What We Saw(3)

“Please. Even Jesus turned water into wine. If I can find a guy who performs that miracle, I’ll never let him leave.”

A guy.

Leaving.

My truck.

Jumping out of bed, I pause only briefly to adjust myself to the fresh hell of standing upright. “Shit.”

Rachel scolds me for my language on the Lord’s day. I would usually retort that he is her Lord, not mine, but right now I need all potential deities on my team.

Running down the hall to Will’s room, I blow past our family Wall of Fame. Fifth-grade me leers back from a gallery frame: braces, shin guards, rubbery sports glasses strapped across the wavy hair bursting from my braid in all directions. Over the past few years, my exterior has been transformed by contact lenses and a flat iron, but most days I’m still surprised not to see that little mess in the mirror.

Will’s bed is empty, and I scale a mountain range of high-tops and basketball jerseys like the Von Trapps escaping over the Alps. The window in his room faces the driveway, and as I pull back the curtain, I take in the glorious vision of my truck parked at the curb.

“Yes!” I hiss this at the phone while performing an unplanned fist pump that sends an electric shock through my forehead, as my stomach reels in a hoedown of misery.

“What?” Rachel is confused.

I take a deep breath and grasp the back of the chair at Will’s desk, trying to persuade my insides not to rebel. “I wasn’t sure how I got home. I guess Ben drove me back here in my truck?”

“Uh, yeah. He was gone from the party for like an hour. Must’ve walked back.”

“Wait, he went back to the party?”

“The night was still young. You were toast by ten forty-five.”

“Again, your fault.”

“Whatever. I left a little before midnight. Ran into Ben coming up the Doones’ driveway. Oh—” She pauses.

“What?” I ask.

“Just a tweet. Looks like we aren’t the only ones who had fun last night.” She giggles. “And there are some Instagram pictures to prove it.”

“Who is it?”

“Crap. Gotta go. I have to get there a few minutes early so I can make copies of the coloring sheets. Text you later.” Rachel yells down the hall for her mom to hurry, and my phone beeps that the call has ended.

“How you feeling, rock star?”

Will is standing in the doorway. He’s wearing the shiny gray basketball shorts he sleeps in and stretching, his fingers hooked onto the top of the doorframe. I am briefly dumbfounded. When did he get that tall? His hair is doing its own electromagnetic experiment, and as I take a step toward him, I trip on a pair of Nikes and collapse onto his bed with a groan.

He laughs. “That good, huh?”

Will slips into the room and closes the door behind him, gingerly sitting next to me so as not to bounce my head. A blurred memory of slipping past him in the hallway last night flashes before my eyes.

“You’re not gonna tell Mom and Dad, are you?”

“Depends . . .” There’s a smirk in his voice. I squint at him through my headache.

“On what?” I try to affect my imperial Katherine the Great voice. He’s not buying it.

“On whether you take me with you next time.”

It takes every ounce of strength I can muster to sit up, grab a pillow, and swing it at Will. He catches it easily with one hand and tosses it back at me. We both laugh, me grasping at my head and begging him to make it stop.

“You were pretty wrecked last night,” he says. “I think I should chaperone next time.” Ignoring him, I gingerly pick my way across the mounds of stuff between me and the door. He jumps up and clears a path. “Please?”

I stop and try to press one of his enormous cowlicks down on the side of his head. It springs back like a hydra—messier, angrier. “Let’s see if I survive this time.”


A grin spreads across his face. “That’s not a no . . .”

I laugh, and give him a little push so I can get to the doorknob. “I’ll think about it. Just don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“What are you doing today?”

“First, Advil. Then, a shower. I haven’t allowed myself to dream beyond that.”

Will smiles as I step into the hall. “Brush your teeth,” he whispers. “You smell like the bar at Don Chilitos.”

I try to punch him in the arm, but he dodges and swings the door closed. Off balance, I stumble gently into the Wall of Fame, narrowly avoiding a collision with a picture of me and Ben. We are in second grade, standing in the front yard, soaking wet. I am wearing a red swimsuit with white polka dots. Ben has on little board shorts covered in cartoon monkeys. I should text him to say thank you for getting me home, but back in my bedroom my fingers pause over the screen, and I toss the phone on my bed. Something about that shot of us in the hall changes my mind. If I can rally after my shower, I’ll go over to his house and offer my gratitude in person.

Still smiling about the picture, I gulp down three ibuprofen, holding my hair out of the sink and slurping straight from the tap. We were playing “rainstorm on the beach” the day that shot was taken. Mom had put the sprinkler next to the sandbox, and Ben tried to explain what it felt like when the surf boils over your toes.

Stepping into a steaming shower, I remember the question I asked him that day. Can you see all the way to the other side?