A Little Something Different (13 page)

“I feel like an asshole for not remembering.”

“I don’t ever really say much about that stuff.” He starts to whistle tunelessly and I take that as a hint to move past this topic.

We walk outside and even though it’s two in the afternoon there’s a weird quality outside like it’s almost dusk.

“Usually snow makes everything seem too bright,” he says, looking around as we walk.

“I think it’s because the clouds are so dense or something.”

“Thank you, Al Roker.”

“That’s funny you bring him up. He’s the one who told me the clouds would be particularly dense during this storm.”

“I think you missed your calling as a meteorologist.”

The walk to the green takes ten times longer than usual because the snow is at least eight inches deep.

“So what’s up with Lea?” I ask.

“Not much.”

“Are you going to like … ask her out or something?”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“You say, ‘Hey, Lea, let’s go out sometime.’”

“I don’t have a car.”

“So?”

“It’s not like I could take her to the movies.”

“Think outside the box a little, Gabe. You’re so full of self-doubt. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“We’ll see what happens if she’s here today.”

We come out on the green and there’s already a group of people there, including Bailey and a bunch of my roommates. He jogs over to us.

“You ready for some football?” he asks.

“We forgot about his bum elbow,” I tell Bailey, gesturing toward Gabe.

“Oh, man.” Bailey slaps his forehead. “What are you doing here? We should put you in bubble wrap and send you to bed.”

“You sound like my mom.”

“Yes, I’d imagine that Mrs. Cabrera would be a big proponent of that idea.”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m here because maybe…” He glances around and he smiles before he even finishes that thought. Across the green are Lea and her friends, picking their way toward us.

“Bailey set that up for you. He got Bianca’s number a couple of weeks ago,” I tell Gabe, patting him on the shoulder.

“I’m gonna freeze my balls off,” Gabe grumbles.

“Lea will keep your balls warm,” I say.

“Now go be a good cheerleader and sit on that bench,” Bailey adds.

“The bench that’s completely covered in snow?”

“Yes. Clean it off and maybe the girls will join you.”

He groans but walks over there, pulling his hat onto his head and putting his hood back on before scooping the snow off the bench and plopping down.

“I feel kind of bad,” Bailey says.

“He seems okay about it,” I say, looking at Gabe thoughtfully. “Come on, let’s get this going.”

Sam trots over to us.

“Why didn’t you tell us Gabe was getting the pins out of his elbow?”

He makes a face. “I totally forgot. I am the worst brother ever.”

Bianca comes over by the boys and wants to play, but Maribel and Lea take a seat by Gabe. I’m happy to see Lea sitting right next to him. Unfortunately Gabe is sitting as far away from her as possible, basically hugging the arm of the bench.

I lose track of them during the game and eventually it seems like everyone is having a snowball fight rather than following any of the rules of football. I glance back over by the bench and Gabe is sitting by himself and apparently talking to a squirrel.

I’m a little bit concerned.

Bench
(on the green)

Well, well, well. Looks like someone’s finally cleaning me off. Probably just gonna use the snow to make snowballs or a fort or something. But it’s nice to feel the wind at least, sort of refreshing after weeks of being under ice.

What’s this? Are they actually sitting down, too? And is it possible that this is my favorite butt from way back when? This day has gotten a lot better. Considering I thought it would be another in a long string of lonely days on this tundra.

He seems a little tense.

Oh, damn, it’s because he seems to have some lady friends joining him. Terrible. And they’re making the whole structure off balance and he’s turned all wrong. Go away, ladies, you’re ruining the perfect butt.

“Hey, Gabe,” they both say with varying levels of enthusiasm. If you’re going to talk to this great ass, at least be excited about it.

He doesn’t say anything in return but I think he might at least wave or something.

“What’s up?” one of the girls asks.

No response.

“Not a big football fan?” the other one asks.

I can feel him shrug, but I’d kind of like to tell him that he should probably talk. Unless he doesn’t like these broads; maybe that’s why he’s so tense.

