The good news is that he doesn’t seem to have noticed. Having finally grown tired of basketball, he’s lying on his back in the grass, an arm shielding his eyes from the sun, his foot moving in time to some unknown rhythm.
“It’s been two hours,” I say to Griffin, who is sitting beside me in the shade, our backs against the brick wall of the school. Our shoulders are only a few inches apart, our knees almost touching, and I keep hoping that he’ll scoot closer. But he doesn’t.
“That’s a long time,” he says, gazing off in the direction of the empty soccer fields in the distance. “A lot can happen in two hours.”
I tip my head back and close my eyes. That’s exactly the thought I’ve been trying to avoid. Beside me, I can feel Griffin studying me in profile, and it’s hard not to turn and face him. But I know that if I do, he’ll look away again, those pale eyes of his like tropical fish, so quick to dart away.
“Maybe something happened to her,” he says, and I look over at him sharply.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” I say, before trailing off.
“Because it might be true,” he finishes, and there’s something too matter-of-fact in his tone, a bluntness that’s unsettling. I can’t decide if that’s because what he’s saying is true or because I’m rarely so honest myself.
I clear my throat. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“Based on what?” he asks, but there’s no challenge to his words. There’s not even any emotion behind them. He’s simply asking.
“Because,” I say, fumbling a little. “Because it has to be.”
Griffin considers this. “That’s not very logical.”
“Who said anything about logic?” I say, just as my phone rings, jittering roughly across the pavement. I grab it, relieved to see the number I’ve been dialing all afternoon, and angle myself slightly away from Griffin.
As soon as I pick up, there’s a flood of words, rushed and frantic and apologetic. “His sister broke her arm on the swings,” Noah’s mother says. “One minute she was pumping her legs and the next she was jumping off, and everything was so chaotic with the ambulance and the hospital and getting the cast, and I didn’t have the number for the camp with me, and my husband is out of town on business, and—”
“It’s fine,” I say for what feels like the millionth time this afternoon. “We have him. He’s totally fine.”
“I’ll be there in three minutes,” she says, and then the call ends, and I let out a long, relieved breath.
“See?” I turn to Griffin, who I can tell has been listening. “Everything’s fine.”
“Well,” he says with a shrug, “there were only ever two options. Either it was going to be fine or it wasn’t.”
* * *
A few minutes later, as we head over to the parking lot, I’m astonished to see Noah reach up and take Griffin’s hand.
Without meaning to, I come to an abrupt halt.
I’ve never once seen Noah initiate contact with anyone before. And for that matter, I’ve never really seen Griffin do it, either.
But now he folds the younger boy’s hand in his own as if they’ve known each other forever, as if this happens every day, as if it’s not the most extraordinary thing in the world.
* * *
That night, my sister pokes her head into my room.
“So,” she says, her eyes very bright, “was it a date?”
I think of Griffin in his blue button-down, the flicker of surprise on his face when Noah reached for his hand, the nearness of him as we sat against the brick wall of the school, the way the clouds passed overhead and the world had been quiet around us.
I think of the way we’d left things in the parking lot. By then, it was too late to head out to the arcade, and we decided to try again another day. As he walked back toward his car, though, I felt a rise of panic at the open-endedness of it all, and without thinking, I called out, “Tomorrow?”
He stopped.
“Mañana,” he agreed with a smile that made me dizzy.
“Annie.” Meg’s voice is full of impatience, and I realize she’s still waiting for an answer.
“Yeah?”
“Was it?” she asks, and I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “It was better.”
* * *
In the morning, once everyone is assembled in the gymnasium, where we start our day, I ask the kids what they’d like to play first.
“Kickball!” says Nadim Sourgen.
“Red rover!” says Gigi Gabriele.
“Nothing!” says Tommy King.
There’s some conferring—heads put together, hushed whispers, peals of laughter. Then, out of nowhere, Noah pipes up. “Caballo!”
This is followed by a surprised silence. The other kids look over at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.
“What’s caballo?” asks Jake Down.
“It’s Spanish,” I say. “For horse.”
“Like in riding?” asks Lucy Etherington.
“Like in basketball,” I say, smiling at Noah, who has already hopped to his feet, his hands on his hips, ready to play. “Caballo it is.”
* * *
This time, I’m not leaving it to chance. At the end of the day, even before we’ve trooped out to the parking lot for pickup, I leave Grace and another junior counselor to look after the kids and I hurry to the bathroom to change into my dress.
When I emerge from the cool of the building into the afternoon heat, all the campers turn to stare at me. They’ve only ever seen me in a messy ponytail and the same white T-shirt and green shorts. They’ve only ever seen me looking tired and sweaty and harried.
But now I’m wearing a yellow sundress that swishes when I walk, and I’ve let out my ponytail so that my dark hair falls to my shoulders. I’ve got on perfume and deodorant and even bit of makeup. And from the expressions on their faces, it’s clear I look like an entirely different person.
“You smell good,” says Tommy O’Callaghan, with a note of surprise.
“Like flowers,” confirms Wells von Stroh.
“Thanks,” I say, hoping Griffin might have a similar reaction.
