When We Were Us (Keeping Score, #1) (2 page)

I guess it wasn’t really how he talked so much as what he said.  Jesse’s mom said once that Nat didn’t have a filter.  For a while I thought that meant there was something else that was wrong with him from when he was born, but then my mother explained that it meant that Nat just said whatever he thought. 

“I thought that was telling the truth,” I said. 

My mother sighed and thought for a minute.  “Abby, if I asked you how I looked in my new dress, what would you say?”

This was easy.  “I would say you looked pretty.”

“Okay, thanks, but what if I didn’t?  What if it made me look fat or something?”  At the look on my face, my mother laughed.  “That’s what I mean.  See, you’re trying to think about how you can tell the truth and not hurt my feelings, right?”

I nodded.

“All right then.  Nat doesn’t understand that.  He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but he just says whatever he thinks or feels, without considering how it might make other people feel.”

And in pre-k, there were probably lots of kids who didn’t worry too much about how other people felt, but it was really bad with Nat.  He would tell the teacher about every mistake she made.  He told the other children they couldn’t read well or counted wrong or didn’t know how to tie their shoes.  It was never mean-spirited, it was just matter of fact Nat.

As we went through school, Jesse and I tried to gently tell Nat that he couldn’t share every thought that came into his mind the minute he thought it.  He never understood, although I think he learned to tone it down a little.  Sometimes Jesse or I would give him a look, and he would realize he was going too far.

By the end of pre-k, though, everyone knew and accepted Nat.  No one ever picked on him or called him names.  That lasted through fourth grade, until we changed schools and moved over to Herbert Andrews Elementary.  On the first day, as I walked onto the playground, I saw Nat in the middle of a bunch of bigger kids, and it didn’t look like they were planning a game of tag. Nat was doing his swaying thing, which he only does when he’s really nervous.  No one else really notices it, but I knew what it meant.

Right before I took off to help him, I saw Jesse.  He was standing between me and Nat, and I knew he saw what was happening.  But before I could really wonder why he wasn’t doing anything, I saw one of the boys shove Nat.  He almost went down.  And if he went down, I knew it wouldn’t be good.

So I sprinted across the playground.  At Marian Johnson, the playground was a dusty field.  But here at HA, the whole thing was asphalt, painted here and there with maps and other pictures I guess people thought were educational.  All I knew was that I wanted to get to Nat before those kids knocked him onto that hard concrete.  And I made it.  I didn’t plan how I was going to stop them.  They were all much bigger than me, and I never was any good at that kind of fighting anyway.  Jesse always says I use my words better than he uses his fists.  I wasn’t sure my words were going to make much difference here, but I guess they did something, because the boys backed down.

After they were gone, I expected. . well, I don’t know what I expected.  I guess maybe I thought Nat might say thanks.  And maybe Jesse would think I had done a good thing.  But they both acted like I was the one who’d almost beat up our best friend.  And I think Nat was actually mad at me. 

Things didn’t get any better for Nat the rest of the year.  We were dealing with more than just the kids who had always been in our class; now we were at the bottom of the school ladder.  Fifth graders overall were easy pickings for the older kids, and Nat was an especially easy target.

But what really made things hard was what happened with Jesse.  As the year went on, it seemed like Jesse was moving farther away from Nat and me.  He didn’t always hang out with us on the playground in the mornings.  He ate lunch with us, but then afterward he would sometimes go off with other boys and run around, play whatever game they put together.  Nat and I sat on the bottom rungs of the monkey bars or on swings if we could get to them before they were all taken.  We talked about school and about our families. 

It was cool, and mostly I didn’t mind hanging out with Nat.  He listened to me, and he didn’t think what I said was silly.  And I liked hearing him talk about the stuff he was reading, his latest visits to the doctors and what he learned there, and about his mom and dad.  But sometimes I would look out at the other kids, running and climbing and playing, and I would want to be a part of that.  I didn’t understand how Jesse could just leave us there, but at the same time, I wished sometimes that I were out there playing with the rest of our classmates, too. 

