carefully everywhere descending (15 page)

I frown and step back, and my heel catches on something at the edge of the porch. I lose my balance and shriek as I fall back, arms pinwheeling.

“Audrey!” I hear Sam yell as I land—hard—on the ground. Thankfully, it's not a high porch, just a foot off the ground, but my tailbone and back don't seem to appreciate the brevity of the fall. Wincing, I sit up.

“It's okay, I'm okay,” I say as he stands worriedly over me. “Ow. What did I step on?”

Sam looks behind him. “It was a statue of a rooster.”

“
Was
?”

“Well,” says Sam, bending over and picking up part of it. “You kinda… beheaded it.”

My stomach sinks. “Oh no. No! Can we glue it back together?”

“Uhhh….” With difficulty, he holds up the head, which is in three distinct pieces. I cover my mouth with my hand.

“This is terrible.”

“Eh, it's not any worse than what it looked like whole,” he says, studying it.

“No, Sam! I destroyed someone's property. I'm so horrified.” I climb to my feet, barely noticing the sore muscles and twinges. “Oh! Now he has to answer the door. I was almost killed on his yard.”

But he doesn't. I'm starting to think he may be genuinely not home this time. Finally, I run to our house to get paper and leave a note under the broken rooster, explaining why we were there, that it was an accident, and please let me replace or reimburse him for his loss.

Ha! Now the ball's in his court.

Sam and I cross the poor line to go start hitting up the wealthier houses. Sam was right; no one in our neighborhood would be interested in adjusting their budgets to afford the stuff in the catalog.

After seven houses, we've sold stuff at three and are pretty well on our way to meeting his goal.

“How's school?” I ask as we leave our eighth house, the Uzuns, who bought a whole bunch of fruit and put us over halfway there.

He pulls a face. “It's
fine
. Don't nag.”

“Are your grades up?”

“
Yes
. It's
fine
.”

“That's a surprise, since I saw you got a
D
on your last science test.”

He looks at me in outrage. “You snooped through my stuff?”

“No, Sam! You left it on the table before school yesterday while you were putting on your shoes, and I saw it then. I'm worried your grades will drop. What if you end up repeating the seventh grade? I mean, picture it: You're stuck there while all your friends move on. You'll be the oldest one in the class. It doesn't have to be like that. Why don't we add another study day onto the week?”

“Ugh!” He kicks a rock so hard it flies across the street into a yard in a wide arch, and for a heart-stopping moment, I'm sure it's going to hit the house. Two damaged properties in one day; the Anderson kids on a roll. It doesn't, though. It just skips into their yard and stops halfway to the house. “I
hate
school!”

“Sam,” I start, then stop myself.

“It's so stupid! I hate the stupid teachers and the stupid tests and the stupid schedule I have every day! I hate having homework! I hate having to write papers! I hate it all!”

He's worked up, his chest heaving and his eyes suspiciously wet. I stop walking and put my hands on his shoulders.

“Sam,” I say gently. “I'm sorry you hate it. I'm sorry you find it frustrating. But you
have
to do it. And you have to do it for the next five years. You may never like it, but you need to learn to cope with it. It's the only way to get to a better life.”

“My life is fine the way it is,” he huffs, pulling away from me and storming off. “Just because you're too good for us doesn't mean I am.”

“I'm not ‘too good!'” I say, stung.

“Whatever.”

“We're adding an extra study night,” I say firmly, running to catch up to him. “It doesn't have to be as long—forty-five minutes, let's say to start—but until you improve in school, it's happening, bean.”

He groans but doesn't protest. I force myself to act cheerful at the next house. Sam barely looks at them or me, but they still buy a bucket of white-chocolate-macadamia-nut cookie dough.

We only need one more sale before we're done. That cheers Sam up as he hops down the steep driveway to the sidewalk.

“What about that one?” he asks, pointing at Scarlett's house, kitty-corner to the intersection where we just arrived. A silver Audi is parked in the driveway.

