Water Balloon (15 page)

"Send your parents my best," Jane's mother calls.

I turn and see two people step away from computer desks, so I check and yes, it's my turn.

It would be best not to think now. Not to think about how awful that was. And definitely not to think about how what just happened will translate into my daily life in school. Not to picture the same thing playing out in the hallways over and over and over.

I get online. Finally.

E-mail first. A lot of old stuff from Leah, from before she knew I was computerless. Forwarded jokes from Uncle Stu, Dad's brother. I hate forwarded jokes but save that message to see if there's anything Grace and Faith might like. An e-mail from my cousin in Chicago.

And that is all.

Wow.

Nothing doing on Facebook.

Nothing happening anywhere.

I haven't been missing anything.

And no one has been missing me.

***

I ride my bike home, my body feeling the same supercharged way it did the one time I watched a horror movie.

I have never seen a dead person. But I've read that even if someone just died seconds earlier, they don't look asleep; you can tell that they're dead. Something is gone.

That's exactly how it felt with Jane. There was nothing there. Nothing. My brain has a hard time getting it—we were best friends forever, but now there's nothing. The word
chilling
keeps going through my mind. It's chilling.

At home, I put my bike in the garage and text Leah:

When will u be here?

She doesn't answer. I spend the rest of the afternoon listening to the game with my dad, weed whacking around the bushes, and pulling crabgrass out of the backyard flower garden. When balls at the game are hit foul, I think of Jack and wonder if any are landing near where he's sitting.

"Marley," Dad says as he's gathering up cut-down weeds in his garden-gloved hands. "Tell me why you didn't have a good time with Leah."

I do my own version of his air cough of annoyance.

"And why haven't I been seeing Jane around? Is something going on?"

"I'm not exactly talking to Jane," I say. I get an actual chill down my back when I think about the way she walked right past me in the library, as if I wasn't even there. And then I feel a sickening wave of shame when I realize it's probably not that different from how I always passed poor Elsie Jenkins in her tan windbreaker.

"I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Did I ever tell you about Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth?"

"I'm sure you did," I say. "I wasn't listening."

"Here, take this," he says, handing me a giant trash bag. "Make sure you get all the weeds on that side," he says. "Anyway, they had some little fight over something that really didn't matter, and they didn't talk to each other for six years. Years during which they were teammates, together all the time. They didn't talk until Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day."

I nod my head the whole time he talks—another baseball story. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I say. "When Gehrig gave that echoing speech. I consider myself, -ider myself ... the luckiest man, -uckiest man ... on the face of the earth, -ace of the earth." I've heard this part of the story thousands of times. Lou Gehrig was already sick then. He died a couple of years after that.

"I've always wondered if the Babe and Lou regretted letting that misunderstanding keep them from talking all that time. Six years thrown away, just being mad at each other. That's a waste. Maybe you can work it out," Dad says.

What a Dad thing, a teacher thing. Tell a little story, a fable, a cautionary tale and guide the way to fix a problem.

"It's not that simple," I say. I try to picture Lou Gehrig unleashing water balloons in a surprise blitz or Babe Ruth rudely ignoring Lou in the back hallways of Yankee Stadium, but the image shifts and baseballs are flying out of a bathroom window and into a stadium, and then Jack's there too.
(What? That's the nature of
daydreams and fantasies. They get weird.)
Luckily my father stops talking.

We're listening to the postgame report (because a half-hour pregame and three-hour ball game isn't enough baseball for me! I need to hear it all summarized and analyzed!) when Dad and I finally finish up. "We don't need to bother watering," he says. "Mother Nature will take care of that." I look up and see that the sky is clouding over. He goes into the house.

I text Leah again: When r u coming over?

Why isn't she answering?

Why do I always assume that when she's not with me, she's with Jane?

And why do I feel nearly certain that the only reason Leah spent time with me this weekend was because Jane was too busy for her?

The wind starts blowing hard. Rig and I head inside. I sit on the couch with the newspaper and flip to the entertainment section. I think about seeing a movie later, but who, exactly, would go with me?

