Playing the Field

  I slapped little pieces of dirt and grass off of my pants and walked back to second base. I didn’t pay much attention to the game after that. Even after Serena and her friends had gone into the school, somehow I still saw her in my mind hobbling across the grass toward the building. Everything had happened so fast. I barely had enough time to tell her I was sorry, and she hadn’t said anything to me at all. She hadn’t said anything, but I could be fairly certain she wasn’t impressed with my athletic skill.

  I took a long, deep sigh. It had been eight years since the holding hands incident with Stephanie Morris in kindergarten. Eight years since I tried to get a girl to like me. After today, it just might take me another eight years to make my next try.

  Chapter 6

  That night after dinner while I cleared off the table, I told Mom she needed to find me a tutor for algebra.

  “Really?” She looked surprised I had brought it up. “I thought you’d been doing your homework every day.”

  “I do it, but I get it all wrong. I’m too far behind to understand it on my own.”

  Mom rinsed off a plate, then put it into a slot in the dishwasher. “I’ll call the school and see if they can recommend someone.” She smiled a bit. “And because I can see you really are trying to do better, maybe your father and I will pay for most of the cost.”

  I put a handful of plates into the sink. “Thanks.” It was the best news I’d had all day.

  My jobs were finished, but I stayed in the kitchen watching mom fill the soap dispenser. Mom was so mommish. It was hard to believe she’d ever been a teenager.

  “Mom, did you ever, you know, like anybody when you were my age?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose I was interested in a couple of guys.”

  “Would you still have been interested in them if they’d crashed into you during PE and hurt your knee?”

  Mom shut the dishwasher and looked over at me. “Did you run into someone in PE?”

  I nodded.

  “Was she okay?”

  “I don’t know. She went to the health office.” I had the feeling she wouldn’t think I was kinda cute anymore.

  Mom said, “Oh,” in a sad sort of way and then, “Did you tell her you were sorry?”

  I nodded again.

  “Maybe you could send her a card or something.”

  Kirk walked over to where I stood. I hadn’t even known he was around or I wouldn’t have told Mom about Serena at all. That’s the beauty of only being five years old. You’re so short people overlook you, and you get to hear their conversations. With a serious expression on his face he asked, “Did you kill someone?”

  “No,” I told him. “Not this time.”

  He seemed a little disappointed. “Was there lots of blood?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I’d send her flowers anyway.” Kirk then broke out into a commercial jingle tune. “Say it with flowers and lighter her day. She’ll know you lumpy in every way.”

  It’s supposed to be: Say it with flowers and light up her day. She’ll know you love her in every way. I didn’t correct him.

  Mom picked up the dishrag and wiped off the edges of the sink. “I think McKay is a little young to be sending girls flowers.”

  “The girl on the TV liked it,” Kirk said. “She wrapped her arms around the guy’s neck like she was going to squeeze his head right off.”

  “You watch too much TV,” Mom said.

  “I bet nobody could squeeze McKay’s head off.” Kirk tilted his face sideways and gave me a studious look as though he was trying to determine how sturdy my head was.

  I left to go do my homework before Kirk could start requesting neck-squeezing demonstrations.

  I tried to keep my mind on the Revolutionary War, but my mind kept drifting back to Serena and flowers.

  I’d never been one to take advice from my little brother, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Girls liked flowers. Maybe I should give her some. Or maybe not. Maybe it would be a geeky thing to do.

  The next day Serena wasn’t at school and Rachel told Tony, who told me, that Serena had sprained her knee. She would have stay off it for at least a week, and then she would be on crutches for a while after that. This made me feel even worse. Serena was crippled, and it was my fault. I had to do something for her, and Kirk’s suggestion seemed like the best idea. The only problem was there wasn’t a florist store within bike riding distance.

