I hadn’t thought about it that way, but he was right. It made me feel good, like I had helped him too.
Leo took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you something before you left.”
“Okay,” I said. “What is it?”
“Um,” he said, and for a minute under the streetlamp in the night I thought he was going to tell me that he liked me.
What would I do if he did?
I liked him too. He was cute. I could picture kissing him. I could picture holding his hand.
“I wanted to say thanks,” Leo said. “I have a lot of friends. You might not think that because you saw Cory and those guys bugging me at the festival. But at school, I do. And at home, I’ve got my family. I feel alone a lot, though. I like things they like, but I also like different things. So when you and I became friends this summer it was great. I feel like we get each other.”
I waited for him to say something more. But he didn’t. Is that all? I wanted to ask. He stood there on the sidewalk and I noticed that he had dust from the tunnels on his black T-shirt.
He smiled at me. I realized that what he’d said was a lot.
“I thought you were going to tell me that you liked me,” I said.
“I do like you,” Leo said.
“I mean, I thought you were going to tell me that you wanted me to be your girlfriend or something.”
“Oh man,” Leo said. He looked embarrassed again.
“A minute ago you told me that you thought I was cute.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “I mean, I do think that. But you’re not my girlfriend. You’re my person.”
I knew right away what he meant.
I thought he was cute and he thought I was cute but it was different than it was when people have crushes.
With Leo I’d fallen into another kind of like. I couldn’t wait to tell him stuff and I loved hearing him laugh at my jokes and I loved laughing at his jokes. He made me feel like I had a spot in the world.
It felt as if Leo and I could like each other all our lives.
So I hugged him.
He was my person too.
11.
I slept in because my room stayed dark for a long time. We’d had to board up the window until we could get a new one installed. I rolled up my blanket and pulled off the sheet to take downstairs. My last set of clean clothes sat out on the dresser.
Through the kitchen windows I saw my mom out in the backyard, wearing work gloves and pulling the smaller branches left over from the big tree cleanup into a pile. The morning was greeny-gold, end-of-summer. Our suitcases and boxes sat in the mudroom, ready to go out into the car.
I went outside to help her.
“I want to get this part of the yard cleaned up,” she said. “Mr. Bishop said he can come and haul the last of the branches away and I don’t want to leave him with too much to do, since he’s already being so nice about it.”
“I snuck out with Leo last night,” I said, pulling some of the sticks into the pile. The grass was dewy and long. I didn’t look at my mom. “We went over to the festival. Meg let us see the tunnels when everyone else was gone. I’m sorry. I know I was grounded. But it was our only chance.” I decided to keep the part about exactly how late we’d been out to myself.
“I guess that’s okay,” Mom said. I glanced over at her in surprise. She shrugged and smiled. “Leo’s been a very good friend. But the next time you break the rules like that there will be big trouble.”
“Okay.”
“So you got to say good-bye.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But we’re going to keep in touch. Write to each other and stuff.”
“Tell him we’ll be back in December,” Mom said. “For the Christmas break. The renters will be gone for the holiday.”
“I will,” I told my mom. “You know who else we should write to? That boy.”
“What boy?” she asked.
“The one who Ben helped,” I said.
Her eyes filled with tears.
The back door opened and Miles came out. “Hey,” he said. “Didn’t you guys hear the doorbell?”
“No,” my mom said. “Who was it?”
“Mrs. Bishop,” Miles said. “She brought this.” He held up a jar of jam. “It’s homemade. She said to tell you guys good-bye and that she’ll keep an eye on the house while we’re gone.”
“That’s nice of her,” Mom said. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
“Where’s the bread?” Miles asked.
“We’re all out,” Mom said. “All we have left is cereal and milk. We can get a hamburger for lunch on the road.”
Miles groaned. “That’s too long.” He went inside and then came back out with the jam and a bowl and a spoon.
“Wait,” I said. “You can’t eat it straight.”
“I can,” said Miles. “Do you want some?”
I looked at the jar. The jam was colored the most beautiful red. It was like bottled rubies, but better, because you could eat it. “Sure,” I said.
“Me too,” said my mom.
“Really?” Miles and I asked at the same time.