Water Balloon Read online

  "I've been thinking about what we talked about last night, Marley."

  She's behind me and I'm looking down at the ground, at the holes left behind from digging down deep for all those far-reaching roots.

  I want to say that we don't need to talk about it anymore because I'm sick of talking, and it doesn't make it better, and there's nothing she can say anyway.

  "I'm sorry," she says.

  "What kind of sorry?" I would have thought I'd be so thankful to hear her say those words. Instead, it unleashes some fury that has been growing, waiting. I am so mad at her and Jane for making me feel like I've lost my only friends in the world. For ditching me when I'm living through the hardest time of my life.

  "For everything, Marley. It's just that Jane,—I don't know. When I'm with her, it all makes sense. When I'm with you, it all seems wrong. I am sorry. I'm sorry if we hurt you. I'm sorry I hurt you."

  I must have been braced for her to say something lame. Because I feel something like a huge, rolling wave of relief soak me through to the edges. That was the exact right answer.

  She walks over and hugs me. The tears that have been threatening every five minutes, anytime someone said something nice, come out in a hurry. I'm hugging her tight, and I'm sobbing, and I'm feeling so good. So grateful.

  The front door opens and Dad is calling out for me. "Your mom is on the phone. Hey, are you okay?"

  I'm drippy and snorffly, but I nod. "I'm good. I'll be right in."

  Rig looks up at me, lying half on his back, and I know he's thinking that he doesn't want to go in right now, that the sun feels good on his side, that the grass feels right under his other side. "Just stay," I tell him.

  ***

  When I get back outside, there's Rig in his sprawled-out-on-his-back position, with Jack rubbing his stomach in big, long ovals. Leah is standing right next to Jack. She takes two steps away from him when she sees me.

  "Hey, Marley," Jack says.

  "No camp today?"

  "It's Saturday."

  "Camp?" Leah asks. "You work at a camp?"

  "No," Jack says, looking at the ground and toeing the dirt with his sneaker. "I just go to this baseball camp. I mean, I do sort of work there, but I also kind of go there."

  I'm an idiot. Why did I have to bring up his camp and embarrass him? "So what are you doing?"

  "Dean's supposed to pick me up. That's my brother," he says to Leah, leaning forward to look around the big maple and down the street. "I guess he's going to be late." He pulls a ball out of his pocket, tosses it up a little, and catches it.

  "He doesn't live with you?" Leah asks, her eyes all earnest and interested and intent on Jack.

  "No. He's older. He lives by himself."

  "I have older sisters too!" she says, as if it is the single most unbelievable coincidence of modern times. "One's away at college and one lives in Boston!"

  Jack looks at her like he doesn't exactly get the connection. Then he looks back at me. "It's just a little weird, because we were supposed to get together today, but I haven't heard from him all week. Usually he calls. He'd better call." He takes the ball and hurls it hard against the maple tree.

  "Oh, I hope he's okay," Leah says with a touch on his back.

  Get your hands off him, Leah.

  "If he doesn't show, maybe we could hang out," she says, her hand still casually on his back. "I mean, you should definitely hang with Marley and me. We could just hang, or walk Marley's dog, or whatever."

  This is all too complicated. There's a war going on inside me. On one side—the soul-filling relief at being friends with Leah again, about being past the apologies and back to something normal. Or starting to build some new without-Jane normal. And on the other, the reality that Leah can sometimes be so annoying and flirty with the wrong people.

  "Thanks," Jack says, "maybe I will, but I have a feeling he's going to show up this time. We're supposed to go up to the Bronx." He smiles at me. "To the game."

  "They're playing the Orioles, right?" I feel like I need to prove something.

  "Yup," Jack says. Then, with a smile, that eye-disappearing, dimple smile, he bends over and pats Rig's stomach, saying, "I'll see you later. I'm going to call him." He waves at both of us and sort of backs up a few steps before turning around and walking back to his house.

