“Horse?” he asked.
“You’re on.” She tossed him the ball. “Let’s see what you got, old man.”
He arced his middle-aged body gracefully and swished home a shot from the top of the imaginary key.
“Ooh,” Jamie said, “white boy can jump.”
He threw the ball to her and they switched spots. “Put up or shut up, kid.”
As soon as she let the ball go, she knew it was a brick. Sure enough, it thudded against the backboard. “Whoops.”
“That was… close,” he offered.
“Do you need to get your prescription checked?”
“Always a possibility at my age.”
They played on, bantering as was their habit. Her dad used to kick a ball around their small back yard with her, too, but by the time she was in sixth grade his form was too painful for her to watch and her perfectionist streak was too much for him to endure, so that ended. But basketball was usually a safer outlet. They’d had some of their best conversations out here in the driveway while Meg practiced one or more instruments and Jamie’s mom worked in her studio.
“So,” her dad said after she’d chased the ball down the driveway for the third time. “About telling Emma.”
She passed him the ball, a little surprised. Since the day she got home from France and confessed to her parents what had happened, she and her dad hadn’t spoken much about it on their own. “What about it?”
“I want you to know that I’m happy to be there with you when you do it, if that would help. Your mom, too.”
“Thanks, but I think it’ll go better if I do it on my own,” Jamie said, watching as her father sank a ten-footer.
“Can I ask why?”
“Oh.” She thought about it as she traded places with him and sized up the shot. “I think I’d be too self-conscious if you guys were there. Like having an audience or something.” She let the ball fly, cursing under her breath as it hit the edge of the basket and bounced out. “Besides, Mom makes me nervous.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, corralling the ball.
“She’s, I don’t know, unguarded, I guess.” That was the word she and Shoshanna had come up with to describe the way her mom stared at her when she thought she wouldn’t notice.
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“It can be. Sometimes I wish she would look at me the way you do.”
He turned toward her, his face in shadows. “And how is that?”
“Like you’re not thinking about what happened. Like I’m still the same me.” She squinted into the light, wondering if he would defend her mom.
Sure enough: “She’s trying, Jamie. She really is. One of the hardest things for a parent is to see your child hurting and be unable to do anything about it.”
She wanted to point out that she was the child in this scenario even if she didn’t feel particularly child-like these days; to tell him that she wasn’t sure she could manage the weight of her mother’s sorrow on top of her own. She didn’t even think she should have to. But she couldn’t say that, not to him. Instead they stood in silence, watching each other until a car horn sounded somewhere nearby.
As the sound died away, she gestured to the ball on his hip. “Quit stalling, dude. Take your shot already.”
“Fine. But if you change your mind about Emma, say the word.” He lined up another ten-footer from the other side of the key and sank it easily.
Jamie tried again, and again she missed. “Damn it!” She punched the ball, spiking it off the driveway. “How do you do that?”
“Years of practice, young one. Years and years. Now take a breath.”
“You sound like Shoshanna.”
“Then there’s probably something to it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jamie fired the ball at him.
They didn’t mention Emma’s visit again as they played on under the spotlight, the air cooling and the neighborhood settling around them.
#
Emma lay quietly on the futon mattress they’d set up on Jamie’s floor, staring up at the paneled ceiling. It was dark still on this, her next to last morning in California, and she could hear Jamie snoring lightly nearby. Finally the younger girl rolled over on her twin bed, stretching her arms above her head and kicking off her covers as she had done every morning since Emma had arrived.
“You awake, Blake?” she asked, peering through the dimly lit room.
“Yep.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just thinking.”
Jamie paused. “You nervous about flying tomorrow?”
“A little.”
Jamie was one of the only people in the world who knew that while she wasn’t exactly afraid of flying, she didn’t entirely trust the process. Not only were images of 9/11 forever burned into her brain, she had inherited a wariness of flight from her father. When her dad was in medical school, his older brother, Dean, had died in a small plane crash during a ski trip. Emma had overheard her mother tell one of her sisters that sometimes he still woke up sweating from a recurring nightmare. It was always the same—the plane’s broken windshield letting the water rush in as the damaged craft sank into the cold, dark depths of Lake Michigan. He couldn’t get his seat belt undone, couldn’t do anything but hold his breath for as long as possible and watch the light overhead fade away.
For the last six or seven years, her father had flown on average something like thirty times a year, sixty if you counted round trips. He had to face his biggest fear routinely in order to save people he didn’t know from their biggest fear: losing a child. When she thought about it like that, she had to admit, she almost felt sorry for him. How ironic that he worked so hard to keep other families together while his own fell apart.
Except that they hadn’t fallen apart, not completely. He was home more now, traveling less, and Emma had to admit that her parents seemed happier together than ever. Maybe the adage her mother liked to repeat was true: We forgive those who hurt us for our own sake, not theirs. Nice idea in theory, but in reality forgiveness wasn’t that easy. At least, not for Emma.
“I can’t believe it’s almost time for you to go home,” Jamie said, watching her from the bed.
Emma looked away from the adorable picture of Jamie in her boxers and tank top, her hair tousled in yet another new bedhead style. “Me either.”