  I suppose I could have asked my mother to drive me somewhere, but she’d already said I was too young to send a girl flowers. I was afraid if I brought the subject up again, she’d get all weird about it. She’d ask me a thousand questions about Serena and give me lectures about how I shouldn’t get seriously involved with girls and maybe insist on meeting Serena’s parents or something. I didn’t want that. Some things were just better for a guy to do on his own. I’d have to find the flowers myself.

  After I got home from school, I surveyed our backyard. We had plenty of blooming bushes and plants growing there, although they weren’t really the kind of flowers you made into a bouquet.

  But what other choice did I have? I could have called Tony, but he had the same type of plants in his yard. We all did. Since we lived in a desert climate, there weren’t many types of plants which could survive the summer when the temperature stayed above 110 for months on end.

  So I could choose bright pink flowers from the prickly green bushes in the corner—although those would be hard to pick, or white flowers from the bushes by the house—which come to think of it, were poisonous. Although I knew girls didn’t actually eat bouquets, it somehow seemed wrong to give someone a poisonous one. That left the low growing ground cover called lantana. It had bunches of tiny blossoms that grew together in clumps so that they looked like little purple popcorn balls. Not exactly the type of flower you see a lot of in floral arrangements.

  I looked at the plants again, sighed, and decided a card would be fine.

  Mom had a bunch of blank cards we used for different occasions, so I pulled one of those out of her desk and sat down at the table with it. I looked at the inside of the card for a few minutes, then wrote, “Dear Serena.” I tried to think of something to write after that, but just tapped my pen against the card instead.

  What did you write to someone you’d crashed into? “Dear Serena, I’m glad to hear nothing is broken?” “Dear Serena, I hope you don’t hate me now?” Cards were so personal. That was the nice thing about flowers. You didn’t have to say a lot when you gave someone flowers. You just handed them over, and the person said, “Thanks.” That was it. Much easier.

  I looked out at the bushes in the backyard again. Flowers were flowers. What did it matter that we didn’t have the same kind you bought at the store? Besides, I’d always thought the lantana were pretty. Why wouldn’t Serena like them?

  I put the card in its envelope and shoved it into my back pocket. Then I checked Serena’s address online and yelled to Mom that I was going for a bike ride. I went out the door to the garage, but before I got my bike, I took the side door into the backyard. We had so much lantana growing by the side of the house, my parents would never notice if I took some.

  I broke off stems until I had a big handful of them, then held them up and viewed them appraisingly. After a moment I held them to my face and sniffed. They smelled faintly like dirty laundry, as though they were trying to repel the bees instead of attract them, but still they looked soft and pretty—like something a girl would like. Nice.

  Of course by the time I’d peddled over to Serena’s house some of lantana blossoms had shaken loose, and a few of the stems were mangled, but it still looked all right.

  As I walked up to Serena’s door, I noticed they also had purple lantana in their front yard. I hoped she wouldn’t think I’d picked her own flowers to give to her. It was just one reason—and suddenly I could think of many—to turn around, get back on my bike, and go home. But what if Serena had seen me already? What if she were at this moment looking
out her window and happened to notice McKay standing on her driveway with a handful of flowers? Wouldn’t it seem even more ridiculous to turn around now? Maybe she’d think I had come by, picked her flowers, and was about to take them somewhere else.

  I took a deep breath, walked up to her door, and rang the bell.

  After a few moments Mrs. Kimball opened the door. She looked at me, looked at the flowers in my hand, and then back at me questioningly.

  “I didn’t pick them from your yard,” I blurted out. “I got them from my house.”

  She still looked at me questioningly.

  “They’re for Serena,” I said. “I came by to see how she was because I sort of plowed over her in PE yesterday.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Kimball drew the word out for a few seconds. “Well, come inside.” She stepped aside so I could get by. “I’m sure Serena would love to visit with you.”

  I followed Mrs. Kimball into their family room where Serena was laying on the couch. She wore an old T-shirt and shorts, and her hair was kind of messy, like she hadn’t combed it yet today. Her knee was wrapped in an Ace bandage and propped up on four pillows. She was gazing at the TV and looked bored.

