Water Balloon (11 page)

Rig starts to whine. "Just wait down there," I tell him. He circles the tree twice, then settles down, his head resting on a small bump of tree root. I think of Rig staring at Beulah the boxer's house. Is that how Jack feels when he's looking at Dad's house? Is he really willing me out or just longing for Will?

It's dirty in the tree house, disintegrated-leaf dirty. It smells like old rot. "What did you guys do up here?"

"Guy stuff," Jack says. My brain has an image, all at once, of little boys playing pirates, on the lookout for land; of baseball cards in a pile; comic books traded back and forth; marbles. What about when they were older?

"Like what kind of guy stuff?"

"I could tell you," Jack says. "Sadly, I'd then have to kill you. Sorry."

"Hmm," I say. "You don't sound sorry."

He shrugs. "Nothing I can do about it. Guy Code secret."

I wonder if Guy Code is anything like our code. I'm pretty sure my friends did not honor the unwritten rules of friendship tonight. Oh, God, no. Tonight.

"So what do you think of the joint?" Jack asks, smiling. I sit down before I can register how weak in the knees I feel. That smile has an effect on me that is not like anything that's come before. I sit down with my back against the wall. Jack sits against the wall to my left. Our sneakers are touching.

My crushes have always been intense, but wholly one-way. With Jack, it feels like there's a possibility that this might be a two-way street. Couldn't he be interested in me too?

I want to ask him,
So are we going to do guy stuff?
but it sounds like a come-on. I wish I could bring myself to brush his arm with a trademarked Leah Stamnick Casual Arm Touch or let my sneakered foot play with his.

"So what's the deal with that camp, anyway? Are you like a counselor? Or—"

"There's no name for what I am. I don't pay to go. They don't pay me. I'm just ... in the middle. I help out. I love it there."

I look up at the wall. There's a poster of the Yankees team from six years ago on one wall, and another listing all their championships next to it. He sees me looking. "Will was a Yankees fan too," he says. "Your house is destined to be occupied by Yankees fans. It has been decreed."

I could just casually mention that maybe I'm not as big a Yankees fan as he thinks I am. But if I like talking about the Yankees with Jack, and I do—I like talking about everything with him—then maybe it's okay?

"Where does Will live now?"

"South Carolina."

"Oh. That's far."

"We thought we'd visit each other a lot, but so far we've talked on the phone a little and done some IMing. I don't know. So what about you?"

"What?"

"You said you had some long story about tonight. About why you're home now instead of with your friends."

"Oh, just this thing."

"What kind of thing?"

"A bad thing."

"Some kind of fight?"

"No, not a fight. I don't know. They had this party with some new friends and ... I don't know. I'm sure it'll be okay." I don't really believe the words I just said. I can't imagine any way this can all work out. But we've always been friends. It never occurred to me that could ever change. Those friendships have been a fact of my life, as true as math. But right now it's turned into an equation I cannot begin to figure out.

"Were they acting like—"

"Jerks? Kind of. Yeah."

"I get pissed when people treat me bad. If you're going to be my friend, you need to always treat me right, you know? I can't stand it when people are jerks. I don't need that."

That's it. I can't say it, but that's exactly it. I do need them. They're my best friends. They've always been my best friends. Tonight, though, he's right. They didn't act that way. I'm sure they think that what I did was even worse.

"It just wasn't a great party," I say. "I didn't know anyone and I sort of felt like a loser."
No. Stop talking, idiot. Do not tell him about the Water Balloon Blitz Disaster.

"So what'd you do?"

"After making a complete fool of myself by throwing water balloons out the window onto the people at the party?"
Marley! Hey, Marley? Shut up!

His face! He's silent-laughing, like he can't believe what I'm saying. "Should I even ask what you did next?"

"I left."

"Well, at least that was smart."

"I guess." I wonder what they said when I left. Do they hate me? I'm not wild about them right now, but it's not like I meant to throw away my two best friends, either.

I hate feeling like a fool. I felt so brave when I was up in that bathroom, in pre-Blitz mode. I wonder if brave and stupid are sometimes a little too close to each other.