“It’s been awesome, hasn’t it?”
“Best winter break ever.”
Jamie threw her legs over the side of the bed and paused. “What do you want to do on your last full day in town?”
“I don’t know. What sights haven’t I seen yet?”
“Golden Gate Park?”
“Sounds perfect.”
And she was sure it would be. So far she had loved the Bay Area. Her second night there had been New Year’s Eve, and Jamie’s family had ventured into the city with Becky’s to watch the annual fireworks display near the Bay Bridge. After roller skating at a disco rink in the Haight, they’d caught a train to the waterfront where, at precisely midnight, the fireworks began, accompanied by music blasted from loud speakers along the shoreline. The display lasted fifteen minutes, and then, cold and happy, the two families and Emma had caught a train—BART ran late on the last night of the year—back to Berkeley.
Jamie had practice the next couple of afternoons, so Emma went with her to watch from the empty stands. Back home, Emma’s school sat on a hillside overlooking Lake Washington, and was bordered by two parks that contained nearly a hundred acres of second growth forest. Berkeley High’s campus, meanwhile, occupied two full city blocks. A group of homeless men on the corner near the high school made the sort of comments Emma had only ever been subjected to walking around downtown Seattle. When she asked Jamie if this happened regularly, she’d only shrugged and said, “Yeah, but you get used to it.”
Being accosted by strange men wasn’t the only hazard to negotiate at Jamie’s high school. At the first game of the new year, a handful of boys in the stands h
ad cat-called every time Jamie touched the ball. She was focused on the game and didn’t seem to notice the harassment, but Emma, who was sitting a few rows away with Jamie’s family, had soon had enough. Midway through the first half, she’d walked over to their row, leaned in, and said, “Keep it up, boys. But you should know that every time you harass her, you’re basically telling the world how tiny your dicks are.”
And then she’d flipped her hair and sashayed back to her seat, purposely letting her hips sway a little extra in her low-rise Levi’s. When the boys left a few minutes later without another word, Meg and Becky turned to her, eyes wide.
“What did you say to them?” Meg asked.
“The truth.” She held up her pinky finger where only the two girls could see it. “That only small men harass girls like Jamie.”
“Oh my god, I think I love you.” As Emma’s forehead creased, Meg added, “Not like that. Don’t worry, I leave the ladies to my sister.”
Emma had felt her face growing warm and turned back to the game in time to see Jamie rip the ball from the end line across the mouth of the goal. One of her teammates tapped it in and the stands erupted—in a good way, this time.
Now as they got ready to go play tourist, Emma wondered if this was it. Was Jamie finally going to reveal her deep, dark secret? A couple of times, Emma had been sure she would. Her first day in town, they’d driven with Meg and Becky over the Golden Gate Bridge and out to Stinson Beach in Marin County. There, she and Jamie had wandered off on their own, making footprints in the sand and rolling up their jeans to clamber over the rocks at one end of the park. She’d been sure Jamie was going to tell her then as they sat on a rock close together watching the ocean spray ricochet off nearby rocks, but instead they’d talked about the biggest earthquakes they’d survived—a 7.1 in 1989 for Jamie, a 6.8 in 2001 for Emma. Then Meg and Becky caught up with them and the conversation had shifted again.
Another morning, they’d gotten up early and hiked from the Cal soccer fields up through the Redwoods to Grizzly Peak. At the lookout, they’d munched sandwiches and fruit, and as they gazed out over the expansive view of the Berkeley Hills, East Bay, and the city of San Francisco, the Pacific shimmering in the distance, Emma had been sure Jamie was going to open up about her past. Instead the conversation had revolved around 9/11—where they were, what they saw, whether or not they knew anyone personally impacted by the terrorist attacks. Neither had, but Jamie admitted her parents weren’t so lucky. It seemed like almost everyone in the Bay Area knew someone who had a friend or relative or neighbor connected to Flight 93, the San Francisco-bound plane that had crashed in Pennsylvania.
At this point, Emma was starting to think she’d misread the situation. Jamie seemed less troubled than when they’d first met, and anyway, there were a million reasons why she could have been distraught that last night at Surf Cup. Maybe she was upset about losing the tournament finals. Maybe she’d gotten in a particularly nasty fight with her mother. Or maybe she was premenstrual. The possibilities were endless.
If Jamie didn’t have anything to confess, Emma told herself as they jogged downstairs for breakfast with the rest of the family, then she would take the bull by the horns herself and officially come out. Things had gone so well with her mother at Thanksgiving that she was actually looking forward to telling Jamie. After all, it wasn’t like the girl who had come out at thirteen was going to give her a hard time for revealing that she thought she might be bisexual.
The morning started out foggy, but by the time they had finished breakfast and caught the train into the city, the marine layer had burned off. They disembarked near the University of San Francisco and walked a block to the park, set their watches, and started a leisurely run along the park’s wooded trails, chatting as they went. This was Jamie’s one day off from soccer for the week, but like Emma she didn’t like to go a day without exercise. It wasn’t an addiction, they assured each other. Then they laughed. Well, maybe it was. But at least it was a healthy addiction.
Their route took them past tennis courts and the picture-perfect Victorian Flower Conservatory.
