“Ms. Emerson?” I said.
She didn’t look up from her papers. “Yes, Trent?”
“Would it be okay if I didn’t water the plants today?”
At that, she did look up. “You don’t want to anymore?”
I thought about that. It wasn’t, actually, that I didn’t want to water Ms. Emerson’s plants. I didn’t hate going there after school as much as I had at first. Not at all, really.
“I do,” I said. “It’s just . . .” The reason I’d started watering the plants to begin with was so Ms. Emerson wouldn’t hate me so much. And it seemed like it had worked okay. I was pretty sure she didn’t hate me anymore. There was even a tiny chance that she sort of liked me.
That didn’t mean that the plants didn’t need to be watered anymore, of course. Plants needed to be watered nearly every day, or they would die.
“I was just wondering if it might be okay if I took a day off,” I said.
If watering Ms. Emerson’s plants had made her not hate me anymore, I wondered if it might work on someone else.
“There’s something I sort of need to do,” I told her.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Everything okay?”
I nodded. Then I stopped. I shook my head. “I think Fallon’s still mad at me. She won’t talk about it, and I don’t know what to do. I mean, I don’t really want to talk about it either. But . . . ,” I trailed off. I didn’t know what came after the but. Instead I stared at the watering can, like there might be some answers in there.
“Talking can be hard sometimes,” Ms. Emerson said. I was sort of surprised she said anything, because she didn’t say too much too often. “I can understand about not wanting to talk.”
I nodded at that, still staring at the watering can.
“But Trent?” She paused. “Here’s something I think is very important.” I waited. She took her sweet time to tell me, that was for sure. She must’ve thought that what she was about to say was extremely important, that it deserved my absolute full and undivided attention.
I looked over at her. “Yeah?” I said.
“When you do choose to speak,” she told me, “speak truths.” And with that, she went back to her grading.
I stood there, staring at her as she graded papers, feeling like a bit of a moron for a while, because I didn’t know exactly what to say. What I finally said was “So it’s okay if I take the day off?”
She nodded.
“Thanks,” I told her.
“And Trent?” she called after me on my way out.
I spun around. “The plants will be thirsty again tomorrow?” I asked. But I guess maybe I was sort of smiling when I said it.
Ms. Emerson was maybe sort of smiling, too. “Yes indeed,” she replied.
• • •
Pedaling my bike was practically the hardest thing in the world that afternoon. Right foot up, left foot down. Steer around the corner, but not too hard. Don’t forget to balance. It hadn’t rained since Friday, the street was dry as a bone, but still, you would’ve thought I was pedaling through quicksand, what with how difficult it was to just ride in a straight line. But I got there, eventually.
To the Littles’ front door, I mean.
Knocking was hard that afternoon, too. Form a fist, bend your right elbow, reach out with your upper arm, bend your wrist, and rap on the door. Once, twice, three times. Arm down at your side.
Half of me was sort of hoping he wouldn’t be there. But he was.
“Oh,” Mr. Little said when he opened the door. That’s what he said. Oh. Like he was hoping to find the mailman with an early Christmas present, and instead he got me. “It’s you.”
“Hi,” I said. “Um—”
But Fallon’s dad cut me off.
“You shouldn’t be here, Trent,” he said. And he didn’t sound entirely mean when he said it, even though it was sort of a mean thing to say. He said it more like he felt sorry for me. “Anyway, Fallon’s not home right now.”
“I know,” I said. “She’s at play rehearsal. That’s why I came now. I wanted to talk to you.”
Mr. Little was on his way to closing the door on me when I said that last part, but as soon as he heard it, he opened the door again.
“Me?” he asked.
I scuffled my feet against the doormat. “Yeah,” I said, even though I was starting to think that this had been a really terrible idea.
“I have an early shift today,” Mr. Little said, super annoyed. He looked at his watch. “I leave in an hour.” His eyes darted back to me. “What was it you had to say?” He didn’t invite me in.
“I . . . um . . .” I was starting to realize that I hadn’t thought through this part of it very well. “I wanted to water your plants.”
Well. That went over about as well as you’d expect.
Mr. Little sighed. It was the sigh of a man who was about to slam the door in a twelve-year-old’s face and felt kind of bad about it but not bad enough not to do it. “Good-bye, Trent,” he said.
“Wait!” I said. And for whatever reason, Mr. Little didn’t slam the door closed. “It doesn’t have to be plants. It can be anything. I just . . . I know you and Mrs. Little don’t like me, that’s why you don’t want me hanging out with Fallon. But I thought if you did like me . . .” I went back to scuffling the doormat with my feet, then realized that kicking around the doormat of the person I was trying to impress was maybe not the best idea I’d ever had. I straightened it out against the edge of the doorframe with my toe and went back to talking. “Fallon’s really important to me,” I said. I was trying to speak truths, like Ms. Emerson had said. “She’s my friend. And I want to hang out with her. But only if it’s okay with you and Mrs. Little. So I guess I just thought . . .” Mr. Little was giving me a look like I had three heads. “If you have anything that needs dusting?” I said. “I’m good at dusting. I do it at my mom’s shop all the time. Or vacuuming? Or . . . I can come every day. As many times as you want. As long as it takes.”
