At the tideline, Cass halts and Em echoes him, digging his toes into the wet sand. For about five minutes, Cass does nothing, just lets the waves wash over their feet. Then he reaches forward, placing one of the cars a little way out in the water.
“Can you get down now on all fours and reach this?” All his attention is on the little boy, as though he’s forgotten I’m there.
It reminds me of the way he is at swim meets, turned inward, concentrating completely on the task at hand.
Maybe that’s it. It’s not weird between us. He’s concentrating.
Which is what I want. It’s not as though I’d like Cass focused on me while Em sinks below the waves. Exactly the way I did with him.
For forty-five minutes the game continues. Each car is a little farther out in the water. Cass lies on his stomach. “Can you do like me?”
Emory obeys without question or hesitation. I’m worry-ing because the slight waves are slapping closer to his face and Em hates that—always yells when we scrub his face in the bathtub.
“Okay now. Last rescue. You do it one-handed. You hold your nose like this to keep the water out and reach far. If you get a little wet, just squeeze your nose tighter and keep reaching. But you have to close your eyes while I put out the last thing.”
Em’s eyelashes flutter shut, his fingers pinching his nose.
Cass drops something into the water about ten inches out and smack, a wave slaps right across my brother’s lowered face. I jump up from where I’d been sitting, wait for the howl of outrage and terror. But all I see is a flash of red and blue
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clutched tightly in Emory’s hand, held aloft triumphantly, and the smile on his face.
“Way to go, buddy. You saved Superman.” Cass straightens up, then raises his hand for a high five. Em knows those from Nic, so he presses his hand against Cass’s, then scrambles over to me, waving his treasure.
It’s one of those plastic Superman action figures with a red cape and the blue tights, a little worn, some of the paint scraped off the manly square features. But Em doesn’t care. He carefully traces the S on the chest, his lips parted in awe, as though this is a miniaturized live version of his hero.
“How ’bout another try in a few days? Maybe we could do this twice a week. It’s better if the gap between lessons isn’t too big,” Cass tells me, putting an elbow behind his head and stretching, like he’s getting the kinks out.
Em has extended Superman’s arms and is flying him through the air, his face lit with joy.
“That’d be great! Fantastic.”
I sound way too enthusiastic. “I mean . . . Fine. It would be fine. Emory would like that.”
It’s all about Emory, after all.
Silence.
More silence.
Cass bends down and starts carefully restoring the Matchbox cars to his backpack, drying them first with the (yes, pink-ish) towel around his neck “Okay then,” I say. “I should get him home. He’s probably tired.”
Cass makes one of those noises like “Mmmph.”
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“Thanks for the lesson, Cass.”
“No problem.”
“?”
“—”
“It’s really hot today.”
“Yep.” Sound of bag zipping.
“How was the water?”
“Ask Emory.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Subjective question,” Cass says, standing up, one-shouldering the backpack, and finally venturing beyond monosyllables.
“Mom and Jake are like me. We can swim in anything, no matter how cold. Bill and my dad are wimps. They wait till, like, the beginning of June.” He says this last with complete disgust.
“No Polar Bear Plunges for them, huh?”
Ack, shouldn’t have mentioned that. But . . . jackpot. Eye contact. Completely untranslatable eye contact, but hey.
I do the elbow-behind-head stretch thing he did earlier. Two can play at the “I-just-need-to stretch-my-muscles” game. But Cass is not looking at me, plowing his foot through the sand.
Emory pulls on the bottom of my shirt. “Cookieth,” he sug-gests. “Cookie. Then Dora Explora. Then bath. Then story. More story. Pooh Song. Then bed.”
Guess I’ve got my itinerary laid out for me.
Nic’s hardly been home one single evening since school let out. Mom’s picked up an office building in town that she cleans two nights a week. Grandpa Ben has the bingo and Mass and the St. Anthony of Padua Social Club.
I take off my shirt.
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Cass doesn’t fall over like Danny Zuko when Sandy appears in head-to-toe spandex at the end of Grease. Thank God, right, because I’ve always hated that scene. Great message: When all else fails, show some skin and reduce the boys to slobbering, quiver-ing messes.
He doesn’t even seem to notice. Just stands there, very still, jaw clenched, looking out at the water.
Okay, I didn’t want it to be all about my body or even mostly about my body, but hello.
I shake my hair over my face. “Okay, Em, let’s hit the road.”
I bend down to let him clamber onto my back and perform his trademark chokehold on my trachea. Which is handy because it means I don’t have to say an additional “good-bye and thank you” to Indifferent Boy. Or wonder why my throat hurts.
Emory’s mesmerized by Peter Pan. I’m wondering what’s up with Tinker Bell and her jealousy issues. It’s not like anything was ever going to work out between them. She’s three inches tall and he’s committed to never hitting puberty.
Speaking of never, why is there never anything to eat in our house except Nic’s Whey Protein Isolate Dietary Supplement powder (“Guaranteed to Bulk You Up”), Mom’s freezer-burned Stouffer’s lasagna, Grandpa’s fish, shellfish, linguica, and pile of farmer’s market vegetables, and Em’s favorite foods—ketchup, Cap’n Crunch, eggs, frozen French fries, bananas, pasta, more ketchup?
Why don’t I have any representation in the cabinets and refrigerator? There isn’t even any sugar or flour . . . and absolutely nothing left over from my baking spree.
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Mostly, I acknowledge, because I really don’t care. I love food, but shopping for it is one chore that Mom and Grandpa and Nic do that I am happy to hand over to them.
But that means there’s nothing to drown my sorrows in.
I mean, sure, I like vegetables, but who sits on the couch in their robe and eats half a dozen pickling cucumbers and a tomato?
Grandpa chuckles at the rapt expression on Emory’s face as Peter Pan duels with Captain Hook. He scrapes the bottom of his grapefruit clean and prepares to fill it with Raisin Bran.
“Girls talk too much,” Peter complains on screen.
“You think so, Peter? Maybe that’s because boys never explain,” I say back. “So we have to talk because they’re too busy being idiots who give us the silent treatment.”
Grandpa shoots me an amused look. Then he grins in that same “those young people and their silly antics” way Mrs.
Ellington did.
I stomp into my room, throw myself face-first on my bed.
Which really isn’t built for that particular cliché and shud-ders under me, letting out a squawk. Next thing you know I’ll be sliding down the wall of our shower, sobbing and singing depressing pop songs into my shampoo bottle.
I scrub my face with my hands. Maybe Spence Channing has the right idea. Maybe “just sex” is the safest way to go. Because these . . . feelings . . . hurt. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought, but I felt like something had changed. That Cass and I had finally moved beyond . . . well, just beyond. Whether it was smart or not.
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