Lost in the Sun (16 page)

“But—”

“I understand that, but—”

“Don't you put this all on Kari. There are two of you in that house, and I know damn well that if you wanted to do something—”

“You had three sons first, Tom.”

That last sentence, when Mom said it, she wasn't arguing anymore.

She'd already given up.

I was just slinking back to my room, silently, so Mom wouldn't hear, when I noticed Doug, peeking out from his own room, watching me. He'd been listening too.

He looked like he felt really sorry for me.

“Shut up,” I hissed at him. And I closed myself inside my room.

•   •   •

It shouldn't have felt so terrible, knowing that my father didn't want me, especially since I didn't want him either.

But it did. It did feel terrible.

I curled up on my bed, still in my jeans and T-shirt. I didn't even have the strength to pull the covers over me. I just lay there, curled up in a tight little ball, trying to squeeze the fire out.

Sometimes you only get one chance.
That's what Dad had told me.

But what were you supposed to do when that chance had come and gone?

The next day I was in a rotten mood, and I guess you can probably figure out why.

As soon as I got to P.E., I didn't even bother to give Mr. Gorman an excuse for why I couldn't participate (it was volleyball, like I was so sad to miss
that
). I just headed straight up to the bleachers. I'd brought a book with me, one I'd snagged from Aaron's room a couple of days before. It was a Mike Lupica book he'd read when he was my age, and so far it was pretty good. Actually, I was so into the book that it took me a while to realize I wasn't alone on the bleachers.

Noah Gorman was there too. Standing just in front of me, eyeing me carefully.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him, lowering my book. “I don't want any trouble.”

But Noah didn't punch me or spit on me or yell at me or any of the other things I thought he might do. Instead, he sat down on the
bleachers. One level below me. “I don't want any trouble, either,” he said.

Whatever.

I guess I was getting pretty into the book again. The next time I looked up, Noah was staring at me—and you could tell he'd been doing it for a while, because as soon as I noticed him, he got all embarrassed and spun around in his seat super quick.

“What?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said. He pretended he'd been watching the volleyball game, which is definitely not what he'd been doing, since he'd been facing a totally different direction. The squeak of sneakers and shouting and balls bouncing echoed off the walls. I hadn't even noticed until right then.

I went back to reading.

“Is that a book about baseball?”

That's what Noah Gorman asked me.

I looked up at him. He was turned around again, staring at the cover of my book.

“Um,” I said. There was a picture of a kid pitching a baseball on the front cover, so the answer to Noah's question seemed pretty obvious. “Yeah.”

I went back to reading.

But I was only at it a few minutes when Noah interrupted me again.

“Why are you reading a book about baseball?” he asked me.

I set the book down in my lap. Squinted at him with one eye.
“Because I like baseball,” I told him. He should've been able to guess that, really, since we used to be friends and everything.

“Oh,” he said. I watched him awhile, to see if he'd say anything else. But he didn't, so I lifted the book to my face again.

“I figured you didn't anymore, since you didn't join intramurals.”

That's what Noah said to me as soon as I had gone back to reading. Lucky for me, it wasn't a question, so I didn't have to say anything back.

I turned a page in my book, then realized I hadn't finished the one before it. I thought about turning back to it, but Noah was still staring at me, so I thought that would be weird. But pretending to read a book when someone was staring at you turned out to be pretty weird, too. I was almost glad when Noah said something else, because it saved me from having to pretend to read anymore.

“I hate baseball,” he said.

I huffed as I looked up from my book, like I was super annoyed he'd interrupted my really important reading. But I asked him, “So why are
you
on the team then?” Because I guess I was curious or whatever. I'd always thought Noah hated baseball, but then he'd gone and joined the stupid team.

“My uncle's the coach,” Noah told me. “I don't really have a choice, do I?”

I wasn't sure if that was true or not, but Noah seemed to think it was true, so maybe it was.

I flipped back to the previous page in my book, so I could finish reading from where I'd left off.

“You already read that page,” Noah told me.

I set my book back down in my lap.

“What are you, the reading police?” I asked.

Noah blinked at me, like he was thinking about something important. “You shouldn't have beaten up Jeremiah,” he said.

