When We Were Us (Keeping Score, #1)

by Tawdra Kandle

  One day toward the end of the year, Nat missed a whole day of school. That was pretty unusual; not that he didn’t have a ton of doctors’ appointments and stuff, but his mom always made sure to make them either first thing in the morning, so he got to school before lunch, or right after school. He didn’t want to miss any classes he didn’t absolutely have to, because he almost always got sick at some point in the school year and had mountains of work to make up. So he avoided missing any days that weren’t absolutely necessary.

  In fifth grade, though, Nat was amazingly healthy. He was in school every day until that day in late April, when he had to go for a day of tests at the children’s hospital in Philadelphia. He didn’t want to go, and he was grumpy the whole day before, even though I promised I would get all of his work and bring it over as soon as he got home that afternoon.

  That morning, Jesse was waiting for me at the bicycle rack.

  “Hey.”

  I brushed my hair back out of my face. It was curly and long and always in my way. “Hey,” I answered. “Nat’s not going to be here today.”

  Jesse frowned. “He sick?”

  I shook my head. “No. Tests, doctors appointments, you know.”

  Jesse nodded. “Yeah. So. . .we’re going to play kick ball at lunch. You wanna be on my team?”

  I thought for a minute about Nat. I almost felt guilty for wanting to play kick ball, like I was being disloyal to him. But then I thought about all those days of sitting on the swing watching the rest of the school play.

  “Sure,” I said to Jesse. “I’ll play.”

  Chapter 3—Nathan

  My first clear memory is of Abby and Jesse. We were at my house, because that was almost always where our mothers met in those days. Our house had everything I needed in it, all my medicine and my nebulizer, and there were ramps so that I could get around with my walker.

  We were standing at my train table, which was my favorite place to play in those days. Trains were my obsession. Whenever I heard the whistle in the distance, I demanded that my mother take me to the crossing that was a couple of miles from our house. Sometimes she would, if we were going out anyway or if she were feeling especially guilty. But mostly she would tell me to go play with my own trains.

  In those days, these were the chunky plastic toys that I could easily move and run around the tracks. Later, when my fine motor skills had improved, my grandparents bought me a more sophisticated set. But it’s the first set that I remember so well with Abby and Jesse. Playing trains was what we did together. When they got to my house, they might ask if we could go outside or watch a movie or play with something else, but we always ended up with the trains. I never thought until much later that maybe they didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.

  I was running my favorite blue engine around the outside track when it ran over Jesse’s finger. He yelped just like my grandmother’s dog did when Grandpa accidentally stepped on its tail, and he pulled back his finger, sticking it in his mouth. Abby’s face puckered.

  “Are you okay, Jesse?” she asked, her voice sweet and high. I loved the sound of Abby’s voice.

  “My finger hurts.” Jesse spoke around the finger in question, still in his mouth. I could tell he was trying not to cry. He wasn’t a crybaby at all, so I guessed it really did hurt.

  “Do you want me to get your mommy?” Even then, Abby took care of us.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “He shouldn’t have had his finger so close to the track.” This sounded reasonable to me as I said it. It was true; the train hadn’t moved to run over Jesse’s finger. He had put his hand in its way.

  “Nat, it wasn’t his fault,” Abby protested. “It was just an accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I insisted. “He put his hand down on the track. He saw the train coming.”

  Jesse scowled at me. “Who cares? Trains are stupid.”

  Abby gasped as though Jesse had just spoken high treason. She glanced at me, but I didn’t react. Actually, what Jesse said didn’t matter to me at all, because it was so clearly not true. Trains could not be stupid. People could be stupid, but not trains. Now if he had said that trains had square wheels, I would have argued with him.

  “Jesse, don’t say that. Nat’s trains are really fun.”

  “They’re stupid and I don’t know why we always have to play with them.”

  “You don’t have to play with them,” I said. “Abby and I are playing.”

