I smiled back and shook my head. “I never win anything.”
He cocked his head. “Well, I don’t know about that. You look like a winner to me.” He winked and turned to address the horde of kids who’d assembled around the table, laughing and pushing and eyeing the snack cakes piled on the table. Behind us, all the parents gathered to watch and take pictures and cheer their kids on. I knew better than to look for my mom. She was sitting in a hospital room, and though I wished she could be here, I understood she was where she needed to be.
The lump in my throat grew, and I swallowed a few times, trying to make it go away. I caught the man’s eye, and he nodded. He believed I could win this contest, and that counted more than he knew. I looked down at the lone snack cake sitting on my plate and swallowed a few more times, willing the lump to go down enough for me to swallow around it. There was no reason I couldn’t win this. I would do it for Cutter. Maybe if I won he’d open his eyes. Maybe I could still somehow make everything OK.
When the whistle blew, I dove into that cake, inhaling it without even really chewing. I could feel the barely chewed cake collecting in my esophagus (thank you, fourth-grade health class) as I inhaled snack cake after snack cake. The spongy, thick mass seemed to swell and it hurt, but I welcomed the pain. Deserved it. I thought of Cutter’s damaged lungs. I kept eating and swallowing, adding to the mass until it felt like I would choke to death.
The world fell away, and it was just me, the plate in front of me, and the cakes as they came and went. I didn’t think of Pilar and Lilah, also trying to win the contest. I didn’t think of Zell, snapping pictures of a kid who wasn’t hers. I didn’t think of my mother, who wouldn’t be there to see if I won. I just thought of Cutter, of him getting better, and that somehow I was making that possible in this moment, eating snack cakes on the Fourth of July at the same pool where he nearly died.
I heard a whistle blow and felt someone tug my arm into the air. The man looked down at me, my arm aloft as I struggled to swallow what was in my mouth. “Water,” I managed to gasp, and he handed me a water bottle as if he’d known I was going to ask.
“You won,” he said. “I told you that you would.” I didn’t answer him. I was too busy gulping the water, thinking as I did how weird it was that something that nearly killed my brother could also be the thing that was saving me.
ZELL
Zell watched as James handed Cailey her trophy for winning the pie-eating contest. (She didn’t know why they called it a pie-eating contest, as the kids weren’t really eating pies—they were eating Little Debbie Snack Cakes. But that’s what it had been called for as long as she could remember. And who was she to call attention to it?) She’d been surprised by Cailey’s fierceness, the way she tore into those little cakes one after the other, her body hunkered over the plate, her intensity visible.
James gave Cailey a hug that went on a second too long, if you asked Zell—not so much that anyone would notice it, but enough that Zell felt her guard go up. She’d known James since his family had moved in. He’d been attending college then, coming and going like young men do, not really connected to his family or the neighborhood. But in his senior year of college, his father had suddenly dropped dead. James had quit school and come home to assume his role as man of the house: earning a living, mowing the grass, and chasing after his mentally delayed brother, Jesse, when he got loose. Living across the street from the Doyles, Zell could attest to the orderly way James kept up the house, to his comings and goings from whatever job he held, and the way he cared for both his mother (who had dementia and was little more than a shell of a woman anymore) and Jesse. She was sure it wasn’t an easy life for him, and she did feel sorry for him at times. But . . .
One time she caught him outside her daughter Melanie’s window trying to look in. At first she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, and she stood and watched for just a moment, wondering what was happening. It took her mind a second to catch up, to register that she was witnessing a Peeping Tom in action. She hollered out his name, “James!” and he turned toward her voice with a look of horror and guilt on his face. “What are you doing?”
She marched over to him. He began backing away, and before she could get to him, he broke out in a run. She hollered at his retreating figure, disappearing in the gathering dark. “I better not catch you around here again!” She’d stood there for a moment, listening to her heart pounding as she caught her breath enough to go back inside. She watched as a light went on in the Doyles’ house, signifying James’s successful escape.
The next day, after double-checking the locks on Melanie’s window, she went outside to see if he’d left footprints, debating whether she should call the police and report him. It was in looking for the footprints that she saw a soccer ball, and remembered that Jesse had been in the front yard kicking a soccer ball as far as it could go just before she found James by the window. One of her sons had remarked that it was too bad Jesse was mentally delayed because he sure could kick the hell out of a soccer ball. She’d picked up the soccer ball and carried it to the Doyles’ front porch. She left it there for Jesse, but she never apologized to James for accusing him. She still wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Now, watching him hug Cailey, those same concerns returned.
Cailey skipped over to her, holding her trophy aloft. “I won, Zell!” she crowed, and Zell clapped her hands together, managing, she hoped, to look happy and not concerned.
“That is just amazing, Cailey! I mean I’ve seen you chow down, but never quite like that.”
Cailey grinned, her first real smile of the day. “I can’t wait to show it to Cutter.” She inspected her trophy. Then quieter, she added, “I’m going to tell him I won it for him.”
“I think that’s a great idea.” Cailey handed over the trophy, and Zell tucked it into her beach bag for safekeeping.
Cailey dug into the cooler for a water and took a long pull from it. “I’m so thirsty. I can still feel that cake stuck in my throat.” She took another drink.
“I saw you met Mr. Doyle,” Zell said.
“You mean the guy doing the contest?” Cailey asked. “The one who lives across the street?”
“Yes, I’ve known him a long time.” Zell weighed her words carefully.
Cailey thought about it. “His mom’s in a wheelchair. I’ve seen him push her around. What’s wrong with his brother?”
“Well, now, I don’t rightly know. That family has just had its share of hardships.”
Cailey looked thoughtful again. “Kind of like mine,” she said.
It was not the direction Zell had wanted this to go. She didn’t want Cailey identifying with James, sympathizing with him. “I guess you could say that,” she said. “But he’s a lot older than you. He’s an adult, and he’s got adult problems,” she added.
Cailey gave her a “duh” look. “I know,” she said.
“Well, I just saw him talking to you, and I wanted to make sure you knew that he is not really someone I’d want you to . . .” She had run out of words.
Cailey raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”
Zell waved her hand in the air. “I’m just being silly. Worrying like old ladies do.”
Pilar called to Cailey, and she hopped up from the chair. “I’m gonna go swim,” she said, already forgetting Zell’s warning.
“Sure thing,” Zell said, relieved that the conversation was over. But before Cailey could walk away, she called out to her. “Just don’t ever go in his house, OK?”
Cailey gave her a quizzical look. “Like I ever would,” she said, then shook her head and scampered away.
EVERETT