiled once, and then Ethan was able to watch her walk away, his single-pointed attention blessedly unobserved. He watched the long, honey-colored curtain of her hair swish back and forth as she walked.
The minute she disappeared from sight, Ethan pulled his phone out of his pocket.
He texted to Glen: Big news.
Then he waited, chewing slightly at his lip, willing Glen to be there to talk to
him.
Yeah what?
Having lunch with her
How’d you manage that?
Her idea
Right
I mean it. She’s acting all weird like she’s dying to get to know me
A long pause, during which Ethan had no idea what Glen was thinking. And he really wanted to know. In fact, he needed to know.
She say why?
No just that she’s been wanting to for a long time
Look dude
Another painfully long moment of no new messages appearing.
What? Just say it
Don’t get your hopes up too high. I mean I hope it’s a good thing but now I’m worried. I know you. You’ll crash hard if you’re wrong. Maybe it’s just because you’re the boss’s son
Ethan glanced up to see Jennifer walking down the long restaurant hallway in his direction. She smiled at him, and something inside him melted. And he thought, Right, Glen. Sure. Don’t get my hopes up too high. I notice that advice doesn’t come with a manual of step-by-step instructions.
Ethan had yet to understand how anyone exerted authority over his own hopes. They seemed to chart a course all their own. If anything, it seemed Ethan’s hopes steered him rather than the other way around.
He slipped the phone down into his lap and texted: Gotta go.
Jennifer sat across the table from him and smiled warmly into his face. Ethan looked away. It was the wrong thing to do, but he couldn’t help it. Her eyes and her smile felt like fire. Like the sun, burning his eyes if he tried to look directly.
“You need to tell me all about this big trip you have coming up,” she said.
She plunked her elbows onto the table, laced her fingers together, and set her chin on her hands. And just waited, staring into Ethan’s face.
“Oh, you heard about that.”
“Oh, yes. We’re all looking forward to it. Only five days left to wait!”
“But only my mom and I are going.”
“Oh,” she said, and seemed to stumble briefly. “Right. Of course. But I just meant your dad and I are so happy for you guys. How long have you wanted to see Machu Picchu?”
“Just about forever. My mom got me this picture book about it when I was a kid. I was, like, maybe four. She always said we’d go there someday. She said we’d hike the Inca Trail and sleep in these camps that’re over thirteen thousand feet up in the Andes, and wake up to see the sun glinting off the glaciers. It was just one of those big dream things that get stuck in your mind, you know? But I’m not hiking. Which is hard for my mom to accept. She’s disappointed in me.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true,” Jennifer said.
But it doesn’t really matter what anybody thinks about it, Ethan thought. She’s disappointed in me and I know it.
“I think when I was four she just assumed I’d grow up to be an athlete like everybody else in my family. But I’m so not. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“I don’t see why,” she said, her voice oddly light. As if she was trying too hard. But trying to do what, Ethan wasn’t sure. “I’m sure you have other good qualities.”
Ethan snorted. He wanted to look up at her face, but he was afraid of being burned again.
“Yeah, maybe. Maybe someday I’ll figure out what they are.”
“You’re smart. Your dad’s always telling me how smart you are.”
“He says that?”
“Of course he does. So your mom’s hiking but you’re not? How’s that work?”
“Well, first we’re going to spend a few days in Cusco. Getting used to the altitude. And, you know. Sightseeing. And then she’s going to hit the trail, and I’m going to take the train up to Machu Picchu Pueblo, which is right at the foot of the monument. And I’ll get a couple or three days all to myself up there, which should be kind of fun.”
“What about school?”
“That’s one of the best parts. My mom convinced the principal that it would be educational. Like a history and social studies lesson all in one. We wanted to wait and go at spring break, but she couldn’t get off work then. So we’re going now. I’ll regret it when I get back. I’ll have catching up to do. But it’ll be worth it.”
“Of course it’ll be worth it!” she said. “That’s an understatement. Gosh, I envy you.”
Just then something strange happened. Something Ethan would go over untold times in his head in a fruitless search for significance.
Ethan looked up—way up—to see his father smiling down at their table. Literally at the table. Not so much at either one of them.
“Dad? What are you doing here? I thought you had a client lunch.”
“It ended early,” Noah said. “He got called away.”
“Join us!” Jennifer said, too cheerily, too enthusiastically. Ethan thought he heard her voice squeak slightly, the way his own voice used to when it was changing. “Sit down!”