All the parents are on time today, even Noah’s mother, who arrives with a rueful wave. His sister is in the back, and she lifts an arm to show off her bright pink cast. As I walk him over to the car, Noah keeps his usual distance, but when his mom rolls down the window to ask how his day was, he looks up at her.
“We played caballo,” he says, climbing into the back seat.
“What’s caballo?” I hear her ask as they pull away, and I’m still smiling at the disappearing car when I see Griffin across the parking lot.
The first thing I notice is that he’s wearing a different button-down. I squint to make sure I’m seeing it right, but it’s true. This one is the exact same style as the others, only it’s checkered blue and white. It takes me a moment to realize he has on jeans, too; they’re a little long, so he’s cuffed them at the bottom, but they still drag on the ground, making soft scraping noises as he walks over.
“Wow,” I say when he reaches me. He’s not even bothering to hide the fact that he’s staring at my dress, and this suddenly feels like an actual date. “You look really nice.”
“Oh.” His eyes snap up, then back down again. “Yeah, my mom—” He stops, then lets out a sheepish laugh. “My mom told me not to say that she helped me pick out this outfit. But I guess I just did.”
I laugh, too. “I guess so.”
“She also told me to tell you that you look nice.”
“Your mom sounds like a smart lady,” I say, watching his face go pink, and it’s all so endearing: this guy who looks like he should be a total player, like he should know exactly what he’s doing when it comes to dating, but is actually getting advice from his mother. His awkwardness is completely charming and entirely unexpected, but instead of putting me at ease, it makes me more nervous, as I realize just how
much I like him.
“Ready to go?” I glance behind me at the remaining campers, who are staring at us, and the other counselors, who are grinning and wolf whistling. I know they’ll have questions for me tomorrow. I only hope I’ll know how to answer them by then.
At the car, Griffin opens my door, and I think date! But then he seems to go out of his way to make sure our arms don’t accidentally touch as I climb in, and once again, I’m not so sure. When we’re both buckled in, he fumbles with the keys for a second, and as we pull out of the parking lot he turns on the radio. I’m surprised to hear the measured voice of an NPR reporter giving a rundown of the day’s news.
“I would’ve pegged you for classic rock,” I tell him, and he automatically reaches for the knob, turning down the volume. “Or maybe just classical.”
“I like the news,” he admits after a long pause, so long that it’s hard to tell if this is a response to my earlier comment or just an idle thought. “I like to know what’s going on in the world.”
“Smarty pants,” I say, and he shrugs.
“I like facts. And statistics. There’s something kind of soothing about them.”
“About statistics? There’s something kind of headachy about them for me.”
“That’s how I first got into basketball.” He drums his fingers on the wheel, his eyes square to the road. I’ve spent so much time staring at the back of his head, or else trying to get him to meet my eye, that I’ve never had a chance to study him in profile—the gentle slope of his nose, the scar just below his right eye, the perfect cheekbones, and the way his hair falls over his ear. “The numbers.”
“Definitely the most exciting part of the game,” I say with mock enthusiasm, and I see him start to bob his head before he catches himself.
“You’re joking,” he says, and I nod.
“I am.”
“Seriously, though,” he goes on, “there’s something really cool about all the stats, but it’s more than that. It’s a game of angles. I mean, think about it. If you’re able to stand in one place and shoot the ball in the exact right way once, you should be able to stand there every single time and do the same thing, right? Technically speaking, you should be able to make the ball go in again every single time.”
“Yeah, but that’s not how it works,” I say. “Because you’re not a robot. You twitch, and it goes to the left. Or you raise your hand a little higher than the last time without realizing it. There are always a thousand different ways it could go wrong.”
“Exactly,” he said. “But here’s the cool part: You can also adjust a bunch of various factors and still have it go in from the same spot, even while shooting it in a completely different way. So there are about a thousand different ways it could go right, too.”
I look at him sideways. “Is this your way of talking a big game?”
“For Pop-A-Shot?” He shakes his head. “No, I’m sure you’re gonna beat me.”
“I have to admit, we used to have one in our basement, so I’ve had a lot of practice. But it’s been a while.”
“How come?”
“Oh,” I say, blinking a few times as he eases the car onto another road. Ahead of us, the sun is slipping lower in the sky, and the buildings on either side of us have been replaced by a blur of trees. “We had to—we moved a few years ago. Out of a house and into an apartment. So … no more room for anything like that.”
We’re both quiet for a moment, and Griffin repositions his hands on the wheel. “It’s not as good as real basketball anyway. The balls are too small.”
“Maybe it’s that your hands are too big.”
“That too,” he says. “But it messes up all the angles.”
“So you’re gonna blame your upcoming defeat on math?”
“Pretty much.”
Just ahead, an ancient-looking wooden sign advertises Hal’s Bar & Restaurant, and Griffin pulls into the gravel drive. There are only a couple other cars in the lot, and we park and walk over to the entrance together.
Inside, it’s dark enough that it takes our eyes a few seconds to adjust. The bartender glances up, then away again. Nobody else even bothers. Hal’s is a strange hybrid, part family restaurant and arcade, part hole-in-the-wall bar. On the weekends it’s crawling with kids eager to redeem their tickets for dinky prizes. But during the week it has a seedier feel to it, dotted with regulars who sit silently hunched at the bar, drinking slowly and watching baseball on the boxy old TV in the corner.
