What We Saw (4 page)

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 invent 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 the last bite of my ice cream cone when a group of guys start 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 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.”

“For you?”

He sighs. “I can buy my own goddamn underwear.”

A woman with a booming voice calls her kids to the picnic table. Ben chews his cheek, watching as they obey in double time. “I know I'm a total tool for feeling this way. It's just, Mom's obsessed. There's enough crap in the guest room to fill every sock drawer I own from now until I'm seventy.”

“Maybe she's just trying to show you how much she cares about you.”

“Maybe. But wouldn't it be better to show me she cares by sticking to our agreement? Those Rubbermaid bins aren't for me. They're for her.”

“If you can nail down a scholarship do you think she'll chill out?”

He looks at me with a sad smile. “I don't think it works that way. Pretty sure I have zero power where this whole coupon-hoarding thing is concerned. It's like some bad reality show.”

“I understand,” I say. “Sort of. I mean, my parents have their own crazy. Dad makes bad bets in his fantasy football league with the guys on his construction crew, but he's always on my case about saving more money. Mom is always complaining about how she needs to lose ten pounds, but she'd rather try crazy diets than just eat more fruit and come running with me.”

Ben smiles. “Remember when she did that grapefruit diet when we were in elementary school? Your dad told her if she didn't watch it she was gonna squirt herself in the eye every time she peed.”

“She got so mad at him,” I say. “And then at us because we couldn't stop laughing about it.”

We both giggle at the memory. A breeze rustles the new buds on the elm branches above us and blows a strand of hair over my face. I reach up to brush it away.

“I like my mom and dad,” I tell him, “but sometimes, I wish they'd admit they don't know everything.”

“All parents have that thing they don't know about themselves,” says Ben. “It's like a room they aren't aware exists. They don't know it's there, so they can't even look for the light switch.”

Before I can agree, Ben tosses aside the DQ bag full of
empty fry boxes and ketchup packets. He stretches full length on the grass under the tree, lays his head on my leg, and closes his eyes.

The words on my tongue disappear. My first instinct is to run my fingers through his hair, but I stop my hand midair. It floats over his head for a second, before I press it against my lips, and slowly drop it back into the grass. I relax against the tree, attempting to breathe normally.

After a few minutes, my heart stops pounding. I can feel the weight of Ben's head pressed against my thigh, keeping me from floating away. The basketball game has resumed, minus one, and as I watch I realize how lucky I am that my parents and their crazy isn't so bad in comparison to Adele's. Losing fifty bucks or ten pounds isn't going to land you in a psychiatrist's office or take over your life. Still, it might be easier to relate if we could all just turn on the lights.

Of course, to them, we're just kids.

One day, they say, we'll understand.

But I wonder if maybe I'm the one who does understand.

Sometimes I get the feeling they've asked me to hold this big invisible secret for them, like a backpack full of rocks—all these things they don't want to know about themselves. I'm supposed to wear it as I hike up this trail toward my adulthood. They're already at the summit of Full Grown Mountain. They're waiting for me to get there and cheering me on, telling me I can do it, and sometimes scolding and asking why I'm not hiking any faster or why I'm not having more fun along the way. I know I'm
not supposed to talk about this backpack full of their crazy, but sometimes I really wish we could all stop for a second. Maybe they could walk down the trail from the top and meet me. We could unzip that backpack, pull out all of those rocks, and leave the ones we no longer need by the side of the trail. It'd make the walk a lot easier. Maybe then my shoulders wouldn't get so tense when Dad lectures me about money or Mom starts a new diet she saw on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store.

The sun is hanging a little lower in the sky, and the guys on the basketball court haul their friend with the sprained ankle into a car as the mother at the picnic table packs up the leftovers. My leg is all pins and needles from the weight of Ben's head, and before I can talk myself out of it again, I run my fingers lightly through his hair. He stirs and opens his eyes.

“Did I go to sleep?” He rubs his eyes and yawns.

“Yeah. So did my leg.”

He smiles and helps me up, grabbing our trash and tossing it in a barrel on the way back to his truck.

AS WE DRIVE
away from the park, Ben's phone rattles in the cup holder. The music from the playlist pauses as John Doone's picture pops up on the screen under the name “Dooney.” Ben glances down and frowns.

“Want me to answer it for you?” I reach toward the phone, but Ben grabs it in a hurry and taps ignore. The music swells to full volume automatically.

“Nah—I'll call him back. Probably just woke up.”

“How is he going to put his house back together before his parents come home?”

Ben smiles. “Deacon told him just to burn it down.”

“Wish I could've stayed longer,” I groan. “Was it fun after you dropped me off?”

Ben glances over at me, but I can't read what's behind his eyes. “Nothing's ever as fun without you there.”

My stomach drops and I try to stop myself from staring at him. Too late. There is no oxygen in the cab of this truck anymore. Ben takes a big breath, then opens his mouth to speak. Only he doesn't speak. He bellows a song like one of those opera guys on PBS:

“
Yooooooooou, light up my liiiiiiiiiife. Yooooooooooou give me hooooooope to carry oooooooooooooooon—
”

I punch him in the shoulder. “Asshole.”

He laughs. “No! Don't be pissed.” I feel his hand on my knee and look back at him. He's smiling his Irresistible Grin. The one that made my mom sneak him an extra juice box back at age six when we had snacks after the game.
Some things never change.

“Seriously,” he says, turning onto Oaklawn. “Would've stayed at the party later if you'd been with me. Since you weren't, I walked back to get my truck and left.”

“Oh. Rachel said she saw you coming in when she was headed out.”

“Told Dooney bye. He and Deacon were wrecked by that point.”

“Yeah, Rach sent me a picture, and—”

“Of what?”