Talking about stuff like this with Jack, that takes some courage too. Only I'm not sure how much more of that I have. Or if I should trust my judgment to know when I'm being brave and when I'm being stupid. I'm not at all sure I know the difference.

We're quiet for a while. I don't know if he feels it too, but it's almost as if there are some warm, delicious sparks flying, Fourth of July fireworks in miniature, right here in this tree house.

I wonder what it says about me that I'm more comfortable in a little kids' tree house with a guy I've known for less than a week than I was at a party with my best friends since second grade.

My dad insists that we play tennis before dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the two slow days for his lawn care business. I complain like crazy in the beginning, but the truth is, tennis helps to pass the time. It keeps me from checking my cell phone every other minute. Is it working? Do I have messages? Why don't I have messages? How can this be happening?

I have bad days on the court and good days, like always, but it does seem that the more we play, the fewer bad days there are. On one of the bad days, when I'm gathering up all the balls I've hit into the bushes, I see Leah and Jane out with their Curtain Call friends.

I would have thought that the stunning shock of a pain like this would wane, but it's still raw, like new. Leah's the easiest to spot, as that awful yellow and pink bike would stand out anywhere. Also, she's the only one on a bike, as if everyone decided at once that they don't ride bikes anymore only no one remembered to tell Leah. There's a guy who I think is Sage, and two other girls. It seems as though Jane and Sage are a little off by themselves. I don't know if they see me, but if they do they don't let on.

It keeps getting worse. Or maybe I'm just now realizing how bad it is. What have I done? I didn't know when I left that party that I'd have to give up everything. I can't just let go of all those years, the two best friendships. Every time I'm about to reach for the phone, to check my messages one more time or maybe even to call them, I stop.

I get to the point, finally, when I stop checking messages. I don't even bother charging my phone; it's not like anyone's calling me, and it gets kind of depressing to see that I've missed zero calls.

Jack and I spend more time together. Even when we're not together, I'm thinking about him. A lot. Wondering if he thinks about me.

We talk every morning before he heads out to camp, and he wills me out after work each day. We walk Rig, hang out up in the tree house, and mostly, we talk. We talk about baseball camp and the twins, the Yankees, his parents and mine, and how little we're looking forward to school in the fall.

For him, fall is all about sports, which team he might make. He's nervous about flubbing the tryouts for some new travel team. I make it seem as if my own complete lack of enthusiasm is just about the whole idea of going back to school. That's not really it. I know exactly what I'm anxious about. How do you start school without friends? I wonder if I should go buy my Elsie Jenkins limited edition tan windbreaker now.

I'd probably lie awake each night worrying about it, but my weekdays are a new kind of thoroughly exhausting physical torture. As the twins get to know me more, they want to do more. When I come over, they have lists of all they want to do that day. Lynne says they spend their whole night asking her how to spell words so they can write them down. After three days of "GO 2 PARK" at the top of the list, I get the hint.

Lynne drops us in the parking lot behind the playground. "What time would you like me to pick you up, Marley? I'd like to let the baby sleep a bit. Is one thirty too late?"

"That's fine," I say.

"Let's eat first!" Grace says.

"Dessert first!" Faith says. "Kwee have dessert, Marley?"

"No. We're going to play in the playground for a while, and then we'll have a picnic lunch."

"A picnic?"

"Yes."

"I love picnics."

"Excellent."

And then, at the same instant, like twin bunnies, they take off toward the swings. "Marley! Marley! Push me!" Grace calls.

I walk behind the swings and push Grace. I'm about to push Faith too, but she screams. "Don't! I'm pumping!"

She's a good pumper, too. It took me a long time to get the hang of pumping—I thought it was just a leg-motion thing. Watching Faith, I see the way she works her whole body and gets the swing rocking higher and higher. Grace bends her legs out/in, out/in, but she doesn't gain any height from it. I give her big pushes.

The girls are calm, concentrating on getting higher, higher. In the quiet I catch the metallic sound of a bat hitting a ball, over and over.