Mr. Little looked at me. Up and down. Very slowly. And in case you didn’t know, being looked up and down very slowly by an enormous police officer is not the most fun thing that could ever happen to a person. But I didn’t squirm. Not even a little.
“Fallon is very important to me, too,” he said at last.
I nodded. I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to say anything right then.
“Did she tell you to come here?” he asked me. He was squinting at my face, like he was using his special police officer skills to decide if I was telling the truth.
He didn’t really need to do that, though, because the truth was exactly what I planned on telling. “No,” I told him. “She doesn’t know I came. I thought she might be . . .” I was going to say mad, but Fallon didn’t exactly get mad. “I didn’t tell her.”
Mr. Little straightened up to his full height and looked down his nose at me for a long time. That wasn’t entirely comfortable either, but I still didn’t squirm.
“Well, I’m not going to force a sixth-grader to do manual labor just to get in my good graces,” he said.
My shoulders might have slumped just the tiniest bit when he said that, but quick as I could, I straightened them again.
“But . . .” My shoulders got even straighter when I heard that but. Mr. Little looked behind him, into the house, like he was deciding something. “I was just about to eat dinner before I left for my shift. Why don’t you come join me?”
He definitely said that last bit the way you’d ask a skunk to spray in your soup, but I didn’t care. He was asking. My heart leaped up in my chest, but I did my best not to leap in real life. “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I’d love to.”
• • •
For dinner, Mr. Little made baked chicken and a pasta dish from scratch, with tomatoes and basil and mozzarella cheese, and there were g
reen beans, too, which he boiled in a pot and then at the last minute doused in a bowl of ice water. Most of the food was already prepared when he let me into the kitchen, except for the green beans. I swear, he really did that, dumped fresh-cooked green beans into a bowl of ice water. It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen.
“It makes them crispy,” he muttered at me when he saw me looking at him funny. That was the first thing he said to me after we came inside the house, and the last thing he said for about ten minutes after that. I was starting to figure out where Fallon got her knack for not talking when she didn’t want to.
Mr. Little got down two plates from the cupboard, and spooned some pasta and green beans onto each one. On one of the plates he added a chicken breast. Then he spent a long time packing up the other two chicken breasts he’d baked, and putting the rest of the pasta and the green beans into plastic containers, and setting it all carefully in the fridge. I figured that was for Fallon and her mom, for their dinner, but I didn’t want to ask. I knew Mr. Little probably only had a few answers left in him, so I wanted to save them up.
When he was finished packing up leftovers, Mr. Little handed me the plate without chicken on it, and a fork, and said, “Here.” Then he walked past me into the living room with his own plate, where he sat himself down on the couch. “Sit,” he told me, glancing down at the couch next to him.
I found the farthest bit of couch I could, and I sat.
As soon as I did, Mr. Little looked at his plate of food on the coffee table and said, “I forgot the pepper.”
“I’ll get it!” I said, shooting out of my seat. I figured that was the least I could do, since Mr. Little was feeding me afternoon dinner, not to mention talking to me at all. But Mr. Little scowled at me.
“Sit down, Trent.” He said it like an order. “You’re not going to make me like you just by getting me pepper.”
Well.
When he sat back down with the pepper, Mr. Little glanced sideways at me. I took an enormous forkful of pasta and shoved it into my mouth, then smiled at him like it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten. It was really good, actually, but I was having trouble eating, because, one, it was like three forty in the afternoon, so I wasn’t exactly starving, and two, Mr. Little was making me pretty nervous.
“So,” he said. And he said it in the sort of way that I imagined he’d say “So” to a criminal he was about to grill in his interrogation room down at the station. “Tell me about yourself, Trent.”
“Um.” That was the sort of question that sounded easy enough to answer, but wasn’t at all. “What do you want to know?” I asked.
Mr. Little sawed at his chicken with his knife. “Whatever you think I should.”
“Um,” I said again. “Well, I’m twelve. I, uh, go to school with Fallon. I’m in sixth, too.” Mr. Little nodded. He already knew all that, obviously.
“Parents?” he asked me.
“Sorry?” I said.
“Do you live with both your parents?” He took another bite of chicken. “What do they do?”
“I live with my mom and my brothers,” I said. “She works at Kitch’N’Thingz, across from the movie theater.” He nodded. “My dad and my stepmom live in Timber Trace. He does investing, or something, I don’t really know. She makes jewelry. They just had a baby.”
Mr. Little was looking at his plate, not at me, but somehow I still felt like I was being drilled down to my soul. “Do you get along with your family?” he asked.
When you choose to speak, speak truths. “Most of them,” I said. “My mom and brothers, yes. Most of the time. Not my dad so much, or Kari. The baby’s fine, I guess.”
“I see.” I couldn’t really tell what that I see meant, so I didn’t say anything. I ate some green beans instead.
They were pretty crisp. I ate some more.
“How do you do in school?” he asked me.
