collar. And he would wink at his friends and make little grunts of satisfaction like he was doing now.
Sari took an abrupt step back. She gathered up the towel in her fist and jerked his shirt back down into place with her other hand.
Jason turned his head. “You're done?”
“I should get back to Zack.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Well, thanks. That felt great.”
“If it's still sore later, you could take some Advil,” Sari said and went back to the kitchen, where she dropped the now cool towel on the counter like it was burning her fingers.
After that day, she would find Jason looking at her in a whole new way.
She'd be running with Zack outside, playing some kind of chasing game, and she'd glimpse Jason standing by the French doors, watching them with this new, curious, eager look on his face. Or, at the clinic, she'd be tickling Zack while they were playing a game and he'd try to tickle her back and she would roll a bit on the floor with him and then realize that Jason wasn't reading a book in the corner of the room like she thought but was just sitting there watching them, his head thrust forward, that look on his face again. And she'd scramble to her feet, suddenly uncomfortable in the room where she spent hours every day.
“I think Jason Smith is interested in me,” Sari said. She and Lucy were sitting on her bed, cross-legged, knitting, homemade Manhattans in lowball glasses on the night table beside them. They were both a little buzzed but not completely blotto. Not yet.
“Of course he is,” Lucy said. “How could he help but be? You're incredibly cute, and you're fixing his kid-”
“Zack Smith isn't
“You know what I mean. Substitute whatever politically correct term for it you want. Hey, do you have a measuring tape?”
Sari fished one out of her knitting bag and handed it to Lucy, who spread her knitting on the bed and measured it. “Shit. It's nowhere near twenty inches yet. This sweaters going to take me the rest of my life.” She rolled the tape back up, concentrating carefully as if the task were a challenging one, which it was, since she was tipsy. “Married guys must come on to you constantly when you're at work.”
“It happens,” Sari said, reaching over to the night table and picking up her glass. “Usually they're just kind of sad and pathetic and I ignore the whole thing and eventually they give up.” She took a sip. “But this is different.” She put the glass back down.
“Because he's cute?”
“No. No.” She almost said “No” a third time, but she stopped herself.
“He's married, right?” Lucy leaned back against the headboard and resumed her knitting.
“Divorced. Or maybe just separated. I’m not sure. His wife was at the evaluation, according to the report. But I haven't seen her since then and he's said stuff about being a single dad.” She poked at her knitting but didn't pick it up.
“What does he do for a living?”
“He told me once he's trying to be a screenwriter but I don't think he's ever sold anything. I know he coaches kids basketball at their local rec center.”
Lucy snorted. “And you say he's not one of the pathetic ones?
“He comes from money. And I assume his wife works. He doesn't
“I still say he's kind of a loser. I mean, compared to what he was like in high school.”
“Still good-looking, though. Even better-looking, actually.”
“So why not go for it?” Lucy asked. “I mean, he's good-looking and available and you think he's interested. And he's definitely a huge step up from Jeff.”
“He's an asshole, Lucy. Remember?”
“I didn't say you should marry the guy.”
“Did we decide to stop having standards in our love lives?”
Sari asked, hugging her knees to her chest. “Because I didn't get that memo.”
“It's not about standards,” Lucy said. “It's about having fun. The guy's good-looking, right?”
“What he and his friends did to Charlie-almost on a daily basis-” She couldn't even finish the sentence.
“All right then,” Lucy said after a moment. “So let's remember that. That he was an asshole and worse to Charlie. So here's my super-brilliant idea: you sleep with him and break his heart afterward.”
“Oh, please-” Sari said, but Lucy didn't let her finish.
“I’m serious. You make him fall in love with you and when he's good and overwhelmed and madly in love with you- because I think any guy would be if you gave him half a chance-you tell him you remember everything, and you tear his heart right out of his body and you leave him open and bleeding on the floor.”
“That's a beautiful thought.”
“It is, isn't it?” Lucy said without a trace of sarcasm. She put down her knitting and took a big gulp of her Manhattan, then gestured with the glass. A few drops flew out and onto her quilt. “You get it all then, Sari. You get to sleep with the best-looking guy who ever went to our high school and you get revenge for everything you and Charlie ever suffered. Tell me you wouldn't have dreamed about that ten years ago. Tell me that isn't everything you ever wanted.”
Sari lay in bed that night, thinking about what Lucy had said, wondering if she could really do that-sleep with Jason Smith and then break his heart.
All her life she had tried to make up in some way for everything Charlie had suffered. The struggles he'd had just to communicate. The loneliness he must have felt when kids wouldn't sit next to him on the bus. The times he tried to smile at someone or worked hard just to say hello and only got a “What's your problem, retard?” in response.
Every choice she had made as an adult was about Charlie. And, in a weird way, about Jason Smith and all the Jason Smiths who had ever shoved Charlie or laughed at him or made Sari hate her own brother for letting himself be made fun of.
She once got so angry at him for always letting them humiliate him that she went after him herself-hit him as hard as she could, clawed at him with her fingernails, screamed at him that he had ruined her life by being autistic. She could remember him backing away from her, terrified, even though he was twice her size. All that night, she couldn't sleep, sick with shame and self-loathing. In the end, she had crawled into bed with him, hugging him and crying, hugging him and crying.
Her anger and her guilt-all the fault of Jason Smith and his friends.
She lay in bed now and wondered: would there truly be any comfort in revenge?
And immediately knew the answer. Of course there would. Of course there would.
3.
I
Sign me up,” Kathleen said. “It's perfect.” She hoisted herself, ass first, onto the edge of Lucy's kitchen table and sat there, long bare legs dangling-she was wearing shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops, even though it was a fairly cool October morning. “Tomorrow at work, I’ll ask Kevin to sponsor me for Sari's autism walk, and then I’ll try to get him to ask to come with me, and he probably will, but even if he doesn't, it'll still make me look all noble and caring.”
“How gullible
Kathleen jumped down. “I need to jump-start this thing. I mean, it's not like we're not spending time together-so far, we've gone running twice, and he flirts like crazy. But he's got this girlfriend to get rid of and he's too nice a guy to just dump her. But if I take him on Sari's autism walk thing, I’m pretty sure I can clinch the