  Leah has a smile on her face that I do not trust. I want to pelt her with water balloons. Or possibly stones. But I know her. If I said anything, she would act like I'm crazy. Flirting? Trust me, Marley: I was so not flirting. You'd know when I was flirting.

  And I don't trust myself anymore. Is Leah doing anything wrong? Am I just jealous that I couldn't flirt even if flirting would save the lives of my immediate family? But Leah wouldn't flirt with Jack. This is just how she is; it was just Leah being Leah. I want to hug Leah and tell her I'm so glad we're friends again. I would also like to pull her hair and tell her never to look at Jack again.

  I sigh and sit on the grass.

  "What?" Leah asks.

  "I'm not sure."

  The sun's rays warm the top of my head with an intense, no-joking heat. Summer heat. The hot air feels full of the essence of cut grass, exactly the way it's smelled every summer for the past thirteen years. Everything's the same, and everything's different.

  I hate not knowing. If I knew Leah and I had worked everything out and it was all cool for us from now on, I could live with having felt like the left-out loser for a little while. Or if I knew that my parents ended up back together—that would have to be easier than this limbo. Not knowing feels worse than anything.

  And I wish I knew if Jack and I would become friends beyond just this summer. Or maybe even more than friends. That one's a little different, though, because at the same time, this, the finding out, is amazing. I'm savoring the delicious excitement of not knowing how it works out, the hopeful suspense of living through each tiny new experience that creates what exists between Jack and me. As my dad says when the Yankees play loser teams, you never know how it'll turn out. That's why you have to play the game.

  Ace of the Earth

  Leah and I make breakfast for my dad—pancakes, pulpy orange juice, and a few strips of bacon. We make up some big heaping plates for ourselves too. I pour my orange juice through a strainer I find under the stove to remove all the pulp.

  Working with Leah in the kitchen, reaching over her for the baking powder, around her for the flour, I'm aware of how it feels, as if we've almost clicked into place again. But it also feels like there's a shadow of unease lurking at the corners, darkening, seeping.

  "What do you two have planned for today?"

  Leah shrugs. "Just hanging, I think."

  "Actually," I say, "I might try to get to the library. I have to check my e-mail, since I can't do that here." I pause for a minute, letting that sink in with him. "And I want to get some books to read to the twins."

  "I don't know if you have plans tonight, Leah, but you're welcome to stay here with Marley. I'll be going out for a little while, and—"

  "Where are you going, Dad?"

  "I'm meeting a friend for dinner."

  "What friend?" The people he and Mom go out with are all couples. Have they divvied up their friends? Do they take turns?

  "Lynne." If I'm not mistaken, my very own father is blushing.

  Leah snorts. Just like a twin.

  "Lynne who?"

  "Lynne Kroll."

  "Kroll like the Krolls, like the twins?"

  He nods. His face is still bright red.

  "Is Mr. Kroll meeting you for dinner too?"

  "Mr. Kroll isn't living with his family. You haven't noticed that, Marley?"

  "I'm there when most normal people are working, right?"

  "Well, I suppose that's true," he says, focusing an unusual amount of concentration on using his fork to cut the remaining small piece of pancake into smaller, equal-size pieces. "I thought it might be obvious that there's not a male presence in that house."

 
"But they just had a baby."

  "He actually left before Jenna was even born. He's only seen the baby once."

  Leah looks like a wide-mouthed frog. I could shove four hot dogs in her open mouth. I know what she means—this is way too much info for one breakfast conversation—but she should shut her mouth.

  So the twins' father is not there. And my dad is ... Oh, gross. But is he meeting her for dinner, maybe, to just talk about me and how it's working out? Then why would his face have burned so red? Ew. It's not enough he has to play ball with Jack? He has to have dinner with Lynne too?

  "It's just dinner, Marley. I don't want you freaking out about this."

  I am so not freaking out about this. Why does he think I'm freaking out about this? "How'd you even meet her?"

