Lost in the Sun

  “What’re we having for dinner?” she called over.

  He didn’t look up from his tablet. “Pork chops,” he answered. Which might’ve been the first time I ever heard him speak.

  “You want to stay for dinner?” Fallon asked me, without even bothering to check with her dad if it was okay. (If he were my dad, I sure as heck would’ve checked first.)

  “I can’t,” I said. “Have to get home by five-ten.” The Dodgers were playing the Rockies tonight. They were two games out of first place and with the season coming to an end, they were running out of time to make up ground.

  Fallon checked the clock on the wall. “Want to help me take Squillo for a walk?” she asked me.

  I still had some time before I missed dinner with my dad, so I said okay.

  “Dad, we’re taking Squillo out!” Fallon called to the kitchen as she scooped her dog up from where he was napping on the couch. “Be back in a sec, ’kay?”

  Her dad grunted in reply.

  • • •

  We took Squillo on the walking path through the park, since Fallon only lived two blocks away. Squillo was a cute dog, but he liked to tug at his leash.

  After Squillo did his business in the grass (which was disgusting, by the way—first time I was ever thrilled I didn’t own a dog), Fallon asked me to take his leash so she could scoop his poop with the plastic bag she’d brought. And I thought I was holding on good and tight—I mean, how tough could it be to keep a grip on a tiny fuzzball like that?—but before I knew what had happened, Squillo had tugged so hard that the leash flew out of my hands. He probably would’ve been halfway across the state before we caught up with him, but luckily Fallon was paying more attention than I was, and she stepped on his leash, jerking him back.

  “You’ve got to hold on really tight,” she told me as she handed back the leash. “Wrap it around your hand. He’s stronger than he looks.”

  I tried to wrap the leash around my hand, but I guess I didn’t really get what Fallon was talking about, because she rolled her eyes at me and said, “You’re killing me, Smalls,” like the fat kid in The Sandlot—I mean, exactly, same ups and downs to her voice and everything—and rewrapped it for me. I didn’t want to admit it, but it did seem much sturdier that way.

  She went back to picking up the poop while Squillo sniffed at the grass.

  “You’re really good at that, you know,” I told her.

  “What?” Fallon asked, tying up the bag and looking around for a trash can. “Cleaning up dog poo?”

  “No.” I laughed. Squillo decided it was time to get moving again, so he tugged and we followed. “Saying lines and stuff. From movies. You always say it exactly like the person. I could never do that.”

  “Oh.” Fallon shrugged as she tossed the plastic bag into a trash can. “Thanks. It’s fun, I guess.”

  “Maybe you should try to be an actress,” I told her. “Instead of a script person. You’d be really good at it, I bet.”

  Fallon wrinkled her nose.

  “What?” I asked her. “You don’t like acting?” But as soon as I said it, I knew the answer. I could see it in her face. In her eyes. You couldn’t hide a thing like that.

  “You think you can’t do it,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it out loud. But then once I said it, there was no stopping. “Because of your scar.” What a moron I am, I thought, telling Fallon she should be an actress. She probably wanted to be an actress, more than anything else in her life. But.

  But.

  You couldn’t be an actress with a giant scar across your face. What parts would she play? Girl with a Scar? Other Girl with a Scar?

  I felt like a real jackass.

  I was just opening my mouth to tell her what a jackass I was, hoping she wouldn’t be too mad and we could just forget about the whole thing. But before I got a chance to say anything at all, Fallon said something first.

  “Why doesn’t anybody ever get hungry at the beach?”

  That’s what she said.

  “Huh?” I asked. Squillo stopped to sniff at the roots of a tree, so I stopped too.

  “Why doesn’t anybody ever get hungry at the beach?” she said again. She was tugging at the bottom hem of her sweatshirt (it was bright green, with cartoon peas all over it, and said “Visualize Whirled Peas”). Suddenly it occurred to me.

  A joke. She was trying to tell me a joke.