After what seems like a really long time, too long to wait to respond to a question, he says, “I hurt my elbow.”

“Are you okay?” a girl asks, her voice worried.

He’s slow to answer again. What’s with this kid?

I hope the girls leave soon so he can relax and I can enjoy our time together.

Maribel
(Lea’s roommate)

Lea is working really hard to talk to Gabe and he’s giving her nothing to work with. I’m starting to think he’s a lot weirder than I realized. Either that or our voices are getting lost in the wind. I feel bad for Lea.

“Which assignment did you pick for class?”

He kind of scrunches up his face and shakes his head, but I’m not sure if that’s answering Lea’s question or whether he was trying to get the snowflake off his nose.

“So, you played baseball in high school?” she asks, pointing toward the sweatshirt underneath his unzipped coat. I should yell at him to zip it up; it’s freezing out.

He crosses his arms and smiles at her.

“Yeah, I played softball,” she mumbles.

I would think we were bothering him, but he looks at her a lot. It’s like he’s trying read her mind rather than hear what she’s saying.

“It’s cold,” I say. “Come on, let’s play.”

She looks forlornly over at Gabe and then gestures to the group. “We’re gonna go play.”

He does an adorable tip of his imaginary hat brim, so at least I know he has some personality in there somewhere.

“That was painful,” she mutters to me as we walk over to the group.

“I’m glad you noticed.”

“I’m not delusional, Mar,” she says. I just feel bad because on our way here she was so excited and bouncy, and now she’s confused more than anything. The boy you like should never make you that confused.

I roll up a snowball and throw it at Casey. He looks at me with mock surprise and throws one back and then pauses, looking over my shoulder. I follow his eye and notice that Gabe looks sad and small and appears to be talking to a squirrel.

Squirrel!

It’s been so long since anyone came and played on the green and all of these people are here and they’re all playing and I wonder if they know where my acorns are.

I run in circles around them, careful not to get stepped on the way my friend did once. His tail has never been the same. After running up and down all the trees and watching them play for a long time, I notice one of them is sitting alone.

He likes the girl, I can tell. She was sitting by him before, but now she’s gone and he looks sad.

I zigzag over toward him and hop up on the bench. I sit for a while. This is my favorite bench. I’m happy all these people are here, but I’m sad that this boy looks so sad.

“This sucks,” he mutters.

Is he talking to me?!

I look up at him and he looks down at me.

“How’s it going, little squirrel?”

I am overjoyed! Hooray! I’ve made another friend. Maybe he can help me locate my acorns!

“Are you the same one I always see Lea talking to?”

I fluff up my tail, hoping that’s the response he’s looking for.

“I bet it’s not so bad being a squirrel. I bet you’re cooler than I am. Like if the girl you liked spent a half hour sitting with you on a bench you would actually talk to her. But I couldn’t really hear her through my hat, and my hood, and over the wind. And I wanted to switch sides, because that would have been easier, but her friend was over there and there was no way to do it without being conspicuous. And eventually I’m going to have to explain everything to her, but I don’t want her to feel bad for me. And no matter what, I still don’t like talking about it.”

I turn my head to the side to really look at him. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s obviously very sad about it. I try to think of some way to make him happy.

“You ready to go?” one of his friends asks. Or maybe it’s his brother. They both kind of look the same. But the humans all kind of look the same to me.

“Yeah.”

“Want to say good-bye to your new best friend the squirrel?”

“Hey, man. That squirrel’s a good listener.”

“I could be a good listener, too, if you gave me a chance.”

Sam
(Gabe’s brother)

Gabe doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and I feel suspiciously like we’re in an after-school special.

“I know you’d listen.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“I just don’t have anything to say.”

I nod. “You don’t have to say anything important. I know everything has completely sucked for the past year and I’m sorry about that.”

“Thanks.”

We walk slowly back to my house. I’d told my roommates to go ahead and get pizza without us. Gabe obviously has something on his mind, so maybe he’ll talk about it if it’s just the two of us.

