“What makes you so sure you can trust him?”
Dad looks at me as if it should be obvious. “Well, I’ve already trusted him to take care of the thing that I love the most in the world. I think he can handle a spaghetti recipe.”
I’m glad that my dad loves me so much, but seriously. “I’m not just some thing you trusted him with. I’m your daughter.”
The three of them are quiet for a moment, and then I hear Ben trying to hold back a laugh. He fights it for as long as he can, but then it finally erupts.
“What’s so funny?” I ask him.
“I don’t think he was talking about you, Izzy.”
I look at their faces and can tell that he’s right.
“Then what was he talking about?”
“His surfboard. He trusted me with his surfboard.”
“Black Beauty is the thing you love most in the world?” I say, with all the outrage I can muster while laughing.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Dad says. “I thought you knew.”
Now Ben is really losing it, and I realize that I’ve never seen him laugh this hard. He’s like a kid having a good time, and it dawns on me that this is the thing he’s been missing. Maybe it’s even the thing he thought he’d never get again. His family is breaking apart, and there will never be any dinners like this where his mom and dad are sitting around the table telling jokes and giving him a hard time.
The rest of the meal is filled with funny stories and new insights. For example, I learn that in college he’s hoping to major in English—another swoon from my mother—and that he’s terrified of roller coasters—more chop busting from my father.
Originally I was thinking we might go out after dinner to catch a movie, but instead I suggest he get a taste of the übercompetitive cage match that is our family game night.
“The game is charades,” Dad says as we move to the living room. “Lucas-style charades.”
“What’s Lucas-style?” Ben asks me.
“Lucas-style is when your parents are both teachers and they like to take everything that’s fun and turn it into something that’s educational and maybe a little less fun. Like at my fifth-grade birthday party, where instead of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, we played Pin the Beard on the Civil War General.
“It was one of those big bushy beards,” Dad tries to explain to Ben. “But it just didn’t translate.”
“No, it didn’t,” I say.
“And how do you do Lucas-style charades?” Ben asks.
“The categories have more of an Advanced English and AP American History vibe,” I answer him. “Instead of TV shows and celebrities, we’ve got categories like Underappreciated Authors, Historic Battlefields, and my personal favorite, Politicians of the Nineteenth Century.”
“Those were good clues,” Dad says rehashing a sore spot from a past game. “I was pretending to ‘fill’ the cups and get ‘more’ of them. Fill . . . more. Millard Fillmore.”
“Those clues are only obvious to you,” I say.
“Well, today you don’t have to worry about my clues,” Dad says. “That’s because this is a battle of the sexes—Mom and you against Ben and me.”
And, then, as if gender supremacy wasn’t enough, he raises the stakes just a little bit more and says, “Winning team picks what flavor ice cream we get from the Islander.”
“You’re on!” I say, in a growl that would make a professional wrestler proud.
Ben lights up as we break up into teams, and I can tell he really needs some family time. When it’s time to play, I’m up first, and I pull “William Shakespeare” out of the hat.
“We got this,” I say to Mom as I get into position.
Dad hits the stopwatch and signals me to go.
I do the signs for “writer” and “second word” and start shaking side to side. Ben and Dad laugh hysterically, but I ignore them.
My mom starts shouting out answers. “Twist. Shimmy. Shake.”
I signal that she’s right with “shake” and move on to the next part of the word. I pretend to throw a spear, and it takes her a moment to figure it out, but then she gets it.
“Shake . . . spear. William Shakespeare!”
Dad hits the stopwatch and announces our time. “Twenty-three seconds.”
Mom and I high-five. We feel pretty confident, and I can already taste the mint chocolate chip ice cream I plan on selecting.
Ben’s up next and draws a name from the hat. Since I’m the timekeeper, he shows it to me, and I see that it’s “J. D. Salinger.”
“This round’s all ours,” I assure my mom. “No way they’ll beat twenty-three seconds.”
“Ignore that,” Dad says, trying to encourage Ben. “I trust you with my recipe and I trust you with my clues.”
Ben thinks for a moment and finally decides on his plan. “Okay,” he says. “I’m ready.”
I signal him to go. He does the sign for writer and then squats like a baseball catcher and holds up his glove.
“J. D. Salinger!” screams my dad.
I hit the stopwatch and look down at the number.
“How fast?” asks Dad.
I shake my head. “Seven seconds . . . but it doesn’t count.”
“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t count’?” asks Dad.
“You cheated,” I say.
“How did we cheat?” asks Ben.
“I don’t know how, but I know you did.”
“What do you mean?”
“All you did was squat. How is that J. D. Salinger?”
They both look right at me, and at the exact same moment say, “The Catcher in the Rye.”
That’s when I realize that they didn’t cheat. Even scarier, they’re totally in sync with each other.
“Oh my God,” I say, turning to my mom.
She says exactly what I’m thinking. “We’ve created a monster.”
What follows is the most intense game of charades I’ve ever played—and, in my family, that’s saying something. Ben and Dad make a great team, but Mom and I keep it close. We finally lose it with Politicians of the Nineteenth Century. That category always kills me. I draw a blank trying to act out “Ulysses S. Grant,” and Ben somehow gets “Zachary Taylor” from my dad pretending to sew.
“It’s a Taylor, like a tailor,” he says, trying to explain.
Even though we play competitively, we don’t really take it seriously, and I feel a deeper connection with Ben than I did before. I never realized how important it was for me that he get along well with my family.
“As the champions, we get to pick the ice cream flavor,” Dad announces. “And as our MVP, you get to make the decision for us, Ben. What flavor do you want?”
Ben thinks about this for a moment and says, “Mint chocolate chip.”
“No,” Dad says, as though he’s just suffered the ultimate betrayal. “You’re picking that because it’s Izzy’s favorite flavor.”
“It is?” he says, playing dumb as he shoots me a wink. “I’m picking it because it’s my favorite flavor.”
“The whole point of winning is so you can rub the loser’s nose in it after the competition,” says Dad.
“It really is hard to believe they let you coach children,” says my mom. “Come on, let’s go get the ice cream. I’ll let you be as obnoxious as you want the whole car ride over.”
“You will?” says Dad. “That’s really sweet. That Zachary Taylor hint was amazing, wasn’t it?”
Mom and Dad leave and, for twenty minutes at least, I get to be alone with Ben.
“So now you know what game night is like,” I say.
“It was a lot of fun,” he says.
I walk over to him and wrap my arms around his waist. “I guess you deserve a victory kiss.”
“I would think so,” he says.
We kiss for a moment and everything seems good. Unfortunately, that moment does not last.
“I need to tell you something,” he says, pulling back. “I didn’t want to do it in front of your parents, but I got a call from my mother right before I came over here.”