“Dad?” I said. “Can I ask you something?”
He smiled at me and tousled my hair. “Sure, kiddo. Anything. What’s up? Woman trouble?” My father always did that, pretended that we were talking man to man and that I might really have some sort of adult problem that we could discuss.
I shook my head. “No. I just wanted to ask you. Am I going to die? I mean, like soon? Like sooner than most people?”
His face fell into the less familiar lines of sadness. He didn’t ask me why I wanted to know or pretend that I was posing a silly question. Instead he answered me thoughtfully.
”No one knows the answer to that question, Nat. We’re on this earth for a certain span of time, and truthfully, no one can tell us what the future holds. My grandfather lived to be 102, and my dad is still going strong. But I could walk out to get the paper in the morning and get hit by an out of control car. We just don’t know. We try our best to stay healthy and safe, but life is a fragile thing sometimes.”
“But what about me, about what’s wrong with me? It makes me different from other kids, but is it going to make me die younger too?”
My father sank onto the bottom step of our front porch. “I don’t know. I guess, if everything stayed exactly the same as it is right now, the answer would be yes. The same disease that makes your muscles weak and complicates your breathing sometimes would eventually end your life. But we know that nothing stays the same. There are scientists and doctors working to figure out how to cure you. You are working hard to get better, too. So you see, we could focus on the possibility that’s there right at this moment, or we can choose to believe that there’s a better future out there.”
I thought about what he said, and I nodded to show that I had listened. And I really had. I decided that I was going to do everything I could to live as long as possible, and I was also going to make sure that I lived as fully as I could. I had a good reason to want to live, the best reason in the world, actually.
I was in love.
I don’t know when I realized that I was in love with Abby. I had loved her all my life, that was for sure. Along with Jesse, she was my best friend. But Abby was always more patient with me than even Jesse. She chose me more often than he did. I knew that making choice didn’t help her social life, but she did it anyway.
But the summer before we started junior high, something changed. Not Abby, although she was growing up and getting prettier every day. It was me. That August, when my family was about to go to my grandparents’ house in the mountains and Abby’s family was heading to the shore, I was grumpy. I couldn’t figure out why; I love our two weeks in the Poconoes. We hike trails and play in the creek and sit around reading for hours.
Then the night before I left, Abby came over to say good-bye. She gave me a typical Abby hug—fierce and tight and full of her particular brand of love—and she said, “I guess I’ll see you the first day of school!”
And just like that, I knew. I was in a perpetual bad mood because I was going to have to go two weeks without my best friend, who, as it turns out, was also the love of my life.
I spent most of that night trying to figure out how I could get Abby to come to the Poconoes with us. Or how I could go to the beach with her family. Of course, it wasn’t possible. My mom never would let me be away from her for that long; she always worried if I were out of her sight for longer than a typical school day. And Abby was an only child, like me. Her mom and dad planned this week at the beach especially for her. They wouldn’t let her go with us, and even if they would, how could I explain this sudden need for her?
So the next morning I got into the car with my parents and we drove west. I stared out the window as we crossed the Walt Whitman bridge into Pennsylvania. My mother was talking about everything she wanted to do on vacation, all the food she’d brought to cook delicious meals. My dad was in a good mood, too. It was his parents we stayed with during these two weeks, and he enjoyed that family time.
We had been the car almost an hour before my mother noticed that I was quiet. I shrugged and told her that I was tired, that I hadn’t slept well. A few minutes later, so they wouldn’t guess that my sleeplessness was related to my question, I spoke up.
“Mom? Will I be able to get married some day?” I tried to make it a casual question, something that had just randomly gone through my mind.
I caught the quick glance my parents exchanged, and then my mother turned around in her seat.
“Why do you ask? You planning to propose to someone soon?”
I stifled a sigh. Just once I wished they would take me seriously and give me a straight answer.
“I just wondered, that’s all. You know, with me being. . .different and all.”
My dad met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “I think it’s one of those things we talked about a few years back, bud. Your mom and I hope you can fall in love and get married. But since I’m thinking you’re not going to be eloping any time soon, maybe we don’t have to worry about it today.”
“What made you ask that?” My mother tried to keep her voice light, but I could hear the curiosity and just a tinge of apprehension.
“Oh. . .I don’t know. Just wondering about it.”
We were all quiet for a while, and then my mother, still keeping her tone deceptively casual, remarked, “Abby has really grown up this summer, hasn’t she?”
I don’t know whether I really blushed, but my face felt hot. “Yeah, I guess,” I mumbled.
“Jesse is sprouting up, too,” my father added. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Both his brothers are tall boys. Do you think Jesse will play basketball next year?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t really worried about Jesse’s potential in basketball. He was always going to play sports that I wouldn’t be able to dream of trying. I was used to it, but since sports didn’t interest me anyway, his prowess didn’t bother me.
“Hard to believe the three of you are thirteen,” my mother mused. “I remember when you were all babies, and Lisa and I used to tease Abby’s mom about one of you boys being her son-in-law one day.”
