“It’s yours,” he said, holding it out to me.
When my eyes were back, I saw that it was the trophy from the last day at camp. The one he took home after he tripped me and I fell.
“So you did trip me,” I said accusingly.
“Not on purpose. If your legs didn’t fling every direction, it wouldn’t have happened.”
That was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. “That’s what your eyes are for. You see someone in front of you, you go around. You don’t go through them,” I told him.
“Do you want it or not?” he asked in a tired sort of way, as if he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.
I held my hand out, and he gave it to me. It was heavier than I thought it would be. Not like the cheap plastic trophies they gave out at the swim meet last summer. Even the girls that held their noses when they jumped in the water got one. Not dove. Jumped. Like they were at a backyard cookout instead of a race. I remember I’d been so mad in the car on the way home that Mom had pulled over and told me she was not going to drive one more inch until I calmed down.
“But why bother giving out trophies if everyone gets one,” I’d shouted.
She’d started to speak, then looked at the road. Finally, she looked back at me. “They wanted to make everyone feel special. That’s a nice thing, isn’t it?”
I hadn’t answered because what I wanted to say would’ve only got me in trouble for using bad words. I’d tossed the trophy in the trash when we got home. Who wanted a trophy for first place when Mary Ellen Arnold took the same one home and she came in dead last after she doggy paddled over to the side because the water was getting too deep. Too deep in the shallow end.
Smelliot was still waiting for me to answer. As if I had to think about it. Of course I wanted to keep it. But the whole thing seemed kind of fishy.
“Why fess up to it now?” I narrowed my eyes at him, turned the trophy this way and that. Maybe he’d rigged it to blow up.
“I don’t know,” he said, but he looked over at his brother, who was leaning against the truck next to Jess. Alex gave him a thumbs-up, and Jess mouthed to me: Say thank you.
Thank him for stealing my trophy? Was she nuts?
“My brother said you told him I won.”
“I told him you won the trophy. I didn’t say anything about the race,” I pointed out. I was no tattletale.
“You’re hard to give something back to,” he said, turning away, toward the house.
“Hey,” I called after him.
He turned when he reached the steps, and I said, “This doesn’t mean we’re friends. I still think you’re a jerk for what you said.”
He kept walking up the steps, slowly though, as if he didn’t want to reach the top and have to go inside. Jess and Alex were sitting in the truck now, and the street was empty. I was still holding the trophy in one hand and the bag in the other. My face burned with anger. Who did he think he was, acting nice? Didn’t he remember calling me Kat Poop? Pinching my arm? Suddenly I wanted to throw the trophy at him. Make him take back his stupid words.
I caught up to him, ran up to the top step, and stood in front of him.
“Here.” I thrust the trophy out to him. “I don’t want it. And you can’t sleep here. It’s my house, and I say so.”
He stared at me for a second. Then he looked down at his feet. When he looked back up, I lowered my hands. I know what people look like when they’re about to cry. And he looked like that. Mom was going to kill me if she came out here and he was crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t cry.”
“Who said I was crying? I don’t want to move into your house anyway,” he shot back. But he didn’t look up again. His ears were dark red.
I was still holding the trophy out. I looked at it. Maybe he’d brought it as a peace offering. Sort of like the tomahawks that Indian chiefs gave to one another to make friends. We’d studied it in school last year, and Mrs. Whitley read us a book about it out loud, and even with her squeaky voice that made my ears ache, I still paid attention. And that says a lot.
Grandma would say one good deed deserves another. And that people sometimes forget what you said and did, but they usually remember how you made them feel.
“I didn’t mean that about you moving in. I take that back.”
He shrugged. But his ears went back to skin color, and he didn’t look like he was going to cry anymore.
“And I take back that I don’t want the trophy.” I moved it so it was partly behind my leg, so it wasn’t fully in sight, and cursed my big mouth for saying I didn’t want it.
“And I’m sorry for bringing up your da— I mean your stepfather . . . you know, what I said.”
“Okay! Jeez. Can you just take it and be quiet?” He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes, like I was a lunatic. I stood up as straight as I could. Who was he to say anything? A few minutes ago, he’d been pretending to be a man-eating sloth.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked, sweeping my arm toward the door like the hostess did when she showed us to our table.
He shook his head, opened the door, and went in. I stood on the porch. Mom’s laugh trickled out, and the smell of coffee filled the doorway. I held the trophy in front of me, traced the edges of it with my finger.
I thought of Smelliot walking into my kitchen, into his new house that he didn’t want to live in. How his brother was leaving and his dad was in heaven and now his stepfather was gone too.
I went inside and ran into the kitchen. Everyone at the table stopped talking and looked up, except Smelliot. He had his chin in his hand, staring at the tablecloth, a piece of date nut bread untouched in front of him. I wrinkled my nose. I hated that bread too.
“Do you want to see my room?” I asked.
He looked up at me, his face blank while our mothers nodded furiously.
“I have a huge bullfrog,” I added, and Mom frowned. But Smelliot got up and walked over to me. Behind him, Dad winked at me.
He didn’t find out until we got to my room that the bullfrog was a stuffed animal with a missing glass eye.
But by that time I was telling him how cool his new house was. How the tree outside his bedroom window lost its leaves in the winter and you could see the dock in the backyard. And in the summer when the tide was out, there was always a little puddle of water at the bottom of the ladder that was as warm as bathwater.
And there were these tiny little fish that you could catch in a jar, and at night, under a flashlight, they looked like streaks of silver under your blanket. Like a jar full of fireworks right in your hands. I told him not to mention that part to his mother. Taking fish from the ocean into your bed wasn’t one of those better choices Mom talked about.