“So what do you need, Chris?” She put her hand on my wrist. It felt weird, like when the blood pressure cuff tightens at the doctor’s office, even though she was only touching me with her fingertips.
“I need Amanda.” I had to catch my breath to choke the words out. “She’s my best . . . person. I’d give up”—I gestured to my body, my swan body—“all of this for her. Can I do that? Can you do that?”
“Do what?” Kendra removed her hand from my wrist, and the weird, throbbing, intriguing feeling stopped. “Give up what?” she asked.
“This. Being tall. Being a starter. I don’t care about any of it. It doesn’t matter.”
“How could you give it up?” Kendra looked confused. “Your height is your height. You can’t change it.”
A wind swept by, whipping up dirt and leaves and pebbles. I remembered once Mom took me to this play, a musical called Damn Yankees. She thought I’d like it because it was about sports. I sort of did. It was about this old guy who sold his soul to the devil so he could be young and athletic and lead his favorite team to victory.
Was that what I’d done? Was Kendra the devil? Had I sold my soul to be a few inches taller, to make a team, to be a hero?
I said, “Can’t you put me back the way I was before?”
She said, “I don’t understand what you mean. How could I do that?”
No, she wasn’t the devil, but she was a witch. And no one ever said witches were nice or that they did anyone favors.
She put her hand on my wrist again, and again, I felt weird. I wanted to flinch away, but I didn’t, couldn’t. Instead, I said, “What do I do?”
She said, “Figure out what you really want from Amanda. Then figure out how to get it.”
“Oh, okay. That’s easy.”
“After all these years, it should be.” She took her hand off my arm.
I had no idea what she meant.
So I went to school and went home and did homework and hung out with Sydnie and her friends and played football (well, amazingly well), and I never saw Amanda. She didn’t come to my games.
Until she did. With Darien. She was going out with Darien.
And then I knew the answer to the first question Kendra had put to me: Figure out what you really want from Amanda.
What I wanted was not just to be friends with Amanda. I wouldn’t want to ball Darien up in my hand like a used McDonald’s napkin over a girl I just wanted to be friends with. I loved her. Like, love loved her.
But I didn’t know the answer to the other part: how to get what I wanted. What I needed.
I broke up with Sydnie. It wasn’t fair for me to date her. I tried to be nice about it, but when she screamed that I was just doing it to get out of taking her to homecoming when homecoming was a month away, I was over it. Done. She only liked me because I was a tall, good-looking football player. But I didn’t even know who that was. The guy she liked wasn’t me. In my heart, I was still a short, fat, funny guy who sometimes played football but mostly liked math and sending goofy texts.
Other girls flirted with me, but I didn’t flirt back. I didn’t want anyone else. I knew who I wanted.
I wondered if swans ever looked into the water and wondered who that was, looking back.
Probably not. They were birds. You could only carry a metaphor so far when it involved birds. Birds weren’t really that smart.
I tried to text Amanda, but now she’d blocked my number.
I left a note on her car, begging her to meet me. She ignored it.
I wanted to do more, but when you’re a guy, there’s only so much you can do before you get arrested for stalking.
Then, one day, I came home and my mother was cooking ziti.
Mom never cooked ziti, not anymore. Since my dad left, she’d been on a health kick, lost forty pounds, and pretty much only ate dirt. Or quinoa, as some people called it.
Now she only made ziti when someone died, to take it over to the family. One time, it was a woman from her book club. Another time, my uncle Dave.
So, weirdly, I associated the usually pleasant smell of sausage and onions with death.
I walked up behind her. “Everything okay?”
When she turned, I knew from her face it wasn’t. “Oh, Chris. It’s Tim Lasky. He’s had a heart attack.”
“Tim . . . what . . . is he . . . ?” I looked at the ziti, boiling in the stockpot.
“He’s okay. I mean, he’s going to be okay. I heard from Stacey Rankin, and then I called Amanda. She said he was doing better. He’s in the hospital, though.”
A landline. She’d gotten hold of Amanda on a landline. I’d forgotten such a thing existed. We’d stopped answering our own because it was only robo-calls.
Mom was still talking. “I tried to get her and Casey to come stay with us, but she said they were okay. So I thought maybe you could bring this over there?”
Mr. Lasky. Tim Lasky could have died, and I woudn’t have talked to him in the past four months. Shit.
“Tim’s really okay?” I noticed I was shaking.
Mom nodded. “Yeah, that’s what Amanda said. Can you bring this over there? I know you’re busy.”
“She’s home?”
“I can call and make sure.”