  “Um, I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”

  Fallon bent down to scratch Squillo behind his ears, her head tilted up to look at me. “Because,” she said, raising her eyebrows at me like this was about to be the most hilarious joke I’d ever heard, “of all the sandwiches there.”

  I wrapped the leash tighter around my wrist. “What?” I said.

  “Get it?” she asked, even though very clearly I hadn’t. “Because of all the sand which is there?” She enunciated each word. “At the beach?”

  I blinked at her. “That’s the dumbest joke I ever heard.”

  Fallon laughed out loud at that. She was pretty when she laughed, actually, because she had this way of throwing her head back, and her whole face got into the act, not just her mouth the way some people laughed. “Yeah,” she said. She wiped at her eyes. “Right? It’s so terrible!”

  I was pretty sure she was losing her mind.

  “My uncle used to tell me that joke,” Fallon said, “when I was a kid. Uncle Steve. And I mean, he told it to me every single time I saw him. Christmas, Easter, birthday parties, whatever. Over and over and over. And I’d laugh, every time, just to be polite. Finally on my ninth birthday I told him, ‘Uncle Steve, you already told me that joke.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I know, I was just waiting till you said something.’” She snorted, then looked off to the far end of the park, where some kids were throwing a Frisbee. Then she looked back at me, shrugged, and said, “I know it’s not funny, it just sort of cracks me up still, you know?”

  I tugged at Squillo a tiny bit, until he gave up on the tree and was ready to start moving again.

  We walked a few minutes in silence.

  There was something about Fallon, I’d noticed, that wasn’t what it seemed. Something sad. She was like Mom’s coffee—it always smelled sweet, and then you took a sip and realized it was nothing but bitter.

  “It’s a pretty funny joke,” I told her at last.

  “You still owe me a picture, you know,” she replied.

  I sighed. “No pictures,” I said. “I don’t even have my notebook anyway.”

  “Liar.” She tapped the front pocket of my sweatshirt, and my Book of Thoughts let out a hollow thud. “You always have it.”

  “Well, I’m not drawing you any pictures anyway. I don’t draw stuff for other people, just for me.”

  She snorted like she didn’t believe me. “Just wait till you hear the real way I got my scar,” she said. She flipped around backward so she could face me as the two of us walked together. “Then you’ll be dying to draw it.” I sighed again. I didn’t even have to wait to hear it—I knew it was going to be another weird lie. I couldn’t say why for sure, but I hated when Fallon told stupid lies about her scar.

  But Fallon clearly didn’t care about my sighing.

  “I was deep-sea scuba diving,” she started, “and this manatee came up to me, swimming right side by side. It was so cool, you can’t even imagine. Just me and nature. And then all of a sudden, he turned his head to look at me, and I saw that he had this look in his eyes, like he was a soulless beast. And before I could swim away, he whacked me with his flipper, right here.” She karate-chopped the air, right between our two faces. I flinched, and she howled with laughter. “You like that one?” she asked, spinning back around to walk forward again. She almost tripped over Squillo. “‘Soulless beast’?”

  There were kids playing baseball, over on the ball field. I steered us left so we wouldn??
?t pass them.

  “Hey, Fallon?” I said, after a minute or two.

  “Yeah?” She was walking just a few feet to my right, plucking leaves off the trees as we passed underneath and shredding them between her fingers. She didn’t look at me. I wondered if she knew what I was going to ask.

  “How did you get your scar?” I said. “I mean, for real? No stories.”

  I didn’t have to see her face then. I knew, by the way her breath stopped, for just a beat, that I shouldn’t have asked. She was mad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She was trying to sound like it didn’t matter.

  It mattered.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said.

  “I know,” she replied. “I’m not going to.”

  “Okay.”

