Quite an Undertaking: Devon's Story

by Barbara L. Clanton

  She stopped in front of a photograph of President Nixon and Queen Elizabeth. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.” I looked down at my feet.

  “No, c’mon. I saw you smile.”

  What was I supposed to say, that I wanted to follow her everywhere? I made up something quick. “I was thinking how Mme Depardieu drags us out here in November because she loves Jacques Cartier, and he had nothing to do with the Seaway. I mean, not really.”

  “She’s funny about things like that, isn’t she?” She flashed me a mischievous smile, and the mirth in her eyes made me smile even bigger. “The French III classes used to go all the way to Québec, you know.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Oh, what a conversationalist I was. My brain was mush. Couldn’t I think of anything more clever to say than Oh, yeah?

  “Yeah, but I guess budget cuts forced us here.” She gestured to the exhibits. “Hey, Devon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you sure you’re okay hanging out with me today?”

  I couldn’t believe she was asking me that question. “Yeah, why?”

  “Oh, well. I just…you know.” She pulled up her sleeve again and showed me her forearm.

  Of course it didn’t matter to me that her skin color was darker than mine. “Rebecca, how can you ask me a question like that?”

  “Well, I don’t want you getting grief from—” She waved her hand toward the other students in the exhibit hall.

  “Them? Pfft. Don’t worry about them. Who cares what they think?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard being different.”

  Was she trying to feel me out on the race issue? I wasn’t sure, but I tried to make her feel better by saying, “Well, I kind of know what it’s like to be different.” Not that anybody knew I was different since I wasn’t out of the closet yet, but still.

  “No, I don’t think you do, Devon.”

  “Yeah, actually, I do. Your difference is just a little more, uh, obvious.”

  She was about to say something, but then a bunch of our classmates came by, and we couldn’t talk anymore. Even though I had just kind of come out to her, we managed to walk on for a while in what I would call a comfortable silence.

  John directed our group up the other side of the exhibits and then to the movie in the big theater after that. I could hardly concentrate on the movie with Rebecca sitting so close to me in the semi-darkness. Once the movie finished, I finally got to have popcorn while watching the video in the lobby. I couldn’t believe it when Monsieur LaFrett, one of the other French teachers, announced that we had to get back on the buses to return to school. It felt like we had just gotten there.

  Rebecca and I walked side by side to the bus, but I stepped aside to let her get on first. She seemed surprised by my chivalry, and I couldn’t help thinking that Jessie would have bounded on the bus leaving Rebecca trailing behind. I heard the scoreboard tick over again. Another point for me.

  Rebecca headed toward the same seat we had shared earlier and slid all the way to the window. I sat next to her, but sitting this close made my palms sweat and my stomach flip. I tried to act normal, but that was nearly impossible. I felt better once the bus started moving back toward the tunnel to Massena.

  Rebecca turned to me. “Did you bring lunch?”

  I smiled at her, kept eye contact, and reached down for my backpack. I unzipped the front pouch and pulled out my banana. I held it up, brown spots and all, for her to see.

  “That’s it? A banana?” She looked at me incredulously.

  “Faulty alarm clock, remember?”

  “Oh, you didn’t have time.” Her eyes were an odd mixture of sympathy and laughter.

  “Pretty much. I’m lucky I’ve got this baby.” I wiggled the banana and then zipped it back into my backpack.

  “I’ll share if you want. I’ve got plenty. My mom made my lunch, and she packed me a huge turkey sandwich on seven grain bread with…” She opened her lunch bag and rooted around. “Oh, a granola bar and some cucumber slices. I could split everything with you, if you want.”

  “You would?”

  She nodded.

  “Thanks.” I got all jiggly inside thinking that Rebecca wanted to share her lunch with me. I had planned to snag half of Gail’s sandwich, but maybe Rebecca wanted me to eat lunch with her at the same table and everything. “Looks like your mom knew I’d be in a pickle today.”

  Rebecca made a show of looking in her lunch bag again. “Nope. No pickles, just cucumbers.” She chuckled at her joke, and I laughed with her. It felt amazing.

