Dad finishes dressing me. Sliding his hands under my back, he lifts me from the bed and straps me into my wheelchair. Then he smiles. “So what do you want to do today?”
He’s acting as if it were just an ordinary Friday afternoon and we had plenty of time to kill. I don’t understand it. “What do you want to do?”
He ponders the question, looking out my window at our backyard. “We could visit Shannon Gibbs. Her house is just a mile down Banner Road.”
“And why would we want to do that?”
“Well, she’s facing the same decision you are. Maybe it would be useful to talk it over with her.”
It’s amazing how clueless Dad is when it comes to social situations. I mean, I like Shannon—we were on the same Learjet coming back from Colorado, and we had a long talk during the flight, mostly about the kids we hated at Yorktown High School—but if the tension in her house is anywhere near the level in ours, that’s the last place I’d want to be.
“I don’t think so. It would just complicate things.”
He continues to stare at the backyard. A robin flies past the window in a brown-orange blur. “We should get outside at least. It’s a beautiful day.” He glances at his watch. “And it’s already two thirty.”
Two thirty on a Friday afternoon. Just half an hour before the final bell rings at Yorktown High, sending hundreds of jubilant students home for the weekend. Now I know where I want to go. “Okay, let’s get in the car.”
By three o’ clock, Dad’s Volvo is idling in the high-school parking lot. We’re in the corner of the lot farthest from the school, but I still have an excellent view of the kids streaming out the front doors. This section of the lot is where the jocks and cheerleaders hang out before piling into their cars and heading for the first of their Friday-evening parties. The boys swagger past in their varsity jackets, happily insulting one another, while the girls gather in huddles of denim and polyester.
This wasn’t my crowd at Yorktown. I didn’t belong to any crowd or clique; I was an outlier, an oddity. But I knew someone who was a full-fledged member of the jock club, and now I see him coming this way, just as I expected. With his right hand, Ryan Boyd exchanges high-fives with his buddies, and with his left, he clasps the waist of his girlfriend, Donna Simone.
Ryan’s a couple of inches taller than he was the last time I saw him. He’s also twenty pounds heavier, and all of it is muscle. He doesn’t look like a kid in a Giants jersey anymore—he looks like an actual New York Giant. Donna looks tiny beside him. She’s dressed in tight jeans and a crop top, and there’s a three-inch-wide gap between the waistband of her pants and the bottom of her shirt. The index and middle fingers of Ryan’s left hand touch the bare skin at her waist.
I’m so jealous I squirm in the Volvo’s passenger seat. Ryan’s handsome and athletic and popular. He’s like my avatar in the virtual-reality program, the perfect quarterback, the hero of the game. He’s everything I wanted to be.
I wait until Ryan and Donna come within ten yards of Dad’s car. Then I press the button that rolls down the passenger-side window. “Hey, Ryan!” I yell. “Over here!”
He looks my way and does a double take. “Adam?” He steps cautiously toward the Volvo, dragging Donna along. “Adam, is that you?”
Ryan grins, and for a moment all the years fall away and I see the face of my best friend, beaming with pleasure. But as he gets closer to the car I notice the differences: the blond stubble on his chin and upper lip, the crooked scar on the bridge of his nose, which got broken in the game against Lakeland High last fall. (I read all about it in the school newspaper.) His grin falters a bit when he comes up to the Volvo and sees my wasted body strapped into the passenger seat, but after a second’s hesitation he reaches into the car and gives me a hearty clap on the shoulder.
“Man, I don’t believe it!” he shouts. “I haven’t seen you in forever!”
I’d like to smile back at him, but I can’t. I’m too angry. “Yes,” I say, my jaw clenched. “Not since last June.”
Ryan’s grin disappears. Clearly uncomfortable, he glances at my father, who’s minding his own business in the driver seat. “Hey, Mr. Armstrong,” Ryan says. Then he points at his girlfriend, who has a queasy look on her face. “Adam, you know Donna, right? She’s on the cheerleading squad.”
I don’t know anything about Donna except for the fact that she’s an idiot. She takes a step backward, pulling away from Ryan. The queasiness on her face is mixed with irritation. She seems annoyed that her boyfriend has spoiled her after-school mood. “I’m gonna go talk to Ashley for a second,” she says. She pats Ryan on the back and speed-walks away.
At the same time, Dad shuts off the Volvo’s engine and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. “Excuse me,” he says tactfully. “I need to make a call.” Then he steps out of the car, leaving me alone with Ryan.
Neither of us says anything at first. Ryan shifts his weight from foot to foot, averting his eyes. After a while I start to feel sorry for him. But then I look at his handsome face and muscular forearms, and I’m jealous and angry again.
“You’ve gained some weight,” I say. “Aren’t you getting a little too heavy to play quarterback?”
“Yeah, I need to cut down a little.” He slaps his midsection, which is actually as trim and sturdy as a tree trunk. “So what are you doing here, buddy? Are you coming back to school?”
I grimace. “No. I’m thinking of transferring to another school, actually.”
“Not Lakeland, I hope.” He attempts another grin.
“No, it’s in another state. Out west.”
Ryan nods. “Wow, that’s far away.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to visit.”
He lets out a long breath. His shoulders slump as he stands beside the passenger-side door. “I’m sorry, man. I’m a total jerk. I should’ve come to see you.”
“Hey, no sweat. You’ve been busy, right? With your football buddies. And Donna Simone. She’s a real charmer.” I’m usually not like this, so mean and sarcastic, but I’m furious at Ryan and it feels good to let it out. “And besides, I’m gonna make lots of new friends now. At my new school, out west. They’ve got a great bunch of kids there.”
“I’ll do better from now on, Adam. I’ll send you emails. I promise.”
“No, that’s okay. I understand why you didn’t keep in touch. Being friends…with someone who’s dying? That’s a big…downer.” It’s getting hard to breathe. I pause for a few seconds to gather my strength. I need to say this. “But here’s what…I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me…about what happened to Brittany?”
Ryan shakes his head. “Oh man. What a mess.”
“Don’t you think…I deserved to know?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just…” He raises his hands as if surrendering. “It happened so suddenly, you know? She came to school one day and she wasn’t the old Britt anymore. She quit the cheerleaders, started failing her classes. Nobody could figure it out.”
“Did you try…talking to her?”
He frowns. “Of course I tried. But she was acting so weird. You couldn’t have a conversation with her. She’d say strange, random things and start laughing. And a few weeks later she ran away.”