  She grabbed Squillo’s leash then, right out of my hands, and the two of them were in my way, stopped still, so I had to stop, too. “Not because it’s some big secret or anything,” she told me. “That’s not why I’m not going to tell you. It’s too boring, the real story. Not interesting at all. And once you know, then that’s it.” She poofed one hand out in front of her, like she was performing a magic trick. “No mystery.” She smiled that lopsided smile at me. “And where’s the fun in that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Because I knew that’s what I needed to say. “I’d rather have the mystery.”

  “Exactly. Promise me you won’t ask again. It would ruin it.”

  “I promise,” I told her. And I meant it.

  She turned back around, and started walking back toward the house. I waited a second before I followed her.

  • • •

  That night, during the first inning, one of the Rockies hit a fly ball, straight to shallow center field. It should’ve been an easy catch, only something wasn’t right. The centerfielder had his glove raised high, but he wasn’t moving towards the ball.

  “What’s he doing?” I shouted, scooching forward on the couch to yell at the TV better. “What’s he—?”

  That’s when the ball sailed right over the guy’s head—and I mean, right over. He still had his glove extended, just hanging out there, useless, in the air, while the ball zipped past him, only a few inches away.

  “He missed it!” I slapped my leg, angry. “It was right there, and he totally missed it!”

  Next to me, my mom just shook her head. “He couldn’t see the ball,” she said. “It must’ve been lost in the sun.” And that’s when I realized that the centerfielder hadn’t been trying to catch the ball at all—he’d been using his glove to shield his eyes.

  “But it was right there,” I whined, watching the centerfielder turn around and chase pathetically after the ball as it rolled all the way to the warning track. “He had it. If he’d just shifted even a little, he would’ve caught it easy.”

  Mom shrugged. I thought she’d be more mad about missing the out—usually she screamed at the players louder than anybody. But this time she only said, “You can’t catch what you can’t see, Trent.” And we went back to watching the game.

  The Dodgers lost by one run. One run.

  Stupid sun.

  TEN

  There sure were a lot of movies about baseball. Over the next week and a half, Fallon and I watched A League of Their Own, Bad News Bears, 42, Rookie of the Year, and Angels in the Outfield.

  (I caught an error in that last one that even Fallon didn’t see: After Ray Mitchell hits his home run at the end, he totally doesn’t touch home plate, which means the run wouldn’t even count! Fallon was pretty impressed with me for that one.)

  Fallon said we could keep going for a thousand years if we wanted to, but I knew we’d have to stop soon. The first day of intramural baseball was on Monday, and once that started, I’d have to give up Movie Club. Which I never expected I’d be sad about, but it turned out I sort of was.

  On Friday after the movie ended, we took Squillo for a walk again, and I was trying to figure out how to tell Fallon about intramural baseball without her getting mad at me, but she started talking as soon as we stepped outside the door, so I didn’t really have a chance.

  “My birthday’s tomorrow.” That’s what she told me.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. I don’t know why. A person can have a birthday any old day, obviously. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Want to come to my party? We’re going to Castle Park.” Castle Park wasn’t too far away, and they had miniature golf and video games and bumper cars and a couple of roller coasters, too. It was pretty fun. Fallon stopped walking while Squillo peed on a tree. “You have to come,” she said. “It’s going to be really fun.”

  “Tomorrow?” I asked. She nodded.

  Tomorrow was Dad’s company picnic. He would murder me if I tried to bail.

  “Okay,” I told Fallon.

  “Yeah?” Her eyes lit up on either side of her scar.

  “Yeah.” I’d’ve wanted to go anyway, even if it didn’t mean turning my dad into a raging lunatic. It turned out Fallon wasn’t too bad to hang out with.

  But the raging lunatic dad part was a plus, I have to admit.

  “Be at my house at nine,” she said. “My parents are driving.”

  • • •

  “Fine.”

  That’s what my dad said when I told him I couldn’t join him and Doug and Kari and the company picnic that weekend because of a “Movie Club field trip.” No screaming, no scolding. Just . . . “fine.”

  “Fine?” I asked. I guess I was a little surprised.

