Water Balloon (12 page)

I see a few people now, littler kids mostly, sitting on benches with lunch boxes open on their lap and next to them. "Kwee just eat our dessert when we get back, Marley Bear? Do we have to eat the lunch too?"

"Well?" Grace asks.

"Marley Bear!" Faith says.

"Lunch too," I say. "Let's just walk a little farther first."

Finally I see Jack walking in from the outfield, carrying four or five canteens on his shoulder. He calls out, "Which of you geniuses left your water out in the sun?"

I hear a round of "Sorry, Jack!" and "Thanks, Jack," and "Oops! That one's mine. Thanks!"

He's walking over to deliver a Snoopy thermos on a strap to a kid on a bench directly in front of us when he sees me. "Marley!" he says, a big smile on his face. "And let me see, which one of you is Grace?"

"Duh," Faith says. "Her."

I wish I were allowed to kick her. Just every now and then. Not all the time—that would be wrong. "Be nice, Faith. This is Jack."

"Hi," Grace says. "Marley's gonna let us eat our dessert first today because we went for a walk with her."

"She sounds like an awesome babysitter," Jack says.

"I don't know," Faith says.

"So this is where the camp is, huh?" It's lame, but it's all I can force out of my mouth.

"Kwee walk back for our dessert picnic now, Marley Bear?"

"I thought your last name was Baird, with a
d.
"

"It is."

"She's really like a bear. 'Specially when she's mad."

"Yeah? And is she mad at you a lot?"

"Not a lot," Grace says.

"Yup, a lot," Faith says.

"What are you guys doing here?"

"We was playing in the playground and my sister was showing off on the monkey bars and then Marley Bear said we should take a walk and so now we're taking a walk."

"Sounds good," Jack says. I wonder if he thinks I steered them over here on purpose. I mean, I totally did, but I wonder if he thinks that.

"And we get to eat dessert first," Faith says. "And how come you know our Marley Bear?"

"We live near each other," Jack says.

"In the same house?!" Grace asks.

"Jack!" A kid is calling him from one of the benches.

"What about that infield drill?"

Jack shrugs, which I think, I hope, means he wishes he didn't have to go.

"Let's get back," I say, flashing a smile of grown-up regret to Jack. "Let's go eat some junk."

"Cool," says Faith.

"Yeah, Marley," Grace says. "You're a cool bear."

"I'll see you later, Jack."

"Yeah, will me out."

***

I lead the twins back to the playground. They're peppering me with questions. "So whowazzat, Marley?"

"How come you know that guy, Marley?"

"Izzat your brother?"

"Jack is my friend. He lives near my dad's house."

"You got a mother, Marley Bear?" Grace asks, reaching for my hand.

"I do. She doesn't live with my dad, so I'm not staying with her right now. I live with her most of the time. A lot of the time."

"Your mother don't live with your father?"

"Right."

"Where does your brother live?" Faith asks.

"I don't have a brother. Or a sister. Just me."

"That's lucky," Faith says.

Grace looks sad, then mad.

"I don't think so," I say. "I think you guys are lucky to have each other. I'd love to have a sister."

Faith says, "Not lucky."

"We should find a place to wash your hands before we eat lunch."

"Eat dessert, you mean," Faith says.

"Well, both."

"Dessert first," Faith says. "You said."

"Clean hands first."

At once, both girls are spitting in their palms and then rubbing their hands together. They each rub their hands against their shorts and then hold them up. "Clean," Faith says.

"See?" Grace says.

"If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me."

"I love Marley Bear," Grace says.

"Let's eat," I say.

The twins climb onto the bench by the fence and tear open the snack-size packs of cookies. "Kwee have drinks now?" they ask. I'm reaching into the cooler, opening drinks, then finding napkins to clean up the spilled drinks. The girls take off before they eat their sandwiches, back to the swings, where Faith swings high, standing on a swing, feet about a foot apart, like some tomboy version of Peter Pan. Grace practices her pumping. The swings squeak loudly, but I can still hear the metallic
ping
of a bat hitting a ball followed by the sounds of raised voices, cheering. Grace slows to a stop. When her swing is perfectly still, she climbs off and walks to the sandbox over in the corner. Faith joins her. I bring over my water bottle and a cup, and together we make a sand kingdom.