I went back to reading. He interrupted my book for
that
? “Jeremiah's a jerk,” I muttered as I read. I had to read the same line over three times, though, because thinking about how big a jerk someone was at the same time you were reading turned out to be sort of hard to do.

“Yeah,” Noah agreed. “But you still shouldn't have beaten him up.”

He didn't say anything to me after that, for the whole rest of P.E. I looked up once, when I was turning a page, and he'd stopped staring at me. Turned all the way around to watch volleyball.

During lunch, I noticed that Noah wasn't sitting at the table with Jeremiah. He was all by himself at a table near the lunch line.

“What are you looking at?” Fallon asked me.

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. And I took another bite of my beans.

•   •   •

Fallon wasn't particularly chatty at lunch. Which was weird, because she was always chatty. Instead of chatting, she poked at her burrito with her spork (it wasn't a particularly delicious-looking burrito).

“Are you mad at me?” I asked her finally.

She didn't look up from her burrito. “No,” she said.
Poke. Poke.
“Why would I be mad at you?”

“I don't know,” I said, because I didn't. “But you're sort of acting like you're mad.”

“Well, I'm not,” she said.
Poke. Poke.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

She still didn't talk to me.

“What movie do you want to watch today?” I asked. Movies always got Fallon talking.

Fallon set her spork down on her tray. “I can't do Movie Club anymore,” she said. Only she wasn't exactly looking at me. “My parents are making me do drama instead. I have to be in the play. We have rehearsals every day after school.
The Wizard of Oz.
Isn't that lame?”

I squinted at her. Studied her dark brown eyes, darting all over the cafeteria, at everything but me.

She was lying.

“Yeah,” I said softly. But
why
was she lying? “That's pretty lame. It sucks, actually.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”

Fallon went back to poking at her burrito, and I went back to eating mine, but I wasn't hungry. I wanted to ask her about her dream, about the screaming. I wanted her to talk to me the way she had in the stockroom. But somehow I knew she wouldn't talk about that.

After five minutes or so of not really talking, I pulled my Book of Thoughts out of my backpack.

“Hey, I can draw a picture for you, if you want,” I told her. “Anything you want, even a scar picture.”

Poke. Poke.

Not looking at me.

I tried again. “I thought maybe I could draw one of that totally tragic typewriter accident you were in when you were a kid. Remember that?”

Fallon pushed back her tray and stood up. Just like that.

“I have to go,” she said.

Still not looking at me.

“What's going on?” I asked her.

She picked up her tray and climbed out from behind the bench. “See you later, Trent.”

And just like that, she was gone.

•   •   •

During social studies, when Ms. Emerson asked me why I hadn't turned in my homework, I told her, “Bite me.”

The classroom went good and silent, let me tell you.

“Excuse me?” she said.

I looked up from my oven station, toward the clock on the wall. The final bell was going to ring in forty-two minutes, and then what was I supposed to do with myself? Not go to dinner with the dad who didn't want me, that was for sure.

“I said, ‘Bite me,'” I told her. “Are you hard of hearing or something?”

A couple of kids started snorting, but they hushed up quick when Ms. Emerson stood up from her stool.

She leaned forward across her stovetop, arms right on the coils, and looked at me.

Everyone in the classroom sucked in one deep breath.

Finally, after a moment that threatened to stretch on forever, Ms. Emerson smacked her lips together, like she'd made up her mind, and, still looking at me carefully, said, “You know, Trent, sometimes
I do have trouble with my hearing. Thank you for your considerate question.” Then she stood up to her full height, clapped her hands together, and said, “Now, class, who can remind us where we left off yesterday with our maps?”

And that was all there was of that.

•   •   •

After school I really wanted to talk to Fallon. Find out why she'd been acting so weird, why she'd been lying about joining Drama Club. But I didn't know where she was. She might've gone straight home, but if I went there and she didn't want me around, her cop of a dad would probably snap my head off.

And then I thought about where she'd gone when she was upset before.

I slammed shut my locker, took a deep breath, and walked back down the hall the same way I'd just come.

“And to what do I owe this pleasure?” Ms. Emerson said as I opened the door to her room. She was sitting at her stovetop desk, glaring at me. She made the word
pleasure
sound like a nasty word.