  “Fine,” he said again. “You don’t want to see me, Trent? Then I don’t want to see you. Tell your mother.”

  That was it. He hung up the phone.

  I guess I wasn’t too sad I didn’t get screamed at, but still. You’d think most dads would’ve done a little bit of screaming.

  • • •

  I was the only person at Fallon Little’s birthday party. Well. Besides Fallon, obviously. And her parents.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I asked when we piled into the car. Fallon was wearing the ugliest pair of jeans I’d ever seen, with glittery flowers all over them. Her top was normal, though—plain blue. Her hair was pulled back into two frizzy pigtails. “Are they meeting us there?”

  “You’re the only person I invited, nimrod,” Fallon told me.

  I guess I should’ve been flattered by that, but instead I was kind of confused. Why didn’t Fallon have any friends? She was nice. And funny. Weird, but you know, who wasn’t?

  Well. I guess she had one friend.

  “Did you bring me a birthday present?” she asked as her dad started up the car.

  “Fallon!” her mom scolded, shifting around in the front seat to face us in the back. Fallon’s mom wasn’t intimidating like her husband. She was short and skinny, with long curly brown hair, like Fallon’s, but like she’d figured out how to unfrizz it. She seemed really friendly, too.

  “What?” Fallon answered. “It’s my birthday. I’m supposed to get presents.”

  I stuck my hands underneath me so I was sitting on them, then realized that was weird and moved them. “I forgot,” I said. “I mean, you didn’t give me much time.”

  Fallon stuck her lip out. “That’s fine,” she said, after a second of thinking about it. “You owe me a cotton candy then.”

  “Sure,” I said, because that sounded fair to me. But Fallon’s mom turned around again and rolled her eyes in that teasy mother way and said, “You don’t owe her anything, Trent. We’re very glad to have you.”

  When we were on the highway and the wind was whipping through the sliver of open windows in the front seat so her parents couldn’t hear, Fallon leaned across the gap in the seat and told me, “You owe me a cotton candy.”

  I just laughed.

&nbs
p; • • •

  Fallon’s parents pretty much left us alone once we got to Castle Park, which was good, I thought, because I wasn’t really looking forward to hanging out all day with a gigantic silent cop who looked at you like he could kill you with his eyeballs. They gave Fallon and me a wad of ride tickets and Fallon another wad of cash, and told us where to meet up with them later.

  “What do you think they’re going to do all day?” I asked Fallon as we raced off to the Viking Voyage roller coaster. (Fallon, as it turned out, was nuts for roller coasters.) “Play video games?” I couldn’t exactly picture that.

  “They’re probably going to do miniature golf,” Fallon told me. “Because they’re old and boring, and that’s the most boring thing in the park. Or people-watching. Mom likes to people-watch.”

  It was still early, so the line for Viking Voyage wasn’t too long. When we got through the turnstile, Fallon grabbed my arm and raced me to a seat on the far end. “You get to see the most over here,” she told me as she strapped herself in. “This is where it’s the scariest.”

  Fallon was right about that. The Viking Voyage whipped us up sideways like a swing—higher, higher, higher—until finally we were completely upside down, and then it left us there, hanging, for what felt like ten minutes. I could feel the blood draining into my head as we hung there. Next to me, Fallon’s frizzy hair was hanging wild.

  “Isn’t this awesome?” she called over to me while we were still upside down. Her scar was darker than normal, bright eggplant purple, from all the blood in her face, I guess.

  She was grinning like it was the best day of her life.

  I laughed. I’d never met anyone who looked so at home on a roller coaster as Fallon Little.

  By the time we were ready for lunch, we’d done all the roller coasters twice, and the Killer Vortex four times. We got in line for hot dogs, and while we were squirting ketchup and mustard on our dogs at the condiments stand, Fallon said, “You know where I really want to eat lunch? On the bumper cars.”

  I thought eating lunch on the bumper cars was weird enough. But when I followed Fallon’s gaze over to where she was looking, I thought it was even weirder.