Words and Their Meanings (8 page)

18

N
at drives me home because running is not an option. Neither is walking, considering the quarter-size blisters I have on my heels. And the button-size ones on top of my toes.

“Let's wait a few days to go through Joe's room,” Nat says as she turns into my driveway. “In the meantime, you've got to call Mateo back.”

I start to protest but she's already reciting the lines she wants me to say.

“Hey, Mateo,” Nat practically coos, “it's Anna! Sorry I rushed off the phone this morning, I was in the middle of drying my hair” (Nat flips hers as she says this). “Anyway, I'm busy tonight, but I have a free afternoon tomorrow, if you want to go with me to see my best friend's boyfriend's soccer game. You know Nat, right? She's the most fabulous friend in the universe, super talented and beautiful and—”

“Oh, yeah.” I nod. “I am totally going to say all of that.”

Nat smiles and shoves me out the door before stalling the car, twice.

Once I'm alone, I pull the phone from my pocket. Play hot potato with it. My blood is running flood-river style through my body right now. I decide I'm not calling. Decide I am calling. Decide he's probably figured out I'm a hot mess. Decide I need to know if this is true.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Hi,” I say, too fast to hang up.

Silence. I pick a frayed thread on my shorts.

“Hi?” I try again.

“Yeah, I'm here,” Mateo replies. “Just had to double-check who was calling, because after this morning, I didn't think I'd be hearing from you.”

I set my jaw. This was a bad idea.

“But I'm glad,” he adds. “That you called.”

“Yeah, well.” I stall as much as Dolores. “Even though you ate way more banana split than I did last night, I figure I either owe you six dollars or can drag you to watch my friend Nat's boyfriend play soccer tomorrow, where I can pay six dollars for you to experience the concession stand's equally enticing hot dogs and fake-buttered buckets of popcorn.”

“You've got a weird sense of balancing out a debt,” Mateo says. I can tell his dimple is showing.

“Well, I know it's slumming—” I cough to cover up my faux pas. It's not that I assume Mateo lives in a ghetto, it's just, well, us township kids aren't well versed in his area of town. And vice versa.

“How do you know I haven't already experienced those delicacies?” he asks. I twist a chunk of hair around and around until my finger turns purple.

“Do you play travel soccer?”

“No.”

“Do you have friends that play travel soccer? At the field on my side of town?”

“Your side of town?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Uh-huh. I've never been to this snack shack of yours, so how about I pick you up tomorrow and allow you the pleasure of introducing my fine palette to such preservative-rich treasures.”

I can't help laughing.

“You sound ridiculous when you talk like that,” I say after snorting.

“How do you know this is not how I carry on a normal conversation?” His words come out like a slow current.

“I just do,” I say, trying to match his tempo.

Daily Verse:

You can always count on me to be just yapping away.

19

I
opt for a thin purple (pre-Patti, to appease Mom) long-sleeve shirt, cut-off jean shorts, black Converse high-tops, and three leather cords draped around my neck. The one hanging closest to my twined gold key has swirling glass beads on each side of a Celtic cross. The designs carved into the metal used to be tinted green, but the whole thing is stained black with permanent marker now. I stare at the Patti photo grid and frown. Sometimes it would be nice to just have a mirror.

The doorbell rings. I hear Mom get up, and listen to her exchange cautious pleasantries with Mateo. I wonder if she's running through a catalogue of faces, trying to recall if she should know this boy from school plays or games or field trips. I wonder if she is afraid my heart will be on my sleeve, or if she'd rather see it broken than not beating at all. I wonder if she's hoping he's a promise of better days.

I don't let myself wonder anything else.

“We're watching Alex's game. Back later,” I say without stopping, pulling Mateo outside with me. His hand stays in mine a second too long. My skin tingles like a new lifeline was carved with the trace of his finger.

“I like soccer,” he says to break the silence. “I played when I was younger. But then I got too busy with cooking and school, plus I play basketball too. Still like to watch, though…”

His head bobs with the beat of some pop-ish love song on the radio. The window is down. I let my hand surf waves of warm air. This is what life felt like, I think, back before it happened. This. Normal. Happy.

We pull into the parking lot just as Nat is stepping out of her car.

