37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order) (2 page)

Colin shoots me a dirty look. I set my books down on the desk next to Abby. Colin has already claimed the one on the other side. I sigh. I love this kid. He’s wonderfully brilliant and equally deranged, but he has a profound weakness: Abby. He can’t resist her, and she knows it.

I grab for the other notebook, temporarily freeing Colin from his chains.

“Hey,” Abby complains. “What gives?”

“Fan yourself,” I tell her.

Colin mops the sweat from his brow. He catches my eye and shrugs one shoulder at me—half grateful and half annoyed.

“Colin doesn’t mind, do you, hon?”

“Of course not,” he pants. “What are friends for?”

*   *   *

COLIN AND I
are the first to reach our lunch table. We sit at the end of one of the long rectangular tables, mostly talking to each other even as the table fills up with the rest of our group. Sometimes Abby sits right next to us; other days she holds court more toward the middle of things. Last year I tried to instigate a move for just the three of us to one of the small round tables nearby, but Abby said those are for the losers without many friends. Colin even came down on my side for a while, saying if we played it right, we could make it a status thing:
Look who’s cool enough to sit at Abby Duncan’s table
. Turns out, what Abby loves is not the exclusivity, but the crowd, and where Abby goes, Colin follows. So we’re back. It doesn’t make much difference to me, in the end. Sitting in silence among friends is better than sitting alone.

I pick at my à la carte salad, watching Colin watch Abby approach us. She stops by the jocks’ table, tossing her perfect caramel hair and smiling in what Colin once called “a kissable way.”

When Mom finally let me straighten my hair last year, I practiced tossing my hair like Abby for hours. I’ve got it down now, but it’s a skill I rarely have the opportunity to use.

Dennis North, the wrestling team captain (talk about the body of a Greek god…), actually stands up to flirt with Abby. She tips back her head as they laugh, and Dennis manages to touch her shoulder, stomach, and ass before the joke has run its course.

Colin toys with his fork. Usually, he’s not one to delay any kind of ingestion.

“You okay?”

He can’t tear his eyes away. “Sure. Yeah.”

We figure Abby to be the second most popular girl in the sophomore class. She’s standing there in a ragged sweatshirt and simple jeans, but every jock at the table is checking her out. She’s that girl.

Abby wants to be everywhere at once, it seems to me sometimes. For Colin and me, there’s nothing to do but wait for her to circle through our midst. He lives for these moments, and it’s written all over his face.

“It’s going to happen one day. Me and her,” Colin declares, plowing into the Salisbury steak on his tray.

“Hmmm.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that Abby doesn’t see him. Not really. Even if he had a chance, it wouldn’t be good for him. He would be trampled, and he’d go down smiling.

“My mom wants to do it,” I tell him. “To end it.”

I surprise myself, blurting it out like that. I hadn’t meant to tell anyone. Not yet.

Colin’s chewing slows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I do feel a bit relieved, having it out there. I tear at my lettuce slowly, still not hungry, but it feels like the breaths I’m taking are deeper. More calm.

It’s funny that it’s Colin I can talk to. We’ve only been friends since mid-freshman year, and Dad had already been in ALF for several months at that point. Colin wasn’t around when the accident happened, doesn’t know the whole story firsthand, only the things I’ve told him. There’s a certain look he gets on his face, though—a look that says he knows what it feels like to hope for something that’s not even remotely in his hands. I see it when he’s thinking about Abby.

“Wow.” He’s paying attention to me now. For the moment, Abby is forgotten. “What are you going to do?” he says.

I shrug. “You got any ideas?”

“Wait and see. Maybe it’ll blow over again.” Colin, the optimist.

I draw my fingers through my hair. “Not this time. It’s different.”

“How do you know?”

“She sat me down to
talk
.”

Colin raises his brows. “And you talked?” Colin knows what it’s like at my house, though I still haven’t told him about the dream.

“No, I kinda stormed out. But she said—”

Abby slaps her tray down across from me. “He didn’t even ask me to the dance. Can you believe it? After all that.” She drops into the chair.

I blink toward her, untangling my mind from my own problems. “What?”

She waves her hand, impatient. “Dennis. God, he’s so dense. I even told him I’m free next Friday, and nothing. Can you
believe
that?” With Abby, there’s always lunchtime drama. Today, I’m really not in the mood. I let my forehead drop into my hands.