  “No, Jesse didn’t mean it, Nat. We can all play. Come on, Jesse.”

  But Jesse had stomped off into the other room. Abby watched him go, distress and indecision on her face.

  I resumed playing with my trains as though nothing had happened. “Abby, you run the red train now. You can make it go over the bridge and stop at the station.”

  Abby obeyed without speaking. When the red train had stopped at the station, we both loaded the passengers onto it.

  “Jesse and I really like your trains, Nat. Don’t be sad about what he said. It was just because his finger got hurt.”

  “I’m not sad,” I answered. “Abby, let’s make the trains race.” We ran the trains alongside of each other, but Abby didn’t say anything else.

  A few minutes later, Jesse stuck his head into the room. He didn’t look at me at all. “Abby, my mom says we can go outside and play on the swings. Let’s go.”

  Abby took one step away from the train table and then turned back to me. “Nat, come outside with us.”

  I was still absorbed. “I don’t want to. I’m playing with my trains.”

  “But don’t you want to play with Jesse and me outside?” she persisted.

  I shook my head. “No. It’s too hot outside. I want to stay in here.”

  “Come on, Abby,” Jesse called. She took another step toward the door. I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

  Finally, she said, “Go on out, Jesse. I’m going to stay inside with Nat for a while. Maybe we can go out and play in a little while.”

  Jesse didn’t answer, but a few seconds later we heard the screen door slam. Jesse’s mom jumped up and yelled at him not to bang the door, and she apologized to my mother, who just laughed.

  “He didn’t mean it, Lisa. That door is so light, I’m always forgetting and letting it slam behind me.” I heard the edge in her voice, which usually meant that I had done something that made her sad or uncomfortable. It was the same thing I heard when the doctors were telling us about new tests I had to have or when we talked about my walking.

  Abby came back slowly to the train table. She picked up one of the people waiting to board my blue train, and she turned him over and over in her hand. As we played, I saw her glance out the window more than once, and I knew she wanted to be outside. It never occurred to me to say that to her, though. I was always happier when Abby was playing with me. I liked Jesse, too; they were both my best friends. But Abby made me feel special in a good way. It was like she didn’t see my walker or my spindly arms. She saw the real me, inside.

  Jesse was my friend, too, and usually the three of us hung around together. But I don’t think Jesse ever understood me the way Abby did until the first day of fifth grade. That day, standing on the playground with all those boys standing over me, I was scared for the first time in many years. I wasn’t so much afraid of what they were going to do to me as much as how embarrassing it was going to be, how I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of Abby. I didn’t know if she was there yet, but I knew she would be soon. The idea of her seeing me on the ground, dirty and maybe worse, made me sway in nervousness, something that I hadn’t done in a long time.

  But then a bad situation got even worse. All of a sudden, Abby was right there in the middle of those boys, and she was yelling at them. She threatened to go get a teacher, and pretty soon they all left. Then it was just Abby and me. Before I could say anything to her, Jesse was there with us, and she was yelling at him for not coming to help me.

  I knew Abby thought she
did the right thing. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t thanking her and why Jesse wasn’t praising her. But she’s a girl. She couldn’t see that not letting me stand up for myself-no pun intended—made everything worse.

  It’s kind of funny that my first memory was of Abby choosing between Jesse and me. That didn’t really happen again until later, when we started fifth grade. That year, when Jesse started playing with the other kids at lunch, I knew Abby would rather be running around with all of them instead of sitting on the monkey bars every day with me. But she never said it, and she never left me. And I never said she should.

  Maybe it was selfish, but I guess that I felt like my whole life was a little unfair. Abby made up for some of that. If it was selfish to want her to stay near me and be my friend, I was okay with that.