  "At a meeting. At the library once a month there's a meeting for people going through divorce. We met there."

  Going through divorce. Like beyond being separated. Moving ahead, going through with it. Maybe there are no meetings for parents who are just separated. Maybe it's just the closest fit.

  "Well, this was delicious, ladies. I thank you." He stands and takes his dish and silverware from the table to the sink. "And now, Marley, you may be saddened to learn that I am off once again to seek and destroy dandelions. I'm going win the Battle of the Lawn at last." He walks out the back door. I wonder, briefly, if he'll notice the dandelions I've pulled, and how I got all the roots.

  "OH! My God," Leah says. "Do not tell me it is Saturday. Just do not."

  "Really? 'Cause it is."

  "Just kill me. I hate to say this, but I have to get out of here! I was supposed to do a read-through with ... OH! My God. I'm so dead. I'm sorry to skip out on you, Marley. I—"

  "Just go. It's fine."

  "No. I want to hang with you more. We have to catch up. Can I come back later?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  She calls her mother to pick her up and packs her things while I clean up in the kitchen. I'm wiping down the counter when I hear the honk of her mother's black Explorer. The three of us used to call it Dora, and we thought that was the funniest thing anyone had ever thought of.

  "I'm gonna go now," she says. "Wish me luck on the read-through! I'm reading with this hottie, Ethan."

  Ethan. Callie's boyfriend. "I hope everything works out."

  "It always does." Leah laughs as she walks out the door. "See ya."

  I watch them pull out of the driveway, past Dad's cartons, still stacked at the curb. There really must be some new-him in my dad, as the Dad I used to know would have been on the phone with the town every day, demanding that his trash be picked up at once.

  I step outside. My dad is standing on the front lawn in his gardening clothes, pouring something that might be vinegar, judging from the stench, over the low stems of each dandelion plant.

  "Do you feel like a murderer?" I ask him, stepping off the porch and onto the lawn.

  "Only in the best way," he says. "Freeing the individual blades of grass from the tyranny of unwanted intruders."

  "That's what all evil rulers say." I sit on the lawn and then stand when I feel the wet soak through my shorts.

  "Did you have fun with Leah?" Dad asks.

  "Not exactly fun," I say.

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "Want to? Not exactly."

  "Do you not exactly want to help me too?" He holds out his dandelion elimination tool with a hopeful look.

  "Again?" I ask.

  "Yes. Again."

  "Maybe once I get back from the library?"

  He nods.

  "I'd totally do it now, of course, if I didn't have to go to the library to use a computer, but my dad's computer? It's still broken? And he didn't pay for an Internet connection? So I haven't been able to go online all summer? And—"

  "Goodbye, Marley."

  I grab an old backpack for books and set off on my bike.

  ***

  There's a wait for computer time, of course, so I put my name on the list at the head librarian's desk.

  In the DVD aisles, I pull a few out but put them back when I realize there's no way I'm going to be done with them in two days. Two-day DVD loans, library? Really?

  I'm heading into the kid and teen room—a hilarious mix of baby ducks and kittens on one wall and vampires on another. I'm stepping aside into the bathroom entranceway to let three people pass, when I realize one of them is Jane's sister Sammi. I look up. Sammi and her mother. And, with her head not looking up from texting, Jane.

  "Marley!" Sammi says, hugging me. "I haven't seen you! I miss you!"

  "How are you, Marley?" her mother asks. "Jane, stop that. Say hello."

  Jane does not stop texting.

  Jane does not look up.

  Jane does not say hello.

  Jane-in-glasses keeps looking down, fingers working the tiny keyboard furiously.

  "Jane!" her mother says.

  Jane looks up. She slowly tucks her hair behind her ear. She says, "Eh." Or maybe "Uh." Or possibly "Oh."

  And then she walks away.

  "Did you ever read this, Marley?" Sammi asks.

  Grateful to have something to do other than melt into the gross library carpet, I look at the book she's holding. It has a dog and a potbellied pig on the cover. I smile. "I have. It's funny."

