What We Saw(8)

Forever.

We’ve talked about this more than once since we started hanging out again.

It was an accident that I saw his garage last fall. I’d come over to study for a geology test and arrived a few minutes before he came home from practice. Adele greeted me at the door and asked if I wanted a Diet Coke or a Coke Zero. In her excitement to serve me the Coke Zero I requested, she pulled me down the stairs to the garage entrance off the rec room of their raised ranch. While I was standing in that doorway Ben arrived and discovered me, slack-jawed, watching his mother slide a twelve-pack off the shelf just beneath CHARMIN and right above DRāNO.

The first time I saw those perfectly packed shelves, I was seized by the urge to grab a canvas bag and do a supermarket sweep. From ballpoint pens and batteries to Post-its and Sticky Tack, Adele gave me the grand tour, tallying the money she’d saved and pointing out which products were the best deals. Most of the time, with double coupons and deals that “stack,” she actually got money back. She’d haul out a colossal pile of product for free, and because of her coupons and the way the deals worked, the store would also pay her. I stared up in wonder that first afternoon, laughing in amazement as she explained her system.

I’ve only seen her in action for a few months, but I now know it’s no laughing matter. Adele has a coupon compulsion, no doubt about it. She can’t not do it. The urge to get the next deal overwhelms her to the point that she’s missed several of Ben’s games this year—not to mention moments like this one, when it might be nice to sit on the deck out back, have some iced tea, and hang out.

Instead, she’s running for the Right Guard special. It has nothing to do with deodorant. It has to do with the fix she gets from the deal, the short-lived euphoria of the score. As we watch her screech around the corner onto Oaklawn, I wonder what it was that actually caused this malfunction in Ben’s mom. Had it always lurked beneath the surface? Did the divorce just uncover it, buried beneath thick layers of “normal”?

As we climb into Ben’s truck, he says, “Thanks for being cool about . . . all this.”

I know that “all this” means his mom and her stockpile. I know that “being cool” means taking it in stride and not telling anyone at school. I also know how hard it is for him to talk about it.

Ben puts the truck in reverse but pauses, foot on the break, hands on the wheel. He glances over at me. “You really have to get home?”

“Eventually. No rush. Did you have a pressing errand with which you require my immediate assistance?”

He smirks at me and shakes his head.

“What?” I ask, blinking with wide eyes of false innocence.

“You,” he says, “and your attempts to pepper all conversation with iambic pentameter.”

“From the boy who just used ‘iambic pentameter’ in a sentence, modified by the verb ‘pepper.’”

“Touché.”

“Conversational French. Further proving my point.”

“It was my point,” he says with a laugh.

I cross my arms. “Which was to mock me?” I love giving him a hard time.

“No! Just—it’s nice not to have to dumb things down. It’s one of the reasons I like talking with you: Your communication skills are both scintillating and exquisite.”

“Wow!” I snort-laugh, which cracks him up. “Okay, now you need to cool your jets.”

“Mmmm. Ice cream sounds perfect,” he says. “I’d suggest Dairy Queen, but I think I’m too smart to be served there.”

“Drive, Einstein. Your secret is safe.”





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE


HarperCollins Publishers

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six


WE CARRY DIP cones and French fries across the street to the park and plop down in the grass against a big tree near the jungle gym. A group of kids shriek from a spinning tire swing. Two little boys chase each other, scooping fistfuls of wood chips off the ground and chucking them at each other. Their dad shouts from a grill near the picnic tables that they should stop it. They ignore him.

Ben has nearly finished off the hard chocolate shell on his vanilla soft-serve and starts dipping French fries into the ice cream. We sit in silence, letting the afternoon sun make us lazy. The quiet between us is different from the tongue-tied awkwardness I first felt just a half hour ago. Most of the time, I’m not frantic to come up with conversation around Ben or worried about forcing words out if they won’t come. I know he’s cool just hanging out with our thoughts. Somehow, this makes me feel closer to him, not farther away.

I’m crunching on the bottom of my ice cream cone when a group of guys starts a pickup basketball game on the court by the parking lot, and I wonder aloud if Ben’s heard from any scouts lately.

“Iowa and Indiana have been watching my clips online,” he says. “Told Coach they’re both sending people to see the tournament.”

“Are you kidding? That’s huge. You’re only a junior.”

He shrugs. “Don’t know whether to feel relieved or guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“About leaving her.”

He’s talking about Adele, and I proceed with caution, letting his remark sink in before I pursue it. “Is she collecting all that crap in case you don’t get a scholarship? Stocking up now so she can spend all her money on tuition later?”