by Lisa Graff
“What?” Aaron said, all innocent.
“Your girlfriend,” I told him. “Everyone knows, Aaron. It’s not a secret.”
“Oh.” Aaron shook his head. “Uh, no. Probably not.” And then he wouldn’t talk about Melinda or Clarisse anymore.
When we were finished eating, Aaron said that as long as I was visiting, he might as well see if he could take an early lunch, so he got one of the other lifeguards to cover for him and ended up with a full extra hour of break. He told me he was going to use that time to take me out in one of the rowboats and work on my rowing. I was terrible at rowing, because I didn’t have nearly as much upper-arm strength as Aaron, but I liked the movement of it. Dip the oars, swipe through the water, up, across, repeat. It felt like good hard work, not like cleaning counters at Kitch’N’Thingz or counting money or something wussy like that. There was something about it, when the lake was still and you were far enough from the shrieking children that you could pretend you couldn’t hear them, that made you feel calm and sweaty at the same time.
“Can we row to the island?” I asked Aaron.
He thought about it. “Sure,” he said. “But just around in a loop. No getting off, because my boss’ll get mad.”
“Okay.” That was fine with me.
We rowed around the island, a slow circle. Aaron made me do most of the work while he studied how I held the oars. Occasionally he’d give me pointers, and I’d correct my grip. We were on the far side of the island, blocked completely from Swim Beach by the trees, when Aaron decided to say something.
“You’ve got to stop being so hard on Dad,” he said.
I nearly started choking at that one. “I’m hard on him?” I asked. Maybe all that tanning had gotten to Aaron’s brain.
“Weren’t you guys supposed to practice your championship egg racing this weekend?” Aaron said, by way of an answer. “It seemed like Dad was looking forward to it.”
“It’s not that hard to keep an egg on a spoon,” I replied. “You just, like, don’t drop it.”
Aaron looked into the water, at the ripples from the oar as they grew into larger and larger circles. “I just think you could bother to show up to dinner sometimes,” he said. “Dad misses you when you’re not there.”
“Fat chance,” I told him. “Dad doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
You know what Dad said to me, after Jared? He said, “Well, it happened, I guess. And there’s nothing you can do about it now. No use thinking about it.”
I didn’t listen to anything Dad had to say anymore.
“Watch your thumb, there,” Aaron told me, pointing. “You’re going to get blisters.”
“I already have blisters,” I muttered, but I moved my thumb anyway.
When we’d made a full circle around the island, Aaron said we should probably start heading back, so I rowed us the whole way to shore, all by myself. I didn’t mind, because it meant I got to watch the island as we left it, getting smaller and smaller, more and more mysterious.
Once we reached the shore, Aaron hopped out of the boat without hardly making a splash and dragged me back in. I managed to lurch out onto the sand without getting my sneakers wet, and then I hauled up the front end, with my arms straining like they might burst, and Aaron picked up the back end, like it was the easiest thing he’d ever lifted in his life, and together we walked the boat back to the rack and slid it into the bottom slot.
“I’ll tie it up later,” Aaron told me. He glanced over at the lifeguarding stand, where his boss, Zoey, was waving him over. Zoey had graduated high school last year, but she acted younger than the other lifeguards half the time, that’s what Aaron said about her. “I gotta get back to the stand. You heading out?”
“Yeah.” It didn’t make much sense for me to spend the rest of the afternoon at Swim Beach, even if I had paid five dollars for a day pass. “I’ll see you later. Dodgers are playing the Giants at seven.”
“You should call Dad,” Aaron said.
I stuck my hands into my back pockets. “I probably won’t,” I replied.
Aaron glanced at the lifeguard stand, then he turned back to me. “This was kind of nice,” he told me.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. Then he slugged me in the shoulder. “Don’t make a habit of it, little brother.” And he raced off to the lifeguard stand, kicking up sand with the back of his wet flips as he went.
• • •
Mom was clearly surprised to see me when she walked in the front door that evening.