“The graduation dance, remember?” Abby persists, prodding me with her fist. “I’m dying for him to ask me. And we have to get you a date, too.”

“We’re sophomores,” I remind her. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Abby rolls her eyes.

“Maybe you should ask
him
out,” Colin offers, picking at his slice of soggy Jell-O cake. I slide my glance toward him. He is the best friend either of us could ask for. Sometimes I don’t know why Abby and I bother with each other.

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” Abby said. “Guys are supposed to chase
me
.”

“He wouldn’t say no, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Colin says, suddenly scarfing the cake. He defends himself with helpful comments. Today, it’s making me sick.

Abby flips her hair. “Of course he wouldn’t say no. That’s not the point.”

“Oh,” Colin says. “Well, anyway, you should be with somebody who gets you.” He moves his tray back and forth in front of him.

“No, I should be with someone
hot
,” Abby says, laughing.

I can’t take it anymore. “If he’s so dense, why do you even care?” I say. “Dennis is a jerk. I don’t know what you see in him anyway.”

Abby rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I push my salad away.

“You don’t know what it’s like. You never go out with anyone.” Ouch. True, but still. My face grows hot.

“I mean, why won’t you at least try to get a date for the dance?” she whines.

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

“Whatever, Ellis.”

I spin the salad bowl round and round. “We were having a
conversation
here, you know. Before you sat down.”

Colin intervenes, T-ing his hands like a referee. “Guys, stop it.” He puts his hand out, touches my arm. “Ellis.”

I jump up from the table. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

Abby’s voice follows me. “What’s her problem?”

I don’t hear what Colin says in response. Maybe he tells her. Maybe he doesn’t. But he’ll say something. Colin will always find words to say to Abby. And even if he knows I need someone right now, he will not come after me.

4

Goldfish Crackers

They remind me of being little. Long before anything changed.

I BUY A PACK
of Goldfish from the snack cart and head out to the courtyard. The problem with storming off from one’s established lunch table is then you have to find another place to sit. Either that or wander around looking too cool to be held in one place or to be seen associating with anyone. I’m fairly sure I can’t pull off the latter.

I take a casual stroll around the yard as if I’m stretching my legs. Most everyone else is seated, so I kinda stand out. I need someone—anyone—I can sit with. Someone slightly less popular than myself, someone I won’t be embarrassed to approach, but not so uncool as to be disreputable. The thing is, there are three or four tables inside where I could easily sit. But as soon as I do, someone will start a round of gossip about why I’m not in my usual seat.

I could just go back. But I know that when Abby’s in the mood she’s in and I’m in the mood I’m in, we always end up in a fight. I know I’m spoiling for something right now, but it really isn’t that.

I tug open the little foil package in my hand. Goldfish were perhaps not an inspired choice for this moment. I savor their light flavor and crunch, but they’re really not the kind of food I can escape into. They make me think of how, when I was a kid, I’d throw them and Dad would try to catch them in his mouth. Then he’d caution me never to try it, because I might choke. He never worried about himself choking. I wonder, did he worry about falling?

The courtyard is pretty quiet, just the hum of cars from the street beyond the building, and a few quiet, wafting conversations. I’m a bit surprised to realize most of the people out here are eating by themselves.

Cara Horton’s sitting high on the concrete steps to the auditorium, alone, a giant sketch pad open on her knees. We used to be friends, Abby and Cara and I, in middle school. We’re still technically friends, I guess. There was no big, dramatic end to things. Cara just drifted away from us. Maybe we never were very good friends in the first place, if something like that could happen.

It seems way weird to go up to her now. After so long. I can’t even remember the last time we spoke, let alone hung out. I know it was sometime after Dad. Cara was with me that week, when it happened. The week of May 10, spring semester of eighth grade. We were all at Abby’s house, painting our toenails, when her mom came in and said I had to get in the car with her and go to the hospital. I remember how we didn’t know yet what was going on, but Abby insisted on coming along. She and Cara threw themselves into the minivan and refused to move, even though her mom said no. I remember their faces, wide-eyed and trying to smile, even though we were all scared, sitting in the waiting room those first few days, holding hands. Then the summer unfolded, and after a while, I was still waiting there, but Abby and Cara were not. Abby resurfaced at some point, I guess. On the first day of high school, she and I went arm in arm, but Cara was gone.

