Girl Out of Water(14)

I’m not sure if all kids have this much energy or if I just hit the familial jackpot. Sometimes I get a break when they play one of their multiplayer games on the Xbox, but most of the day, they trail me around the house with a never-ending chant of, “We’re bored. We’re bored. We’re bored.”

This was never a problem in Santa Cruz because there’s an ocean, and nine-year-old boys can boogie board and fly kites and throw seashells at one another to their hearts’ content.

But Nebraska doesn’t have an ocean.

It has yellow grass and central AC.

Everyone is particularly on edge today because Aunt Jackie is having her second surgery. After that she’ll be in recovery at the hospital for a while before she can come home. Since Emery still seems so nervous, Dad and I decided it was best I stay home with all the kids, so he’s at the hospital alone with Aunt Jackie. Emery has spent most of the morning on the living room couch with us, instead of in her room like usual. Of course, she’s still silent and glued to her phone, but it’s nice to all be in the same physical space.

The boys are on a sugar high (probably because their genius cousin made them waffles and ice cream for breakfast), and they won’t stop begging me to take them to the park. “Please, please, please,” they chorus.

I hate it when they speak in unison. It’s obnoxiously twin-y of them. I put down my phone, where I’d been days deep into my friends’ Instagram feeds. “You guys,” I say, “I would love to take you to the park, or anywhere for that matter, but you know I don’t have a car.”

“But that’s the thing,” Nash says. He’s standing in front of me, jumping from one foot to the other. I don’t know why he’s jumping from one foot to the other, but if it’s using up some of that extra energy, then I’m all for it. “We don’t need a car. The park is really close. We can skateboard there.”

Skateboard there? Really?

None of my friends back home skateboard. There’s a divide, I guess. The surfers spend all their time on the beach, while the skaters bum around in a littered skate park after school and smoke cigarettes. I wouldn’t call skateboarding a sport so much as an excuse to be a burden on society. But with no ocean, surfing isn’t an option.

“I don’t know guys,” I say. All I really want to do today is sit at home, watch the Big Wave Awards on ESPN2, and maybe text with Eric since I ended up sleeping through 99 percent of our last conversation. I don’t know where things stand with us. Aside from that one text message he sent, we haven’t talked about the kiss. I’m worried the distance will not only ruin what we started but also weaken our friendship. Ocean water erodes a lot back home, dissolves paint and rusts metal, but it can’t chip away at relationships. Distance, however… Well, I’m worried that’s a stronger force.

I push away the thought and concentrate on the kids. Parker and Nash have upped their puppy dog eyes game from JV to varsity, and even Emery is glancing up with interest. I guess I could text Eric from the park and watch the awards later…

“I should ask your mom first.”

“But she’s in surgery,” Parker says with a quiet, yet surprisingly commanding, voice. “Our mom is in surgery.”

“Don’t try to manipulate me,” I say.

“We’re not trying to manipulate you,” Nash, who for some godforsaken reason is now doing jumping jacks, says. “We’re just giving you the facts.”

“It could be fun,” Emery chimes in. “Some of my friends are there.”

If the park has caught her interest, then maybe we should go. It’d be good to put her mind on something besides Aunt Jackie, and despite my best (okay, moderate) efforts, I haven’t served as a very good distraction. “You think?” I ask her.

She gives me one of those small smiles and nods.

The park isn’t a terrible idea. It might even be a good one. Three days indoors is unheard of for me. The last time this happened, I had the flu, and Dad caught me sneaking out to the beach with my surfboard when I still had a hundred-degree temperature.

I bite my lip, quickly weighing the situation in my head. Nothing too catastrophic can happen, and I’ll text Dad where we are. It’ll be good to give them something to think about other than the whole Mom-on-an-operating-table thing, so I nod and say, “Okay. Let’s go to the park.”

? ? ?

In reality, the “close” park is a brutal two-mile journey. Parker and Nash have their skateboards to ride, and Emery has her bike. I have a choice of Emery’s Rollerblades that I can barely squeeze my feet into, the boys’ bicycles where my knees bump against the handlebars, or walking. I choose walking.

On the way, we pass rows of plain, two-story houses, complete with white picket fences and trimmed lawns. It’s an older neighborhood, with suburban cookie cutter homes, so different from Santa Cruz, where one house is an ancient bungalow like ours and the next is a multimillion-dollar mansion. The streets are relatively empty, save for the occasional car that slows to an impossibly safe speed before passing us. As we travel, the houses become more spaced apart, and grander trees appear, their leaves dark green despite the crisp summer heat.

After a few more minutes, Parker announces, “We’re here!”

Thank god. I’m dripping in sweat, even dressed in athletic shorts and a loose tank top. Sweating never bothered me in Santa Cruz since the moisture constantly mingled with ocean water, but here there’s no avoiding the volume of my own perspiration.