“Solomon, stop analyzing your mother,” his dad said from behind a book, one of those creepy mystery novels he was always reading.
“Anyway, she’s a nice girl. Pretty too. Only one cavity.”
Solomon knew good and well what was going on. His mom was doing that thing she did where she thought talking about some pretty girl would suddenly cure her son and have him walking right out the front door and straight to high school. It was innocent enough, but he hoped she wasn’t actually that desperate for him to change. Because, if she was, then wouldn’t these little moments, built up over time, eventually collapse into a mess?
He’d heard their conversations about him a few times. When he was ten he learned that if he held a plastic cup against his bedroom wall, he could hear everything his parents were saying in their bedroom. The last time he listened was when his mom asked his dad if they were going to be “stuck with him forever.” After she said it, he didn’t hear anything for a while. Then he realized it was because she’d started crying as soon as the words left her mouth. Hours later, Solomon was still awake wondering how to answer his mother’s question. He eventually decided on a hard yes.
TWO
LISA PRAYTOR
Sometimes life just hands you the lemonade, straight up in a chilled glass with a little slice of lemon on top. For Lisa Praytor, junior and straight-A student at Upland High, meeting Solomon Reed’s mother was that glass of lemonade. And it was going to change her life.
You may have known a Lisa Praytor at some point. She was the girl sitting at the front of your classroom, raising her hand to answer every single question the teacher asked. She stayed after school to work on the yearbook and as soon as she got home, she dove headfirst into her homework.
She’d always been one to keep a packed schedule, choosing at age eleven to live by the words of her great-aunt Dolores, who said, “Not a day on your calendar should ever be empty. It’s bad luck. Twenty-four hours of wasted opportunity.”
Not even an offer from her boyfriend to drive to the coast and watch the sunset could tempt her off schedule. And Clark Robbins was the kind of guy who asked her to do things like that all the time. He was handsome without being threatening, and his tree-bark brown hair parted in a way that was particularly appealing to Lisa. On the day that Lisa met Solomon’s mom, she’d been dating Clark for a year and seventeen days. She had it marked on her calendar for proof.
During eighth grade, after a seventh grader had an episode in front of the school, Lisa wrote an op-ed piece for the Upland Junior High Register to defend the boy—a scathing essay on the importance of empathy. It didn’t go over well with her classmates and until the end of the year, rumors swirled around that Lisa was secretly dating the crazy kid who jumped into the fountain.
Had it not been for the student body of nearly one thousand at Upland Junior High, Lisa may not have been able to escape her failed attempt at heroism when she got to high school. She did, though, and most of her friends and classmates eventually forgot about it altogether.
But not Lisa. She’d seen him that day—this skinny little guy with messy hair taking his shirt off and dropping his pants and walking that slow, quiet walk toward the water. She never knew him, really, but she’d always thought he looked nice, like the kind of guy who’d hold a door open for someone else without a thought. And she’d always hoped that someday she’d see him again or, at the very least, hear that he was doing okay.
Then one day, Lisa saw an advertisement for Valerie Reed’s dental practice in the local newspaper. It took one Internet search to confirm that this was Solomon’s mother. She’d never really been looking for the fountain kid, despite thinking about him from time to time and wondering where he’d ended up. But the second she realized she’d found him, she knew she had to get to him as soon as possible. And the only way to do that was to make an appointment with his mom. At the very least, Lisa would get a nice teeth cleaning and a free toothbrush. At the very best, she’d make all her dreams come true.
“So, where do you go to school?” Dr. Valerie Reed asked as she sat down to examine Lisa’s teeth. It was March twenty-fourth, a Tuesday, and Lisa was having a really hard time not asking a million questions about Solomon.
“Upland High. Are you Solomon’s mother?”
“Yes,” she answered, slightly taken aback.
“I went to junior high with him. His picture’s on the wall,” she smiled, pointing across the room to a photograph of Valerie, Jason, and Solomon hanging by the window.
“You knew him?” Valerie asked.
“Knew him?” Lisa asked. “Oh! Did he . . . ?”
“No. God no. Sorry,” Valerie said. “He just doesn’t get out much.”
“Private school? Western Christian?”
“He’s homeschooled.”
“You do that and this?” Lisa asked.
“It’s all online. Okay, lean back for me. Open wide.”