“Want to check it out?” Jamie asked.
“Definitely.”
Inside, they wandered the narrow aisles of blooming tropical plants, pausing to inhale the rich scent of earth and plant life.
“This place is amazing,” Emma murmured, lifting her face to the winter sunlight filtering through the greenhouse roof.
“It’s always summer in here.” Jamie closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “You wouldn’t know to look at it, but this building was almost destroyed by a wind storm a few years back. But then a bunch of people got together and got it named a historic site and raised enough money to remodel. It only reopened a little while ago.”
“My mother would love this place.”
“That’s right, she’s a big gardener, isn’t she? So is my Aunt Mary.”
“The one in Pasadena?”
“That’s the one.” Jamie glanced at her, eyes narrowed.
“What?” Emma asked expectantly. This would be the perfect place for Jamie to tell her, surrounded by blooming flowers from foreign lands.
“Nothing.” She shook her head, and they walked on.
Outside a little while later they resumed their run, following the trail down through a wide courtyard between a pair of museums. They continued past the Japanese Tea Garden and veered off on a path that led to the shore of a small lake. The day was lovely, and Emma kept telling herself it wasn’t possible she would be back in gray, rainy Seattle in less than a day. She felt so at home here. No wonder people always said Seattle was a smaller, more provincial version of San Francisco. Both cities had plentiful water, bridges, gardens, and evergreens, not to mention high tech start-ups, Subarus, and yuppies galore. Yet another reason she and Jamie connected so easily.
They ran around the lake, past the polo fields in the center of the park, around the golf course and archery range, and slowed to a walk at the northwest edge of the park. They cooled down a bit before stopping in front of a brewery that sat almost on the beach.
“What do you think?” Jamie asked as Emma checked out the menu.
“Looks good to me. It’s my treat, okay?”
“No way. You had to buy a plane ticket to get here, remember?”
“It was a frequent flyer ticket. Besides, my parents gave me spending money and you still haven’t let me pay for anything. Let me get lunch at least. Please?”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “Fine. I would hate to offend your parents.”
They were soon seated at a table by the wide front window overlooking the sea. The midday sun hovered unseen somewhere over the city, so they set their sunglasses on the table beside their cell phones. A server came by and Emma watched as the girl, who was about their age, smiled particularly widely at Jamie and leaned over her shoulder to point out an item on the laminated menu, her sizable chest brushing against Jamie’s arm.
“She was totally flirting with you,” she said when they were alone again.
Jamie glanced up at her. “What?”
“The server. She was flirting with you.”
“Really?” Jamie rubbed a hand along the back of her neck, eying Emma doubtfully. Her eyes were the color of the winter sky beyond the window, her cheeks flushed from their run. She was gorgeous in an androgynous, jock girl sort of way, and she clearly didn’t know it.
“Really,” Emma said, and looked down at her menu.
Throughout her visit, there had been small moments like this where she noticed how attractive Jamie was, or how great she was with her family, or how tough she appeared walking around the Bay Area with her shades on and her Adidas warm-up jacket zipped to the top. At those moments, like now, Emma would realize that her feelings definitely blurred the friendship boundary. But they couldn’t. She couldn’t. She lived in Seattle and Jamie lived here and soon they would be on opposite coasts. Besides, Jamie was too young for anything to happen between them, and ther
e may or may not be that pesky secret to worry about.
“Does that creep you out or something?”
Emma glanced up to find Jamie frowning at her, and tried to ignore the fact that serious Jamie was almost even cuter than sweaty, pink-cheeked Jamie. “No. Should it?”
“I guess not.”
Their eyes held, and Emma’s heart rate, which had recovered from their run by now, picked up again. Did Jamie feel it, too? But then the waitress returned, and Jamie locked her eyes on the menu, mumbling that they needed another minute. Shy Jamie was the most adorable incarnation yet, Emma decided. Then she sighed to herself. That kind of thinking was not helpful.
They ordered salmon burgers and french fries and talked five Ks and trail running while they waited for their food to arrive. The restaurant wasn’t as busy as Emma would have expected on such a nice weekend day, so it wasn’t long before Nadine, the flirty server, was back with their food. She brought Jamie another root beer without asking—“on the house”—and ignored Emma almost entirely. When she walked away this time, Jamie smiled sheepishly.
“Okay, so you may be right.”
“Does this happen to you a lot?”
“Free drinks? I thought it happened to everyone.”
Emma laughed. “No, it definitely does not. You’re going to break a lot of hearts when you get a little older, you know that?” She said it mostly to remind herself, not expecting the comment to have much of an effect on Jamie.
But across the table, she shuddered a little and reached for the ketchup bottle. “God, I hope not,” she said, her eyes darkening.
There was that look again, the one Emma had noticed the first time they met, the one that had been missing for most of her visit. Jamie exhaled in an almost but not quite sigh, glanced out at the ocean, and retreated inside herself briefly. Emma wanted to ask what the problem was, wanted to apologize for obviously saying the exact wrong thing. But she only sat still and waited. When Jamie finally looked at her again, she seemed almost back to normal.
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you really swearing off dating until North Carolina?”
Training Ground Page 8