“No,” I say, my stomach contracting. “Let's start back for home.”

“Why?” Sam asks.

“Trust me, bean,” I say, turning away. “Besides, why walk all the way over there, when we can just go here?” I head away from Scarlett's toward a stately pink house. Sam follows me reluctantly.

We strike out at the next two houses, before selling a few bags of oranges to an elderly lady who thinks her grandkids will like them when they come to visit. On the way back home, Sam and I agree the kids would probably have preferred any flavor of the cookie dough to the oranges.

I consider suggesting to Sam that we settle down with his homework, but the second I inhale, he gives me a look like he knows what's coming and dreads it.

I decide to give him a break. He's worked hard today already, I suppose.

“I'm going to see if Amber wants to hang out,” I say instead. He looks surprised. “Go pester Jimmy.” I squeeze the top of his head to show I'm joking and pull out my phone to call Amber.

She's free for the afternoon and would love to spend time together. I take the car and meet her in her driveway, where she's just finishing washing both her zippy yellow Mini Cooper and the family minivan. She's sweaty and her entire front is drenched in water.

“You've got perfect timing,” she says, dropping the hose into an overturned plastic bucket that still has suds clinging to it. She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead. “Want to make cookies? You pick what kind and get out the ingredients while I grab a quick shower.”

I decide on peanut butter with a Hershey's Kiss the second I open her pantry and see a large, unopened bag of the chocolates in Easter colors, with a big orange discount sticker on the side.

“We need to eat these,” I say mock seriously when she comes down, wet hair pulled back into a thick ponytail and a shirt that's a little too tight for her body type. “They'll go bad if we don't.”

She nods with a similar gravity. “It's in the best interests of everyone if we bake them into delicious cookies.”

Amber chats happily as we bake, recounting her last cello lesson, funny things that happened in the classes we don't share, and amusing things her family said/did. They're planning on taking a two-week trip to her grandparents in Alaska this summer. It sounds amazing.

The cookies are so good, we both eat two while they're warm and the chocolate is melty. Amber has a date with Steven that night, so I pack up the half she gives to me on two separate plates and wrap them in cellophane.

“Are you sure you don't want more?” she asks as I balance them on one arm and fish my keys out of my khaki's pocket with the other. “We made plenty.”

“This is fine,” I say. I have specific uses in mind for both.

“Hey,” says Amber with hesitation. I freeze in my tracks and stare at her, standing next to the stove with all its dirty cookie sheets. Amber is nothing but quietly assured. “I was thinking…. You can say no, of course, but Steven has a friend, Brenna, and I thought it would be fun… if you would like, of course, but it may be fun if we all four go out sometime.”

“Er—”

“I don't want to push you into anything,” Amber says in a rush, holding up her hands beseechingly, “and I don't mean it as a way to get over Scarlett, or to rush into anything, but… I just thought it would be nice to spend time together. And we're going to be going to college soon. Developing these sort of social skills is a must for a college girl. Brenna got into Northwestern, and she told Steven it was in large part because she was so self-assured around other people.”

“She got into Northwestern?” I ask swiftly. I had known Steven was a senior but hadn't really thought of it in context of colleges and applications. “I'll think about it.”

She nods. “Okay. I thought, if nothing else came of it, you might be able to get some tips about the admissions process.”

It's a thought that sticks with me all the way back home. It's the part that appeals to me most; being with Amber is always great, of course, but forcing myself to small talk with someone I don't know in a high-pressure social situation…. Ugh.

As I drive up, I can see the note I left still fluttering under the broken pieces of rooster on my neighbor's porch, so I take one plate inside and put it in the freezer to save for whenever he gets home (not only will it preserve the cookies, but Jimmy and Sam won't look for it there, especially since I have a decoy plate for them).

