When We Were Us (Keeping Score, #1)(5)

Abby gasped as though Jesse had just spoken high treason. She glanced at me, but I didn’t react. Actually, what Jesse said didn’t matter to me at all, because it was so clearly not true. Trains could not be stupid. People could be stupid, but not trains. Now if he had said that trains had square wheels, I would have argued with him.

“Jesse, don’t say that. Nat’s trains are really fun.”

“They’re stupid and I don’t know why we always have to play with them.”

“You don’t have to play with them,” I said. “Abby and I are playing.”

“No, Jesse didn’t mean it, Nat. We can all play. Come on, Jesse.”

But Jesse had stomped off into the other room. Abby watched him go, distress and indecision on her face.

I resumed playing with my trains as though nothing had happened. “Abby, you run the red train now. You can make it go over the bridge and stop at the station.”

Abby obeyed without speaking. When the red train had stopped at the station, we both loaded the passengers onto it.

“Jesse and I really like your trains, Nat. Don’t be sad about what he said. It was just because his finger got hurt.”

“I’m not sad,” I answered. “Abby, let’s make the trains race.” We ran the trains alongside of each other, but Abby didn’t say anything else.

A few minutes later, Jesse stuck his head into the room. He didn’t look at me at all. “Abby, my mom says we can go outside and play on the swings. Let’s go.”

Abby took one step away from the train table and then turned back to me. “Nat, come outside with us.”

I was still absorbed. “I don’t want to. I’m playing with my trains.”

“But don’t you want to play with Jesse and me outside?” she persisted.

I shook my head. “No. It’s too hot outside. I want to stay in here.”

“Come on, Abby,” Jesse called. She took another step toward the door. I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

Finally, she said, “Go on out, Jesse. I’m going to stay inside with Nat for a while. Maybe we can go out and play in a little while.”

Jesse didn’t answer, but a few seconds later we heard the screen door slam. Jesse’s mom jumped up and yelled at him not to bang the door, and she apologized to my mother, who just laughed.

“He didn’t mean it, Lisa. That door is so light, I’m always forgetting and letting it slam behind me.” I heard the edge in her voice, which usually meant that I had done something that made her sad or uncomfortable. It was the same thing I heard when the doctors were telling us about new tests I had to have or when we talked about my walking.

Abby came back slowly to the train table. She picked up one of the people waiting to board my blue train, and she turned him over and over in her hand. As we played, I saw her glance out the window more than once, and I knew she wanted to be outside. It never occurred to me to say that to her, though. I was always happier when Abby was playing with me. I liked Jesse, too; they were both my best friends. But Abby made me feel special in a good way. It was like she didn’t see my walker or my spindly arms. She saw the real me, inside.

Jesse was my friend, too, and usually the three of us hung around together. But I don’t think Jesse ever understood me the way Abby did until the first day of fifth grade. That day, standing on the playground with all those boys standing over me, I was scared for the first time in many years. I wasn’t so much afraid of what they were going to do to me as much as how embarrassing it was going to be, how I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of Abby. I didn’t know if she was there yet, but I knew she would be soon. The idea of her seeing me on the ground, dirty and maybe worse, made me sway in nervousness, something that I hadn’t done in a long time.

But then a bad situation got even worse. All of a sudden, Abby was right there in the middle of those boys, and she was yelling at them. She threatened to go get a teacher, and pretty soon they all left. Then it was just Abby and me. Before I could say anything to her, Jesse was there with us, and she was yelling at him for not coming to help me.

I knew Abby thought she did the right thing. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t thanking her and why Jesse wasn’t praising her. But she’s a girl. She couldn’t see that not letting me stand up for myself-no pun intended—made everything worse.

It’s kind of funny that my first memory was of Abby choosing between Jesse and me. That didn’t really happen again until later, when we started fifth grade. That year, when Jesse started playing with the other kids at lunch, I knew Abby would rather be running around with all of them instead of sitting on the monkey bars every day with me. But she never said it, and she never left me. And I never said she should.

Maybe it was selfish, but I guess that I felt like my whole life was a little unfair. Abby made up for some of that. If it was selfish to want her to stay near me and be my friend, I was okay with that.

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Chapter 4: Abby

I thought starting over in a new school for fifth grade was hard. It was nothing compared to moving to the junior high for eighth grade. At least in fifth grade, we were still kids. Lunch time on the playground was the most stressful part of the day. But in junior high, suddenly everyone started breaking off into groups, and there were cool people. . .and then some who weren’t considered so cool. Some people called them dorks or whatever, but it was really just someone’s opinion. In eighth grade, there are a very few people whose viewpoints matter. I wasn’t one of them.