“Why, what’s going with Nat? Is he hanging around with other kids, too?”
I shook my head. “No. Nat doesn’t hang out with anyone but me. But he’s with me all the time, and he looks at me—“ I felt my face grow warm. “I just don’t like the way he looks at me.”
“Ah.” My mother smiled and touched my cheek. “So it seems Nat has a crush on you. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I wondered when one of the boys was going to realize what a beauty they had in their midst.”
“Mom!” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Seriously. We’re friends. We’ve known each other literally forever. How could you say that?”
“What bothers you more, Abby? The fact that Nat might have feelings for you, or the idea that Jesse might not?”
To my utter mortification, tears filled my eyes. I dropped my head onto my folded arms.
“I love Nat, Mom. He’s like—I don’t know, kind of the brother I never had. And I always thought Jesse was the same way. But then this year, when all these girls have been fussing over Jesse, I felt—I guess I felt jealous. Jealous that he pays them so much attention and doesn’t really seem to care about me anymore.”
“I don’t blame you, sweetie. But let me ask you this. If it were Nat the girls were fawning over, would that bother you as much?”
“I don’t know. I guess so. I just can’t imagine it. Nat depends on me for everything. Maybe it might be a relief if he had someone else to count on.”
My mom nodded. “Interesting. Well, let me give you some advice. Just ride this out. Keep being Nat’s friend, but be Jesse’s friend, too. Don’t let him see that you’re bothered by the girls. Pretty soon he’ll realize what—or who—he really wants.” She stood to give me a hug. “Have I told you lately that I wouldn’t be thirteen again for all the money in the world? But don’t let it make you sad, love. It’ll all come out right in the end.”
I tried to smile and believe that she was right. But I had a feeling that eighth grade was going to be a long year.
Chapter 9: Jesse
By the time we started our junior year in high school, I was eating, breathing and sleeping football. And I loved it. I never complained about the day-long practices in a hundred degree heat or about the games where they had to clear snow from the ground so that we could see the yard markers. As long as I was out on the field, I was in heaven.
The rest of my life wasn’t so bad, either. I had a pretty cool group of friends. Most of them were football players, too, because it was easier to hang with guys who knew what I was talking about. And the girls were usually cheer leaders or the girlfriends of the football players. They understood the game and the commitment.
I still saw Nat and Abby pretty often, although they weren’t part of my main crowd. Nat had gotten involved in crew, and he spent long hours at our local college, practicing and competing. It was beginning to show, too. Although he was still smaller than the rest of us and still had that somehow scrawny look to his face, his arms and chest had filled out, and he seemed to have found some kind of quiet confidence that he’d never had before.
Abby was a different story. She had grown, too, until she was among the tallest girls in our class. She had long legs and arms, but she carried herself with a kind of grace I didn’t notice in the other girls. Her face had slimmed and softened, too. The only thing that hadn’t really changed was her hair, which was still long and curly and always in her way. I knew that she had made friends with a few girls who worked on the high school newspaper, and when I asked her about it, she went on and on about the joys of writing. I didn’t get it myself, but since she helped me sometimes with my essays and term papers, I kept my mouth shut.
Other boys in school had begun to notice Ab, too. Some of them asked me about her, what she was really like, and I know a few tried to ask her out. But she never seemed interested. She was always nice enough to everyone, but she just didn’t date. I couldn’t figure out why.
I was doing okay in that department. I didn’t have a steady girlfriend, but I dated. I liked to hang around with all of my friends most of the time, but a movie or a dance with a pretty girl was okay, too. Whenever my mom or my brothers teased me about a date though, I had to remind that for me, football came first. If a girl didn’t get that, she didn’t get me.
I asked Nat once if Ab liked any particular boy. He got the funniest look on his face, and shrugged.
“Maybe she just doesn’t want to date,” he mumbled. “Maybe she doesn’t feel like she needs to.”