Letting Ana Go (3 page)

Today, my sophomore year is officially over. Next year, I’ll be
a junior. Vanessa got all weepy when we were cleaning out our lockers because she and Geoff won’t see each other every single second of every single day anymore, although that’s not really the case. We’ll be running together practically every day, and usually we hang out in the afternoons, too. Geoff will probably get a summer job working construction for his dad a few days a week. I promised Vanessa that we would go and take him lunch if she wanted to, which made her smile and wipe her eyes.

She said it wasn’t just Geoff she’d miss, it was
this
, and then she waved her arm around the hallway.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew what she meant. We’ll be back in school in twelve weeks—same buildings, same hallways, same people—but we’ll never be sophomores again, and we’ll never take biology together again, and we’ll never be exactly the same as we were right in that moment. This afternoon when she said it, I understood what Vanessa meant, but now that I’m thinking about it, folding it up in these sentences and sliding it into the drawer with all my other thoughts and memories, it makes a knot swell up in my throat and my eyes sting a little bit. Who knows how this summer will change us?

I guess this is one of the reasons I like Vanessa so much. She remembers how special these little moments are while we’re still having them.

I’m glad that I decided to write this down. Now that I’m
finished, it feels like I have all of this brain space left over to use for thinking about other things. I don’t have to worry about forgetting this either. It’s all right here, tucked neatly away for the next time I need it.

It felt so nice to sleep in this morning and not have to go to school. Coach Perkins ran us hard yesterday because it was our last practice before summer, and I was sore when I walked downstairs. I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms and plopped down in the corner of the sectional and flipped on the TV. Last night was Mom’s fourth shift, so she’ll be off for the next three nights, but I tried to be superquiet because she’s always exhausted from working four nights in a row.

I was catching up on this show Jill and I always watch where this comedian cracks jokes about videos from the Internet. He’s really tall, and skinny, and he’s not drop-dead gorgeous or anything, but he has this handsome smile and he’s so funny that he’s one of those guys who gets cuter and cuter the longer you look at him. Sometimes he shows videos where somebody breaks an arm, and I have to fast-forward through them. You can always tell it’s coming, just from the setup. Usually it’s somebody on a bike getting ready to ride down a set of stairs, or some idiot pulling a bozo in a shopping cart behind
a pickup truck. The thing Jill and I are always amazed by is that most of the time, you can tell that the person who is in the video doing something completely deranged is also the
person who uploaded this video
. Which begs the question, why would you want the
entire world
to see you do something so stupid? Isn’t it enough that you came two inches from death and wound up in the hospital with a cast on your leg? Must you advertise this fact? When I do something that’s embarrassing, I just feel like dying. I want to curl into a tiny ball and crawl under my bed.

Anyway, Mom stumbled into the kitchen and said good morning. I smiled and she came over and kissed me on the top of the head, then walked back across the great room and stood in front of the open refrigerator for what seemed like forever. Then I heard her
SIGH
. After that, the pantry opened, then closed. Then the cabinets next to the refrigerator opened, then closed. Then the pantry again. Then another
SIGH
.

And finally, I couldn’t stand it one moment longer. I turned off the TV and marched into the kitchen with my empty bowl, rinsed it out in the sink, dried my hands, turned to my mother (who was peering into the refrigerator again), and said:

Mom!
This is ridiculous. Just eat something for breakfast.

Mom: But I’m so fat. I just need to save my calories for dinner tonight.

Me: Stop. Whining.

Mom (shocked): Wha—?

Me: You are not fat. You need to lose twenty pounds. You are a
nurse
. This is not rocket science.

Mom: But I’ve been trying to diet and . . .

Me: Mom, dieting doesn’t work. You
know
this. This is about changing the way you eat. Calories in versus calories out.

Mom: But I don’t eat that much!

Me: No, you do eat that much, you just don’t know what you’re eating because you don’t sit down and make a meal. You graze all day long and pretend that you’re saving your calories for dinner, but really, you’re eating all these little bites of crap all day, and then eating way too much at night because you’re hungry from not eating the right stuff during the day.

She started crying at this point, and I gave her a hug, but I am just tired of this. Dad’s always giving her a hard time about it, true, but if you want to fix something, you just have to start somewhere.

