“No, you’re not,” she agreed. “And things are going to change soon. I hope you and Jesse and Abby will be friends forever. But now that you’re getting older, you might find that Abby wants to start spending more time with other girls. She may begin dating, even.”
The idea of Abby—my Abby—dating someone other than me made me feel like I did when my lungs were tightening. I couldn’t take it, and I began rubbing my chest absently, trying to loosen the muscles.
“Nat! Are you okay?” My mom twisted around in her seat, concern all over her face. “Do we need to stop?”
“No, I’m okay,” I told her. “Sorry. Just habit, I guess.”
She looked both relieved and suspicious, but she nodded. “Okay. Why don’t you try to catch some sleep? We’ve still got another couple of hours.”
I closed my eyes and lay my head back against the seat, but in my head, all I could see was Abby. It had suddenly struck me that having her for my own might not be as easy as I thought. What if she didn’t love me?
I made up my mind in that moment. I would make her fall in love with me. That’s all there was to it.
Chapter 6: Jesse
I knew Abby and Nat weren’t really excited to begin junior high, but I thought it was going to be great. We’d get to change classes, so I wouldn’t get bored sitting in the same classroom with the same teacher for seven hours a day. And we got to have real lockers, which sounded pretty cool. Best of all, I’d finally get to play an honest-to-goodness sports, not the baby kind where they never really kept score or told us who won. Our junior high had football, basketball, soccer, base ball and track teams. I wanted to play them all, but my dad said I had to make a choice, or my schoolwork might suffer.
My brothers played basketball, and everyone kind of expected me to do the same. It’s the bad thing about being the youngest of three boys; everyone expects you to be just like your brothers. But I really didn’t like basketball, not the way I liked football. So I decided that was what I was going to play.
That summer before eighth grade, I spent most of my time mowing lawns. Simon and Danny, my brothers, had started the business when they were my age, and now I was part of it too. It was pretty cool to be earning money, even though my mom made me put most of it away for college. She said someday I would thank her. I told her I was going to get a football scholarship and get a free ride to whatever college I chose, but she said it was good to have a back up plan.
I liked mowing lawns. Pushing the mower or using the trimmer, I had a lot of time to think. I also met new people, and I liked that. Most of them were older, but that was okay. Some of the old ladies would invite me to the porch for lemonade and cookies. The men would inspect my work carefully and nod approvingly, and that was cool. They told my parents that I was really responsible and did a good job, and I know that made my parents happy, too.
Sometimes I met kids, but most of the families who had kids my age didn’t hire us to cut the grass; they would just have their own kid do it, which only makes sense. But this one family had all daughters, and I guess they didn’t want girls doing yard work. So I did the lawn, and I met their oldest daughter. Her name was Sarah, and she was a year ahead of me in school. I guess she had been in school with us for a while, but I never noticed her.
When we met, she was wearing a bathing suit and heading out to the family’s pool. Now I never noticed girls and what they wore before. I mean, yuck. Abby never cared about she had on as long as it didn’t get in her way. But seeing Sarah in this bathing suit kind of made me look twice. She was really pretty, in a different way, and she smiled and waved at me.
The next time I was at her house doing the lawn, she came out and brought me a drink. It was really hot, and I was grateful for both the break and the ice water. I stood there gulping it down, trying not to be impolite about it, and she started talking. She told me that she knew me from school.
“You hang out with the girl who has all that curly hair and that kid who—“ She stopped, and I knew exactly how she was going to describe Nat. With most people, I’d get mad, but I could tell she didn’t mean it in a cruel way.
“Yeah. That’s Abby and Nat. We’ve been friends as long as I can remember.”
“Wow, that’s cool. We’ve only lived here for about three years, so I haven’t known anyone that long.” Sarah smiled up at me, shading her eyes with her hand. I noticed that her fingers were long and her nails were painted bright pink.
“Where did you live before?”
“Chicago. I was born there.”
“I’ve never lived anywhere but here,” I admitted. “But I like it here, so that’s okay.”