  Sammi hugs the book to her stomach.

  Jane's mother looks mortified.

  "Well, bye," I say, turning around and walking back to the adult section as quickly as I can.

  "Send your parents my best," Jane's mother calls.

  I turn and see two people step away from computer desks, so I check and yes, it's my turn.

  It would be best not to think now. Not to think about how awful that was. And definitely not to think about how what just happened will translate into my daily life in school. Not to picture the same thing playing out in the hallways over and over and over.

  I get online. Finally.

  E-mail first. A lot of old stuff from Leah, from before she knew I was computerless. Forwarded jokes from Uncle Stu, Dad's brother. I hate forwarded jokes but save that message to see if there's anything Grace and Faith might like. An e-mail from my cousin in Chicago.

  And that is all.

  Wow.

  Nothing doing on Facebook.

  Nothing happening anywhere.

  I haven't been missing anything.

  And no one has been missing me.

  ***

  I ride my bike home, my body feeling the same supercharged way it did the one time I watched a horror movie.

  I have never seen a dead person. But I've read that even if someone just died seconds earlier, they don't look asleep; you can tell that they're dead. Something is gone.

  That's exactly how it felt with Jane. There was nothing there. Nothing. My brain has a hard time getting it—we were best friends forever, but now there's nothing. The word chilling keeps going through my mind. It's chilling.

  At home, I put my bike in the garage and text Leah:

  When will u be here?

  She doesn't answer. I spend the rest of the afternoon listening to the game with my dad, weed whacking around the bushes, and pulling crabgrass out of the backyard flower garden. When balls at the game are hit foul, I think of Jack and wonder if any are landing near where he's sitting.

  "Marley," Dad says as he's gathering up cut-down weeds in his garden-gloved hands. "Tell me why you didn't have a good time with Leah."

  I do my own version of his air cough of annoyance.

  "And why haven't I been seeing Jane around? Is something going on?"

  "I'm not exactly talking to Jane," I say. I get an actual chill down my back when I think about the way she walked right past me in the library, as if I wasn't even there. And then I feel a sickening wave of shame when I realize it's probably not that different from how I always passed poor Elsie Jenkins in her tan windbreaker.

  "I don't want to talk about this right now."

  "Did I ever
tell you about Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth?"

  "I'm sure you did," I say. "I wasn't listening."

  "Here, take this," he says, handing me a giant trash bag. "Make sure you get all the weeds on that side," he says. "Anyway, they had some little fight over something that really didn't matter, and they didn't talk to each other for six years. Years during which they were teammates, together all the time. They didn't talk until Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day."

  I nod my head the whole time he talks—another baseball story. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I say. "When Gehrig gave that echoing speech. I consider myself, -ider myself ... the luckiest man, -uckiest man ... on the face of the earth, -ace of the earth." I've heard this part of the story thousands of times. Lou Gehrig was already sick then. He died a couple of years after that.

  "I've always wondered if the Babe and Lou regretted letting that misunderstanding keep them from talking all that time. Six years thrown away, just being mad at each other. That's a waste. Maybe you can work it out," Dad says.

  What a Dad thing, a teacher thing. Tell a little story, a fable, a cautionary tale and guide the way to fix a problem.

  "It's not that simple," I say. I try to picture Lou Gehrig unleashing water balloons in a surprise blitz or Babe Ruth rudely ignoring Lou in the back hallways of Yankee Stadium, but the image shifts and baseballs are flying out of a bathroom window and into a stadium, and then Jack's there too. (What? That's the nature of daydreams and fantasies. They get weird.) Luckily my father stops talking.

  We're listening to the postgame report (because a half-hour pregame and three-hour ball game isn't enough baseball for me! I need to hear it all summarized and analyzed!) when Dad and I finally finish up. "We don't need to bother watering," he says. "Mother Nature will take care of that." I look up and see that the sky is clouding over. He goes into the house.