“I want to stay for at least another hour,” Mom said. “These old magazines are great, and I can’t check them out.”
“Go find something to read,” Dad said. “Kids’ Room is in the back.”
On my way to the Kids’ Room, I stopped at a computer to check my email. Since we’d moved, I couldn’t stop checking it.
Big surprise: nothing from Charlie this time either. He was acting as if I was asking him to send smoke signals. It’s not as if he couldn’t check his email right there on his cell phone. So I couldn’t text. What was the big deal?
I’d been trying to keep myself from sending him another email until he emailed me back, but I really wanted to know what he thought I should make Winnie.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hey
Guess what? Since we’re not starting school, my parents are making me and Jeanine do these projects so I’m starting a doughnut business. Long story. I’ll tell you everything at Thanksgiving. Maybe you can help??? For now, I just need to know which of my desserts you like the best, not including the peanut butter–white chocolate chip cookies.
The peanut butter cookies were definitely Charlie’s favorite but plenty of people don’t like peanut butter or white chocolate, so they were way too risky. You’d be surprised. There are some serious white chocolate haters out there. I don’t get it.
When I got to the Kids’ Room, I headed straight for a pile of lumpy beanbags by the windows. I’ve never been a napper, but I hadn’t been sleeping. It wasn’t just the doughnuts. The house, also known as the Purple Demon, talked a lot more than our apartment ever did. Clanging, creaking, moaning—different nights, different sounds. But her message was always the same, and I heard it loud and clear: Get out!
Halfway to the beanbags, I stopped in front of a table with a bunch of books on display to look at one with a basketball on the cover.
“It’s good,” someone said.
I looked around the room.
Tucked behind the door was a boy, lying on a bunch of beanbags, several books open on the floor in front of him. Everything about him was long from his arms and legs to his chin and his shaggy, black hair.
“Oh, thanks. Uh, what’s it about? I mean, you know, other than basketball.” I was hoping he didn’t think I sounded as dumb as I thought I did. I couldn’t have cared less about the book, but I was pretty excited to be speaking to a real-live kid in town.
“This high school basketball team that’s really awful and how they end up winning the state championship. It’s the fourth in the series. They’re all really good though.” The kid spoke like someone was timing him. “Each book follows a team in a different sport, and each time the team has to get through something hard, like an injury or a scandal or something, so they can come together and win, but then sometimes they don’t win, and then that’s sort of the point too, you know?”
He stopped and waited for me to give some sign that yes, I did know, and as soon as I did, he started right back up where he’d left off.
“I think the first one was about a swim team or maybe that was the second.” He kept speed talking, but as he did, he stood up, crossed the room, and pulled a book from a shelf like he’d had its location memorized. “Yeah, this is the one. Both Hands. You should start with this.” He handed it to me.
“Great. Thanks.”
“So, you into basketball?”
“Yeah.” I was relieved we were moving on from books to sports.
“Yeah, me too, but mostly just to watch. I really only play ice hockey.”
“On a team?” Nobody I knew played ice hockey. Up until that point, I honestly thought the only kids who played lived in Canada, Minnesota, or one of those other states where it’s cold like ten months a year.
“Uh-huh. It’s pretty big here.”
I could tell by the way he said “here” that he knew I was from somewhere else.
“I don’t play,” I said. “I was hoping that maybe there was a basketball team I could try out for.”
“Sorry.”
“No team?”
“No, there’s a team, but all the good kids play hockey so the basketball team’s…um, kind of…”
“Sad?”
“Pretty much.”
Great, I was going to play on a sad basketball team with all the unathletic kids. Perfect.
“Can’t you skate?” he asked like he’d never met somebody who couldn’t.
“A little, but I don’t even know the rules of hockey.”
“You play soccer?”
I nodded.
“Not that different. I could show you. There’s an open sticks and pucks session every weekend at the rink in Crellin. No rink here, but plenty of places to skate when it gets cold enough. Hey, you hungry?” he asked like it was part of the hockey conversation.
It took me a second to catch up. “Uh…” I wasn’t hungry at all. Mom had made apple pancakes that morning. “Sure.”
The boy led me back through the library to a small office behind the circulation desk.
“My mom works here,” he said as he poked around the shelves of a mini-fridge in the corner of the room. “I’m Josh.”
“Tris.”
“Like for Tristan?”
“Yeah. My parents found it in some name book I wish they’d never bought.”
“I don’t know. Tristan was a knight at King Arthur’s Round Table, which is pretty cool, and he was a better fighter than just about all the other knights except Lancelot.”
“Who?”
Josh’s face went tight, and he ducked his head behind the fridge door. “Sorry. He was just another big-time knight for King Arthur.”
Josh went quiet for the first time since we’d met, and it was clearly not a good sign. What had I done and how could I