"Push me higher, Marley!" Grace reaches out with her legs, trying to pump. "Higher!"

"You are such a baby, Grace. You always need pushes."

"So what?"

"So you're a baby."

"You are."

Faith is pumping herself even higher than I can push Grace. As Faith's swing nears the top of its frontward arc, she jumps off.

"Whoa," I say, relieved she didn't break her neck. What am I supposed to do if she breaks her neck?

"Bet you couldn't never do that, Baby Grace." Faith takes off to the ladder for the high slide.

Grace is trying not to cry. I push her as high as I can, hoping to cheer her somehow.

I ask, "Do you ever pretend not to hear her? That might really drive her crazy."

"She don't care," Grace says. "Stop me, Marley. I wanna go with Faith now."

I grab the chains and slow the swing. I can't tell if she is really hurt by the things her sister says or if this is just how they are. I'm not even sure it's my business. Shouldn't the parents be dealing with this stuff?

Grace waits until the swing has completely stopped swaying, then steps lightly off. As soon as she hits the ground, though, she is off, racing hard toward her sister.

They meet up at the slide, where they take turns getting up the ladder and then going down the slide a different, goofy way. They do it over and over and over. Down feet-first on their back, headfirst on their side, each trying to outdo the other one for silliness.

I stand on one of the benches to see if I can glimpse the baseball fields from here, but there are too many trees in the way. I sit back and try to pick sounds out. It's impossible, aside from the odd
ping
and general loud shouts. The twins are laughing loud, and the baseball field is too far away.

Faith starts climbing up the slide when Grace is about to go down, and Grace, without a word, starts crying.

"Faith, come on," I say. "You know you go
up
the ladder and
down
the slide."

She gets this look on her face that I've learned the meaning of. If five-year-olds had a good cursing vocabulary, this look would translate to one of the worst words. She just sits in the middle of the slide, one foot touching each side. She is not moving.

Grace decides to go down anyway, and she picks up some speed before banging into her sister. They tumble off at the bottom, hands and feet all tangled. I hear Grace's high-pitched yelp and race over.

They look at me at the same time. Grace's eyes are still red from crying, but I can see now that she's laughing. "Kwee do that again, Marley Bear?"

"No. Try to come up with some different way to nearly kill each other."

"Okay."

Faith runs to the monkey bars and effortlessly walks her way, hand over hand, across the length. Grace tries to follow, but her hands can't hang on; she's down on the ground after two bars.

The minute Grace clears out from underneath, Faith races across again, this time stopping in the middle to put her feet to the bar, an upside-down bridge. Then she drops her legs back down and makes her way across, hand over hand.

I can see Grace's frustration. She looks like she's going to walk over to Faith and kick her or pull her hair out of her head. "Anybody want to take a walk before our picnic?" I say in a ridiculous Mary Poppins voice.

"Walks are boring."

"I don't want to."

"If you take a short walk with me, I'll let you eat your dessert first when we get back."

"'Kay," Grace says.

Faith steps to my side and puts a hand in mine. "Walks are great," she says.

"Let's see what's on the other side of those tennis courts," I say. "Maybe there's something interesting."

"Haven't you never been there?" Grace asks.

"I don't think so. Have you?"

"We been all over this park. Our daddy took us here," Faith says.

Grace adds, "He used to."

"Yeah?"

"We'd ride our bikes sometimes. Tricycles and training wheels. And I'm ready for my training wheels to come off, but Mommy says—"

"I know, Faith."

"Mommy says that even when we were little babies, they'd take us for rides here," Grace says. "They had little seats they put on their bikes so they could ride us around. We'd just sit there. I think it must have been fun, getting riddened all around with someone else doing the riding. I'm so hungry, Marley. Kwee go back for dessert now?"

"We just started walking. Let's keep going until we can see what they're doing over there. It sounds like there's a lot of kids playing."

Actually, it's gone quiet. It must be lunchtime or something. I wonder what kind of lunch was in Jack's swinging baseball bag this morning.