“Yes, tennis is a great game,” he said.
And then god I don’t know our shoulders were like inches from each other’s and I just needed to tell Coop thank you in some way for coming over and obviously we’re just friends but it was a deeper thank-you than just like “thank you for the ride” or “thank you for the food” so I moved my hand until it was on top of his hand, and I held it for a second, and Coop shifted his hand to be underneath my hand and held mine for a second, too, and then we let go.
“You should show them Captain Stickman,” I said after a while, watching a cloud shaped like a fish.
“Right now?” he said.
“No, doesn’t have to be right now,” I told him.
Then Coop said, “How about tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said and closed my eyes to the sun on my skin. “Tomorrow.”
TOMORROW
The days are like this: sometimes I wake up and think, What’s due? What do I have to do today? What must I write? What’s next? Who’s in my way? I have to let the stillness of the morning hit me in slow waves. I’m in bed, I think, and I am breathing and some things hurt, some things don’t.
First I put one leg out of the bed, then the other leg, and put my feet on the floor. Mom arrives with her basil and air, and Dad with his mint and kiss, and today as I stand in front of the mirror, eating my yogurt and pills, I wonder why there is such pleasure in waking. I wonder how I could have wanted to know so much about everything out there and why, now, everything close to me is so fascinating. I wonder how the brain can work just as well when it moves slowly as it does when it moves fast. A million things happen at once just to make up a house and a yard and a mountain.
Did I ever mention that there is a nest of warblers outside my window?
Did I ever mention that my dad sometimes plays guitar in his room when he thinks everyone else is asleep?
How can one body hold so many different people? I wonder how someone can want such different things in such a short time. I wonder why everyone is so good to me.
Stuart would be home tomorrow. I was trying not to think about it because I didn’t want things to go back to the way they were. Not that Stuart had done anything wrong, Stuart was fine, it was just that I didn’t know yet where he fit into this magic combination I’d found of Coop and games and all the people around who had helped find this version of me, a person who never existed but might have always existed. I didn’t know how much he’d like playing fake tennis or building tiny stick houses. Stuart’s girlfriend was Future Sam and Sammie trying to be Future Sam and I didn’t know how well he’d like regular Sammie, as I was right now. I was just learning to like me this way. Anyway.
I followed my family outside to say good-bye for the day, waiting on Mrs. Lind, and from far away, I could see Coop making his way toward me, holding a bowl of strawberries from his mom’s garden.
“Hello, Samantha.”
“Hello, Cooper.”
He threw a strawberry at me. I held out my hands and missed, of course. “Oh, Jesus, sorry,” Coop said, and immediately went to find the berry on the ground. He rubbed it on his shirt and ate it. “I asked your mom and dad if it was okay that we go on an adventure.”
I thought, one last adventure, though maybe that wouldn’t be true. But I was not getting better. I was getting calmer, but not always better. We both knew that, I think.
“Is that okay?”
“It’s perfect.” I motioned him to come closer to me so I could have a strawberry. He came closer. We ate the whole bowl one by one, sometimes I turned my neck to look up at him, sometimes I didn’t.
“Let’s go down to the creek,” I finally said, and whistled for Puppy. As the dog rushed toward us, I decided I wanted the grass blades between my toes, so I sat down and slipped off my shoes. It took me a while. Coop threw a stick down the slope for Puppy until I was finished. I reached out my hand for him, and we were ready.
The creek’s just across the highway, a little break in the land under bending trees that you can barely see until you’re right up close. We sat with our feet in a sunny patch of water.
“I hate being slower,” I said.
“Maybe you’re not, though,” Coop said. “We were both chubby kids, so you’re probably just the same speed we both were a few years back.”
I burst out laughing, thinking of the two of us bumbling toward the creek, cheeks and hair flying, making whooshing sounds. “Running down the mountain really does make you feel faster than you are, doesn’t it?”
“It’s just gravity!” Coop said, laughing with me. He laughed with his belly and turned to me, the serene smile back on his face, and said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“I was just thinking and I said the end part aloud.”
“I do that, too,” I said.
“Let’s go to the general store!” he said. “That was my idea.”