"I call I'm the nasty princess that knocks down stuff," Faith says.

"No, me!" Grace says. Not in a convincing way.

"And I'm the Marley Bear that gets angry at nasty princesses who knock down stuff. So let's not knock it over yet."

"When?"

"When you're
both
ready."

"I don't ever want to knock it down, Marley," Grace says.

"How about when Mommy gets here?" Faith asks.

Grace thinks about that. "Okay."

"You know any jokes, Marley?" Faith asks.

"Not a single one. I don't know any jokes."

"Marley Bear," Grace says. "Everyone knows jokes.

I know that one about the black and white and red newspaper. It's not funny, maybe, but I know it.

"Okay. I know one."

"Go 'head," Faith says.

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?" Grace says.

"Jonathan."

"Jonathan who?"

"Jon, a thin man just walked by."

"Marley?"

"Yes, Faith?"

"Isn't a joke opposed to be funny?

"I told you I didn't have any good jokes."

"I have one," Grace says.

"Go 'head," Faith says.

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Tyler."

"Tyler who?"

"Tyler, a thin man just walked by." Grace starts to laugh, looks at me, then at Faith. "Not funny?" she asks.

Faith is about to say something mean when I begin to explain the Jonathan joke, and then rethink, realizing that a joke that requires explanation is probably not much of a joke at all. Also: they're five.

We concentrate on broadening our kingdom to the far reaches of the sandbox. When we hear Lynne's horn honk, I say, "One, two," and before I get to three, Faith is knocking it down. Grace is about to cry. I show her the turrets that are still standing, and she kicks them over. I gather together the picnic leftovers and containers and walk the twins to Lynne's car.

I help buckle them in and am about to climb into the passenger seat when Lynne says, "I have to take the girls with me now to Jenna's doctor appointment. Your dad said you could just walk home from here, that he'd meet you there. Is that okay?"

"Sure," I say.

"You gonna go and see your brother?" Faith says.

"I don't have a brother."

"Say goodbye to Marley, girls," Lynne says as she climbs back into the driver's seat. "See you, Marley." "Be a good bear," Grace says.

I'm not sure if it's a dream or if it's just an image I get in those strange minutes between being awake and asleep, but whatever it is, it haunts me. It's the first day of school. The halls aren't too crowded; I think the bell's already rung. I'm walking down the hall. Leah and Jane and some other kids are looking at me and whispering to each other behind their hands. Someone is down at the other end of the hall. As we get closer, we exchange glances and nod, acknowledging each other, the way members of the same species do. I turn and watch as the tan windbreaker disappears around the corner.

***

It sucks. It just sucks. How can I not have friends? How could my two best friends just let me fall out of their lives? Will I never hang out with Leah again? Jane? When I see them at school in September, will it be awful and awkward? Where's my life? This cannot be my life. All because I water balloon blitzed at the wrong time?

I cannot figure out how to steer off this course.

When it happens, it happens in the strangest way. Jack and I come back from walking Rig one Thursday afternoon and my dad's standing on the back porch, looking like he needs to tell me something.

"I saw Leah," he says. "Riding her bike."

"Really? Did you talk to her?"

"Yes, I did. She said she'd been trying to get in touch with you—texting, e-mailing—that she needs to talk to you. So I invited her over. She'll be here any minute."

"What are you talking about?" He must have misunderstood. Leah does talk really fast.

"I just thought ..". His voice trails off and he seems to be staring very hard at me. I guess he didn't notice that I haven't seen Leah, or Jane, in weeks. It's not like I told him. He probably thought he was doing something really nice.

But wait. Leah's been texting me? And e-mailing me? Must find my phone. Must charge my phone.

"I figured we'd get in some pizza, you guys could play Monopoly, maybe watch a movie. Isn't that, I don't know, what girls do?"

I swallow a desire to stomp and scream that he needs to talk to me before he makes decisions for me. Through gritted teeth I ask, "Did she say when?"

Jack sort of backs away, calling, "See you soon, Marley."