The next week is a blur of schoolwork and I mostly forget about my neighbor. There are only three weeks left in the school year, and everyone's focused and panicked and hyper, except the seniors, who are just hyper and emotional. I only see Scarlett from a distance. Occasionally we catch eyes and both smile a little at each other. I ask Mr. Nwaogu daily who won the science project, and he gets more and more irked as he tells me, “I'll let everyone know soon. Go take a seat.”

Finally, on Friday, he looks at me significantly as the bell rings. I sit straight up, excitement thrumming through me.

“Congratulations to the pair who will be going to Chicago this July,” he intones, looking down at his computer. He adjusts his glasses. “To Mr. Reese and Ms. Risatti. Congratulations.” He leads the class in tepid applause.

I fall back in my chair, numb from the top of my head to my toes. The lovely fantasy of beaming college admissions officers fades away.

No. No. How did this happen?

I'm not stupid, I know how it happened: I let myself get distracted. I settled for a substandard project because I was too busy mooning over Scarlett, a girl who doesn't even want me, to focus on the important things. I took the first project I looked at and called it good without thinking it through, without really trying.

I'm as bad as Mr. Nwaogu.

We should have gone with the lasers.

I'm so furious at myself I can't focus the rest of the class. I keep clenching and unclenching my hand around the pen I'm holding. I look at it and picture myself the same way: encased in a protective surface so everything pings off me, not bothering the core as I work and work until I'm spent up and dry….

Scarlett catches up to me in the hall.

“Hey. Sorry about the project.”

“Me too,” I say grimly, clutching my book and notebook to my chest. She shifts and stares at me, ducking a little to look at my face.

“Look… what can I do to make it up to you?”

I blink at her. “Make what up to me?”

“Losing.”

I can practically see the dumbfounded look on my own face. “Nothing? I lost for us both.”

Her face twists and her hand tightens on the strap of her backpack.

“Yeah,” she says, “yeah, I know getting stuck with me was a bad draw. I just didn't expect to sink the great ship Anderson.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, baffled.

“I could see how much it terrified you to have me as a partner the first day together,” she accuses. “You couldn't wait to get rid of me and work on it by yourself. Turns out, even that wasn't enough to carry my weight, huh?”

“Wha…? Terrified? You mean by that volcano comment?”

“What?”

“The volcano! The baking soda volcano, as a project?”

“Are you serious? I was joking! But if it was between that or a nuclear fusion reactor, I think we both know I only have the capacity to open the baking soda box.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I'm not joking,” she says between clenched teeth.

“Then you're being ridiculous and delusional.”

“Am I? We didn't win, did we? And who do you think was the deciding factor in that?”

“Me!” I say, and immediately realize just how stupid and self-centered I'm being. “Both of us. Okay? We both… just lost. Sometimes you try your best, and you still lose. That's it. It wasn't because of you, and it wasn't because of me. Our competition was just better this time.”

She shifts her bag over her shoulder, a contemplative furrow between her beautiful eyes. The bell rings.

“I've got Spanish,” I say, apologetically. “Just… good game, West.”

She snorts a laugh, a real laugh, like I haven't heard from her in a while. “Yeah. You too, Anderson.”

 

 

A
MBER
IS
waiting by my locker after Spanish, an excited-and-worried smile on her round, pretty face.

“If you're interested, Steven and Brenna are both free tonight,” she says. “We could get dinner and just… hang out?”

I'm feeling a little beaten-up from the day and from the week, but good at the same time—a little freer than I've been in a while, so I agree. “That sounds like fun. What about Vapiano's?” It's the nicest restaurant within walking distance of my house.

Her face lights up. “Perfect! I'll let them know. 6:30?”

“Meet me outside the restaurant at 6:25,” I say, loading up my backpack. “I don't want to be the first one or the last one to arrive.”

Amber nods approvingly. “Great idea.”

So at 6:25 I'm standing outside Vapiano's, sweating a little in the almost-summer heat in the navy lace skater dress I've changed into. It's one of the two nicest dresses I own, and it was fun to doll up a little for a night out. The last time I wore it was to the restaurant Amber's family took me to.