“Natalie, right?” Mateo says, flicking his head in her direction. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail. She's wearing a green and yellow Hornets T-shirt, which is what all the girlfriends on Alex's soccer team wear to games. She waves.

“Mateo?” she asks, and I'm reminded just how talented of an actress she is. “Nat. Nice to see you outside of a kitchen. Hey, Anna.”

I give her a quick squeeze, like this is what we do.

“Yeah, nice to see you girls in Technicolor,” he says with a grin.

Nat throws back her head and laughs. It reminds me of Sameera.

“I like him,” Nat says, as if Mateo isn't standing right next to me. She winks and walks ahead of us. I shake my head and make a mental note to strangle her later.

The team is already on the field, doing their ritual warmups. I know the whole sequence from when Joe used to play. They lift their legs in a sort of high march-skip, moving toward the bleachers and then dropping to the ground for five push-ups before gathering into a circle to dodge and weave in place. I look over at Mateo and roll my eyes.

“I used to find this hilarious. They look ridiculous out there.”

“Used to?” He cocks his eyebrow. “Come to a lot of games with Nat? Or did you have a boy on this team too?”

“Nat. I don't have another connection to soccer,” I say a little too quickly. I don't glance over, but I know Nat's shot me a curious look. We've always been able to do this too—feel what the other is thinking without having to confirm it. I lean against her as an answer.

“Nat and Alex have been together a long time. That equates to a lot of ‘Go Hornets' cheers along the way. It's like a prerequisite of being a best friend, you know, to be the supportive wing-woman. I could probably go out there and play as good as those boys just from watching. Or not, since I spend most of my time buying popcorn, eating the popcorn, buying more popcorn, and then running for a slushie because salt levels have caused my body to go into full dehydration mode. Yup. Love soccer games.”

I pull my sleeve up for a second, glance at the reminder I wrote to keep from yapping away.

And what I don't want to say is this: sitting beside Nat on the third row of cold metal bleachers brings me back to last year, when Alex's team broke out of its normal warm-up to form a human version of the number four. They stood there, staring straight ahead, while the speaker above announced a moment of silence for Joe O'Mally, whose old jersey number, four, would be retired from the summer league forever.

My parents were on the field. Dad accepted a frame with his brother's jersey, or a replica of it anyway. He shook hands with the coach. Walking back to the stands, Mom stayed a step or two behind.

Nat didn't see any of this because she squeezed her eyes shut tight. It's what I wanted to do, and she knew so without me saying it. I did coffin yoga sitting up that day. It was the only time I made it to three minutes without breathing. I passed out against Nat just as my parents were walking off the field.

“Take me to this divine popcorn you keep speaking of,” Mateo says, offering his hand. He pulls me up and bumping his hip against mine, we walk toward the concession stand.

“But I'm paying,” he adds.

Damn that dimple.

Daily Verse:

I think now it's time to get serious about my work.

20

T
here has to be an explanation,” Nat says. She's sitting on my unmade bed with a bag full of chocolate chips in her lap. Between bites, she continues pursuing all possibilities for why Mateo didn't try to kiss me (again) yesterday. I continue proving her logic is flawed.

“He's nervous because you're wild-child hot.”

“Not possible: (a) I'm not, and (b) have you looked at him? Clearly he hasn't had a shortage of pretty girls batting their eyes in his direction.”

“Whatever. Maybe he's suffering from severe halitosis.”

“Nope. Breath smells like cinnamon. He leaned over to tell me what position he used to play in soccer, and I got a good whiff.”

“Okay, he mentioned he knew the goalie on the other team from church. And then when you asked where he went, he said St. Mary's. So he's clearly Catholic. Maybe he's like, saving himself until marriage.”

“Saving himself to the point of no kissing?”

“It happens.”

“Doubtful.”

“Girlfriend?”

“I don't think so.” I get the feeling Mateo is about as honest as they get. He wouldn't omit information like that, not when he keeps saying things like “Thanks for the date.” Of course, I believed in Joe's unwavering honesty. And that made me blind to his truths.

“Maybe he's getting over a cold and—” Nat stops dead. “Sorry,” she says, tripping over every letter. “I didn't mean—”

“It's fine. And maybe. Doesn't matter. Should we get started?”

