Papi and Ramon passed by in the truck and honked repeatedly, cranking their music and waving out the window. I mustered a weak wave and plodded through the rest of the sweltering, fly-infested day.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Shay. I needed to make it up to her. I texted Gordie, I could really use a friend right now.
“I have to be home in an hour,” I said, swinging my feet off the bridge. Gordie rushed over, his hair messy. The duck pond was surprisingly empty for late afternoon.
“Sorry. Traffic.” He was all out of breath.
“It’s my grandma Hosseini’s birthday. We’re having a pancake dinner promptly at six thirty.”
He sat down next to me. “Hi,” he said, smiling.
“Hi.” I smiled back.
He leaned in and it was all lips and salt and tongue and sweetness.
I had worried the days after the beach night would be awkward. But it was just the opposite. Everything with Gordie was easy.
A yellow Lab came up out of nowhere with three tennis balls stuffed in his mouth.
“Really, buddy?” Gordie said, pulling away from me. He nodded politely toward the elderly owner. Gordie held my hand and we stared at the stream moving slowly below the bridge.
“I have to talk to you about something. I wasn’t going to tell any of you, but it’s just bothering me so much,” I said. I told him about Ella’s mom. I pulled up the pictures on my phone. “I don’t know why, but I’m embarrassed. And I feel like I let you guys and Mr. Upton down.”
“You have got to be kidding me with this,” he said as he scrolled through the photos. “What a lowlife.”
“I know. Gordie, I think about Ella all the time. If you had seen her screaming in the car that day… Her little face was so scared.”
He rubbed my back and I moved closer to him.
“And there’s all this pressure to honor my stupid promise to Mr. Upton. It’s too much.”
“We’ll figure it all out. I think the answer to the diamond thing is going to come to us. Like, we’re seeking the answer, but I think we should let the answer come to us.”
“Okay, you sound like a fortune cookie.”
He ran his fingertips up and down my leg and looked over his shoulder. Three-ball Lab and the old guy refused to leave.
I told him about Shay and how I had thought she was blowing me off, when really she was struggling and I was the one not listening. I had assumed Shay would go off to California and be the center of the social scene and make dozens of friends and have the best summer ever while I sat on my porch and read magazines. But she was exhausted and overwhelmed and lonely and I wasn’t there for her.
“Shay’s cool,” Gordie said. “She’ll understand if you just talk to her.”
“I know it’ll be okay. It’s really hard going from seeing each other all day every day to figuring out three hours’ time difference and three thousand miles of separation.”
We watched the dog chase and return the balls over and over again.
Gordie looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before. He picked at the soft rotting wood on the bridge and looked up again. “So, Frances has lymphoma.”
“Oh, no. That’s terrible, Gordie. I can’t believe you let me talk about my lame problems while you had Frances on your mind.”
“Your problems aren’t lame. Anyway, we don’t know yet if it’s bad or curable. But she’s really worried about Keith, you know, about who’s going to take care of him if something happens to her.”
“Of course.”
“I’m hopeful. I’ve gotta be. She’s my nanny.”
“I’m so sorry, Gordie.”
We sat there quietly for a while, until it was time for me to leave for the birthday dinner. Gordie took my hand and led me through a maze of smaller paths in the shadowy forest until we got to a clearing. We stopped and he pulled me into him and we hugged under the tree canopy. I leaned up and kissed his cheek and his lips softly.
“That was exactly what I needed,” he said, looking into my eyes.
“Me too.”
I tried to FaceTime Shay after ten pounds of pancakes and Grandma Hosseini’s heavily frosted chocolate birthday cake. When she didn’t answer, I texted, I’m so very sorry, Shay Shay. Then, a few minutes later, I texted, And I’m here for you.
She texted back a smiling emoji and an I’m sorry, too, Sader. I promise I don’t remember CVS.
The next day, on my lunch break, I made Shay a care package of Tate’s cookies, which would be smashed by the time they reached California, but I knew they would remind her of home. I tucked a deep blue hydrangea between two pieces of waxed paper and stuck it inside the pages of our local newspaper. I sent it priority mail with a note that said Roses are red, hydrangeas are blue. One hundred seven days ’til I see you.
TWENTY-THREE
GORDIE AND I scrolled through random slam pages, throwing our avatar up all over the place and undermining the hard work of America’s trolls while we waited for Val and Alice to show up before Jean’s Tiny Art Show. Jean hadn’t said much about what to expect from the show. We knew it was the culmination of weeks of little kids doing art with Jean every day. That was about it.
“I bet Stewy Upton’s ghost is hovering over us right now saying, ‘You kids are slackers. Honor my promise. Do something noble, you damn fools,’” Gordie said in his Mr. Upton voice.
“Poor Mr. Upton. He was very particular about his fruits. And his vegetables.”
Val came through the sliding doors in a pale pink dress. She looked so pretty, but her eyes gave it all away.
“You broke up with Javi, didn’t you?” I said.
Val’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
I gave her a big hug. “Friends know these things, Valeria.”
We squeezed onto one of the theater chairs and Val told us that Javi backed out of Jean’s Tiny Art Show, where he was finally supposed to get to know all of us, because he wanted to sit on the couch and play video games with Mute Mike. She confronted him about not showing up at the school-supply pickup night. He told her he was sick of her nagging. She told him she was sorry but it needed to be over and she hoped they could be friends. He told her if she wasn’t spreading her legs for him, he didn’t need another friend. She grabbed his phone, threw it in the toilet, and left.
“Where was Mike during all this?” I asked.
She started laughing. “Making a quiche from scratch.”
“Of course he was.”
I held her hand and Gordie brought her a milk shake from the upstairs kitchen. We told her we were proud of her for doing what she knew she needed to do.
“It’s almost like he said that thing about spreading my legs because he wanted me to leave, but he didn’t have the balls to let me go.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just an asshole with lupus,” Gordie said.
“At least he has Mute Mike,” I said. “And homemade quiche.”
Val rested while Gordie and I kept troll-busting. We found a site in Nebraska where guys scored girls on any number of degrading things. Gordie added:
Choose kindness, boys, and we’ll let you in.
—The Unlikelies.
“Where the hell is Alice?” Gordie said.
“She said she might visit Izzy first. I’ll text her to meet us there.”