If Nat knew what I was I thinking, he never said anything.  Which of course makes me think he didn’t know, because as I said, Nat didn’t hold anything back, especially with Jesse and me.  Even after he learned to stop saying everything that crossed his mind in front of other people, he always told Jesse and me what he thought.  I guess I was pretty good at hiding how I felt.  And Nat never said anything bad about Jesse either, even though sometimes I saw his eyes follow whatever game everyone else was playing.

One day toward the end of the year, Nat missed a whole day of school.  That was pretty unusual; not that he didn’t have a ton of doctors’ appointments and stuff, but his mom always made sure to make them either first thing in the morning, so he got to school before lunch, or right after school.  He didn’t want to miss any classes he didn’t absolutely have to, because he almost always got sick at some point in the school year and had mountains of work to make up.  So he avoided missing any days that weren’t absolutely necessary. 

In fifth grade, though, Nat was amazingly healthy.  He was in school every day until that day in late April, when he had to go for a day of tests at the children’s hospital in Philadelphia.  He didn’t want to go, and he was grumpy the whole day before, even though I promised I would get all of his work and bring it over as soon as he got home that afternoon. 

That morning, Jesse was waiting for me at the bicycle rack. 

“Hey.”

I brushed my hair back out of my face.  It was curly and long and always in my way.  “Hey,” I answered.  “Nat’s not going to be here today.”

Jesse frowned.  “He sick?”

I shook my head.  “No.  Tests, doctors appointments, you know.”

Jesse nodded.  “Yeah.  So. . .we’re going to play kick ball at lunch.  You wanna be on my team?”

I thought for a minute about Nat.  I almost felt guilty for wanting to play kick ball, like I was being disloyal to him.  But then I thought about all those days of sitting on the swing watching the rest of the school play. 

“Sure,” I said to Jesse.  “I’ll play.”

Chapter 3—Nathan

My first clear memory is of Abby and Jesse.  We were at my house, because that was almost always where our mothers met in those days.  Our house had everything I needed in it, all my medicine and my nebulizer, and there were ramps so that I could get around with my walker. 

We were standing at my train table, which was my favorite place to play in those days.  Trains were my obsession.  Whenever I heard the whistle in the distance, I demanded that my mother take me to the crossing that was a couple of miles from our house.  Sometimes she would, if we were going out anyway or if she were feeling especially guilty.  But mostly she would tell me to go play with my own trains. 

In those days, these were the chunky plastic toys that I could easily move and run around the tracks.  Later, when my fine motor skills had improved, my grandparents bought me a more sophisticated set.  But it’s the first set that I remember so well with Abby and Jesse.  Playing trains was what we did together.  When they got to my house, they might ask if we could go outside or watch a movie or play with something else, but we always ended up with the trains.  I never thought until much later that maybe they didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.

I was running my favorite blue engine around the outside track when it ran over Jesse’s finger.  He yelped just like my grandmother’s dog did when Grandpa accidentally stepped on its tail, and he pulled back his finger, sticking it in his mouth.  Abby’s face puckered.

“Are you okay, Jesse?” she asked, her voice sweet and high.  I loved the sound of Abby’s voice.

“My finger hurts.”  Jesse spoke around the finger in question, still in his mouth.  I could tell he was trying not to cry.  He wasn’t a crybaby at all, so I guessed it really did hurt.

“Do you want me to get your mommy?” Even then, Abby took care of us.

Jesse shook his head. 

“He shouldn’t have had his finger so close to the track.”  This sounded reasonable to me as I said it.  It was true; the train hadn’t moved to run over Jesse’s finger.  He had put his hand in its way.

“Nat, it wasn’t his fault,” Abby protested.  “It was just an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” I insisted.  “He put his hand down on the track.  He saw the train coming.”

Jesse scowled at me.  “Who cares?  Trains are stupid.”

Abby gasped as though Jesse had just spoken high treason.  She glanced at me, but I didn’t react.  Actually, what Jesse said didn’t matter to me at all, because it was so clearly not true.  Trains could not be stupid.  People could be stupid, but not trains.  Now if he had said that trains had square wheels, I would have argued with him. 

“Jesse, don’t say that.  Nat’s trains are really fun.”

“They’re stupid and I don’t know why we always have to play with them.”

“
You
don’t have to play with them,” I said.  “Abby and I are playing.”

“No, Jesse didn’t mean it, Nat.  We can all play.  Come on, Jesse.”

