He whirled around furiously. “You don’t know how I feel. You’re still in some middle-school fantasyland, like a little kid. You think everything is so easy. Well, you have no idea what I’m feeling.”
“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “I’m completely clueless. You’re right.”
“So don’t judge me,” he said, starting to walk again.
I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. His eyes opened wide, and they blazed at me. For a second I thought he might even hit me. But he just yanked his arm from my grasp and kept walking.
“I’m not judging you,” I called after him. “I’m trying to help you!”
“Do me a favor,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t help me anymore. Forget you ever met me.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I watched him storm down the street. My emotions were a jumble.
I’d spent my whole day in a state of anxiety worrying about him, and he’d simply cut school. That much was clear to me now. He’d phoned the school himself and probably shut off the answering machine to avoid his parents’ receiving any messages that would make them suspicious.
I felt relief. I’d be happy to forget I’d ever met him, just as he’d suggested. It would be a quick and easy way to get rid of an enormous problem I felt unable to solve. I’d told him to get help. I’d done all I could do. Now I should be able to walk away, guilt-free. But could I? I didn’t know yet.
I thought about the Robert I had known before this terrible unhappiness had grabbed hold of him. I remembered his humor and his caring. I remembered all the fun we used to have.
That life-loving person had to be in there somewhere. He couldn’t have disappeared completely.
After all the worry I’d felt, my big blowup with Robert had left me completely drained. It’s amazing how emotions can tire you out just as much as a long run.
That night, Mom had to encourage me to eat my dinner. Because of my diabetes, she pays a lot of attention to what I eat. “Finish your vegetables,” she advised me.
“Mom, I’m not three,” I said as I speared a few green beans with my fork.
“What’s bothering you, Stacey?” she asked. “You haven’t been yourself for days now.”
“I haven’t?” I replied, genuinely surprised.
“No. You’ve been unusually quiet and you seem distracted. And last night you disappeared from the kitchen so abruptly. Did something on that radio talk show upset you?”
“No, but you’re close,” I admitted. “I went upstairs to call in. And I got on.”
“You did?” Mom looked surprised. “I didn’t hear you…. Wait a moment.” She thought for a few seconds. “I turned the radio off after you left.”
“If you’d left it on, you would have heard me talking about Robert, even though I disguised the details.”
“Robert?” Mom repeated, looking confused. I filled her in on everything that had been happening, including our fight this afternoon. “Oh, Stacey. You should have told me sooner,” she said. “You should have let me know what was going on.”
“What could you have done?”
“I could have told you not to take on this huge problem by yourself.”
“That’s what Dr. Gupti said.”
“Thank goodness,” Mom said. “She was right.” She stood up and walked to the phone. “I’m going to call Mrs. Brewster.”
I practically leaped across the kitchen to Mom. “Please, don’t,” I begged her. “Robert would never forgive me. It would be as if I’d betrayed him completely.”
Mom looked doubtful. “You can’t keep this kind of information to yourself, Stacey.”
“Patti knows too,” I said. “She’s tried to tell her parents but they won’t listen. They just think Robert’s being a weird teenager.”
Mom reached for the phone. “Then maybe it will help if they hear it from another source, an adult.”
I grabbed her hand. “Please, don’t. Robert confided in me. He trusted me not to tell.”
She wasn’t happy about it, but Mom agreed not to call the Brewsters. “Maybe this information shouldn’t come from me,” she said, although she seemed unsure.
I wasn’t sure either. Maybe someone did need to talk to the Brewsters. But couldn’t they see what was right in front of them? If they couldn’t, would it really help to hear about it from someone else? They didn’t believe their own daughter.
It was nearly eleven when I finally began to nod off to sleep that night. I was barely awake when I became aware of an odd noise.
Rubbing my eyes, I sat up in bed and listened. It was a crackling kind of sound, a little like corn popping in the microwave. I realized it was coming from my bedroom window.
Moonlight washed through the window and I saw something black spraying up from under the outside sill. I stumbled to the window and leaned toward it. Just as I did, a shower of small stones hit the glass and made me jump back, startled. Someone was throwing gravel at the window. I peered down onto the moonlit lawn.
Robert stood there, gazing up, about to throw another handful. He spotted me, though, and waved. His hair was a mess. Something about his face wasn’t right. He waved for me to come down.
I hurried into the dark hall. First, I stuck my head into Mom’s room. She was asleep. I ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, and opened the back door. A slight breeze blew my nightgown around my legs. “Robert?” I whispered.
He wasn’t there, so I stepped outside, barefoot. “Robert?”
“Over here.” His voice was raspy, choked. As if he’d been crying. It came from the side of the house, to the right of the door.
When I reached him, I saw why his face looked so strange. He had been crying. And hard. His eyes were swollen. His complexion was blotchy. “Oh, Robert, what’s wrong?” I cried. “What happened?” He looked at his feet and mumbled something. “I can’t hear you,” I told him gently.
“I do need your help,” he repeated, lifting his head. Tears sprang to his red eyes. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he choked out. “I’m really scared.”