Are dogs allowed in theaters?

The wind is really starting to howl now; thin-trunked trees bend like dancers warming up.

Dad's getting-ready noises carry to the living room. I turn on the TV and put the volume up high. I can picture him arranging what he's going to wear. Getting dressed, taking the neat roll of bills and short stack of change from his dresser and placing them in his right front pants pocket. I don't want to witness my dad leaving on his first date since moving out. Is it even a date? I don't want to think about it. I yell into his room, "I'm going outside."

"Isn't it raining?" he asks.

Now it's actually starting to brighten a bit—one of those storms that threatens and then backs off. "I think it blew over. I'll see ya."

Before I get out, he says, "I'll leave you money for dinner, if you want to get something delivered."

"Have a good night."

"Thanks, Marley. I won't be late."

There is something repulsive about that. Shouldn't I be saying that to him?

Before the door has even closed behind me, I can see that there's something all over the lawn. It takes me a few seconds to understand what it is, and then a few more to realize how it got there. The wind from the storm-that-wasn't must have tipped over one of the trash cartons out at the curb. The contents of the old Monopoly box have been blown everywhere. There are yellow hundred-dollar bills in the rosebush. Title deed cards line the curb, some turned upside down, the way you flip them when you have to mortgage the property. I walk around the yard, looking for the box. Some bills are blown a few houses down the street. Treasure Chest cards are clumped together under a tree near the curb. The Monopoly board and the game's three remaining pieces—the hat, the dog, and the shoe—are still in the bottom of the box, which only blew into the gutter, but almost everything else is all over the place.

I put the box back on the pile of cartons and go inside to grab a garbage bag from under the kitchen sink. When I head back out to gather up the pieces, I hear Jack right away: "Did you will me out to help you?"

"How could you be back already? Did you fly home?"

"My brother wanted to leave early to beat the traffic. It sucked. We were out of the stadium in the bottom of the sixth."

"Oh, that does suck."

"When I drive, I will never leave a game early." He looks at me. "So, did you will me out?"

"I didn't think you were home, so no." Not unless you count this morning. Maybe my message was delayed. "But I could use some help."

He starts to pick up the game pieces. "What happened here?"

I bite my lower lip. "Tragic Monopoly accident." I hope for a laugh. I get a smile and a handful of white one-dollar bills. "The wind must have knocked over some of these boxes," I say, tilting my head toward the street, where the stacks of cartons are starting to look a little nasty. "Don't they ever pick up trash around here?"

He shrugs. "There are some weird rules about bulk trash, I think."

"Did you have a good time at least?"

"Pitchers' duel," he says.

"I know. I was listening."

We work side by side, gathering and shoving things in the trash bag.

"You know what we should do?"

"Put my dad's cartons in bags so this doesn't happen again?"

"Close. We should go to a Yankees game together. That would be so cool. Dean was saying he wasn't sure he could go to the next game we have tickets for, so why don't you come with me? It's on ... I can't remember the date. The first Sunday of August. Do you think you can go?"

"I'll ask. Can I let you know?"

"Definitely."

Before I can even start to feel excited or maybe nauseous about the very idea of Jack and me at a game together, just the two of us, he says, "So how was today?"

"All right."

"Your friend seems cool."

It's unlikely that he really kicked me in the stomach with a steel-tipped shoe, but it feels like he did. Why? I don't want him hating my friends. Of course, I don't exactly want him loving my friends either. "It's complicated, I guess. The things we used to do together don't seem like much fun anymore."

"Like what?"

"Like playing Monopoly."

"So you just threw out the game? Harsh." He hands me some cards and says, "Park Place, Saint James, Electric Company."

I think to myself:
Park Place/straighten opponents' money piles; Saint James/do ten jumping jacks; Electric Company/cross eyes and squawk.

"Thanks," I say, taking the cards from his hand and putting them in the trash. "This was just an old one; we threw it out before Leah even came over. I have a new one."

"I've always liked Monopoly," Jack says as he reaches behind a crepe myrtle bush for a stack of pink five-dollarb ills.

