“I brought your sneakers.” Matt held them up, wiping his eyes with his arm.
I took them. “Thanks. I’ll put them on for the run home. Want to come with me?”
“Nah, I’m going over Brittney’s.”
I nodded and took off again.
When I reached the Laskys’ a few minutes later, Amanda was already at the door.
“Hey, your mom told me you were on your way over.” She looked down at my feet, which were covered in dirt and leaves, but made no comment.
I wondered if Mom had told her why, but I didn’t want to ask.
“I was just about to call you, actually, to see if you wanted to go to the batting cages.”
I knew Mom had told her then. We never did stuff like that on weeknights, and she seldom went to the batting cages with me during the season. There were already a ton of practices. She probably thought I needed to hit something.
I said, “I’d rather go to the playground.”
She smiled. The playground at the elementary school was our happy place. Unlike the park playground, which was always packed with moms who looked at us weird for swinging on swings, the school playground was empty at night. We knew how to get in through a crack in the fence. It reminded me of the old days of Chris and Amanda, playground buddies.
“Are we running there?” she asked.
My feet were actually throbbing. “Can we walk?”
“Good idea.”
The night air was cooler now, but still, I was sweating. The moon was a sliver, and the sky was bright with stars. We snuck through the fence and started swinging.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Amanda said.
I said, “Don’t get me started.”
Don’t Get Me Started was a game we’d play where one of us would bring up a topic that was super annoying: boy bands, the Kardashians, people who turned on their flashers when it rained, and the other would see how long they could rant about it. I held the record of thirteen minutes, on the topic of Kendall Fisher commenting when I ate Chinese food with a fork at the food court, then offering to teach me to use chopsticks because she said I used them wrong (which was why I’d been eating with a fork). Then it had sort of deteriorated into a general rant about white girls who think they’re Asian because they read manga. I hadn’t even been trying.
Amanda made a shooting motion toward me and said, “Start.”
“They’re splitting up. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, which isn’t a surprise, actually. I mean, the guy was barely home. I’ve spent way more time with your dad. I’ve spent so much time I should be starting to look like him by now. Your dad was there when I hit my first home run. Your dad helped me with my math homework.”
“Okay.”
I pumped a few times, looking for the right words.
“He said he hadn’t been happy in twenty years.”
“He said that?”
“Right? That’s my entire life, Matt’s entire life, and I’m thinking, ‘How is that my fault?’ I mean, did I suck my thumb too long? Did I not get potty trained early enough?”
Amanda kicked her legs higher. “You were awfully fixated on that Spider-Man toy.”
“Hey, hey, hey, watch it. That was a Pose and Stick Spider-Man toy. That was the ultimate Spider-Man toy in the whole world.”
“I stand corrected.”
“We wouldn’t even be friends if it wasn’t for that toy,” I said.
She laughed. “That might be true. That would have been tragic for you, really.”
“Just for me?”
“Yup. Just for you. I would clearly have been besties with Nolan.”
Then she leaped off the swing. She flew through the air a moment, then landed with a thud on the ground. She clutched her arm, screaming, “Ow! My arm!”
“Amanda, are you okay?”
“No. I think it’s broken.” She clutched her arm.
“Shit!” I jumped from the swing and ran toward her. She looked like she was crying, holding her arm. “Can you bend it?”
“No. No. Oh, wait. . . .” She pushed herself up on the arm. “Yeah, I can.” She stood and ran for the monkey bars and hoisted herself atop them. She crawled to the center. “Bet you can’t get me.”
“Asshole. Of course I can.” I ran for the bars myself. I was shorter than her, and not as agile, but they were made for little kids, so I pulled myself up and sat next to her. We were over everything, level with the moss hanging from the trees.
I said, “What would have happened if you hadn’t saved Spidey that day, and we’d never become friends?”
“Clearly, I’d have become a very proper girl who dressed in pink every day and did nail art and knew how to use a flat iron.”
“What’s a flat iron? Is it for clothes?”
“It’s for hair, idiot. See how you’ve corrupted me?”
“Yeah, it’s a tragedy, really. And I probably would’ve been a big, tough guy without you.”
“So you’re saying I made you shorter? Yeah, I think that was genetics, buddy.”
“It’s my dad’s fault.”
“Oh, and I’d have been skinny,” she said.
“You don’t need to be skinny.”
She punched my arm. “You’re supposed to say I am skinny.”