I put my arms around him and he clung to me tightly. He started to cry in terrible, wrenching sobs. I tightened my grip on him. He had to know I was there and that he could cry if he needed to. I had never heard anyone cry like this. Such awful, anguished sobs, as if he might fall apart into a million pieces on the ground if I didn’t hold him with all my strength.
After a minute, his sobs subsided. I leaned away from him. “It just hurts inside me all the time,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “I can’t make it stop.”
I nodded. I didn’t know how he felt. But I could see it was horrible. “And you don’t know why?” I asked gently.
He kept shaking his head. “I don’t know why.”
I took a deep breath. “Can you think of an adult you could talk to?” I asked him.
He thought a moment then shook his head. “No, there’s no one.”
“Think harder. There has to be someone.”
“Well …” he said after a moment. “You might not believe this.” He shook his head. “No, forget it.”
“What? Who were you going to say?”
“Coach,” he said. “I mean, it’s crazy because he’s someone who probably never wants to hear my name again. But he did let me back on the team and … I just always liked him. I think I could talk to him.”
“Let’s go inside and call him,” I suggested.
Robert shook his head and turned away. “He’d hang up on me. I wouldn’t blame him either.”
“I don’t think he will,” I said. “He’ll want to know what happened to you.” I reached my hand to him. “Come on.”
Robert took my hand and let me lead him into the kitchen. I turned on a light. Robert told me the coach’s number, which he knew by heart. He said all the guys on the team knew it. “It’s too late to call,” Robert objected.
“If he’s not awake, leave a message on his answering machine,” I insisted. Something
told me some action had to be taken right now, even it was only a message. “Make an appointment to see him.”
“You call,” Robert said.
I held the phone out to him. “You have to. I can’t do it for you.”
He took the phone from me and made the call. No one answered, so Robert left a message. “Uh … uh … this is Robert … Robert Brewster…. I’d like to talk to you … if you have some time … and you want to…. You probably don’t. I don’t want my parents to know, so you could call me at this number. Stacey McGill’s. She’ll give me a message.” He gave the coach my phone number. “If I don’t hear from you I’ll look for you tomorrow at school. But, it’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me.”
He hung up and glanced at me. “Now what?” he asked.
“You should go home and get some sleep,” I said.
He nodded. I hated to send him away, but I didn’t know what else to do.
A terrible, haunted kind of look came into his red-rimmed eyes. He didn’t want to leave.
“Want some juice or a soda or something?” I asked.
“Some juice would be good,” he said.
I took some from the refrigerator and poured him a glass. He sat at the kitchen table just staring at it.
I jumped when the phone rang. “Hello?” I said.
“Hi, this is Jack Romano, Robert Brewster’s baseball coach. He left me a message to call him here.”
Thank goodness!
“He’s right here,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“It’s for you,” I said, handing Robert the phone.
Silently, I backed into the dining room to give him some privacy. I heard a footstep and turned to see Mom coming down the stairs in her robe. “Stacey, what’s going on?”
I told her, then added, “Robert is talking on the phone to his baseball coach right now.”
Mom put her arm around me. “Good,” she said. “Very good. I didn’t feel right about not talking to his parents. I had decided to call them tomorrow.”
“Now you don’t have to.”
“After he speaks to the coach, have him call his parents,” Mom said, heading back upstairs. “It’s late.”
“Okay,” I agreed. I stuck my head back in the kitchen to see what was happening. Robert’s back was to me, but I could hear what he was saying.
“All right. I’ll come see you tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you.”
I leaned against the dining room wall and drew in a breath. Maybe the worst was over. Maybe.
The next day, Tuesday, I felt awful, as if I might be coming down with a flu or something. I was running a low fever. Mom insisted I stay home and rest.
I felt so achy that I was happy to stay in bed. The only down side was that I missed the Strawberry Festival. Fortunately, I received a complete report from Claudia that night.
Naturally, Claudia’s response to the event was a creative one. She arrived at Kristy’s backyard with her face-painting kit and set it up on a card table.
The festival started at four o’clock, after school. It was amazing how many people showed up with strawberry dishes. I guess they couldn’t wait to unload some of their berries.
Kristy had filled the yard with tables, benches, and chairs. She set out all the dishes and charged a quarter for every slice or piece we served.
Jessi and Mallory were in charge of a table near the house. With the help of an extension cord that reached an outlet on the outside of the house, they had plugged in a blender. Using plenty of ice and a variety of ingredients — though the main one was strawberries, of course — they whipped up icy drinks. It was a warm day, so their booth was a big hit.
In the middle of the festival, Kristy came up with another great idea. She wasn’t prepared for it; it just hit her. She’d collect all the strawberry recipes and put them together in a book. People were so overloaded with strawberries that they’d love to have some ideas on what to do with them.