“Trent!” she cried, clutching her chest like she’d thought I was some sort of robber. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at your father’s.”
I clicked off ESPN. “I sort of, um, missed him,” I said.
She tossed her purse onto the couch and flopped down next to me. “Oh, Trent,” she said. She felt my forehead with the back of her hand like she thought I might have some sort of fever. “What’s going on with you two?”
I shrugged. “I hate him.”
Mom nodded at that, like it was a perfectly normal thing to hate your father. “Okay,” she said. “But he’s still your dad. Growing boys need their fathers. It’s, like, science.” She peeked into the kitchen. “Are your brothers here too?”
“Doug’s spending quality time with Dad like a good little boy,” I said. “And Aaron’s out. He didn’t tell me where he was going. Probably with Clarisse.” I nodded back toward the TV. “Game’s on in ten,” I said. “Want me to heat up two potpies?”
Mom bit her lip for a second. “Yeah,” she said at last. “Sounds good. Let me just make a phone call.” Then she dug her phone out of her purse and started dialing, walking toward her room to talk.
I could only hear her a little while I pulled the potpies out of the freezer and started up the oven. She was canceling plans, probably with her friend Barbara, from her book club. Part of me felt bad for being such a terrible delinquent that my own mother had to cancel the one night to herself she’d probably planned in eons. Aaron would glare at me for sure, if he knew. But then I realized that if my mom was canceling plans, that meant she’d made plans. On a night the Dodgers were playing the Giants, second in a series after a losing game. As far as I knew, Mom hadn’t missed a single game against the Giants since the day she was born.
I was going to ask about it when she came back into the living room. But she was smiling, really smiling, and she looked happy as she flicked through the channels to the game and said, “Ready to pummel some Giants, Trent?” She pulled our two baseball caps from the coat rack and smooshed mine onto my head. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” she hollered.
And I wasn’t about to mess up a good mood like that. So I didn’t say anything at all.
EIGHT
Sunday morning Mom let me go with her to the store. I guess she figured I’d already missed out on going to Dad’s for the weekend anyway, plus I could tell she was feeling pretty happy after we pummeled the Giants the night before (there was nothing that made Mom happier than pummeling the Giants—not even coffee). So she decided I might as well make a couple bucks working.
“Trent!” Ray greeted me when we walked into the store. “Good to see you.”
“There’s one for you in here,” I said, holding out the bag of doughnuts. I guess it was becoming a regular thing, Mom getting an extra doughnut for Ray on the weekends, because Calvin at the doughnut shop didn’t even blink this time when I asked for it.
“Chocolate glazed,” he said, peering into the bag, then back up at me. “My favorite person.”
I laughed. “You sound just like Mom,” I told him.
It was pretty slow at the store, so I spent most of the morning drawing in my Book of Thoughts.
One of the pictures I drew was a good one, maybe my best yet. Me in my house, on that cold February day, right after Do
ug came inside with his friend Brad and told me that the guys at the lake needed another hockey player. It looked pretty close to how it had happened in real life. Only in the drawing, as soon as I tossed the skates over my shoulder to go outside, one of the blades hit the wall behind me and snapped off. Broke, right in two. Unusable. And everyone knew you couldn’t play hockey with only one skate.
“How are your thoughts?” Mom asked, sliding onto the stool next to me. She didn’t try to sneak a peek at my book. Mom didn’t do that.
“Fine,” I said, closing the book.
She nodded. “How’s school?”
Well, let’s see, I thought. My homeroom teacher hates me. My gym teacher hates me. I hate everyone else. But at least I don’t spend lunch in the bathroom anymore.
“Fine,” I said.
“You making friends?”
I guess Fallon counted as a friend, if you didn’t mind that she was half wacko. “Yep,” I told her.
