I sat a minute, letting the sheer brilliance of her plan sink in.
“A picnic,” I said when I could find my words again. “Ooh. That’s good.”
“Wait. There’s one more thing. You got any kind of flowers growing in your yard at home?”
“My mom has rosebushes all along the back fence.”
“That’ll do it. Go out and pick the nicest, most perfect rose you’ve got. Just one. Make sure you cut the stem real nice and long. And break the thorns off it so she doesn’t stick herself on them when you hand it to her. Put it on top of the food, right under the tablecloth. And when you uncover everything, take the rose out and hand it to her and tell her, ‘Here. This is for you.’ Then go about setting up your picnic just so. She’ll like that.”
We sat for another silent moment.
Then I got up off the porch and fell to my knees in front of her. Literally. Fell to my knees. And there had been no forethought about it.
“Please don’t go,” I said. “You help me so much. Nobody else tells me these things. Please?”
She sighed and turned her face away.
“We’ve been through this before,” she said.
“No we haven’t. I told you I thought you should stay. Thought it. Just words in my head. Now I’m telling you how I really feel about it. You know things I don’t know, that no other grown-up I know seems to know. Or at least that they’re willing to tell me. What would I do if I couldn’t come ask you these things?”
I was hoping I’d broken through to a new place between us. But when she answered, I knew I had only hit a wall that would prevent me from getting there.
“You’d figure it out on your own, trial and error, like everybody else. Now get up off your knees, boy.”
I did as I’d been told.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry. I’m going to go running with the dogs now. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Yeah. Go run.”
But before I could get a step away, she stopped me with a kinder thought.
“You let me know how that picnic idea turns out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I will.”
It was always a give-and-take with Zoe Dinsmore. But then I couldn’t let myself get too confused about it, or think too hard. Because the dogs and I were running. And I didn’t want to smack into a tree.
I had been avoiding going over to Connor’s house for a few days, and not really talking to myself about why. But I knew I couldn’t go on that way much longer.
I jogged by his house on the way home. Didn’t even bother to go home and clean up and change out of my running clothes first. I thought if I waited too long, I might talk myself out of going.
To my surprise, Connor was outside.
He was in the backyard, in just a pair of long khaki shorts, sunning himself on one of those cheap folding lawn-chair-type lounges. The kind with the plastic webbing. I could see the vague shape of him through the fence when I was still halfway down the block.
I walked up his driveway and sat down in the grass beside him. The skin of his chest was pasty white, and I worried about Connor getting a vicious sunburn. I could see every one of his ribs, but without any appearance of sinewy muscle stretched over them. Just skin and ribs. He looked like a guy who’d been sick for a long time.
First he said nothing at all.
Then he made a face and said, “Phew! Mind sitting downwind of me?”
“Sorry,” I said.
I moved to the other side of his lounge.
Under different circumstances I might have gotten a little ticky about a comment like that. But he was mad at me for not coming by, and I knew it. And he was going to lash out at me, and I should’ve seen it coming. And I deserved it.
“I guess it’s bound to happen,” he said. Then a long pause. Then, “Running in all this heat.”
“What’re you doing outside in the sun? Seems unlike you.”
“It was my mom’s idea. She thinks I’m getting too pale.”
“Oh,” I said. What else could I say?
I sat there with him in silence for a minute, cross-legged on the grass. Then I noticed the garage door was open. And there was only one car in it. His mother’s car. And it was Saturday.
“Where’s your dad’s car?” I asked, not realizing it was a big question. Mistakenly thinking it was harmless small talk.
“With my dad, I guess.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“No idea.”
“You didn’t ask your mom?”
“I asked. She has no idea.”
I just sat a minute. Wondering if I should say more or not. I was beginning to