  “Serena,” her mother chimed, “someone’s here to see you.”

  Serena turned, saw me, and stared for a moment. “McKay, what are you doing here?” She ran her hand over her hair, and shot her mother an angry look. I wasn’t sure, whether Serena was angry at her mother for letting me in when she didn’t look her best, or for just letting me in at all.

  “I came by to see how you were,” I said. “Oh, and I brought you these.” I handed her the flowers. A few of the lantana blossoms dropped onto her shorts. I suddenly felt silly about giving them to her, but what else could I have done? Pretend I was standing in her family room holding them for some other reason?

  As she took them, she said, “Oh. Lantana. How nice.”

  I knew she didn’t mean it. She would have used the exact same tone of voice if I’d brought her a bundle of weeds. Now she was staring at them like she didn’t quite know what to do with them.

  Luckily her mother took them from her. “I’ll go put them in some water,” she said. And then she added, “It was very sweet of you to bring them.” Mrs. Kimball walked toward the kitchen with one hand holding the bouquet and the other hand underneath it to catch any more falling lantana blossoms. Over her shoulder, she called back to me, “Feel free to sit anywhere.”

  I sat down on a recliner close to the couch. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you better flowers. It was sort of a last-minute thing. I mean, I was just going to give you a card, but I couldn’t think of what to write.” I hadn’t meant to tell her any of these things, but to prove my point, I took out the card from my pocket and gave it to her.

  She opened the card and read out loud, “Dear Serena.” She giggled a little and then closed the card. “You couldn’t think of anything to say after that?”

  “Mostly I wanted to tell you I’m sorry, but it’s a big card and ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t take up a lot of room.”

  “It’s all right.” She set the card down on the couch beside her. “It’s not a bad sprain. The doctor said I just have to stay off it for a while.”

  “You’re going to miss school?”

  “Yeah.” She said this as though she was not happy about the situation. “Anna is bringing me my homework assignments.” Her face brightened a bit. “You’re in my math class. Maybe you could explain the stuff I miss to me.”

  Irony. That’s what my English teacher would have called it. Here was the girl I wanted to help me in class, and she was asking me to help her.

  “Uh, I’d like to,” I said. “But I’m not very good in math. In fact, my mom’s calling around to see about getting me a tutor.”

  “Really?” Serena seemed surprised. “What don’t you understand?”

  “All of it. I mean, I never understood how to do it in the beginning, and now I’m completely lost.”

  Without even seeming to think about it, she said, “I could help you with it.” She waved her hand in the direction of a desk. “My books are over there. Bring our algebra book over.”

  “Now? You want to go over algebra now?”

  She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I don’t have much else to do.”

  And that’s how my first tutoring session with Serena came to be. I would like to say that as soon as she went over the work, I completely understood how to do it, and she was stunned by my intelligence. That’s not how it happened, though. We went back to the beginning of the book and ground through some of the problems. It wasn’t easy, but I did understand it eventually. At least I understood the first few pages. Even that made me happy. It had been so long since I could find x with any accuracy, I’d begun to worry that the letter would be forever lost to me. Working with Serena made me feel like there was a glimmer of hope for my passing math class.

  We were just starting in on chapter three when the doorbell rang. Moments later Mrs. Kimball ushered Brian into the room. Serena looked surprised to see him, and he looked equally surprised to see me sitting beside her. He glanced from her to me in transparent annoyance.

  Serena ran her hand over her hair again. “Brian. Hi.”

  He walked closer to the couch. “I heard about your knee at school and thought you might need someone to help you with your social studies homework.”

  What he meant was: I’m here to flirt with you.

  Serena smiled at him. “Thanks. That was really thoughtful.”

  What she meant was: Why do these boys keep showing up in my living room when I haven’t done my hair?

