Tom shrugs and smiles. He’s diffused the situation, the way he always does. He just always knows what to do. I nudge even closer to him, then lie back, resting my head on his hip. The sun warms my skin. Emily shakes her head and she starts laughing. Tom laughs too and soon that’s what we’re all doing, laughing, laughing, laughing under the sun and it seems like nothing in the world could be wrong at all, like everything is right and good. And nobody’s dad is killing somebody else’s in a desert half a world away. And nobody’s having seizures again. And nobody’s pregnant way too soon. It feels like the whole world is just us, right here, on a riverbank in Eastbrook.
Shawn plops himself down next to Em and bear hugs her. His arm accidentally pulls up her shirt in the back, exposing pale, delicate skin. She hugs him back, nestling in and he says loud enough for us all to hear him, “I don’t know why I love you so much.”
She pulls away, searches his face. “But you do?”
“But I do.”
The heat hitting my bare legs isn’t just coming from the sun, so even though I’m super comfortable and ready for a nap, I grab Tom’s hand and yank him up. “Let’s go take a walk.”
“But ... ” Tom motions towards the sun and the river and the comfortable place we are at, his duct tape work-in-progress. He’s lounging and happy and so cute that jumping on him right then and there is the biggest urge I’ve ever had. Still, Em and Shawn … . I shake my head and indicate that this would be a good time to leave Em and Shawn alone, especially since their lips are already locked together. Luckily for both of us, Tom is smart enough to understand. So we walk. We leave the lovebirds alone.
Tom leaves his duct tape roll on the kayaks. I’m proud of him. Maybe instead of fiddling with the duct tape, he’ll fiddle with me.
I hold his hand.
He holds mine.
The air holds the smell of warm grass.
“People say my dad was a hero,” I tell him.
Tom nods. “My dad says he was a great guy, had a wicked jumper.”
No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine the man in the photograph in the living room pounding down a basketball court, stopping on a piece of straw wrapper someone’s thrown from the bleachers, launching into the air, and gracefully lofting the ball over all the other players. I can’t imagine how he’d smell when he climbed into a helicopter, dealt with a mortar wound. I can’t imagine how his throat would gulp down a cold Pepsi after spending a hot summer day on the river. Maybe, Em’s been right taking pictures of us all doing random ordinary things, as a sort of insurance plan in case we lose each other.
I pluck a dandelion out of the ground. “I don’t remember him.”
The dandelion is bright yellow and so pretty.
“I don’t know why people call them weeds instead of flowers,” I say to Tom. “Is it just because they’re everywhere?”
“Maybe.”
“Just because something’s common doesn’t make it less beautiful,” I tell him and realize that I’m talking like a poet again, which is embarrassing.
I hand him the flower. He smells it and sneezes, then blushes like sneezing is somehow not manly.
“Bless you,” I say.
He tucks the dandelion behind my ear. “Thanks.”
“Do you think it’s weird if I miss him?”
He knows that I’m talking about my dad. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
We stop walking and flop down on the ground. I snuggle into Tom’s chest, wrap my arms around him. The cell phone in his pocket bumps against my leg. A bee buzzes nearby. “Even if I don’t remember him?”
Tom rests his chin on the top of my head. “Even then.”
“I mean I never knew him,” I say. “Do you think we ever really know anybody?”
He moves away and my head tilts up towards his, ready for the kiss that I know is about to come.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think we do. Shakespeare said something in Hamlet, which I won’t quote the right way, because I don’t remember it, but it was something like: The heart knows what the head doesn’t.”
“You should put that on some duct tape.”
“I should.”
“You’re going to leave me some day?”
He cocks his head. His hand slides down my arm. “Commie … ”
“You are.”
“Belle.”
I don’t answer.
“Belle, look at me.”
I don’t look.
“Belle, your dad died. I’m not going to die.”
“But you could leave.”
I think, You could leave if you realize I’ve had another seizure, or how dorky I really am, or that I know about Em and you don’t.
“I’m not going to leave, I swear.”
My head manages to turn towards him. There are tiny pores of skin, so tiny you have to be super close to see them. His eyes are brown beautiful. I want so badly for his words to be true.
“If I were pregnant would you leave me?”
“That’s insulting.”
I gulp. I’ve gone too close to the truth, Em’s truth. I could say sorry, but that would make it too serious.
“If I was having Eddie Caron’s baby would you leave me?”
“I’d kill you.”
“Because you’d be jealous?”
“No, because you would be so stupid you wouldn’t deserve to live.”
I twitch my nose at him. “Nice. How about if I had seizures all the time, and they were the really bad kind, the grand mal kind where you wet yourself and everything?”
“What is up with you, Commie?”
“I don’t know,” I lie. “Senioritis, I guess … Hormones?”
He nods. Guys always fall for the hormones line. Tom is just like the rest.
I stare.