I wave. And all of a sudden, throwing her bike on the lawn and racing toward me, there's Leah. "OH! My God, Marley! There you are!" she says, as though we hang out every day. Like she didn't just stop being my friend. She stands right in front of me and hugs me.
Hugs
me! "Is everything okay?"

No, Leah. I don't think everything
is
okay.
But before my brain can even find words, she's off again, in pure Leah form.

"I mean, you don't answer texts or e-mails. I've left you like twenty voice mails. I've written on your wall, sent you messages on Facebook.
What
is going on?"

Seriously? "Why didn't you just ."..But of course—Leah doesn't have my dad's new number. Why would she?

I explain about the stupid broken computer, and not charging my phone. But really, my brain's working at this as if it's a math problem written backwards in a foreign language.
Why is Leah here?
Did Jane turn on her too?

But the confusion is overtaken by something bigger and stronger—pure relief. I hug her back, about three minutes too late, and we both laugh at the stupid awkwardness. I pull her tight and think that whatever's behind us just needs to stay there, behind our backs. No turning around. No examining. Full speed ahead.

"So can you hang today?" Leah asks.

What about Jane?
my mouth tries to ask, but I don't let it. "Definitely," I say. "What do you want to do?" The truth is, I don't care what we do. I'd go fishing with Leah right now if that was what she wanted. It's just so good to get back to normal, or learn this new kind of normal, normal without Jane. Which, I admit, doesn't feel at all normal. Yet.

We go inside, into my room. She sprawls on the bed and I sit on the floor, my back against the closet door. Everything I can think of to ask—
How's your summer?
What's Curtain Call like? What have you been doing?—
all comes way too close to Jane.

Leah must be bumping into the same thoughts herself, because there's this large silence in the room with us. I put on the radio and Leah finally comes up with "So what do you do for fun in this dump?"

"Absolutely nothing." What I want is to play Monopoly, I really do. It's always been something like my hands' version of comfort food. But after what Jane said, I don't think I'll ever speak the word
Monopoly
in front of Leah or Jane again.

Before we can sink into another deep pit of sucking silence, Leah has a brilliant stroke of conversational genius: she starts talking about wardrobe issues. And she's off.

She tells me about these two new pairs of shoes she got at the mall that I absolutely have to borrow, and somehow that leads to the story about this guy Karsten she liked in sixth grade, who just called her to see if she wanted to go to the movies. "'Yeah,' I told him, 'like, two years ago.'"

"You did not say that!"

"Well, not really. But I didn't go, either."

And it starts to feels right. Comfortable and familiar and right.

Leah-without-Jane has always been a slightly different person than the Leah of Leah-and-Jane-and-me. We never spent a ton of time together, just the two of us, but when we did, it was always good. So now it's just the two of us again. Maybe Jane-in-glasses is just a little too
all that
right now.

At some point after the pizza's delivered I realize my dad is nowhere to be seen. He must have been overwhelmed by all the girl vibes in the house. He and Rig probably snuck outside. I peek out the front window and see him catching a ball. I know it before I even look—there's Jack on the other side of the lawn, catching it and throwing it back. Jack? Is back? Already? Did he come here to will me outside? Did Dad intercept his message? Did Jack even mind or is it all the same to him?

It's no secret (except from Jack) that I've never been a huge baseball fan, but there is something about Jack's rhythm, the natural way he moves the ball from his gloved left hand into his right hand to throw, something about his long, thin legs, something loose and graceful that makes me want to stay by the window until it's too dark to see.

"Whatcha looking at?" Leah asks, her face suddenly next to mine.

I walk away. "Nothing," I say.

Leah keeps looking. "Mmm," she says. "Nice."

"You know," I say, needing to get Leah away from that window, from mmming Jack. "Cold pizza's disgusting. We should go finish it." I push her on her way and peek out the window one more time. Rig is fast asleep on his side beside the bushes, his legs moving—he must be having a chasing dream. Dad and Jack are talking, their profiles illuminated by the cast from the streetlight.

Why is Jack hanging out with my father? Is he just a lonely guy who spends time with anyone who'll have him? Maybe I shouldn't be so flattered that he seems to want to hang out with me.