“Seriously, Mom.” I rolled my eyes. “We’re not babies anymore.”
“No, you’re not,” she agreed. “And things are going to change soon. I hope you and Jesse and Abby will be friends forever. But now that you’re getting older, you might find that Abby wants to start spending more time with other girls. She may begin dating, even.”
The idea of Abby—my Abby—dating someone other than me made me feel like I did when my lungs were tightening. I couldn’t take it, and I began rubbing my chest absently, trying to loosen the muscles.
“Nat! Are you okay?” My mom twisted around in her seat, concern all over her face. “Do we need to stop?”
“No, I’m okay,” I told her. “Sorry. Just habit, I guess.”
She looked both relieved and suspicious, but she nodded. “Okay. Why don’t you try to catch some sleep? We’ve still got another couple of hours.”
I closed my eyes and lay my head back against the seat, but in my head, all I could see was Abby. It had suddenly struck me that having her for my own might not be as easy as I thought. What if she didn’t love me?
I made up my mind in that moment. I would make her fall in love with me. That’s all there was to it.
Chapter 6: Jesse
I knew Abby and Nat weren’t really excited to begin junior high, but I thought it was going to be great. We’d get to change classes, so I wouldn’t get bored sitting in the same classroom with the same teacher for seven hours a day. And we got to have real lockers, which sounded pretty cool. Best of all, I’d finally get to play an honest-to-goodness sports, not the baby kind where they never really kept score or told us who won. Our junior high had football, basketball, soccer, base ball and track teams. I wanted to play them all, but my dad said I had to make a choice, or my schoolwork might suffer.
My brothers played basketball, and everyone kind of expected me to do the same. It’s the
bad thing about being the youngest of three boys; everyone expects you to be just like your brothers. But I really didn’t like basketball, not the way I liked football. So I decided that was what I was going to play.
That summer before eighth grade, I spent most of my time mowing lawns. Simon and Danny, my brothers, had started the business when they were my age, and now I was part of it too. It was pretty cool to be earning money, even though my mom made me put most of it away for college. She said someday I would thank her. I told her I was going to get a football scholarship and get a free ride to whatever college I chose, but she said it was good to have a back up plan.
I liked mowing lawns. Pushing the mower or using the trimmer, I had a lot of time to think. I also met new people, and I liked that. Most of them were older, but that was okay. Some of the old ladies would invite me to the porch for lemonade and cookies. The men would inspect my work carefully and nod approvingly, and that was cool. They told my parents that I was really responsible and did a good job, and I know that made my parents happy, too.
Sometimes I met kids, but most of the families who had kids my age didn’t hire us to cut the grass; they would just have their own kid do it, which only makes sense. But this one family had all daughters, and I guess they didn’t want girls doing yard work. So I did the lawn, and I met their oldest daughter. Her name was Sarah, and she was a year ahead of me in school. I guess she had been in school with us for a while, but I never noticed her.
When we met, she was wearing a bathing suit and heading out to the family’s pool. Now I never noticed girls and what they wore before. I mean, yuck. Abby never cared about she had on as long as it didn’t get in her way. But seeing Sarah in this bathing suit kind of made me look twice. She was really pretty, in a different way, and she smiled and waved at me.
The next time I was at her house doing the lawn, she came out and brought me a drink. It was really hot, and I was grateful for both the break and the ice water. I stood there gulping it down, trying not to be impolite about it, and she started talking. She told me that she knew me from school.
“You hang out with the girl who has all that curly hair and that kid who—“ She stopped, and I knew exactly how she was going to describe Nat. With most people, I’d get mad, but I could tell she didn’t mean it in a cruel way.
“Yeah. That’s Abby and Nat. We’ve been friends as long as I can remember.”
“Wow, that’s cool. We’ve only lived here for about three years, so I haven’t known anyone that long.” Sarah smiled up at me, shading her eyes with her hand. I noticed that her fingers were long and her nails were painted bright pink.
“Where did you live before?”
“Chicago. I was born there.”
“I’ve never lived anywhere but here,” I admitted. “But I like it here, so that’s okay.”
“So. . .” Sarah drew out the syllable. She was rubbing her barefoot absently across the newly mown grass, and she kept her eyes on the ground. “Abby, you said her name was—is she, like, your girlfriend?”
“Abby?” I was so surprised by the question that I couldn’t answer for a minute. “No! No, she’s my friend. One of my best friends. I don’t have a girlfriend. And Abby’s not like that anyway, she’s not interested in that kind of thing.” Even as I said it, I wondered. I hadn’t ever asked Ab anything like that, but she was the least girly-girl I knew. She never said she liked a boy or even paid attention to anyone but Nat and me. None of us was interested in that kind of thing. At least, not until now.
“Well, I guess with all of us starting junior high in a few weeks, we’re going to get interested in it!” Sarah said brightly. “They have dances and everything. . .I can’t wait. I think it’ll be fun.”
“I guess so.” My tone was doubtful. I couldn’t imagine what a dance would be like, and trying to picture the people I knew dancing with each other was really kind of funny. I decided it would be safer to change the subject.