  He looked over at me. “I can explain it to you later if you’re busy now.”

  Which meant: What is McKay doing here?

  Serena glanced at me. “That’s okay. McKay and I were just working on algebra, but we’re ready to take a break now.”

  Which meant—well, I wasn’t exactly sure, but I was afraid it meant: Sit down Brian, I’d rather flirt with you than talk to McKay. You’re much cooler, and besides, you’ve never plowed over me in PE class.

  I stood up. “Actually I ought to be going. Thanks for the help with algebra, though.” I looked around for my belongings, then realized I hadn’t brought anything but the flowers.

  “It was really nice of you to come,” Serena said. “Stop by again and tell me what’s going on algebra class.”

  Meaning: “My mother raised me to be polite, and I must say something to you as you’re leaving.”

  I smiled at her. “Sure,” and then in an attempt at a joke, “Don’t bother seeing me to the door.”

  Serena smiled. Brian did not. He sat down by Serena and opened his social studies book. Right before I went into the hallway, I turned one last time to look back at Serena. She was watching Brian. He was telling her something, but from the smile on his face I didn’t think it had anything to do with social studies.

  The next day at school while I got books out of my locker, I told Tony that I’d gone over to Serena’s house.

  He turned and gave me a big grin. “Way to go!”

  When I didn’t say anything else he nudged me with his elbow. “Well, was she nice to you?”

  I shrugged. “She’s nice to everyone.”

  “Did you ask her to help you with math?”

  “We went over the first two chapters of the book.”

  He gave me the thumbs up signal. “Home run. Didn’t I tell you it would work out? Didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “And we’ll call our firstborn Tony. That is, if she doesn’t want to call him Brian instead.”

  “Brian?”

  “He came over to give her the social studies homework.”

  “Really? Mr. Jet Engine himself stopped by?” Tony considered this for a moment, then nodded solemnly. “I guess that’s good news and bad news. The bad news is you’re going to have to work even harder to get Serena to like you.”

  When he didn’t say anything more, I asked
, “So what’s the good news?”

  “He doesn’t like Rachel so I’m home free.”

  I shut my locker door and gave him a dirty look. “The next time you go mountain climbing, I hope the bear gets more than your camera.”

  “Oh come on, you can take the guy on.”

  “Uh, right.” I wasn’t exactly sure what Tony meant by “taking him on.” It sounded vaguely like I was supposed to punch him out in the school parking lot. I wasn’t about to do that, but I did have my own ideas about seeing Serena again. She’d told me to come over to her house again and tell her what was going on in algebra class. I needed help with the assignments. What better way to accomplish both than to record the math class? It gave me an excuse to see Serena, and hopefully she’d help me out with the assignment at the same time.

  I’d brought a recorder to school for this purpose and was now carrying it around with my books.

  Tony and I walked down the hallway to our first class. As though he’d just thought of it, Tony said, “I called Rachel last night and we talked for over an hour. I think I’ll ask her to go out with me.” He paused for a moment to say hello to some guys we’d just passed, then returned his attention to me. “Maybe it would help your chances with Serena if we all, you know, went out together and did something.”

  “Like what?” I said this not so much as a question, but as a protest. The fact which I had not forgotten, but apparently Tony had, was that we were only thirteen years old. Anywhere we went, we would have to walk, bike, or have our parents drive us. I was not thrilled about any of these options. I mean, how impressed would a girl on crutches be if you asked her if she wanted to walk to the movies with you? Having your parents drive you would be almost as bad. It was hard enough to talk to a girl. It would be impossible to do while your parents listened in from the front seat of the family car. I could just imagine the comments I’d get from my parents. As we got out at the movie theater, they’d say: “You didn’t forget your money, did you, McKay?” or “Remember, a gentleman always holds the door open for his date,” or worse yet, “Be sure you go to the bathroom before the movie starts.” It would be awful. I just knew it.