  “Well, that’s okay. I’m not a pickle fan anyway.”

  “Me neither. I’ll take the original cucumber instead.”

  “Oh, I know. Me, too.” We settled into a conversation about the foods we liked, and it turned out that we both liked to eat healthy, but she admitted a weakness for hot fudge brownie sundaes. For me it was black raspberry ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. We decided that we would pig out at Scoopalicious once they reopened in the spring.

  We were almost through the tunnel when the bus swerved wildly knocking me into Rebecca. We both put a hand down on the seat to brace ourselves, and our hands touched. Rebecca started to pull hers away, but before I knew what I was doing, I reached over and linked my pinky with hers.

  Chapter Nine

  A Sucky Day

  THANKSGIVING WITHOUT GRANDMA sucked. Uncle Joe sat in Grandma’s usual spot next to Dad, and I couldn’t help thinking that Uncle Joe had just moved up in the family pecking order. Families changed, I realized. Families shifted. Grandmas died. I squeezed my eyes shut at the dinner table, so I wouldn’t cry in front of everybody. I made myself think about Rebecca and holding her pinky on the bus. That helped me keep it together a little.

  Jarrod, my cousin, pretty much ignored everybody, and after dinner he sat in the living room with his headphones blasting some kind of heavy metal music. He was in tenth grade at Grasse River, but even though he and I were related, I never hung out with him. Everybody was always amazed when they found out we were cousins. Mom used to make me hang out with him during holidays, but since he was so anti-social, she gave me permission to retreat to my room after I helped clear the table.

  I went up to my room and tried not to notice Grandma’s open bedroom door. When I got to my own room, I left the lights off and flung myself on the bed. I hugged Seymour as hard as I could and cried as I remembered Dad’s grace before the meal. He’d started by saying, “Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks, and I would like to thank the Lord for the wonderful life He gave my mother—” He glanced at Uncle Joe and modified his toast. “—our mother. She lived a good life, and we were lucky to be able to call her Mom or Grandma.” When he said “Grandma” that’s when I started crying for real. I think Missy did, too because she wiped at her eyes a couple times. I bowed my head even more and hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself by having to leave the table or something. I saw my mom rest her hand on Dad’s wrist while he spoke. I thought that was sweet and was glad that we had such a boring normal family that could comfort each other, but I was also incredibly glad when we finally got to say, “Amen.”

  We tried to make Thanksgiving seem like every other Thanksgiving, but I for one had a hard time pulling it off. I kept thinking little things about Grandma like how she hated green bean casserole. She always said the mushroom soup ruined perfectly good green beans. Would my mom or dad ever have to live with me or Missy when they got older, like Grandma had to live with us? Would I say grace someday and thank the Lord for the life of my mom or my dad?

  I lay on my bed in the dark and tried to convince myself that Grandma was the reason I wanted to go to the cemetery with Rebecca next week. I knew otherwise because having Rebecca to myself was the major reason. Maybe we could hold pinky fingers again, or, hey, maybe we could even go all the way and hold hands. I laughed, but stopped because I needed to make visiting Grandma my priority. I was kind of scared going to the cemetery because I wasn’t sure how em
otional I would get. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Rebecca again.

  On the bus, I had taken advantage of a good thing thanks to my grandfather-look-alike bus driver swerving to avoid what we found out later was a workman changing light bulbs in the tunnel. Grabbing her pinky was my way of giving her a sign. She was either thinking, “Finally!” or she was thinking “Gross!” I still didn’t know which because Rebecca hadn’t called or texted me since the trip. I could have texted her, but I was scared to death. When we got off the school bus after the field trip, she handed me half her lunch without saying much and then hurried into the school building leaving me behind. By the time I got to the cafeteria, she was already sitting with Jessie and her regular group of friends. I tried hard not to be disappointed as I made my way toward Gail and Travis.

  I wished Rebecca would just lose Jessie once and for all and be with me. Don’t people lose their kids at the mall all the time? Why couldn’t Rebecca take her to the mall, drop her off, and lose her?