We scoot past the bar and into the back room, which is filled with huge, blocky games like Pac-Man and skee ball and pinball, plus one of those giant tanks filled with stuffed animals and a useless metal claw. The place is quiet and dusty and entirely empty, which isn’t particularly surprising for a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of the summer. Nobody would choose to spend a beautiful day inside a dimly lit arcade. Except, apparently, for us.
“Quarters,” I say, marching over to the machine, and Griffin trails after me. I feed a few dollar bills into the slot, and the coins clink loudly as they fall into the metal drawer. Behind me, I can feel him waiting as I scoop them out, and my heart picks up speed. Something about the quietness of this place—which is meant to be full of people and lights and noise—makes it feel like we’ve stepped out of the real world.
“Hey,” he says softly, and I spin around, my hands filled with coins.
“Yeah?”
In the dusty light from the window, his eyes look very, very blue, and the small scar below his right one is more pronounced.
“I just—” he begins, then stops.
I wait for him to continue. There’s a Cubs game on in the next room, and the tinny sound of distant cheering rises and falls in the stillness. Griffin lifts an arm, and for a second I think he’s reaching for my hand. But then we both look down, and I realize I’m still holding a pile of quarters. Instead, he takes a single coin, flipping it once with his thumb so that it lands perfectly in his palm.
“Tails,” he says absently.
“What are the odds?” I joke, my voice a little wobbly, and Griffin gives me a funny look.
“Fifty-fifty,” he says, as he walks over to the Pop-A-Shot machine, the moment slipping away all at once. This is how it always is with Griffin, like any progress you think you’re making has a tendency to evaporate immediately afterward. Like no matter how much you think you’re connecting, no matter how hard you try, it doesn’t ever add up to anything. You’re always stuck starting over again the next time.
I follow him over to the game, where two small hoops are arranged side by side, with a net that runs down toward the two players, so that each time you shoot, the balls come rolling back in your direction, an endless supply that only runs out when the timer ticks down and the buzzer sounds.
Griffin is already rolling up his sleeves. When he’s ready, he grabs one of the balls, which is about two-thirds the size of a regular basketball, easy enough for him to palm. “These are pretty wimpy,” he says as he studies it.
“You know who these would be great for?” I ask, grabbing another one. “Noah. Did you see how much trouble he was having yesterday? We played again this afternoon, and the regular ones are too heavy for him. But with these, I bet he could almost get it to the basket.”
“And when he dribbles,” Griffin says, bouncing the ball on the wooden floor a couple times, “he’d have a way better grip.”
“Maybe we can win him one.” I point at the glass case in the corner, which is filled with prizes. I usually don’t even bother, since the amount of quarters it takes to win enough tickets to buy anything is about ten times what the thing actually costs. But, even from here, I can see a small green and white basketball half hidden by a stuffed elephant on the lowest shelf. “It’s camp colors and everything.”
Griffin turns back to the baskets. “Well, if you’re as good a player as you are a talker, I’d say it’s a definite possibility.”
“The trick,” I say, turning to face the hoop, “i
s to line yourself up just right.”
“No,” he says, as he feeds the quarters into the slot. “The trick is to get the ball in the basket.”
The machine comes to life, all blinking lights and blaring jingles, and the timer on the scoreboard starts counting down from ten. I reach for the first ball, then stand poised and ready to shoot. Beside me, Griffin is doing the same, his face focused and ready.
And then the buzzer sounds, and I let the ball fly. It bounces off the rim, but before it’s even landed back in the chute, I’ve launched the second one, which falls into the net with a satisfying swish, though I’m too busy to notice. I’m already shooting again, and then again, falling into a neat rhythm, the quick tempo pattern a kind of muscle memory, a callback to the hours spent playing in our basement, before my dad lost his job and we had to sell the games, before we moved to a smaller house, and then to a tiny apartment, before the fighting started, the late nights and the shouting and the name-calling, and my sister curled up in my bed with me, a pillow over her ears. Before all that—before we learned how to put on happy faces, before we understood that smiles were something you could hide behind, and words could be used as shields, when it was just the four of us in the basement, the concrete walls ringing out with the bright sounds of laughter and cheering.
Now, once again, I’m in constant motion, moving like a machine, steady and unseeing, and when it’s over, even after the clocks have displayed their broken zeroes and the buzzer has long since sounded, I continue to shoot what’s in front of me until all the balls are gone, and then I stand there, empty-handed and blinking.
“Whoa,” Griffin says, staring at the scoreboard.
I haven’t just beat him; I’ve demolished him. The score is 88 to 42.
“Whoa,” he says again. “You were in some kind of crazy zone there.”
“Yeah,” I say, still not entirely sure I’ve come out of it, still not entirely sure I want to. “I guess I was.”
* * *
We play all afternoon.
“Rematch,” Griffin keeps calling, each time I beat him, and though my margin of victory gets slimmer each time, it also gets funnier and funnier.