  Chapter 4: Abby

  I thought starting over in a new school for fifth grade was hard. It was nothing compared to moving to the junior high for eighth grade. At least in fifth grade, we were still kids. Lunch time on the playground was the most stressful part of the day. But in junior high, suddenly everyone started breaking off into groups, and there were cool people. . .and then some who weren’t considered so cool. Some people called them dorks or whatever, but it was really just someone’s opinion. In eighth grade, there are a very few people whose viewpoints matter. I wasn’t one of them.

  Somehow over the summer, all the girls who had played Barbies and doll house with me morphed into strangers who wore lip gloss and worried about their hair. I missed that memo, I guess. I still liked to play with dolls and I didn’t care what my hair looked like, as long as it was out of my way.

  Add to that the fact that my two best friends were boys, and I was practically an outcast. But it didn’t matter to me at first. I had Jesse and Nat. If Jesse had grown away from us a little in fifth grade, he made his way back over the next few years. That was mostly because Nat and I began playing kickball at recess. Even though he couldn’t really run, Nat could kick the ball. The other kids let me be his pinch-runner, and together we were a great team. Jesse stopped being embarrassed by his two friends who sat on the monkey bars every day. He always chose us first for his team.

  When I got to school on the first day of eighth grade, Nat and Jesse were already standing in line against the building. This was junior high, and there was no playground anymore. Instead we waited outside the glass doors until the bell rang, and then we filed inside and hoped to find the lockers we’d been assigned.

  I joined the boys, smiling my greeting. Nat returned my smile and greeted me. “Hey, Abby! You look really pretty.” This was high praise from Nat, who rarely paid anyone a spontaneous compliment. I smoothed the denim skirt my mom had made me wear that morning and thanked him and then snuck a look at Jesse.

  Most of the boys in our class were still shorter than the girls and scrawny. They could have easily passed for a year or two younger than thirteen. But not Jesse. He had sprouted up three inches over the summer, and the lawn mowing business he ran with his two older brothers had given him muscled arms and a light tan. He grinned at me from his spot against the wall.

  “Hey, Ab,” he said. “Your mom make you wear that?”

  Irrationally his words irritated me. It was true that I didn’t wear skirts or dresses very often, but couldn’t he have said something nice, like Nat had? Instead he had to tease me. I suddenly hated the skirt more than I had this morning when my mom had handed it to me.

  “Of course,” I snapped. “Didn’t your mother dress you today?”

  Still grinning, he shrugged. “Sure. I don’t care about clothes.” His eyes wandered along the lines of other students, and I saw them warm with appreciation. I followed his gaze to a pretty girl in a short cotton sundress and heels. She was definitely older than we were, but I didn’t like the expression of admiration on Jesse’s face. I bet he wouldn’t tease her about wearing a dress.

  “Bet she can’t play kick ball or anything in that dress,” I commented. Jesse jerked his attention back to me and flushed a little when he realized I’d seen the girl. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “No more kick ball, Ab. Least not at school. We’re not in grade school anymore.”

  I became aware that Nat was watching both of us very closely, and I turned slightly to include him.

  “How was your vacation, Nat?” I asked. His family spent the last two weeks of every summer at a rented cabin in the Poconoes while my family stayed at the beach for a week. Jesse usually stayed in town.

  “Good,” Nat answered me. “We went fishing. And canoeing. My dad says if I keep working at it, maybe I could do something like that, rowing or whatever, in high school and college. It would help build my upper body strength.”

  “That would be cool,” I agreed. “Does the high school have a crew team?”

  “No,” Jesse answered for him. “But I think there’s a local club. Your dad’s right, Nat. It would be good for you.”

  Nat smiled, pleased that both of us had responded so positively. He looked up at me. “Did you have fun at the beach, Abby?”

  I opened my mouth to tell them about the days I had spent building sand castles and playing in the waves, but before I could say a word, I heard a soft voice behind me.

  “Hey, Jesse.”

  I recognized the girl in the dress, the one Jesse had been staring at earlier. Her name was Sarah, I remembered, and she was very pretty, with black hair and huge brown eyes. She was gazing up at Jesse as though he were a luscious chocolate ice cream cone.