  I rolled my eyes and hugged Seymour as I turned to look at Missy’s bed in the darkness. She came home Wednesday night for Thanksgiving break and told me that she would move back into her old room at Christmas. Between now and then, she and Mom had to figure out what to do with Grandma’s stuff. Mom would probably donate Grandma’s clothes to some kind of nonprofit thrift store or something. I don’t know what they were going to do with her other things. Grandma had a lot of knickknacks. I hoped Mom would let me keep the New York City snow globe, but then again Missy would probably want that back. I’d have to ask Missy before she went back to school on Sunday.

  I heard my aunt and uncle and my anti-social cousin Jarrod leaving. When the front door closed, and their car engine started up, I quickly jumped into my sweats, even though it was only eight o’clock. If I went to bed early, Friday and a certain basketball game would arrive much more quickly.

  THE GRASSE RIVER girls’ basketball team had a six-point lead over Reuben Rist High School. The scoreboard clock showed 1:52 left to play in the first quarter. When I got to the gym, just before game time, I looked for Rebecca in the bleachers. She was there, all right, sitting with a lot of the same kids she sat with at lunch. I didn’t know any of her friends’ names which made me feel kind of stupid because our school wasn’t that big. We only had about three hundred and fifty students in each class. I waved and tried to get her attention, but I got the distinct feeling she was deliberately ignoring me. Her indifference hurt my heart, and I took the hint and made my way toward the middle bleacher, smack in between the Rist and Grasse River fans.

  Every now and then I’d sneak a peek her way, but she seemed totally riveted by the game. Maybe Rebecca didn’t count every minute until she could see me again like I did with her. She also seemed riveted by all the guys surrounding her, too. I knew there had to be somebody at this school who liked her as much as I did. Maybe she wasn’t like me. Maybe I freaked her out when I grabbed her pinky on the bus. Maybe I needed to stop thinking about her and try to make sense of this basketball game.

  I tried to take notes on the game, but I wasn’t sure what to write down. The tournament program listed the rosters for each team, and I saw that Jessie was one of two seniors. Belinda Carmichael was the other. I’d interview Belinda after the game, and even though I should interview Jessie, too, it’d be a warm day in a North Country winter before that would happen.

  The game was fast-paced, and it was obvious that Jessie liked to run. I hated to admit it, but she was a good player. Natalie played pretty well, too, but Jessie was undeniably the best player on the Grasse River team. I watched as the Rist team missed a shot, and Natalie jumped up and grabbed the ball after it careened off the backboard.

  “Nice rebound,” I heard someone say. Oh, so that’s a rebound. I’d heard the word before, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

  Natalie threw the ball to Jessie who had taken off running toward the Grasse River basket. Jessie caught the ball on the run, dribbled a couple of times, and bounced it gently off the backboard. The ball went through the net, and someone said, “Sweet lay-up.” When we were at the mall, Jessie had mentioned something about making a lay-up as soft as a baby’s butt, and I guess I had just witnessed one.

  When the buzzer sounded for halftime, the Grasse River team was ahead by a score of 32-24. I stayed rooted to my spot on the hard bleachers as the other fans stood up and milled about. I eavesdropped on conversations around me trying to drink in anything and everything basketball. I learned that rebounds, steals, and assists were important statistics. I guess I should have learned those terms in P.E., but since it wasn’t that important to me then, I didn’t remember a thing. Turnovers, I learned, were not good. Someone in the stands thought Jessie had more turnovers than usual. I shook my head at my ignorance. How could Mrs. Gibson think I could be a sports editor? Sure, I knew how to put words together, but it was becoming obvious that I knew next to nothing about sports.

  I stood up, stretched, and tried to find Rebecca with my peripheral vision. God, she was so pretty. No, she was beautiful. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail that lay softly against her red mock turtleneck sweater. Her long skirt and black boots made her look elegant. Her gold earrings dangled deliciously near her neck. I had to look away. God, she made my insides gooey. I looked away for another reason, though. One of the guys sitting near her caught me staring. Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe what I thought were signs weren’t. Maybe Rebecca was as straight as they came and had only been nice to me because of Grandma.