There's an awkward pause. “Um . . . of me?”

“Oh, cool.” He drums his thumbs on the steering wheel.

“It was
not
cool. I was blotto. Don't worry, I deleted it. Made Rachel delete it, too. I was doing shots with Stacey.”

Ben turns up the volume and a male voice raps about girls in their bras and thongs falling at his feet like trees, “Timber
.
” Ben taps along on the steering wheel as we pull down my street.

“Didn't remember Stacey even being there,” I confess. “Until I saw the picture.”

Ben shrugs and nods his head with the lyrics,
She say she won't, but I bet she will, timber.

“I didn't know she hung out with Dooney much.”

He glances over at me with a grin, turns down the music a little. “Sorry, what'd you say?”

Why am I talking about Stacey at a moment like this?

“Nothing.”

Will is in our driveway shooting baskets, missing more than he's making. As we climb out of Ben's truck, I hear more rim than net—more
donk
than
thwfft
.

Ben's immediately in action, running into the drive, hands up. “Dude. I'm open.”

Will tosses him the ball. Ben takes it down for a couple of through-the-leg dribbles, pivoting low as if he's being double-teamed in a tight imaginary defense. He drives to the basket and alley-oops, like he's going for a layup, but expertly hooks a pass to Will, who is caught completely off guard. My brother bobbles the ball and chases it into the grass.

“A
wwww,
man! Gotta be ready.” Ben shakes his head. “Eyes on the ball, not on my face. I can make you think I'm headed
one way with my eyes, but my hands and feet are busy doing something else.”

There's a big brother friendliness about this chiding that makes Will nod and smile, and beg Ben to show him how he did that. Before long, Ben's shirt is off again, and the two of them are locked in a lopsided one-on-one—Will, losing, but triumphant. Court time with a starting junior is a rare commodity for a benchwarmer on the JV team.

Mom sits down next to me on the front porch steps. She offers me an open bag of gummy worms bearing a large green seal across the front that proclaims them to be
FAT FREE!

I smile and try to look away, but she catches me and pokes me in the ribs. I jump and we both laugh. “Are you making fun of me?” she asks.

“Mom,
all
gummy worms are fat free. They always have been. Because they're made of corn syrup.”

Her laugh is warm and breezy. She slides an arm around my shoulders. “Well, I'm certainly no scientist like you are, but at least they're not full of sugar
and
fat.” She holds the bag toward me once more with a sly smile. “Every little bit helps, I always say.”

I relent and pull out a red-and-green worm, then bite its head off. “I'm not a scientist,” I say between chews. “I'm a soccer player.”

“Oh yes. Yes, of course”—she gives me her mom version of side-eye—“I suppose that's why you've covered every horizontal surface in your bedroom with old rocks.”

“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 round table.

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.”

“With his head in your lap?”

This is what we do, Rachel and I. It's why we're best friends. If it were up to her, even state secrets would be shared, thus causing disaster on a global level. If it were up to me, during said disaster we'd all die alone in the dark from lack of communication and basic resources. The simple fact of the matter is, we need each other. Still, I find a strange delight in making her pry the details out of me.

“I'm waiting,” she reminds me.

“For what?”

She's all business. “Confirmation of head in lap.”

“I will not stand for these wild allegations.”

“Oh my god,” she groans. “This isn't even the biggest story of the day, and you're making me work my butt off for it. You and Ben hanging out is like a blip on the scrolling ticker under the anchor's face on CNN.”

“Fine,” I relent. “I walked over to his house to say thank you for bringing me back home last night.”

“Aaaaaand?”

“And we went to get ice cream and sat in the park.”

“Kate, this will go faster if you just tell me all of the details at once.”

I smile. “But I like hearing you beg.”

“Okay,” she says. “Then I have no choice. You're forcing me to do this.”

“Do what?”

“If you don't spill it this instant, I will tell everyone in school that you are a National Merit Semifinalist, and then whatever this is that you have with Ben will be doomed because your secret genius will be known to all.”

I start to giggle. Rachel is the only person who a) gives me ultimatums, and b) makes me laugh like a sixth-grader.

“Okay, okay! Uncle.” I crack. “Ben put his head in my lap while we were talking, and then he fell asleep for a few minutes.”

“That's it?” she asks.

“That's it.”

“You didn't bore him to death with all your smarty-pants-ness, did you? Is that why he fell asleep?”

“No, Rach. Ben has a secret, too.”

“Narcolepsy? I knew it. He could never stay awake in geometry last year.”

“No.” I laugh, and take a deep breath. “He's also a total brainiac.”

“Get. Out. He didn't—”

“He did. Semifinalist. But don't tell anyone. I'm sure he wants to break the news to Dooney and Deacon in whatever way will cause him the least”—I struggle for the right word—“hassle.”

“Dooney and Deacon?”

“Promise me you won't tell them—or anybody who knows them.”

Rachel pauses. “Um, I'm pretty sure they have other stuff to worry about besides Ben Cody being too smart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Only the biggest story of today,” she says.

“You mean the party?”

“I just can't with you right now,” says Rachel. “You haven't looked at your phone since you walked over to Ben's, have you?”

“Just now,” I admit. “You're my first contact with the media that is social.”

“This is why I love you, Kate Weston.”

“What's going on?”

“Nothing I can't catch you up on tomorrow,” she says. “Sleep tight.”

“Wait—how do you know I'm already in bed?” I ask her.

“
Are
you in bed?”

I fluff my pillow and assume my British accent. “I might be. Or I might be about to sneak out for a clandestine rendezvous with a mysterious stranger.”

“Uh-huh,” says Rachel. “And I might be crowned Miss Nebraska next month. See you tomorrow, Katherine the Great.”