Mom smiled at me. A real, Giants-pummeling smile. Then she slipped my Dodgers cap onto my head. I don’t know where she’d been hiding it. “Excellent,” she said. She nodded toward my closed Book of Thoughts. “Now stop all that thinking you’re doing, because it’s time for serious things.” She put on her own cap, then pulled the radio out from under the counter. “Ray!” she shouted across the store. Our only two customers whipped their heads around, but Mom didn’t seem to care. “It’s starting!”
I stashed my Book of Thoughts under the counter. The third game in the series against the Giants was not something to be missed.
It was a rough game, tight the whole way through, but going into the ninth we were up 3 to 1. Which is of course when the Dodgers’ idiot closer came in, walked the bases loaded, and then gave up a bases-clearing double. So in the bottom of the ninth we were losing 4 to 3.
With men on second and third, Mom and Ray and I all had our rally caps on (which were just our regular baseball caps flipped inside out) when they announced who was stepping up to the plate.
“Come on, Slumps McGhee!” Mom hollered at the radio. (“Slumps McGhee” was her favorite nickname for any player having an off week.) “You can do it! We all believe in you!” She was standing in front of her stool, clutching the sides of the counter. A couple of customers were up at the front and shouting, too. I was pretty sure some people had left the store when they heard all the shouting and stomping, but it didn’t look like Ray and Mom cared too much at that point.
All we needed was a single to win the game.
“You can do it!” Mom screeched again. I held my breath.
The guy struck out.
The Giants won.
“Nooooo!” Mom screamed, falling back onto her stool.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ray shouted.
Me, I just whipped off my baseball cap. Tossed it onto the counter and turned to the customer in front of me, who was holding two whisks. “I’ll ring you up,” I told him.
I didn’t even know why I bothered getting my hopes up about anything anymore.
• • •
I thought the Dodgers getting pummeled by the Giants that afternoon was going to be the worst thing that happened that day.
It wasn’t.
Aaron cornered me as soon as we got home.
“Doug’s going to prank you,” he told me, checking over his shoulder to make sure that Mom was safely in the kitchen and couldn’t hear. Pranking was still completely off-limits.
I hung up my useless Dodgers cap on the rack by the wall. “Why’s he trying to prank me?” I asked. “I thought he was trying to get you.”
Aaron smiled at that. “I guess he figured it’s useless trying to prank the master. Anyway, he said he’s mad at you because you keep ruining all his best pranks.”
“Doug ruins them all by himself,” I said. “He’s just mad because I won’t help him.”
“Regardless,” Aaron went on (sometimes Aaron liked to use big words because he thought it made him sound smarter, but it didn’t, because he always emphasized them a lot so you’d be sure to hear exactly how smart he was), “we’re going to reverse-prank him.”
“We are?”
“Let’s go to your room and I’ll give you the scoop.”
This was the scoop: Doug was going to put hot sauce in my food at dinner. That was it. That was Doug’s whole big prank. But obviously, because he was Doug and he was terrible at pranks, he’d gone and made the thing as complicated as possible. Which was why he’d turned to Aaron for help.
“So first I have to help him convince Mom that he’s going to cook dinner for the entire family, simply out of the goodness of his heart,” Aaron told me, rolling his eyes.
“She’s going to be suspicious for sure,” I said.
“It’s not a great plan,” Aaron admitted. “But it wouldn’t be a Doug prank if it was a good plan.”
“True.”
“So he’s going to make soup,” Aaron continued.
“And put the hot sauce in my bowl,” I figured. It was too obvious, really. “So what’s the reverse prank?”
“Simple,” Aaron said. “After Doug puts the hot sauce in your bowl, I’m going to secretly switch it with his. He’ll be so eager to see you burn your tongue off that when you just eat it, no problem, he’ll be really freaked out.”
“And then,” I said, catching on, “when he goes for his own bowl, steam will come out his ears and he’ll lose his mind. And he won’t even be able to say anything, or he’ll get in trouble for pulling pranks.”
“Precisely.”
It wasn’t a bad reverse-prank, really. And on Doug, it would definitely work.
