We sat there studiously ignoring each other until it was our turn to present.
“Yo presento Cassidy,” I said, and Charlotte giggled loudly.
Mrs. Martin frowned.
“Butch Cassidy,” Charlotte stage-whispered, sending Jill into muffled hysterics.
I knew what Charlotte could be like, and the last thing Cassidy needed was to become the new object of her torture. So I made up a boring story about how Cassidy’s favorite subject was English and that she liked to dance ballet and had a younger brother who played soccer. I did her a favor, making her forgettable, rather than giving Charlotte further ammunition. But clearly Cassidy didn’t see it that way, because, after I finished, she grinned evilly, pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, and calmly told the class: This is Ezra. He was the prom king and he’s the best tennis player in the whole school.
5
WHEN I GOT home, I changed into a pair of sport shorts and stretched out on a pool chair in the backyard. The cushion was dusty, and as I listened to the water lap against the landscaped rocks that made up our fake waterfall, I tried to remember the last time anyone had actually used the pool. The sun was hot on my chest, and so bright that I could barely read the instructions in my Spanish exercise book.
“Ezra, what are you doing?” my mom shrilled, startling me.
I rolled over and squinted toward the house, where she hovered behind the screen door, carrying a yoga mat.
“I’m coming in, all right?” I called back.
“What were you thinking?” Mom asked gently as I joined her in the kitchen. She was still in her yoga clothes, which made her look a lot younger than forty-seven.
I shrugged. “I thought I could get a tan. I’m too pale.”
“Oh, honey.” She took a carton of lemonade out of the fridge and poured us each a glass. “You know you’re supposed to stay out of direct sunlight.”
I grunted and took a sip of the lemonade, which tasted awful. Everything my mom bought was healthy, which meant that it was helpfully missing at least one key ingredient, such as gluten, sugar, or flavor.
She was right though, about the sunlight thing. I was still on painkillers from my last knee surgery and one of the more delightful side effects was increased sensitivity to sunlight. After twenty minutes in the backyard, I was a bit dizzy, but I wasn’t about to admit it.
“How was school?” She frowned at me, the picture of concern.
Quietly humiliating, I thought.
“Fine,” I said.
“Did anything interesting happen?” she pressed.
I thought about how I’d gotten kicked out of the pep rally over a hypothetical nicotine patch (incidentally, I’d never even tried a cigarette), and about Coach A’s nightmarish AP Euro class. I thought about the new girl, a world away from the disappearing strawberry fields and man-made lake of Eastwood, perched on a gothic rooftop in her funny old clothes, strumming a guitar as she stared out at the bell towers and cobblestones.
“Not really,” I said, and then I pretended that I was tired and went upstairs.
OUR HOUSE IS a monstrosity. Six bedrooms and a “bonus room,” all painted the same calming shade of free-range eggshell. It looks like one of those models you walk through in the future subdivisions, full of generically bland showroom furniture, the kind of house that you can’t imagine anyone actually living in. We moved in when I was eight, an “upgrade” from an older gated community on the other side of the loop. A year later, we inherited Cooper, my mad aunt’s massive poodle, when she got remarried and moved into a luxury condo that didn’t allow large pets.
Cooper was a standard poodle, the kind that look like furry black giraffes. I used to take him for walks when I was a kid, riding my Razor scooter while he pulled me up and down the streets. I snuck him into my bed when I had nightmares, even though he was supposed to sleep in the downstairs laundry room. He was about eight years old when we got him, and you could tell he considered himself terribly elegant, a regular lord of the manor. All right, I’ll admit it: I loved that crazy dog, and the way his fur smelled like popcorn, and how his eyes gave the impression that he understood everything you said.
He was waiting for me in my room, curled up at the foot of my bed with his nose on the copy of The Great Gatsby I’d been thumbing through the night before.
How about a walk, old sport? His eyes seemed to ask.
I sat next to him and patted his head. “Sorry,” I said.
And I swear he nodded sagely before settling back down on top of Mom’s old paperback of Gatsby. He just about broke my heart, Cooper. I wanted to grab his leash and take him for our usual jog around the neighborhood, culminating in a full-out race down the steep hiking trail at the end of Crescent Vista. And the thought of how long it had been since we’d done that, and how I’d never be able to take him for a jog again, hit me full force.
I turned on the same Bob Dylan playlist I’d been moping to all summer and lay down on top of the duvet. I wasn’t exactly crying, but it hurt like hell to swallow. I stayed like that for a while, listening to that fantastically depressing old music with the blinds closed and trying to convince myself that what I really wanted was my old life back. But I’d felt completely hollow that afternoon, sitting there in Spanish with the old crew talking about nothing, about lunch. It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.
I’D MOSTLY GOTTEN it together when Mom called me to dinner through the intercom at precisely six thirty. She’d cooked salmon with quinoa and kale, and not to sound ungrateful or anything, but my father and I would have preferred pizza. But we didn’t say anything. You never can, to my mom.
I look a lot like my dad. Same dark curls, although his are gray at the temples. Same blue eyes and slightly cleft chin. He’s six one, though, so he has me beat by two inches. He’s one of those buddy-buddy corporate lawyers who donates a mint to his old college fraternity. Booming laugh, always smells like Listerine, played tennis once, plays golf now. You know the type.
He kept glancing over his shoulder at dinner, either expecting—or maybe hoping for—the phone to ring. Dad keeps a home office, so he can get work done before and after he comes home from his actual office. He claims it’s because New York is three hours ahead and sometimes he has to take a conference call at six in the morning, but really, it’s because he wants us to see how important he is, that he can’t ever be away from his files and fax machine.
My parents quietly discussed what to do about the neighbor’s tree branches that hung over into our backyard, and then the phone in my father’s office rang. The call went to voice mail, the familiar notes riffing through his answering machine. Dad dashed for the phone.
“Stop calling, you little bastard,” he roared.
Mom pursed her lips and ate another mouthful of quinoa, but I nearly died laughing. When my father had his office line installed, he must’ve pissed off the telephone company, because they gave him a real gem of a number. Do you remember the first time you figured out that you could play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by dialing a certain combination of tones on the keypad? That combination just so happens to ring my father’s home office.