Will she even remember, or care?

At the moment she’s my best bet. I climb the steps.

“Goldfish?” I stick the pack out toward her.

“Huh?” Her eyes are outlined with deep green eye shadow. “Oh, hi, Ellis. No thanks.” She’s working her way through a serious pile of carrot sticks. She’s extracted them from their plastic bag and stacked them like Lincoln Logs on top of it. She crunches on one, looking back at her drawing. I feel like she wants to be left alone.

“Well … sorry to bother you.”

She smiles, lifting her head again. “No bother.”

This is encouraging. “Could I maybe sit down for a minute?”

“With me?”

“Is it okay?” I nod toward the cafeteria. “Just needed to get out of there. Away from … stuff.”

“Yeah?” Cara looks me over. “Yeah. How is ‘stuff’ doing? I heard she broke it off with basketball player number a zillion last week.”

I grin because I can really use some Abby-deprecating humor right now. “The wound has healed. She’s moved on to wrestlers.”

“Naturally.”

I sit down on the steps beside Cara and help myself to one of her carrot sticks. The little smile that touches her lips brightens her whole face.

She bends her head over her notebook again, and I remember that she’s shy. I don’t know how I forgot that.

I look over her shoulder. The work is familiar, but better. Her art is really weird. I always liked it, though. She does these little geometric shapes in all kinds of patterns, like mosaic tiles or M. C. Escher tessellations. She thinks they aren’t really art, but I can picture them in a museum or gallery, or someplace like that. Maybe on fancy greeting cards or T-shirts. Except Cara wouldn’t go in for anything as cheesy as that, I suppose.

“I miss your drawings,” I say, realizing that it’s true. Lately I’m so wrapped up in my head that it’s hard to remember what things were like before I got to feeling so screwed up all the time. Cara makes me remember those easier days, when all we did was laugh and play and Dad always came to pick me up after. I don’t even know how everything changed. It’s like I woke up one day and suddenly there was this weight upon me that I couldn’t shake off. Maybe it started the first time Mom said we were going to have to let Dad … go. Maybe it started when he fell. Maybe it’s always been there. Hovering over me, waiting to come down.

Cara puts her arm around my shoulder, probably because out of nowhere, I am crying. Not loudly or embarrassingly, just a couple of tears leaking down the sides of my face.

She kind of hugs me from the side, leaning over her carrot tower until we are pressed close together. Her head is on my shoulder, and it makes me so glad, more tears come. When she sits up, she watches me with quiet concern.

I scrub at my cheeks. “Sorry, that was totally weird.”

“Nah,” she says.

The warning bell rings. Five minutes to get to our next classes.

“Sorry,” I repeat, leaping to my feet so fast I fear I may have just flung myself down the stairs. I catch my balance, but the stab of terror leaves aftershocks coursing through me. I can’t get away from this feeling, not waking, not dreaming. I shut my eyes and try to pull it together.

I face Cara, and smile as politely and normally as I can. “We should hang out again sometime.”

Cara looks up in alarm. I kind of choke on a laugh because her expression is so utterly desperate.

“Yeah, never mind. You probably think I’m a freak now. Forget it.”

“No, no,” she says. “But just you and me, okay?” She says it in this closed-off way that makes me look back, trying to remember what happened, why we really stopped hanging out. I get nothing.

“Sure. Well, see ya.”

“Ellis?”

I turn back. “Hmm?”

“It’s going to be okay.”

“What is?”

Cara shrugs, half smiles. “Whatever.”

*   *   *

RIGHT AFTER SCHOOL,
I head for ALF. I sit with Dad for an hour, eating Goldfish and not saying much. It’s been the kind of day where I just want to see him. To know that he’s there.

Mom will probably be upset, but I don’t really care. She doesn’t like how much I come here, thinks it isn’t good for me, though she hardly ever comes right out and says it. Instead she bakes cookies and spreads out pamphlets that say things like “letting go is healthy.” Maybe, finally, she will get mad and yell at me, forbid me to come here instead of asking nicely. I’ll refuse, of course, because I’m old enough to do what I want. We’ll have it out, and then I’ll feel better.