The next day she’s back with a county deputy. Not Brewer, who’s the only policeman I know by name, except Sheriff Jessup. It wouldn’t be Brewer anyway, he’s a town cop. It’s closer to dinnertime this trip. Dad is off at Nick’s soccer game and the storm has long passed. I wake up from my daily nap about the time Mom is refusing to let the witch come on board.
“Do they really need a warrant?” I ask after the cruiser’s gone.
She shrugs and turns back to slicing tofu for the salad. “Your father’s right, I’m not a lawyer. But this is personal. The state shouldn’t get involved in family decisions.”
“Meredith says at Albemarle High they charged the parents of a boy who got hurt in a soccer game with a crime.”
“Surely not for keeping him home with a sprained ankle?”
“For not letting the rescue squad treat his concussion.”
“What was the charge?”
But I can tell by the way she only stops for a minute, then keeps on sorting through things in the refrigerator that she has already made up her mind that the answer doesn’t matter. She has enough problems of her own. And once my mother decides something, her mind is made up. One good thing about my parents, they’re independent thinkers. In case you hadn’t caught that so far.
“Maybe you and Dad should talk to a lawyer.”
“That’s the last thing we need right now. Lawyers are expensive.”
She doesn’t have to say, “Because of the medical bills.” I know that. The stack on the shelf over the radio has been growing all summer. Dad finally stuck all the bills in an old boot box in the cubby under their bunk. I found them there when we were searching for the cell phone. I guess Dad was as sick of looking at them as I was. I can’t imagine how much higher the stack would be if I were getting the chemotherapy and radiation like the doctors suggested.
When Mom takes me to the high school for the first set of tenth-grade tests—Bio and Algebra II midterms—the ankle splint is off, and a skin-colored stretchy brace thing is on. Not cool, but at least I’m back in sandals. Three more weeks and the whole ankle thing’ll be history. Not that I’m particularly anxious to forget how it happened.
When we walk through the side door by the gymnasium—Mom called ahead for special permission to avoid the front office check-in and all those free-floating germs in the main hallway—the first person I see is Leonard “The Man” Yowell. He’s leaning against the Nabs machine and yakking away to the twins. He’s spiffed up his wardrobe since last year’s Mötley Crüe T-shirts and sandals. To impress the teachers, I guess, since he’s probably already angling for college recommendations. You know that his father the senator who lives in the public eye has to be way more into that “appearances are important” mode than my dad.
I’m impressed, though, with Leonard’s costume. Not that I’d be caught wearing that fancy prep stuff. The pale blue button-down shirt makes him look older. Good decision, Master Yowell. And it distracts from his complexion, which looks rubbed out in places like he dug at it with a bad eraser, a long-standing problem for the poor guy.
The twins seem to have fallen for it. Big-time, I hate to admit. They’re rapt as he holds forth. I can feel my fists clenching, the ends of my fingers pressing into my palms, nails stinging the soft flesh. How has Mack let this happen?
The minute Leonard sees Mom he rushes over to hold the door. “Mrs. Landon, Dan. Great to have you back.” A politician in training, a miniature Senator Yowell. Why didn’t I ever see that before?
“Thank you, Leonard.” Mom has always liked him, despite the Yowell family’s political leanings. Maybe what she likes is their activism, even if they are on the wrong side. You’re starting to see where Joe gets his enthusiasm from, aren’t you? She leans closer to hug Leonard, but stiffens when she remembers the whole purpose of coming in the side door instead of signing in at the office is to keep the germ exposure to a minimum. She must be remembering her own rants. How all teenagers have bad hygiene and I’ll die from something I catch. It’s absurd really when The Disease is already inside and working away at its Grim Reaper role. As Mom steps away from the threesome, she glances down the hallway in both directions, the good Mama Bear checking for danger.
“Hey,” I say to Leonard. The slap of my hand against his, a small gesture of rebellion against the whole damn twist my life has taken. “What’s happening?”
The twins have followed him across the gymnasium. Meredith slips by Leonard and her sister. When she pecks me on the cheek, I flush red all over and Mom just stares like she can’t believe it. Although she’s talked to Meredith on the phone, Mom hasn’t seen her face-to-face before this minute. Leonard’s eyes pop too, but for a whole different reason.
When Meredith steps back, a rush of white noise surrounds me. I’m locked in place, nowhere to look but right at her. Her eyes are green. I can’t believe it’s taken me all this time to notice how different, how deep, how green. It’s not until I look away from her eyes and see her smile that I realize I must be grinning wide enough for a 747 to land.
Juliann copies her sister with a kiss on my cheek, another surprise. Leonard relaxes. Now he’s convinced himself we’re cousins or something. Revived, he steps up to the plate.
“I was just telling the girls what a hole there is in class discussions without you.”
“I bet,” I mutter.
Mom perks up. She must be suddenly feeling peachy keen at the compliment to her boy. About now I’m not feeling as pissed at Leonard because the con is helping Mom relax. You can see how her eyes are drinking in all of his six-foot-two, his khakis, the button-down shirt so new it still has the crease lines in it, and his oh-so-pleasant smile. He’s the poster child for orthodontics. Before I can move past him or think of something brilliant to say to the twins, Mom has to ask.
“How’s your brother liking Harvard, Leonard?” She doesn’t mean anything by it, but she just doesn’t get the girl thing.
Juliann’s looking at Leonard like he’s an interesting specimen all of a sudden. Meredith tugs her sister’s backpack strap.
“We gotta go. Mom’ll be out front, waiting.” She doesn’t move, though. She turns and looks right at me. “Good luck on your tests, Daniel.”
From Leonard’s clutch, I guess he’s wondering how she knew without my saying anything. You can see his brain rethinking the cousin conclusion. He has to assume we’ve had conversations elsewhere. Recent conversations. Sweet.
While I’m waiting between tests for Mr. Lassiter to corral a proctor so he can leave for some meeting, I start to worry again about Meredith and Juliann and the whole social thing at school. Every boy in the school probably has his eye on them. New meat. And each and every one of those guys has a better opportunity than I do. They can sit with the twins in the caf. Wait by their lockers. Invite them to in-school scrimmages or the computer lab. Sit behind them in class. Not being here is torture.
Parents should never discount the social pull of being physically present at school. No matter how much you might hate class, it’s the best place to see your friends. Most kids won’t even fake the flu if there’s a girl or guy they like in their classes. In a single day playing hooky you can lose too much ground when you’re sixteen or seventeen.
Outside the classroom window the football team is doing laps. The sounds, even from across the teacher’s parking lot, are disgusting. Grunts and groans. Some of those guys are so heavy they can barely lift their feet off the ground. The pebbles skid from under their cleats across the pavement. Three or four of them fall farther and farther behind their teammates. When the coaches yell at them to pick it up, pick it up, it must be so discouraging. To have to eat more than you want to maintain that kind of weight, that must be painful too. I’d never make the team. I can hardly finish half a sandwich these days. But feeling sorry for football players is a first for me.