“I slept through a fire drill the other night.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you even do that?”

“I fell asleep on my good side with an earbud in.”

“Dude.”

“I know. It’s obviously not a good situation. I don’t think I realized how bad it was.”

“You could like … die.”

“I would hope that someone would realize I wasn’t outside and they’d send firefighters in for me or something.”

“Gabe, this is not the time to be glib.”

“I’m not being glib. I’m trying to reassure myself.”

I’m at a loss for anything to say.

“The flashing light did finally wake me up and I stumbled out the side fire exit as everyone was going back in.”

“You should probably get that checked out.”

“I’m definitely coming to terms with that fact.”

“You hungry?”

“Of course.”

We’re about to turn onto my street but instead we walk in the direction of the sandwich place. The least I can do is buy the kid a meatball sub.

Before we walk in to order, he pulls me aside.

“I need to get everything right in my head. Sometimes I get sort of overwhelmed and confused. And then I feel. It’s a lot of … emotions. And I hate it.”

I nod. Those are a lot of emotions.

“I’m still seeing that shrink, and it’s getting better.”

“Good.”

“But today with Lea kind of sucked. It was like everything that I know is wrong became grossly apparent.”

“She talked to you a lot.”

“I couldn’t hear anything she said.”

“It really doesn’t have to be like that.”

“I want you to believe me when I tell you that I’ve come to that conclusion.”

“Cool. Or else I’ll have to pull some kind of big-brother advantage and make it happen.”

He pushes me out of the way and walks through the door, pulling it shut behind him before I even know what hit me.

“You haven’t had big-brother advantage since I got taller than you when we were in middle school,” he mutters as I stand behind him in line.

I don’t say anything.

“I’m going to take your silence as agreement,” he says seriously.

I burst out laughing. I kind of lucked out in the younger-brother department.

Danny
(Lea’s friend)

“He works at the library!” I say to Lea as I pull her in for a hug.

“Gabe?” she asks.

“Yes.” I’ve come to terms with the fact that Gabe will never be mine, so I am going to do my damnedest to help Lea woo him. “Let’s go stalk him.”

I thread my arm through hers and we walk in the direction of the library.

“You don’t seem particularly excited,” I say as we get to the front doors.

“Things are sort of weird with him lately.”

“Weird how?”

“Well, they were really good for a while. Like fun and normal and every time I saw him we would talk and even kind of hang out.”

“But…”

“But then I saw him during the snowstorm and I was sitting on the bench by him because he hurt his elbow and he couldn’t play snow football,” she says.

“He hurt his elbow, so precious,” I say, putting a hand to my heart.

She smiles. “I was talking to him, asking him a lot of questions, but like he never answered. He would sort of shrug or whatever but he never talked. I thought we were past that, you know?”

I make my most sympathetic face.

“Anyway, I hate to complain. Because he hasn’t done anything wrong. But I also can’t help but feel like he paid his debt to me that day in Starbucks and now he never wants to talk to me again.” Her shoulders droop. We’re standing near the elevator.

I put a finger under her chin and lift her face up. “Don’t be so sad.”

She pouts more dramatically and pushes my hand out of the way. I grab for her hand and pull her onto the elevator.

“We’re going to find that boy and make him talk to you.”

“That sounds awfully threatening,” she says.

“Okay, so we’ll stake out a table with a good view over by the balcony and you can watch him from afar.”

“I like that idea a lot more.”

We find a table that looks out into the tall atrium at the center of the building. We study for a while, goofing off and chatting more than really getting anything done. At one point, Lea looks down to the first floor and freezes.

“Look,” she whispers.

And there’s Gabe with a cart full of books. I can’t help but check out the way his shoulder muscles move as he pushes.

“I guess his elbow still hurts,” she says.

“He does seem to be favoring the one side.”

Lea puts her chin in her hand, watching until he’s out of sight.

“You like him a lot,” I say.