“I’m going to play football this fall,” I announced. “It’s going to be awesome.”
“Football? Really?” Sarah’s smile widened. “I’m going out for cheerleading. So I guess I’ll see you at the games!”
“Yeah, I guess so—“ Whatever I might have said next was lost in a torrent of water as the sprinklers under our feet suddenly turned on. Within seconds I was drenched, and Sarah was shrieking and trying to get away from the spray.
“Oh my gosh!” She was wringing her blonde hair and giggling. “I thought they only went on at night and in the morning! Something must have messed up the timer.” She looked at me, standing there dripping, and her giggles turned to full-blown laughter. “Well, you were pretty hot, weren’t you?”
I managed a smile. “Yeah, I guess I’m cooled off now.”
Sarah cocked an eyebrow at me. “Want a towel? We’ve got them around back by the pool.”
“Nah. I’ll just run home and change.” And I would be literally running home; my brother usually picked me up from this job and took me to the next one. Since he could drive and I couldn’t, I had to depend on him for the houses where we used our own equipment. But if he saw me soaking wet, I’d never hear the end of it.
“Listen, Sarah, can I push the mower over my your house? I’ll just go get changed and come back to finish up. My brother is supposed to take me to the next client in about forty-five minutes. I think I can make it.”
Sarah helped me move the mower and then I booked for home. My mother just shook her head as I grabbed a dry set of clothes and ran back to Sarah’s house. I had just finished the last strip of grass when Simon pulled up.
“That one took you long enough,” he grumbled after we loaded the equipment. “What happen?”
“Sprinklers turned on,” I told him. “Had to wait until they could turn them off until I could finish.” I knew my mom wouldn’t say anything; she was cool that way. I made it to the next client and got back to work. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and how she had looked when the water soaked her shorts and t-shirt.
I didn’t see her again until the first day of school, when she came over to me in line. Nat and I had been there for a little bit before Ab got to school. The whole thing was weird. First when Nat got there, he asked right away if I’d seen Ab. Well, that wasn’t weird—Nat always wants to know where she is, but there was something different about it that day. He tried to brush it off and said he hasn’t seen her since he got home from vacation and wondered if she had had a good time at the shore, but I swear he turned red when he said her name.
And then to make things even more bizarre, when Ab did show up, she was wearing, like, a dress. I hadn’t seen Ab in anything but jeans or shorts since we were in kindergarten and her mom made her wear a dress on picture day. I was shocked.
But when I said something to tease her, to make her feel better about having to wear a dress—just so she understood that I knew her mom must’ve made her wear it—she got mad. She shot me a snappy comeback, but I could tell she was really annoyed. Who knows why? Nat told her looked pretty, and that seemed to make her feel a little better.
And then before I could really check out what was happening, why Nat was acting so off, I saw Sarah. She was wearing some kind of dress, too, but it just kind of floated around her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her for a minute, and then Ab made some kind of snarky comment about Sarah and how she was dressed. I realized as I stood there, too, that Sarah looked a lot older than Ab did. I wondered if she thought I looked a lot younger than the boys in her class.
Ab changed the subject, and she and Nat started talking about their vacations. I kept quiet. My family didn’t take the kind of regular vacations Abby and Nat’s family did. My mother said that with three boys who were heading to college, we needed to save everything we could. We mostly took day trips and what my mom called backyard vacations.
And then I heard my name, and when I turned around, Sarah was standing next to me, smiling. I tried to play it cool, be nice without doing anythin
g to make Ab and Nat suspicious. We were just rehashing the whole sprinkler episode when the bell rang, and the whole crowd of kids surged into the school.
I lost Ab and Nat, but Sarah stuck with me. I felt bad, because I had promised to help Nat at his locker. But by the time I found them, we were at my homeroom and Nat was going in the room with me. Abby made another comment about Sarah and about her being my girlfriend. I didn’t like how that made me feel. On one hand, she wasn’t my girlfriend. But part of me wouldn’t have minded if she was. On the other hand, I didn’t want to hurt Ab’s feelings, and I had the sense that inviting any girl into our little circle was going to do just that.
Chapter 7: Nathan
The two weeks I spent with my parents in the mountains of Pennsylvania were a roller coaster for me. I would wake up in the morning, bursting with excitement over my newly-realized love for Abby. And then by lunch time, I’d be brooding and depressed, sure that she could never see me as more than her best friend from childhood. I spent hours trying to remember whether Abby had ever acted interested in any boys in our class, and I spent an equal amount of time remember how often she had chosen to be with me over other people.
By the time we got home, two days before school began, I was nervous and jumpy. My parents turned to their fall-back position of worrying that this was some new symptom of my disease, but I explained that I was just anxious about the new school. They bought that. My mom told me long stories about her life as a teenager, and my dad just kept patting my shoulder, telling me it would all work out.
I didn’t call Abby before school began because we never did that. If I had called her just to talk she would have known something was up. So I suffered in silence by myself until my mother dropped me at school on the morning of the first day.
When We Were Us (Keeping Score, #1) Page 3
