And I was consumed by the way that whenever he spoke, his eyes twinkled as if it were the best day of his life. And the way his whole body leaned toward mine when I spoke, a gesture that showed he was interested, he was listening. No one had ever moved their body to face me like that.
The summer sprawled forward, each day more agonizing and wonderful than the last. He began hanging out with Lindsey and my parents, even with Norah, when she was around. He was entering my world. But every time I tried to enter his, Calliope was hostile. Cold. Sometimes she pretended that I wasn’t in the room, sometimes she’d even leave while I was speaking. This was the first time he’d chosen someone over her, and she resented me for it. I was stealing her best friend. I was a threat.
Rather than confront her, we retreated to the safety of my house.
But . . . he still wasn’t making any moves. Lindsey supposed he was waiting for the right moment, something significant. Maybe my birthday. His is exactly one month after mine, also on the twentieth, so he’d always remembered. That morning, I was heartened to see a sign taped to his glass: HAPPY LOLA DAY! WE’RE THE SAME AGE AGAIN!
I leaned out my window. “For a month!”
He appeared with a smile, his hands rubbing together. “It’s a good month.”
“You’ll forget about me when you turn sixteen,” I teased.
“Impossible.” His voice cracked on the word, and it shook my heart.
Andy took over Betsy’s afternoon walk so that we could have complete freedom. Cricket greeted me at the usual time, raising two pizza boxes over his head. I was about to say I was still stuffed from lunch when . . . “Are those empty or full?” My question was sly. I had a feeling this wasn’t about pizza.
He opened up a box and smiled. “Empty.”
“I haven’t been there in years!”
“Same here. Calliope and I were probably with you the last time I went.”
We took off running down the hill, toward the park at the other end of our street—the one that barely counted because it was tiny and sandwiched between two houses—back up another hill, past the spray-painted sign warning NO ADULTS ALLOWED UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY CHILDREN, and to the top of the Seward Street slides.
“Oh God.” I had a jolt of terror. “Were they always this steep?”
Cricket unfolded the boxes and laid them long and greasy side down, one on each narrow concrete slide. “I claim left.”
I sat down on my box. “Sucks to be you. The right side is faster.”
“No way! The left side always wins.”
“Says the guy who hasn’t been here since he was six. Keep your arms tucked in.”
He grinned. “There’s no way I’ve forgotten those scrapes and burns.”
On the count of three, we took off. The slides are short and fast, and we flew to the bottom, holding in our screams so as not to disturb the Seward Witch, the mean old lady who shouted obscenities at people enjoying themselves too loudly and just another reason why the slides were so much fun. Cricket’s feet flew off first, followed quickly by his bottom. He hit the ground with a smack that had us rolling with laughter.
“I think my ass is actually smoking,” he said.
I bit down the obvious comment, that his pants had made this fact abundantly clear in June.
We stayed for half an hour, sharing the slides with two guys in their twenties who were high and a playgroup of moms and preschoolers. We were waiting behind the moms, about to go down for the last time, when I heard snickering. I looked over my shoulder and discovered the arrival of three girls from school. My heart sank.
“Nice dress,” Marta Velazquez said. “Is it your mommy’s?”
I was wearing a vintage polka-dot swing dress—two sizes too large that I’d tightened with safety pins—over a longsleeved striped shirt and jeans rolled greaser-style. I wanted to look pretty for my birthday.
I no longer felt pretty.
Cricket turned around, confused. And then . . . he did something that changed everything. He stepped deliberately in front of them and blocked my view. “Don’t listen to them. I like how you dress.”
He liked me just as I was.
I sat down quietly on my pizza box. “It’s our turn.”
But what I ached to say was, I need you.
On the walk home, he had me joking and laughing about the people who’d tormented me for years. I finally realized how absurd it was that I’d worried so much about what my classmates thought about me. It’s not like I wanted to look like them.
“Cricket!” Andy said, when he saw us approaching. “You’re coming over for the birthday dinner, right?”
I looked at Cricket hopefully. He put his hands in his pockets. “Sure.”
It was simple and perfect. My only guests were Nathan, Andy, Lindsey, and Cricket. We ate Margherita pizza, followed by an extravagant cake shaped like a crown. I ate the first piece, Cricket ate the biggest. Afterward, I walked my friends outside. Lindsey gave me a nudge in the back and disappeared.
Cricket shuffled his feet. “I’m not great with gifts.”