Me: How much do you weigh?

Mom: I . . . I don’t know. I’m afraid to look.

Me: Jeez!

I grabbed her hand and dragged her up the stairs to her bathroom. I pulled the scale out from under the sink and pointed to it. I told her I wasn’t leaving until she weighed herself. I quoted Coach Perkins. She said, just like performance
in a sport, weight is one of those things you have to measure. Coach Perkins always tells us if you don’t know where you’re starting from, you don’t know where you’re going, and only the things that get measured get changed.

So she stepped on the scale. Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but she needs to lose about twenty-five pounds. At that moment, Jill rang the doorbell, and we went back downstairs. She saw that Mom had been crying and asked if everything was all right. I told her it was, and then Vanessa and Geoff showed up. We are all going to the pool at the club Jill’s parents belong to today to lay out and get our tans going for the first day of summer. Right there in the kitchen every single one of us whipped out our phones and showed Mom CalorTrack. I downloaded the app on Mom’s phone while Jill set up her account on the laptop and Vanessa showed her how she could type in the first few letters of the things she ate every day and they’d pop up on the list. Before we left for the pool, we helped her set a goal, and Geoff confiscated most of Mom’s stash of Snack Packs and lo-cal treats and low-fat everything as snacks for the pool.

Vanessa pulled some cottage cheese out of the fridge and measured a three-quarter-cup serving. Jill cut up a cantaloupe that was sitting on the counter. Geoff put water in the electric kettle and brewed some tea. Then I went and got my swim stuff while they kept her company and talked about what she could
eat for a morning snack, and lunch, and an afternoon snack.

Finally, everybody piled into Geoff’s car, only I ran back inside to get my sunglasses, but couldn’t find them. As I was digging through the junk drawer under the key hooks at the kitchen island, Mom grabbed me around the waist and squeezed me extra tight. She whispered the words “thank you” into my ear really softly.

I kissed her cheek, told her to be sure to eat lunch and take a walk, then ran for the car. As Geoff pulled out of the driveway and Vanessa cranked up the music, Jill reached over and handed me my sunglasses. I put them on and she smiled and said, Welcome to Your Summer. We’re So Pleased You Could Join Us.

Then Geoff let out a whoop and sped down the street.

As I picked up the pen to write this I realized my cheeks were aching because I’ve been smiling all day.

This morning I ran the mile and a half to Vanessa’s place. Geoff was already there, stretching in the driveway, and we did a middle distance at a pretty fast pace. When we ran by my place I went in and showered, while they ran back to Vanessa’s. Mom was sitting at her laptop entering her breakfast meal—half a grapefruit, egg whites, and one piece of whole-grain toast. She
looked up and smiled at me, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, she seemed excited about something.

I kissed her on the cheek and she pointed at the screen to where she’d just entered her weight from that morning. She’s already down one pound since she started keeping track last week! I gave her a high five, and she giggled.

After I got cleaned up, Geoff came by and we drove over to meet Jill at her parents’ club again. They’ve got such an awesome pool with a couple of springboards, and the snack bar is to die for. Jill got all As last semester, so as long as she gets permission her parents let her sign for all of our food on their account. It’s not that we eat a lot or anything, but it’s a great deal. It’s one of the reasons we studied so much last year. Jack and Rob were with her, and Geoff challenged them to a cannonball duel to see who could splash the most water out of the pool onto Jill, Vanessa, and me. Naturally, the results were hilarious and disastrous with Geoff, Jack, and Rob ultimately being called into the head lifeguard’s office. I, personally, had been unaware of the lifeguard hierarchy at the Fielding Club Aquatics Center until today, but suffice it to say watching the Cannonball Splash-O-Rama (as Geoff called it) being referred up the chain of command in a series of stern warnings and whistle blowing over approximately two hours was among the funniest things
I have ever witnessed. While Jack was being threatened with a suspension of his membership privileges at the pool by a red-nosed sophomore from the local junior college named Rusty, Rob and Geoff were firmly tutored in the Guest Behavioral Guidelines by Becky, the “assistant head lifeguard.” A curly-haired woman who coached the club’s master swim team, she made it clear that if the guys continued to give “her staff” any more trouble, they would be put on the Fielding Club Aquatics Center watch list for the next month and not be allowed into the facility as a guest.