  I sighed and opened my reporter’s notebook. I wrote Rebecca’s name in big block letters and then with a frown put a line through it. I was barking up the wrong tree, I guess. I closed my notebook and settled back to watch the little kids shoot baskets on the court. I closed my eyes against the bright lights and tried to suppress the deluge of feelings about Rebecca. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get her out of my head.

  I couldn’t believe how many things I’d done in those fourteen hours since getting out of bed that were motivated by Rebecca. Since I had gone to bed so early on Thanksgiving night, I woke up at five in the morning. I tried to go back to sleep, but after rolling around for half an hour, I got up. Luckily my sweatshirt and running shoes were still on the floor by my bed, so I managed to get dressed without waking up Missy. I snuck out the front door and went for a run in the dark. My mom would have killed me if she’d known I’d gone running in the dark, but I vowed to run every day, and as I ran, I realized that Rebecca was my main motivation for running. I wanted to look good for her. When I got home from my run I turned on the kitchen light and poured myself some of my mom’s healthy cereal—some kind of bran flakes or something. I wanted to eat better because I had pigged out on Thanksgiving.

  After my shower, I ironed my shirt and then I even ironed my jeans. Missy was up by then and gave me no end of grief about it. I put my hair up, and then put on my hoop earrings. I was ready to go to the game by 11 in the morning even though it didn’t start until 7 in the evening. Oh, I wanted to text Rebecca so bad, but I restrained myself and channeled my energy into doing homework. That lasted all of five minutes, though, so I switched on my computer. I googled Rebecca’s name, but the only thing I found was a newspaper article about the dance troupe’s concert from last spring. Her name was listed as one of the dancers, but that was the only mention of her. Missy walked in our room when I was doing that, and she demanded her update. When I told her about the pinky thing on the bus, she told me that I had a set of brass ones. I wasn’t so sure about that.

  When the teams came back on the court for the third quarter from wherever they had disappeared to, I was relieved because I could focus on something other than Rebecca. I don’t know what the Rist team did to get motivated during half time, but they scored six points in a row while Grasse River scored nothing. I learned that the correct way to phrase this was, “Six unanswered points.” I jotted that down in my notebook along with about a thousand other bas
ketball phrases.

  When I looked back toward the game, I was shocked to see Rebecca making her way up the bleachers toward me. Like an idiot, I forgot to breathe. I only noticed it because my lungs demanded air, and then I felt like a bigger idiot for inhaling so loudly. I slid over on the wooden bleacher, so she could sit next to me.

  “Hey, at least we’re still winning, right?” I gestured toward the game.

  She sat down without touching me. “Yeah, but Jessie had better start playing some defense or we’re gonna get creamed.”

  “I have to be honest. I don’t know what I’m looking at.” I shrugged. “I mean, as the sports editor, I should know, but…”

  Rebecca laughed that cool laugh that made my insides smile. “What I usually do is find a player to watch for a while.”

  And that would be Jessie, I thought sarcastically.

  She continued. “Like Belinda. She’s boxing out better than usual and getting more rebounds. I think she’s got more points than Jessie.”

  “Okay, you lost me at boxing out.”

  She laughed again. “Watch Belinda. No, don’t watch the ball, just watch Belinda.”

  Our team was on defense, and Belinda stuck like glue to the tall Rist player she defended. Another Rist player took a shot, and Belinda spun around and stuck her butt in the other girl’s stomach. I raised my eyebrows and smothered a smile, but then she jumped with perfect timing to grab the ball as it bounced off the rim.

  “That,” Rebecca said, smiling at me, “was boxing out followed by an awesome rebound.”

  “Wow.” I was impressed.

  “Yeah, Belinda’s good.”

  I opened my notebook, making sure I didn’t open to the page where I had crossed out her name, and jotted down “boxing out.” Rebecca taught me a whole bunch of basketball terms. She told me what a “fast break” was and that the painted part of the court was called the “key.” I learned more vocabulary in an hour of watching basketball than I had all semester in Mme Depardieu’s French class. “Did you play basketball?”