The real reason Nat is here has little to do with dissecting my non-existent love life. We're going to sneak into Joe's room while Mom is running errands and Bea's in summer school. (Bea's teachers let her hide a lot last year—under her desk, in the supply closet, coat room, etc.—but her vanishing acts left some serious holes in her necessary-for-third-grade skill sets.)

“Right. Yeah, okay. But I had this epiphany last night and I'll totally forget if I don't say it.”

I roll out my hand for Nat to take the stage. She pops up and starts pacing the room, ignoring the cascade of tiny chocolate chips falling from her lap to the floor.

“So.” She rubs her hands together. “Remember how we used to talk about the future? How we railed against the traditional zombie student apocalypse of stacking résumé
s to get into the good colleges to get the good jobs to make money and have babies and repeat the whole cycle as parents? We knew our passions. We knew ourselves. I think it might help now. To try and have a real conversation aga
in.”

Partly because she sounds like she's performing an impassioned monologue, I don't interrupt. I do, however, click on the small TV slumped against the bottom of my bookshelf. It's a Gramps special, with an old-school antenna and rounded screen. He rescued it from a dumpster and got it to work well enough to plug in an also-rescued Atari. Gramps hates waste. He hates the idea of TVs or typewriters or computers or radios exceeding their usefulness the minute something better comes along.

Nat exaggerates a sigh and sits cross-legged on my bed, waiting. I pick up the control and turn on Pac-Man. It doesn't take long for a red ghost to eat me. I match her sigh and toss the controller back into the bookshelf.

“Fine. What deep, philosophical musings would you like to discuss before we go pull my dead bruncle's room apart in search of clues to solve this mystery I-can't-even-think-of-without-wanting-to-puke?”

“Really, Anna? Do you have to be so mean?”

Part of me wants to scream YES. Part of me wants to curl up next to my best friend and draw invisible elephants and sheep and airplanes with our fingers, like we used to do with Joe on lazy afternoons. Back then, I could see the nonexistent with ease.

“Look, I'm sorry. I don't have anything interesting to say, I guess. I don't have a passion anymore. And I doubt you want to talk about how life is basically a grenade with the pin half-pulled.”

I don't tell her I wish it wasn't this way, or how much I'd love to rediscover the old me. I don't tell her I sometimes want to find a new first line. I don't tell her I want to believe that any of this, anything at all, matters.

Nat's face is hard to read. She comes over and plants a kiss on my temple.

“Come on,” she says, holding out her hand. “Let's get this over with.”

We creep into Joe's room even though no one is home. We're both jumpy and whispering.

“You do this side,” Nat says, hushing as I trip over the one stack of books I didn't put back the other day. “I'll take the closet.”

We work without speaking. His dresser gets rummaged. His books get pulled again. Rifling his closet, Nat discovers a ten dollar bill in a shirt pocket, a super violent video game I distinctly remember him telling Mom he got rid of, and a copy of a literary review that printed one of my stories.

It feels like we've been at this for two weeks but the clock in Joe's room is telling me it's been twenty minutes.

“This is crazy,” Nat says. “We're never gonna find anything. We'll never really know.”

“My counselor thinks I need a hobby.”

“This is not a hobby.”

“It's like a quest.”

“It's like stupid.”

“You don't have to help.”

She stands in the middle of the room, her bare feet sinking into the ugly blue shag rug Joe insisted on keeping when we first moved into this house. Hands on hips, eyes in slits. Ah, yes, Nat's don't-mess-with-me face.

I'm half under Joe's bed, groping around for anything that doesn't feel like a stray sock or gum wrapper. As I pull my hand back, empty, my pinkie touches something cold. Snatching it into the light, I hold up a plain silver linked bracelet for Nat to see. There is a tiny bird charm attached near the clasp. Her eyes grow wide with surprise. We both know Sameera owns one piece of jewelry: a skinny leather cuff she wears only on special occasions. She is a big believer in the “no fuss, no muss” rules of getting dressed every day.

“Maybe the trail isn't cold after all,” I say, swinging the bracelet like a hypnotist's pocket watch.

“Do you know who it belongs to?” Nat asks, arms crossed.

“Not yet,” I say. “But I have an idea how to find out.”