All of the cannonballing and lecturing had made the guys hungry, and after our run, I was starving myself, so we went to the snack bar. When we arrived, Rob gave an order to Jack that was roughly as long as the Bill of Rights, then he and Jill went to nab us a table on the sundeck that overlooks the lap pool. Jack called after her to see what she wanted to eat, but she just shook her head and waived her bottle of water at him.

Jack: She never eats at the pool, does she?

Me: Did you just meet her today?

Rob: I’ll get her to eat a nacho if it kills me.

Jack: It may.

Rob: Dancers and runners, world’s fittest women everywhere I turn.

Geoff: We are some lucky bastards, aren’t we?

Me: Like the three of you can talk. Your abs belie your 8 percent body fat.

Rob laughed, and walked as quickly as he could without drawing a whistle from a lifeguard. He joined Jill, who was pulling up enough chairs for all of us around a single table in the corner.

As we stood in line under the snack bar awning, Geoff draped his arm around Vanessa’s shoulders and she leaned into him. His chin sat perfectly on top of her dark, wet ringlets. They were doing that thing they do where they somehow tune out the entire world by touching each other, which left me standing there next to Jack, suddenly shivering in the shade. I crossed my arms over the top of my suit. I’ve had breasts for a couple years now, but I don’t need to be shivering and flashing my high beams at my friend’s older brother in front of God and the world.

Jack’s hair was still wet, and he tossed his bangs out of his eyes with a little flip of his chin and smiled at me.

Jack: You cold?

Me: A little.

Jack: I’d put my arm around you like Geoff here is doing for Vanessa, but that might be weird.

Me (laughing): Yeah. Might be.

Jack: Although, I hate to see you shiver like that.

Me (taking two giant steps out from under snack bar awning): Maybe I’ll just stand over here in the sun and wait for you to get the food.

Jack (loudly): Yeah, but now I feel lonely.

Me: We regret to inform you that your loneliness has been trumped by our lack of body heat. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to seeing you in the sunshine again very soon.

Jack’s laugh was infectious and I couldn’t resist joining him. It was strange. In all the years Jill and I have been best friends, I don’t remember being around Jack without her being right there with us. Standing there laughing, six feet apart, him in the shade, me in the sun, it was like I was meeting somebody new. Right before he stepped to the counter to order enough nachos and Red Vines to sink a submarine, he flipped his wet bangs off his forehead again, and for the first time ever I noticed his eyes.

As blue as the bottom of the pool.

Dad took me to dinner tonight. Mom is working shift three of four.

When I was little he used to do this Dad and Daughter Date Night where we’d go eat pizza and see a movie. I can’t
remember when we stopped doing it. I think around the time I went to middle school. I started running track that year, and Dad got the opportunity to open the dealership. It’s one of those things you never mean to stop, but you don’t notice when it does. Then one day you look up and it’s over almost before you realized it was happening.

We went to this Korean barbecue place downtown where you cook your own meat on the grill in the middle of your table. It was delicious and we ate until we were stuffed. I thought about how much Mom would have liked this place. I wondered why he never brought us here. He’d obviously been here before. He knew the hostess by name, the waitress asked how things were going at the dealership, and the chef came out to make sure everything was okay.

Dad read my mind: I come here for work lunches a lot.

Me: It’s a long way from the dealership for lunch, isn’t it?

Dad: Yeah, but it’s such great food. Sometimes it’s worth the trip.

I remember a lot of things about our Dad and Daughter Date Nights when I was little. I remember the place we used to go for pizza with the stage full of singing puppets at the end of the dining room. I remember putting a dollar bill in the machine and the
kerchink
of tokens tumbling into the silver tray. I remember the feeling of Dad’s arms around me as he helped me toss the
Skee-Ball into the 100-point hole. I remember squealing with excitement as the endless tape of tickets came spouting out as the sirens rang and the lights flashed. I remember the candy and tiny monkey doll for which I exchanged the tickets. I remember the doll was fuzzy and brown. I remember how she sucked her hard plastic thumb in a perfectly round, hard plastic mouth.