But Jesse had stomped off into the other room.  Abby watched him go, distress and indecision on her face. 

I resumed playing with my trains as though nothing had happened.  “Abby, you run the red train now.  You can make it go over the bridge and stop at the station.”

Abby obeyed without speaking.  When the red train had stopped at the station, we both loaded the passengers onto it. 

“Jesse and I really like your trains, Nat.  Don’t be sad about what he said.  It was just because his finger got hurt.”

“I’m not sad,” I answered. “Abby, let’s make the trains race.”  We ran the trains alongside of each other, but Abby didn’t say anything else.

A few minutes later, Jesse stuck his head into the room.  He didn’t look at me at all.  “Abby, my mom says we can go outside and play on the swings.  Let’s go.”

Abby took one step away from the train table and then turned back to me.  “Nat, come outside with us.”

I was still absorbed.  “I don’t want to.  I’m playing with my trains.”

“But don’t you want to play with Jesse and me outside?” she persisted.

I shook my head.  “No.  It’s too hot outside.  I want to stay in here.”

“Come
on
, Abby,” Jesse called.  She took another step toward the door.  I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

Finally, she said, “Go on out, Jesse.  I’m going to stay inside with Nat for a while.  Maybe we can go out and play in a little while.” 

Jesse didn’t answer, but a few seconds later we heard the screen door slam.  Jesse’s mom jumped up and yelled at him not to bang the door, and she apologized to my mother, who just laughed.

“He didn’t mean it, Lisa.  That door is so light, I’m always forgetting and letting it slam behind me.”  I heard the edge in her voice, which usually meant that I had done something that made her sad or uncomfortable.  It was the same thing I heard when the doctors were telling us about new tests I had to have or when we talked about my walking.

Abby came back slowly to the train table.  She picked up one of the people waiting to board my blue train, and she turned him over and over in her hand.  As we played, I saw her glance out the window more than once, and I knew she wanted to be outside.  It never occurred to me to say that to her, though.  I was always happier when Abby was playing with me.  I liked Jesse, too; they were both my best friends.  But Abby made me feel special in a good way.  It was like she didn’t see my walker or my spindly arms.  She saw the real me, inside.

Jesse was my friend, too, and usually the three of us hung around together.  But I don’t think Jesse ever understood me the way Abby did until the first day of fifth grade.  That day, standing on the playground with all those boys standing over me, I was scared for the first time in many years.  I wasn’t so much afraid of what they were going to do to me as much as how embarrassing it was going to be, how I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of Abby.  I didn’t know if she was there yet, but I knew she would be soon.  The idea of her seeing me on the ground, dirty and maybe worse, made me sway in nervousness, something that I hadn’t done in a long time. 

But then a bad situation got even worse.  All of a sudden, Abby was right there in the middle of those boys, and she was yelling at them.  She threatened to go get a teacher, and pretty soon they all left.  Then it was just Abby and me.  Before I could say anything to her, Jesse was there with us, and she was yelling at him for not coming to help me.

I knew Abby thought she did the right thing.  She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t thanking her and why Jesse wasn’t praising her.  But she’s a girl.  She couldn’t see that not letting me stand up for myself-no pun intended—made everything worse.

It’s kind of funny that my first memory was of Abby choosing between Jesse and me.  That didn’t really happen again until later, when we started fifth grade.  That year, when Jesse started playing with the other kids at lunch, I knew Abby would rather be running around with all of them instead of sitting on the monkey bars every day with me.  But she never said it, and she never left me.  And I never said she should. 

Maybe it was selfish, but I guess that I felt like my whole life was a little unfair.  Abby made up for some of that.  If it was selfish to want her to stay near me and be my friend, I was okay with that. 

––––––––

C
hapter 4:  Abby

I thought starting over in a new school for fifth grade was hard.  It was nothing compared to moving to the junior high for eighth grade.  At least in fifth grade, we were still kids.  Lunch time on the playground was the most stressful part of the day.  But in junior high, suddenly everyone started breaking off into groups, and there were cool people. . .and then some who weren’t considered so cool.  Some people called them dorks or whatever, but it was really just someone’s opinion.  In eighth grade, there are a very few people whose viewpoints matter.  I wasn’t one of them.