“Fossils, Mom. Those are corals.”
She hands me another gummy worm, which I accept. Ice cream, French fries, and candy have helped my hangover immensely. “All I’m saying is, you can be both, you know. A soccer-playing scientist sounds fine to me.”
She studies me for a moment as I watch Ben squatting low on defense. “Your powers of observation seem especially well tuned today.”
I whirl to face her, and see a tiny smile and raised eyebrow. Before I can protest, she jumps up and cheers for Will, who has stolen the ball from Ben. He presses in a wide arc to the top of the driveway, trying to shake Ben, then abruptly pulls up for a jump shot. Ben is a split second late, and the ball barely clears the tips of his fingers as he leaps for the block. There is a thwfft, and then Will’s unbridled hoot of joy.
“No way, dude!” Ben is as excited as Will. “Where the hell did that shot come from?” He holds up a hand and Will leaps to high-five him, both of them yelping. Ben turns to me. “Your bro is a freakin’ pistol.”
Will looks more like a balloon on the verge of exploding, his whole body puffed to the bursting point by Ben’s praise. I know how much it means to him that Ben thinks he’s got skills. He pushes his skinny chest out a little farther as he runs to get the ball.
“Don’t brag on him too much,” I warn. “His head gets any bigger, he’ll float away.”
Ben grabs my brother in a headlock and rubs his knuckles across Will’s hair. “Nah, we’ll keep Pistol humble.”
Will laughs and struggles free with a smile that’s lit from within. He’s in heaven. I’ve seen him aping what Ben and the rest of the guys on the varsity team do: haircuts; high-tops; slim shorts; baggy tank tops; Ben’s side-swept bangs; a wristband pushed up by his elbow like Dooney, striped socks to his knees like Deacon. Now he’s been handed the highest honor an upperclassman can bestow upon a humble frosh: the Nickname.
In an instant, I can see it all: Will’s efforts to persuade me to bring him along to the next party will double. He followed me around for two weeks begging to go to Dooney’s last night. Now I’ll never hear the end of it. Still, there’s something about the look on his face that pleases me. In this town basketball is king, and Will has just been made a squire to one of the knights at the roundtable.
Mom tosses me the bag of gummy worms with a grin and starts up the stairs to the front door. “Well, ‘Pistol,’ you can shoot right into the kitchen and help me set the table. Staying for dinner, Ben?”
“Sure.”
She nods. “Nice having you around again. Put your shirt on and help Carl get the grill going.”
If it were anyone else, I’d die a thousand deaths, but this is Ben and he knows my mom. She’s a general in search of an army. As she disappears inside, she yells for my dad to get the charcoal out of the garage. He hollers something back, but we can only make out one word before the storm door snaps closed:
“. . . yahoos . . .”
Ben grins and pops his arms into his T-shirt before he whips it over his head. In that split second, I feel the comfort of his presence. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t come to dinner for a long time. Now he’s back—only new and improved.
It’s as if no time has passed at all.
My phone buzzes as I climb into bed that night.
“Oh my god,” groans Rachel. “I left you three voice mails.”
I smile as I reach over and switch off the lamp. “You know I never check voice mail. You might as well write me a message, put it in a bottle, and throw it into the creek behind your house.”
“Clearly,” she says with a sigh. “One day, someone important is going to call you, and you’re going to be sorry.”
“Rachel, you are important. You’re also the only person in the twenty-first century who still leaves voice mails.”
“I sent texts and Facebook messages, too. Lindsey and Christy are on high alert.”
“For what?”
“A search party.”
“For whom?”
Rachel sighs. “For you, and your flawless pronoun usage. Where were you all day that you couldn’t check your phone?”
While I was hanging out with Ben, I didn’t think about reading texts or checking Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. Not at all. Not even once.
“I was . . . busy.”
Rachel knows I’m hedging. “With who?”
“Whom,” I correct.
She yells aaaaaaaaaargh into the phone, prompting me to pull it a few inches from my face and laugh. “Lindsey says she saw you hanging out at the park with Ben.”
My pulse speeds up. Who else saw us? I want to keep whatever this is between us for myself—at least until I know if we’re more than friends.
“So if Lindsey saw me there, why are you calling to ask me where I was?”
Rachel is quiet for a moment. “Kate?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t. Make. Me. Come. Over. There.”
“What? We were just hanging out,” I say matter-of-factly. “From time to time, we hang out. As is our custom. Since we were five years old.”