She ran into the house and grabbed some index cards. Then she hurried through the crowd, interviewing anyone who had donated a dish. Some of the recipes she received were for Bavarian strawberry pie, strawberries Romanoff, strawberry bombe, and strawberry bread. She also took down directions for canning strawberries and making strawberry jam. Mrs. Newton told her how to make homemade strawberry ice. Mrs. Papadakis gave her a recipe for strawberry punch. And Mary Anne’s father even showed up with a strawberry chiffon pie, for which he gladly shared the recipe.
Abby organized a race in which kids had to run to the finish line without dropping a strawberry from the bowl of a spoon that they had to hold between their teeth. The kids loved it. But Claudia said she wasn’t sure whether they liked the challenge or simply enjoyed stepping in their bare feet on the strawberries that fell to the ground. Either way, they had a lot of fun.
Mary Anne and Logan emptied the small baskets of strawberries people had brought into a big basket. At first they told everyone that if they could guess how many berries were in the basket, they’d win all the strawberries.
No one even tried. They didn’t want all those strawberries back!
They quickly switched strategies and decided Mr. Spier’s strawberry chiffon pie would be the prize. That generated a much bigger response. Kids and adults lined up to take a guess. Who wouldn’t want to bring that home for dessert?
Claudia’s face painting was probably the most popular table of all. She painted strawberries on foreheads, cheeks, and chins. For the really adventurous, she offered an entire strawberry face. Margo and Vanessa Pike were the first two to wear the strawberry face. Once the other kids saw them, the strawberry face became super popular.
Her table was so popular, in fact, that within two hours, she wore out her tin of red face paints. Luckily, Karen Brewer had some face paint, which she donated to Claudia.
The second most popular table was the one with strawberry shortcake. Shannon and her younger sisters, Tiffany and Maria, had arrived with cartons of little angel food cakes and tubs of whipped cream. They sliced up the cakes, spooned sliced strawberries onto them, and slathered them with whipped cream. Instant strawberry shortcake. Claudia said the cakes were delicious. Parents had to ask Shannon and her sisters to set a two-cake limit so that their kids wouldn’t make themselves sick eating so many.
At six o’clock, Robert showed up with Patti. Claudia was surprised to see him. (She’d called me earlier from school to see why I wasn’t there. We talked a little about what had happened with Robert, so she knew how things were.) As you can guess, I was very happy to hear he’d been there. At least he was somewhere!
She said she couldn’t read Robert’s mood. He wore a kind of blank expression. But he walked around with Patti and sampled some strawberry dishes.
When Patti wanted to have her face painted, Claudia asked her how Robert was feeling.
“I’m not sure,” Patti replied. “But he seemed a little happier after he came home from school today.”
I decided that meant that Robert had spoken with his coach, which was good news.
At seven o’clock, Mary Anne announced the winner of Mr. Spier’s chiffon pie: Hannie Papadakis! Mary Anne handed Hannie the pie, and she grinned down at it, licking her lips.
After that, Kristy made an announcement. She was going to use the money we had earned to take the kids we sit for on a trip to Splash Down, a new water park that was about to open just outside Stoneybrook. This news was met with wild cheering. (The Strawberry Festival wasn’t even over and Kristy was already planning her next big event.)
Claudia’s booth would have earned the most money, but at the last minute, Kristy outdid her. She ran into the house and photocopied all her index cards on Watson’s copier. With Jessi’s help, she stapled them together and made packets of the strawberry recipes she’d collected. She sold them for a dollar apiece as people were leaving. Every single person bought a packet.
Leave it to Kristy!
By Wednesday, I still felt too crummy to go to schoo
l or to the BSC meeting. At three-thirty, Robert called me. “Dealing with me made you sick, huh,” he said lightly.
“No,” I replied with a laugh. “It’s just the flu.” I wondered, though. Had so much worrying churned up my insides so that the flu germ could reach me? I supposed it was possible.
“How did it go with the coach?” I asked.
“He was great. I apologized and explained what was happening with me. We talked for a long time. He’s pretty smart about life, and feelings, and things like that. He might even let me play again. I hope so. I’d really like to play in the regional championships.”
“Do you think you need to talk to him some more?” I asked.
“He made me feel a lot better,” Robert said. “And he told me to come talk to him any time I need to. He didn’t seem to mind at all. I always liked him. I never realized he was such a cool guy, though.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Totally excellent.” This was the first time I’d heard Robert sound positive about anything in a long, long time.
“What about the dance?” he asked. “Do you still want to go together — as friends?”
“Definitely. I should be better by Friday. At least I hope so.”
“Oh, and speaking of friends,” Robert added, “I spoke to Alex today. Coach told me I should realize that everyone has problems sometimes. That made me think about Alex’s parents splitting up. I told Alex I was sorry about not being a better friend to him. We talked and I think we’re pals again.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Really, really great.”
I stayed home again on Thursday. But I felt well enough to work on my self-portrait for English class. It was funny, but all I’d been through with Robert made me appreciate my life more than I might have before. I had such good friends and such a supportive family. I felt lucky. Really lucky.
And Robert would feel lucky again too. He would work through this. I’m grateful that I’ve always been able to pull out of my sad times. If they didn’t go away after awhile, I don’t know what I’d do.