“I’m in,” I told Aaron.
• • •
I decided to spend the rest of the time until dinner attempting to sort of live up to being the great-at-school non-screw-up my mom thought I was turning into, so I stayed in my room and tackled some math homework. It wasn’t too hard. When Doug came home from Dad’s, I heard him holler at Aaron, “I bought lots of soup! Don’t tell Trent!” Which probably would’ve ruined the prank if it hadn’t been ruined already. I just got up and shut my door so I wouldn’t hear anything else and Doug would still think his prank was running smoothly. I didn’t come out until Mom shouted at me that it was time to set the table.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked as I came into the kitchen. Playing it totally cool. Doug was at the stove stirring an enormous pot of soup with a wooden spoon, a potholder on each hand. He pushed me away with the spoon, flicking me all over with soup dribbles.
“It’s a surprise,” he told me. “Get away.”
Mom laughed from where she stood at the counter, inspecting a salad I guess Doug had been making. It looked like bagged lettuce with some salad dressing poured over the top. “Doug insisted on making dinner himself tonight. Isn’t that sweet?”
I squinted at Mom for a moment, to see if she actually thought it was sweet or was just humoring him. She definitely didn’t know about the prank, I decided.
“The sweetest,” I told her. There were seven empty cans of chicken noodle in the recycling bin. So no need to guess what kind of soup we were having.
“Now why don’t you be the sweetest,” she said, “and help set the table? Aaron, you’re on napkins.”
“Aye, aye!” Aaron replied with a salute.
While Aaron and I set the table, and Doug stirred his soup, Mom put two loaves of Italian bread in the oven to heat. Everyone was in such a good mood, laughing and talking and having a good time, that I was actually starting to look forward to the reverse prank.
And then I heard the voice from the hallway behind me.
“Doug, I didn’t see the badger anywhere,” the voice said. “Maybe you lost it.”
I whirled around.
Standing there, in my own home, was a short little squirt o
f a girl. Brown hair, bangs, wearing white-flowered shorts and a shirt with dogs all over it.
Annie Richards.
I gripped my hands into tight fists, and did my best to breathe normally. What was she doing here?
“What’s he doing here?” Annie asked, glaring at me. Her hands were gripped into tight fists, too.
“I thought you knew he was going to be . . . ,” Doug said slowly. He seemed confused.
Annie kept glaring at me. Wouldn’t look away. “I thought we were doing it to your other brother,” she said.
“Doing what?” Mom asked.
I could tell Aaron was just as surprised about Annie being there as I was. He grabbed the wooden spoon from Doug, to help with the stirring. “Boy, this soup sure smells good!” he said a little too cheerfully.
Doug was biting his lip as he glanced from Annie to me, both of us with our fists clenched tight. He looked really upset. Probably worried that his big, wonderful prank was going to be ruined. “It’ll be fun,” he told Annie. Practically begging her. “I promise. Please, you have to stay.”
“I could use some help tossing the salad,” Mom said to Annie.
Annie turned to Doug and tugged at the ends of her hair for a bit, like she was busy making up her mind. “Okay,” she finally said, and Doug let out a deep breath. She moved to the counter to help my mom with the salad.
“Wonderful,” Mom told her, giving her a squeeze around the side.
I guess I was the only one who wished Annie Richards would leave. The way she looked at me—like she knew, and she hated me for it—I didn’t like it. Not at all. Because I couldn’t blame her, for looking at me like that. That’s the way I’d look at me, too, if I were her.
When the salad was tossed and on the table, and the bread was warmed, and Doug finally declared the soup stirred enough for his satisfaction, he told us all to sit down. “I’m the server,” he told us. “I’ll bring you your soup.”
“Let me just put the pot on the table,” Mom said. “Our bowls are already here.”
“No!” Doug shouted, too quickly. “I mean, that won’t work. It’s like a restaurant, it needs to be like a restaurant.”