Em and Shawn run across the field laughing. Their bodies move together. Shawn must have adjusted his pace so that he doesn’t go too fast for Em to keep up. You can’t tell that, though. It just seems like they’re running through the long grass together. The sky blues above them. The wind blows the grass into river ripples. Their laughs reach their eyes and they stop, slam themselves down on the beach a little ways from us. Shawn’s hand reaches out to Em’s face and his fingers cup her cheeks. She tosses her hair back and smiles. How can she be laughing? How can her laughs be so believable?
Tom’s voice touches my ear, carries with it the smell of the sea. “Belle? What is it?”
I shrug. I am not a shrugger, but I shrug. “I don’t know.”
He waits. I lean back against him, rest my head against his thigh, so that all my eyes meet is the blue sky with the puffy clouds that form into shapes. One resembles a sailboat. Em’s laugh drifts down to us.
“They’re so happy,” I say.
Tom’s fingers rake through my hair, gently lifting it from beneath my head and spreading it out across his legs. “That’s not good?”
I gulp. “Oh, it’s good. It’s really good. It’s just … ”
“Just what?”
Winds shift the sailboat cloud into another shape, blowing it into a giant frog sitting by a cat-o’-nine-tails.
I manage to say it. “I’m afraid it’s going to end, you know. I don’t know. The whole graduating thing. That I’m going to lose everybody.”
“Like you lost Dylan?”
“No. More like I lost my dad. I’m afraid of losing you. What if there’s a draft? What if you have a car accident? What if you just get sick of me and leave? I’m afraid of losing Emmie.” I breathe in. God. “I’m sorry, I’m being stupid.”
He doesn’t laugh at me. “So that’s what you were talking about before?”
My eyes close. The sun makes patterns on them.
Tom’s fingers move through my hair and I say, “You’re a good boyfriend.”
Now he laughs. The muscles in his thighs flex beneath my head. The sun warms my skin. His lips touch my forehead. I open my eyes to see his face moving away. “I’m not going to leave you, Belle.”
I turn onto my side, stare up at him, past his tan stomach, to his chin line and then his eyes. “How do you know?”
“I know.”
The heart knows what the head … .Whatever. Sitting up I blurt it out. “Everybody leaves me, Tom. My dad. Dylan.”
He moves my hair over one of my shoulders. Down the beach Shawn starts laughing again. “I won’t.”
“How do you know?”
He leans in to kiss me. His cheek twitches. I touch it with my finger and he lets me and then he says, “I just know.”
But this whole conversation? It’s true, but it’s also a lie because on my worry list it’s not Tom leaving that gets the #1 spot: It’s Shawn leaving Emmie. That’s now spots #1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.
Right before we get back in the kayaks, I pull Emily aside and ask, “Are you okay?”
“Why?” She pulls her hair into a pony, because the wind on the water will twist it all up into tangles.
“Because you’re acting really happy.”
“Belle, did I not tell you this already?”
“Tell me again.”
“You always make me repeat things. It’s like you get stuck on stuff.”
“Humor me?”
“Whatever. I just want this one last day, okay? One last day with him not worried.”
“With him loving you?”
She twists the elastic in. Her arms come back to her sides. She stares at me like I’m an idiot.
“He’ll keep loving you,” I say.
She doesn’t answer.
I push on. “You’ll tell him tomorrow?”
“Just let me have this, Bellie. Okay?”
“Okay.”
On our way back, a little silver fishing boat slices by us in the water.
“Jesus,” Tom hisses.
I keep paddling. “What?”
Shawn puts a hand over his eyes, gazing at the boat and then he looks at us and says to Tom, “Is that who I think it is?”
Tom’s voice comes from behind me. “Yep.”
I keep paddling, my hands hold the black pole between the yellow blades. In and out up and down. “Who is it?”
I don’t have bad eyes, I just don’t have super good eyes.
“Eddie,” Tom says.
I stop paddling and wave.
“Belle!” Tom yells my name as Eddie waves back. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Waving?”
“To Eddie Caron?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” Tom says, because this seems to be his curse for the day. “Sometimes I just don’t know about you.”
“What?” I say, anger edging up into my throat. “I can’t wave hi? You waved hi to Mimi at the movies.”
“Belle, if Eddie did what he did to you to Emily or Anna or anybody else you’d be all over him, you’d be organizing marches. You’d hate him,” he says. “And I didn’t realize that I was waving to Mimi. It was a reflex.”
“Right.” Something inside me snaps. I paddle harder, like I can escape him somehow, but he’s right behind me and he won’t stop talking.
“You’d hate him and it would be right to hate him, but since it’s you, it’s okay. It’s okay that he violated you.”
“He didn’t violate me,” I mutter, but I’m not sure if he can hear because I’m facing away from him.
“I hate that you don’t like yourself enough to be pissed off at him. You should hate him, Belle. I hate him.” Tom’s voice raises up so that even Shawn and Em can hear.
I glance over at them. Shawn looks embarrassed for me. Em doesn’t. She looks mad.
I say, “First off, you shouldn’t hate people. And … and … I like myself.”
“She’s too good for her own good,” Em shouts over, which is so helpful of her.
A seal pops up, breaking the surface of the water. His big brown eyes stare into mine. I wonder how long he’s been watching us. Anger solids up in my stomach. I don’t tell anyone he’s there.