Ethan’s heart fell. Not in a purely figurative sense, either. At least, not by the feel of it. It felt as though his heart had been resting just below his Adam’s apple, and then sank to a place sickeningly deep in his gut.
His dad sat down. And reached both arms out, resting one hand on Ethan’s shoulder, one on Jennifer’s.
“This is so great,” he said. “My two favorite people.”
There was something wrong with Noah’s energy. It was tight, and too artificially cheerful. And there was something wrong with the statement. Because . . . Ethan almost didn’t know where to begin. Wouldn’t his father’s two favorite people be Ethan and his mom?
“We’re your two favorite people?” he asked, mostly without thinking. He almost added, “That’s weird,” but stopped himself in time. Still, it was clear by his tone that he found it weird. Unfortunately clear.
“Two of my favorite people, I meant.”
Ethan stared for a moment into his father’s face. The tight facial muscles. The artificial smile. Noah quickly looked away.
“Why are you being . . . ,” Ethan began. But then he decided not to go any further in that direction.
“Why am I being what, Ethan? How am I being?”
“You seem kind of wound up.”
“This is my high-energy time of the day,” Noah said.
Which Ethan realized made no sense at all. His father didn’t have a high-energy time of the day. Ethan had known the man for seventeen years. He would have noticed. Besides, it wasn’t energy. It was something else. More like nervousness. But he didn’t have it sorted out in his head, so he didn’t say any more about it.
“Ethan was just telling me about his big trip,” Jennifer said. “About how he’s going to take the train up to Machu Picchu Pueblo while his mom hikes.”
“Aguas Calientes,” Noah said. “That’s the name of the town. Aguas Calientes.”
“No,” Ethan said. “It’s Machu Picchu Pueblo now.”
“I was there, Ethan. I think I know the name of the town.”
“Yeah, you were there. Then, Dad. You were there then. But this is now. And now it’s called Machu Picchu Pueblo. They changed the name of it.”
But Noah’s attention had flitted elsewhere. He looked around the room as if he’d lost somebody or something important. A moment later he caught the eye of Charley the waiter, who veered over to their table.
“A menu,” Noah said. “I could use a menu. I’m going to order something, too.”
“Very good, sir,” Charley said, and veered away again.
“I thought you just ate with a client, Dad.”
“Hungry today,” Noah said. “What can I tell you?”
Ethan had a lot more questions in his head, but none that wanted to form into words, and nothing he thought it would help to ask.
He decided to stop asking.
He slipped his phone out of his pocket again and held it down in his lap. The message app was still open, so he typed in: I’m in the twilight zone.
What? Tell me
But Ethan never did.
Earlier in the Worst Night of Ethan’s Life
Chapter Three: This is Embarrassing
Three months before his father disappeared
Ethan stood at the check-in line at the airport, shoulder to shoulder with his mom. When the line moved—which was not nearly often enough for Ethan’s tastes—he pushed their bags forward with his foot, sliding them across the linoleum floor.
“At first I thought the late flight was a good idea,” he said to his mom. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“You tired, honey?”
She brushed the hair off his forehead and held her palm there as if feeling for a fever. But probably she was only trying to be comforting.
“Yeah. I’m getting kind of sleepy is all.”
“Oh, it’ll be so worth it, though. It’s such a long flight. Just think how happy you’ll be when you wake up in the morning and we’re about to land in Lima.”
“I guess,” Ethan said. “If this line would ever move.”
And then, just like that—as if the universe had been listening to Ethan’s wishes—the line moved. Significantly moved. Four groups of travelers peeled away from the airline counter nearly at once, and Ethan and his mom found themselves at the head of the line.
“Won’t be long now, honey,” she said. “You can even nap at the gate.”
“I’m not so good at sleeping sitting up.”
“If you’re tired enough, you’ll manage. Oh. That’s us. We’re up.”
Ethan trudged behind her, pulling two bags by their shoulder straps and pushing another with his foot. By the time he made it to the open station—which was a discouragingly long way from the head of the line—Ethan was audibly out of breath. In his defense, they were unusually heavy bags.
“Good thing I’m not hiking at high altitude,” he told his mom.
“Get your passport,” she said. “And don’t you dare tell me you don’t have it, because I reminded you three times.”
Leaving Blythe River: A Novel Page 2
