What We Saw(5)

It is unseasonably warm.

Bounce-bounce.

Bounce-bounce.

He spins the ball to his hip, then squares and shoots.

Thwfft.

Precision, timing, balance, concentration: Ben in his natural habitat.

Until that day in the ditch during Mr. Johnston’s class last fall, neither of us realized we’d stopped speaking beyond a quick “hey, how’s it going?”

It happened so slowly—us taking each other for granted. The ebb and flow of our separate lives became a steady current, carrying us toward different pursuits.

Ben shot up almost a foot the summer after sixth grade and traded his cleats for high-tops. The promise of Hawkeye basketball has a chokehold on this town, and any boy who crests six feet in seventh grade is drafted without mercy. The Friday night lights on the Coral Sands football field in October can’t hold a candle to the ones in the gymnasium come December. Our football team has never done very well, and soccer is fine for girls, but varsity basketball? They get all the glory—and, lately, the Division 1 scouts.

Ben and I were still in classes together, but over time the familiar has a way of getting covered up by layer after layer of life, the everyday sediment of homework and practice and parties and who eats lunch where. Our moms talked a lot when his dad filed for divorce a couple years ago, but I didn’t know how to bring it up with Ben. I’d wanted to tell him that I was here for him, that I missed him, but it seemed weird to walk up and say, “Heard your parents are splitting up.” So, we just continued to nod at each other as we passed in the hallway.

Maybe digging around in the dirt made us remember being kids again. Whatever the reason, tromping through that culvert out behind the school last September, all of the ease I used to have with Ben came flooding back. It only took five minutes, and we were laughing like six-year-olds at soccer practice.

I read a novel last summer, and there was a scene where two people saw each other again after a long absence. The author wrote, “It was as if no time had passed at all.” At the time, I wondered how that could be. There’s no way to stop time from passing or people from changing. Ben’s most rapid and dramatic change had been his height—practically overnight—but lots of other changes had been more subtle. In many ways, Ben had grown up right in front of me, only I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d missed all the tiny changes because they’d occurred so slowly.

We learned last year in biology that the cells in our bodies are completely replaced by new ones every seven years. Ben and I are literally different people now than we were as children—fundamentally changed on a molecular level.

As we dug around that ditch, I saw how broad his shoulders had become, how his biceps stretched the sleeves of his clingy gray T-shirt. An eon’s worth of natural selection had come to pass. The boy who used to be shorter than me now towered overhead at six feet, four inches. Those years between twelve and sixteen might as well have been the Paleolithic Period.

That afternoon, Ben held the bucket while I brushed off tiny bits of ancient history, but we unearthed more than a few hunks of limestone for Mr. Johnston’s class. As Ben bent to grab one last piece of coral, I glimpsed the scar behind his ear, and when I saw it, a tremor fluttered through my chest.

A tiny seismic shift.

The layers inside me got all stirred up that day.

I uncovered something beautiful buried deep within my heart, and realized it had been there all along.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE


HarperCollins Publishers

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four


BEN DOESN’T MISS a single shot—even when I call his name. He grabs his own rebound, then turns to face me with a grin.

“She lives.”

I cross my arms. “Disappointed?”

He bounces the ball in my direction. I catch it and slowly dribble in place without looking at my hands, daring him. He stands between the basket and me, smiling and nodding. “Okay, then. Show me whatcha got.”

I drop back like I’m going to take the shot, then try to fake him out and drive around him.

As if.

In a single step, he’s cut me off, his stance wide and low, his arms over his head, blocking my layup. It’s a textbook illustration of that chant the cheerleaders do: Hands up. Defense.

Of course, I realize this too late. I’m already jumping toward the basket. I can’t stop my forward momentum, but Ben’s leg does, and in a flash I’m sailing headfirst toward the pole that holds the backboard aloft.

I close my eyes and brace for impact. Instead, my body is suddenly redirected. Ben’s arm snakes around my waist and pulls me sideways into him. When I open my eyes, his face is inches from mine.

“Gotcha, hotshot.”

I’m still off balance. Ben is the only thing holding me up—like it’s nothing, as if I were made of pure air. His arm is solid in the small of my back, the grip of his hand at my waist steady and sure. I’m not going anywhere.

We are pressed together so tightly he must be able to feel my heart beating against his chest. Each breath I exhale bounces off his neck and back into my face. I make a mental note to thank Will for reminding me to brush my teeth.

I arch an eyebrow. “That was a foul.”

Ben laughs. “Yep. On you.” He gently sets me upright, and goes to grab the ball from the grass next to the driveway. “We call that charging.”