I swallowed my mouthful of green beans as quickly as I could. “Okay,” I answered. “Some classes better than others.”
“Grades?”
“B-minuses mostly. I’m not doing so well in P.E., but I’m making it up right now.” This truth thing wasn’t easy.
He set down his fork and knife, crossed like a long X on his plate, and turned to look at me full-on. “Why do you want to be friends with my daughter?”
Now here, I thought, was the big question.
“I don’t know,” I said. That was the truth. “I don’t think I want to be friends with Fallon, I think we just are friends. Fallon’s . . . well, she’s funny. She’s weird.” I looked up at Mr. Little, because I didn’t want him to think I was being rude. “In a good way, I mean. Most people try really hard not to be weird, but Fallon’s different. And she’s nice. And . . .” Had I been talking too long? I wished I had some water. “She doesn’t feel sorry for me.”
Mr. Little nodded again, taking it all in.
“Can I tell you something else?” I said. I mean, as long as I was being honest . . . “I don’t want to get Fallon in trouble or anything, so I really hope this doesn’t, but I think I should tell you that Fallon and I have been having lunch together. I didn’t know at first you said we couldn’t hang out, but even after I found out last week, we’ve still been having lunch. I only wanted to tell you that because I didn’t want you to find out later and think I was lying about it.” I was talking fast now, trying to get it all out. “And I know you don’t like me, and I know sometimes in life you only get one chance, but Mr. Little, I sure hope you’ll give me another one anyway, because Fallon . . . She’s . . . she’s my friend, and . . . well, I guess that’s all. I’m sorry for talking so much.”
When I started telling the truth, I really got going, I guess.
Mr. Little chewed in silence for a long time. I chewed in silence too.
Finally, he said, “You know, Trent, I appreciate your coming here. That was brave of you, and I have to give you credit for that. I know I’m not always the easiest person to approach.”
“No, sir,” I said. Which was exactly when I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut, judging by the sideways glance Mr. Little gave me then, but he kept going anyway.
“Unfortunately,” he said, and for a splash of a second I felt that heated ball of rage inside me, but it was extinguished almost immediately by my heart, which sank right on top of it. I guess I didn’t even have room for rage in my body, that’s how hurt I was. I gulped a dry scratch of a gulp. “I’m afraid I’m not the one you have to convince to trust you,” Mr. Little finished.
I swallowed over the scratching again. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Little too,” I said. “I’d be happy to. I’ll answer any questions she wants. I can come every day. I can come to her work. I can—”
Mr. Little stopped me with a raised hand.
I waited for him to talk.
“I’ll need to talk to my wife, of course,” he told me after a minute or two of just chewing, “but I think she might be turned in your favor. It’s Fallon you’ll really need to work on.”
I paused with a forkful of pasta halfway to my mouth. “Fallon?” I said.
“Look. I know my daughter likes you. She likes you a lot. And you’re clearly a good friend. But she’s also pretty fragile sometimes.” I scrunched my eyebrows together at that. Fallon? Fragile? “And you scared her pretty badly that day at the movies.”
My heart, which had only recently started beating again, whimpered once more.
“She’s the one you need to talk to, Trent,” Mr. Little told me. “Worry about Fallon trusting you, all right? Then you and I can talk again.”
• • •
Here’s something I needed to figure out.
With some people, when they didn’t like you, you could do something silly and unimportant, say, water their plants. If you showed up every day, showed you actually cared, they might start to like you. Just a l
ittle bit.
With other people, if they didn’t like you, you could talk to them. Tell them the truth. And maybe they wouldn’t like you, but if they listened, really truly, maybe they’d learn to trust you just a little. Maybe they’d start to.
And with other people, you only got one chance. If you screwed up, that was it. It was over. And you knew that it was over.
And all those sorts of people made sense to me. Like it or not, I could work with all those kinds of people.
But what were you supposed to do with the sorts of people who didn’t have plants to water? Who didn’t seem to dislike you, but didn’t totally trust you, either? What were you supposed to do with the sorts of people who would talk about everything under the sun except the things you knew they really wanted to talk about? What did you do with people who never ever got mad, but who were somehow mad at you?
That was the thing I needed to figure out.
TWENTY-THREE
I tried and tried to think of a way to make Fallon trust me again, but I had nothing. If I got her to crack a smile at lunch, I felt like a winner.
But I knew I hadn’t won yet, not really. It was going to take something a lot better than a bad joke to get Fallon back.
On Tuesday I bought a new sketchbook at Lippy’s corner store, and slowly I began to think things through on paper.
• • •
Wednesday afternoon Mom picked me up early, right after lunch, for an eye doctor’s appointment. I’d told Ms. Emerson ahead of time that I wouldn’t be able to water her plants that day, and she told me, “That’s okay. They can be a little thirsty now and again. It builds character.”
I had to admit I was starting to like her a little bit.
After the eye appointment (“Twenty-twenty, Mr. Zimmerman!” the optometrist declared), Mom took me to the store to work with her. It was a slow afternoon. Mom and I were sitting at the counter, not doing much of anything, when Mom said, “How about a movie tonight? Just you and me?”