“Uh.” I shuffled my feet. “Is Fallon here?” I darted my eyes around the room, like I thought she might be hiding somewhere. “Fallon Little.”

“No,” Ms. Emerson told me. She went back to grading papers or whatever it was she was doing.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought she might be here.”

“You are free to check all the ovens,” she told me without looking up from her desk.

I figured that meant Fallon really wasn't there.

I meant to close the door and leave then. I really did. But for some reason I just stood in the doorway for a second, like a moron, gripping the doorknob tight in my hand. I don't know why. Maybe I was avoiding going outside in the cold. Maybe I was just thinking.

“Trent?” Ms. Emerson asked, finally looking up from her papers. She asked it not in the way you would say someone's name if you wanted to ask them a question, but rather in the way you would say it if you wanted to know why the heck they were standing in your doorway, gripping the doorknob, staring at the wall.

“Why wouldn't you give me detention today?” I asked her.

“Why did you want it?” she replied.

Well.

“Fallon comes in here sometimes, right?” I asked her, instead of answering her stupid question that didn't have an answer anyway.

“She does,” Ms. Emerson confirmed. “She is, for one thing, a student of mine.”

“Well, when you see her,” I said, my hand still tight around the doorknob, “can you tell her I want to talk to her? She has my phone number.”

“I am perfectly capable of doing that,” Ms. Emerson said. “Although perhaps such information would be more suitable coming from you.”

There was something peculiar about the way wrinkled old crones talked. Like they were trying to give you an English lesson with every sentence. Anyway, I understood her fine, it just took me a second.

“I think Fallon's mad at me,” I told her. I don't know why I told her that. It was none of her business. “I mean, whatever. Thanks, I guess.” That time I started closing the door for real. “Bye.”

“Trent?”

That time she said my name like there was a question after it. Or more of a statement, maybe.

I opened the door a little wider.

“I find that when people are angry, there's usually not much to do to alter their emotions. But there are often things you can do to cool them down a bit.”

I raised an eyebrow. Cooling down Fallon's anger. Maybe that would be useful. “Like what?” I asked.

“Well.” She thought for a second. “My plants could use watering.”

The other eyebrow went up. “How is watering your plants going to make Fallon like me again?” I asked.

“Oh, I meant me,” Ms. Emerson said. “And it won't sway me completely in your favor, of course. But, as I said, it might help me dislike you slightly less.”

Well.

“Watering can's over there,” she told me, pointing. Then she gestured toward the sink. “The water should be tepid.”

I watered Ms. Emerson's stupid plants. I don't know why. Who cared if the wrinkled old crone liked me or not? But I guess I didn't really have anything better to do. So anyway, I watered them. The spider plant on her stovetop desk, and the fern by the door, and all the millions of pots of flowering green things along the windowsill.

Ms. Emerson had a
lot
of plants.

“Trent?” Ms. Emerson said again as I was leaving the room. She had a habit of that. She didn't say one word to me the whole time I was in the room, but as soon as I was about to leave, suddenly she got chatty.

I swiveled around. “Yeah?”

“The plants will be thirsty again tomorrow,” she said. And with that, she shooed me out the door.

•   •   •

I could've gone home after the plant watering, probably. I bet no one would've argued too hard if I'd just not gotten in the car to go to the St. Albans Diner. No one wanted me there anyway. But I didn't want to be at home.

So I wandered. Down Maple Hill as fast as I could. Trailing circles through the park, past the screaming little kids in their puffy coats.

Down to the lake.

I hadn't been to that side of Cedar Lake since that day last February. The Jared Richards day. As I pulled my bike up into the reedy grass, where it started to get muddy at the edge of the bank, I noticed that it smelled different. Warmer. Muddier. Thicker. It sounded different too. Birds still chirping, the ones who hadn't left yet for the winter. Water lapping, just a bit. Wind blowing.

I found a log, at the edge of the water, and I sat.

November was when it started to get cold in Cedar Haven. It was coldest at the lake.

I sat there a long time, in the bitter wind, and I stared at the lake,
my Book of Thoughts open on my lap in front of me. But it turned out I didn't have too many thoughts.