“No, I’m not,” I announce to everyone. “I’m not good.”
Tom splashes me with the paddle as Eddie’s boat gets smaller as he heads past us towards the bay. “Yeah, Commie, you are.”
The seal nods at me. He sinks down, way below the water. I tell no one I saw him and feel a little happy and a little guilty.
“I just saw a seal and I didn’t tell you,” I say, slicing my paddle in and out, pulling through. “See? A good person wouldn’t do that?”
“Oh my God, Belle, that’s the worst you can do?” Shawn laughs.
Em’s looking for the seal and doesn’t see it.
“Oh, bad girl, I’m scared,” Shawn says, making a stupid twisted-up face.
I close my eyes and paddle, grumpiness pushing my arms, making me paddle faster. Tom keeps pace behind me, but I doubt that anyone else can keep up.
Eddie’s wake hits us. The kayaks bounce up and down in the water, but we still don’t capsize. Somehow we are still above water.
Eddie was just a boy in my life, not a boyfriend, just a neighbor so I don’t know why it feels like I’ve lost him somehow, too.
When we were little we would make jumps in the woods behind his house, pounding down the earth and then soaring our bikes over them, darting between the trees. I remember.
One time we made this super-high jump out of dirt built up and two-by-fours we’d filched off a construction site for a house nearby. The light filtered through the trees and slanted at things and I though he was just crazy and cool, because he could build a mound so high.
He got on his bike, but he didn’t pedal. He didn’t go. His feet planted themselves, flat on the ground. I waited. He didn’t go.
“You want me to go first?” I said.
“You want to?”
“Sure,” I said.
I pedaled hard and fast and I flew over that jump. I just soared up and up and then I landed. Bam. I wiped out. The spokes jabbed into my calf. I rolled over and over, trying not to smash against a tree.
Eddie ran to me. He ran. And he lifted me up, even though we were only in first grade or something. He lifted me up and said, “You okay? You okay? You have to be okay.”
I was bleeding all over him, but I pushed him away and said, “That was really cool.”
“You looked like you were flying,” he said. “I could never fly like that.”
“Sure you could,” I told him, but I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s the truth. Eddie seems stuck, stuck to the ground, to the earth, to his life. Especially now, ever since the “hallway incident.” I don’t think he’ll ever have a chance to fly now. At all.
And Em … It’ll be so hard for her, for Shawn. She’s the one stuck to the ground.
And the truth is, I’m afraid that we’ll drift away, drift apart like Eddie and I did, like Mimi and I. That someday we’ll be so different we won’t know how we were ever friends, and this whole baby thing … that’s got to accelerate the process. It means I have to try so much harder not to let her go.
Once I get back my mother apologizes 264 times during dinner. She just keeps apologizing about leaving. I swear, she thinks I’m five or something. Then the phone rings and it is one Mr. Jim Shrembersky, AGAIN, so I decide to take off on my bike before I have to listen to her giggle too much.
I check the tires, put on some bug spray and head to the cemetery, not the old one close by that I brought Em to, but the one on Bayside, the one where my dad is.
Wi
th Gabriel strapped to my back, I pedal up the hills and coast down, listening to the wind make melodies in my ears, strange lyrics that I want to decipher.
It seems morbid to go to another cemetery; I know that. But I still go.
The weekend’s sun has dried out all the grass from Friday night’s rain. Birds sing in the trees. I lean my bike by a tree, put down the kickstand, and walk over to his grave.
“I wish you were here,” I tell the stone. “I don’t know what to do about Em.”
The stone doesn’t answer.
“She’s pregnant,” I say out loud, testing the words. “She’s having a baby. Em. Em’s having a baby.”
A pine needle falls from a tree, pulled by gravity to the earth. I sit down with Gabriel, lean my back against the tombstone. The coldness of it hits my skin, even though I’m wearing a shirt.
I’ve always wanted a dad.
That’s the truth right there.
I’ve always wanted a dad to help me learn to throw a softball, which I can’t do at all. I’ve wanted a dad to teach me guitar chords, and hug me when boys were stupid and tell me I’m beautiful when I’m getting ready for a prom or something. I’ve always wanted a dad to sneak me twenty dollars when my mom’s said no, or to kiss me on the top of the head when I don’t feel well. I’ve always wanted a dad to help make things better, because that’s what dads are supposed to do, isn’t it? Dads are supposed to fix things.
I want a dad to fix this, to fix this Emily thing.
I want a dad to tell me he loves me, to hug me and fart on the couch when we’re watching CNN or something. I want a dad whose snore noises echo through the house. Will Shawn be that kind of dad? He better be.
“Emily’s pregnant,” I say again.
The world keeps spinning around. I can feel it, sitting next to my dad’s stone. The trees sway in the wind. Another pine needle journeys to the ground. My father is still dead. Emily is still pregnant.
“I want you,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. So, I pull out Gabriel and do the only thing I can think to do, because nothing I do can change what’s happening to Em and nothing I do can make me have a dad, living, breathing, right here with me, right now. I pull out Gabriel and I start to play.