"Yeah, me too. The three of us—me and Leah and Jane—used to play this weird way, like it was almost a whole different game."

"Yeah? How'd you play?"

"Long story," I say. "And ancient history. I think."

"Who were you?"

"Marley Baird. Nice to meet you. I still am, by the way. Who might you be?"

"Funny. No, I mean which piece are you?"

"Guess."

"Dog."

"Right. Always. You too?"

"Actually, I'm a racecar kind of guy."

"Leah's always been the hat. Jane was the shoe."

The weight of how all that is in the past now feels like a superstrong gravity, pulling me down. Jack must feel it too, because neither of us can think of a thing to say. "Can I tell you something?" I say, flailing around inside my head, not yet sure which of the many percolating thoughts is going to come out, just desperate to pull us out of the brutal quicksand of social awkwardness we're sinking in.

He shrugs.

"My dad is like going out with the woman whose twins I've been babysitting. That's where he is right now—out to dinner with her. I mean, I know he and my mom aren't together, but they're not exactly divorced either, just separated, and it's just really creeping me out."

He doesn't respond at first. "So wait a minute," he finally says. "Do you mean you're babysitting for your dad's girlfriend's kids?"

"Oh, I ... Huh." Why did I assume this was the first time they were going out? Maybe because my father isn't the biggest jerk, the most manipulative parent alive. And he'd have to be to volunteer his daughter to babysit for his new girlfriend's kids. I stand, tie the Monopoly trash bag up, and walk it to the trash can. "I don't know what to do," I say. I sit on the curb, my feet in the street. Jack sits next to me.

"About what?"

"Everything," I say. It feels like an understatement.

Rig walks over to Jack. He sits next to him and wags his tail expectantly. "Ruh," he says.

"Does he want to walk or something?"

"I think he willed you to say that," I say.

"Do you want to?"

"Leah said she was coming over, but I haven't heard from her, so sure," I say.

We head to the park. The night is getting dark, but the air feels light. The storm-that-wasn't seems to have taken all the humidity with it. The woods on the path are lit up with fireflies, and Rig looks like a stotal paz, chasing them without any success. Jack and I keep laughing at him, all the way to the park and across the soccer fields. And there, in the playground, are Faith and Grace. How's that possible, if their mother is ... But there's Lynne, and there's my dad, pushing Jenna in a carriage. Okay. Sure. Yeah, of course.

Rig runs over before I can turn and run home or hide behind a tree. "Hey! Marley! Jack!" Dad calls, sounding genuinely happy to see us.

"I thought you were going out to dinner," I say. My voice sounds dead.

"Actually," Lynne says, "just dinner at my house. We were trying to tire out the girls so they'd sleep." Why do they need the girls to sleep? I wonder if she cleaned the kitchen. I wonder what he'll think of that chaotic house. Or has he been in there many times before?

My body is struck from two sides.

"Marley Bear!"

"Marley Bear!" Grace wraps her arms around my right leg, and Faith has her arms around my waist. They start jumping up and down while still holding me, like a team greeting the game-winning batter at home plate.

"Hey, you two," I say. "Do you remember my friend Jack?"

"Hi, Jack," Faith says.

Grace peers around my leg to look at him and smile.

"I've been hearing a lot about you," Jack says.

"Really? What did you hear about us?"

"Did you two see my dog?" I ask, trying to pull Faith away from Jack. "This is Rig. Come say hi."

"What did Marley say about us to you?" Faith wants to know.

I will not be able to walk home. Ever. I'm going to need an airlift. An ambulance. Or a bunch of kindly woodland creatures. My dad and Lynne together is just too weird. And way, way too much.

"Have you guys caught any fireflies tonight?" I ask as I try to twist my body gently from Grace's grip.

"I don't like flies," Grace says. "They're gross."

"All kids like fireflies. They're magic, like ... I don't know. Tinkerbell."

And Rig's off again, doing his absurd fly-chasing dance, chomping at the air as he tries to catch one.