  “Hi, Sarah,” Jesse replied, and I realized to my amazement that he was flustered. He pushed off from the wall and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You ready to start school?”

  Sarah giggled as though Jesse had made a witty comment. I barely refrained from rolling my eyes again. “I guess so. Not going to be as much fun as summer, though, right?”

  Jesse laughed, too. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Not unless they let us run through the sprinklers here, too.”

  “Oh, I know! Can you believe how soaked we got?” Sarah had moved closer, effectively edging out Nat and me.

  “My mom asked me if I had stopped at the pool on the way home,” Jesse confided. “I told her it was a sprinkler inspection that went bad.”

  That sent Sarah off into more peals of laughter, the last of which was thankfully drowned out by the bell ringing, signally the beginning of the school day. We all moved toward the doors and into the building.

  I stayed near Nat, making sure he didn’t get jostled in the crowd of kids. Our lockers were on the same hallway, and we found them easily enough. I had to try the combination for my lock three times before it worked, but Nat must have had more luck, since he was standing next to me, waiting patiently when I looked up.

  “Where’s Jesse?” I asked him.

  Nat shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe he went to homeroom already.”

  I sighed. I had a bad feeling about this day and particularly about this Sarah person, who seemed to have spent time with Jesse this summer unbeknownst to Nat and me. Once upon a time, Jesse would have made fun of a girl like that to Nat and me, but he seemed to like her well enough today.

  We threaded our way toward the classrooms. Nat and Jesse had the same homeroom, but I was on my own. We caught up with Jesse just outside the door to their classroom.

  “I wondered where you guys had gone,” he said. “I turned around and I couldn’t find you. Did you get your lockers to work?”

  I arched my eyebrows. “Yep. You might not have lost us if you hadn’t been giggling with your girlfriend.”

  I expected Jesse to laugh at the joke, but instead he frowned at me. “She’s not my girlfriend. I just got to know her over the summer. I cut the grass at her house.”

  “And inspected the sprinklers?”

  “I was finishing up one day, and Sarah brought me out a drink. While we were standing there talking, the sprinklers came on, and we both got soaked. That’s all there was to it.”

  I did
n’t have time to answer. Nat pulled at Jesse’s arm. “We have to go in, Jesse. She’s starting to take attendance. See you at lunch, Abby.”

  I gave Nat a half-hearted wave and glared at Jesse once more before I flounced off to my own homeroom.

  Chapter 5: Nathan

  I was ten when I first overheard a doctor talking about life expectancy. He and my parents had sent me out to get some water in the waiting room while they chatted in his office. I came back quietly enough that none of them heard me, and I realized the doctor was talking about me in a very solemn tone of voice.

  “There’s every reason to expect that Nathan will live well into his early adulthood. We’re doing everything we can, and who knows what treatment might be discovered by the time he’s eighteen? The important thing is to help him to enjoy every minute. Quality of life, you know, and Nathan has that in spades.”

  My mother sighed, and my father cleared his throat. I stood frozen just outside the doorway.

  My dad asked quietly, “Is there anything else we can do right now? More therapies, other doctors at other hospitals?”

  “We’re doing everything we can,” the doctor repeated, patience in his voice. “I make it a point to keep up with all the articles and papers published on this condition. If I think there’s anything that will help him, you know I’ll be the first to let you know. Try not to let what might happen in the future rob you of what you have here in the present—a wonderful loving son.”

  I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I stepped loudly in the hallway before I pushed the door open. My mother turned toward me, her eyes bright and a smile on her lips. She grabbed her purse and patted my father’s arm.

  “Are we all set then? Ready to go home?”

  On the drive home, my mom chattered about everything and nothing. My father chimed in only when she specifically addressed him, and I was silent. As soon as the car pulled into the driveway, my mother jumped out and said something about getting dinner in the oven. My father climbed out of the driver’s seat more slowly and opened the back door for me.