A Prom to Remember(25)

Cam chuckled and cleared his throat. “How’s baseball going?”

“Oh, you know. Not bad, not great.”

Cam made a few more feeble attempts to engage Henry, trying to make small talk, but Henry was terrible at small talk and he couldn’t understand why Cameron wouldn’t put him out of his misery and walk away.

But then Cameron blurted out, “My mom’s pregnant!”

“Oh,” Henry said, unsure of how to respond.

“I haven’t said that out loud to anyone.”

“Oh, wow,” Henry said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

Cameron nodded and toyed with the edge of a price sticker that was coming off one of the shelves.

“You know, man,” Henry started. He had no idea where that thought was going. He didn’t know what Cameron needed or wanted from him.

But then his mom appeared like an angel from the bathroom accessory area.

“Cameron!” Henry’s mom said, holding out her arms and pulling him in for a tight hug. Cameron’s red hair looked practically radioactive next to her dark black.

“How are you?” she asked as she pulled away. “How is your mom?”

“She’s good, thanks.” Cameron shot Henry a look that Henry interpreted as “please don’t mention the pregnant thing.”

Henry kept his mouth shut.

“It’s been too long since we’ve seen you around the house,” Henry’s mom said, rubbing Cam’s arm. “I was saying that to Henry last week.”

Cam had the decency to at least look embarrassed. It was his own fault that he and Henry weren’t friends anymore, not that Henry was going to say anything like that in front of his mom.

“Yeah, I’ve been working a lot. I have two jobs actually.”

“Two jobs! That’s too many jobs! You should be seeing friends and playing baseball. Those should be your jobs!” Henry made a mental note to use these words against his mother the next time she forced him to work at the family store after a long day of school and baseball practice.

“I know,” Cam said, frowning dramatically. “But you know how it is. The money is going toward college.”

Luckily Henry’s mom seemed to take that for what it was worth and let the topic drop.

“Well, we should get going, Henry,” she said.

“Yeah, sure,” he said at the same moment that Cameron was paged over the loud speaker.

“Good seeing you,” Cameron said as he jogged away.

“Such a nice boy,” Henry’s mom said as they made their way to the front to check out.

She paid for Henry’s T-shirt without even noticing since he slipped it in between the full set of towels she’d selected for Flora Ramos.

On the drive home she asked Henry for the millionth time what happened between him and Cameron. And for the millionth time Henry didn’t have a good answer for her.

“We stopped liking the same stuff,” Henry said. “It happens. Friends grow apart sometimes.”

She tsked as she merged onto the highway. “He could probably use a friend.”

“I know. I tried a million times last summer. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to do anything.”

“Maybe try some more,” his mom said.

Maybe he would. But he would do it on his own terms and not just because his mom thought it was a good idea.





Chapter 12

Cameron

The day after he ran into Henry at Target, Cameron was working the dinner shift at his second job at the pizza parlor. He worked there most days after school until around dinnertime, but they asked him to stay late Monday night since the busboy called in sick. He didn’t mind staying. It was better than going home to spend the whole night in his room, bouncing off the walls and wishing he were somewhere else.

He was going pretty quickly through the latest stack of dirty dishes when he heard a commotion out front. He took a quick peek out of the swinging doors, but all he could see was the long hallway that led off to the restrooms and a little sliver of the front door. Not exactly a prime view of the dining room.

A minute later the lone waitress on duty that night came into the kitchen out of breath. “The high school baseball team is here. Apparently they won some kind of big game tonight,” she said dramatically. “And they need like a million pizzas right now.”

Cameron chewed his lip. He wasn’t one of the chefs, but he would certainly be pulled in if they needed help with the assembly line of toppings.

“Not a great night to be understaffed,” the chef said.

The waitress nodded and blew her bangs out of her face. “When are we not understaffed?”

Seeing as how no one had spoken to Cameron yet, he finished the dishes in the sink and then jumped in to help with the pizzas. It really wasn’t as bad as the two had made it out. The varsity baseball team only had twenty members. Hopefully Cameron wouldn’t be asked to serve them. He hadn’t talked to any of the guys on the team since he abruptly quit and wasn’t sure what kind of reception he would get.

The chef left to grab something from the walk-in freezer, and in the minutes he was gone someone came through the swinging doors. When he turned it was his boss, Eddie. Everyone called him Eddie, not Ed, not Edward.

“Cameron,” he said.