I’ve only seen her in action for a few months, but I now know it’s no laughing matter. Adele has a coupon compulsion, no doubt about it. She can’t not do it. The urge to get the next deal overwhelms her to the point that she’s missed several of Ben’s games this year—not to mention moments like this one, when it might be nice to sit on the deck out back, have some iced tea, and hang out.
Instead, she’s running for the Right Guard special. It has nothing to do with deodorant. It has to do with the fix she gets from the deal, the short-lived euphoria of the score. As we watch her screech around the corner onto Oaklawn, I wonder what it was that actually caused this malfunction in Ben’s mom. Had it always lurked beneath the surface? Did the divorce just uncover it, buried beneath thick layers of “normal”?
As we climb into Ben’s truck, he says, “Thanks for being cool about . . . all this.”
I know that “all this” means his mom and her stockpile. I know that “being cool” means taking it in stride and not telling anyone at school. I also know how hard it is for him to talk about it.
Ben puts the truck in reverse but pauses, foot on the break, hands on the wheel. He glances over at me. “You really have to get home?”
“Eventually. No rush. Did you have a pressing errand with which you require my immediate assistance?”
He smirks at me and shakes his head.
“What?” I ask, blinking with wide eyes of false innocence.
“You,” he says, “and your attempts to pepper all conversation with iambic pentameter.”
“From the boy who just used ‘iambic pentameter’ in a sentence, modified by the verb ‘pepper.’”
“Touché.”
“Conversational French. Further proving my point.”
“It was my point,” he says with a laugh.
I cross my arms. “Which was to mock me?” I love giving him a hard time.
“No! Just—it’s nice not to have to dumb things down. It’s one of the reasons I like talking with you: Your communication skills are both scintillating and exquisite.”
“Wow!” I snort-laugh, which cracks him up. “Okay, now you need to cool your jets.”
“Mmmm. Ice cream sounds perfect,” he says. “I’d suggest Dairy Queen, but I think I’m too smart to be served there.”
“Drive, Einstein. Your secret is safe.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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six
WE CARRY DIP cones and French fries across the street to the park and plop down in the grass against a big tree near the jungle gym. A group of kids shriek from a spinning tire swing. Two little boys chase each other, scooping fistfuls of wood chips off the ground and chucking them at each other. Their dad shouts from a grill near the picnic tables that they should stop it. They ignore him.
Ben has nearly finished off the hard chocolate shell on his vanilla soft-serve and starts dipping French fries into the ice cream. We sit in silence, letting the afternoon sun make us lazy. The quiet between us is different from the tongue-tied awkwardness I first felt just a half hour ago. Most of the time, I’m not frantic to come up with conversation around Ben or worried about forcing words out if they won’t come. I know he’s cool just hanging out with our thoughts. Somehow, this makes me feel closer to him, not farther away.
I’m crunching on the bottom of my ice cream cone when a group of guys starts a pickup basketball game on the court by the parking lot, and I wonder aloud if Ben’s heard from any scouts lately.
“Iowa and Indiana have been watching my clips online,” he says. “Told Coach they’re both sending people to see the tournament.”
“Are you kidding? That’s huge. You’re only a junior.”
He shrugs. “Don’t know whether to feel relieved or guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“About leaving her.”
He’s talking about Adele, and I proceed with caution, letting his remark sink in before I pursue it. “Is she collecting all that crap in case you don’t get a scholarship? Stocking up now so she can spend all her money on tuition later?”
“Who knows? She’s constantly afraid of not having enough cash, or enough . . . anything, ever since Dad took off.”
I can feel the curtain fall in his voice. We never talk about his dad. Ever. It’s as if Brian Cody never existed. “Ben, she wants you to go to college. She’ll be so excited if you get a full ride.”
“Just afraid I’ll come home to shelves in every room. Whole damn place will be packed full of crap from Ajax to Zyrtec.”
I squirt some ketchup across the top of my fries, and wait. If he wants to tell me what that means he will. A guy on the basketball court yelps and goes down. The players gather around him as he rolls onto his back and grabs at his ankle.
“She’s been hiding stuff in the house again.”
I glance over at Ben, who keeps his eyes on the injured player. After a minute or two the guy’s friends get him up off the ground, and he starts limping toward a bench between two buddies.
“I thought you said she agreed to keep all her bargains on the shelves in the garage.”
“Oh, she did. Then the other day I walked by the guest room and the closet door was open a little. Whole thing was stacked with Rubbermaid bins packed full of tube socks and boxer briefs.”