First & Then(18)

I pushed through the school’s front doors and stepped out into the September sun. Foster’s first C team practice would be ending momentarily.

And sure enough, there he was, tripping out from behind TS Middle, an enormous duffel slung over one shoulder. My father had a field day at the sporting goods store the night before.

He waved when he spotted me and picked up his pace to a loping sort of half run.

Marabelle had joined me on the school’s front steps and trailed me as I made my way down.

“I kicked, Dev!” Foster said, near breathless upon approach. “I kicked, and I ran sprints, and I caught the ball…” He was sweatier than I had ever seen him, red-cheeked and grinning. “Who’s that?”

“This is Marabelle. Uh, Marabelle, this is my cousin Foster.”

Marabelle gave Foster a slight smile. His grin faded, his eyes raking Marabelle’s midsection.

“We should get going,” I said. “See you later, Marabelle.”

“Uh-huh.” She waved a few fingers and then guided herself down onto the steps.

I started to go, but Foster hadn’t budged.

“Are you just going to sit there?” he asked.

“No.” Marabelle held up the mango papaya. “I’m going to drink juice, too.”

“All alone?” Foster looked concerned.

She patted her stomach. “I’m never alone.”

Foster looked back at me helplessly, and I cleared my throat. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride, Marabelle?” I asked.

“No, I’m fine.”

I accepted it straight off, one, because she looked quite content, and two, because I don’t think Marabelle was capable of lying. But Foster still looked troubled.

“Come on,” I said, pulling the strap on his bag to guide him forward. “Let’s go.”

“Bye,” Foster said, stumbling as he looked back at Marabelle.

It was only when we reached the car that he spoke again. “How come she’s got a baby?”

“Well, she doesn’t have it yet, does she?”

“I mean, how come she’s pregnant?”

“How should I know? There’s lots of ways to get pregnant.”

“Do you think she wanted to?”

“Foster, nobody in high school wants to get pregnant.”

Foster craned his neck to look back at the front of the school as we pulled out onto the street.

“Where’s its dad?”

“Huh?”

“The baby’s dad.”

Marabelle had never said a word about him, and I had never dared to ask. “I don’t know.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

Whenever I saw her, she was always alone—aside from Baby, that is. “I don’t think so.”

“She’s pretty,” he said after a pause.

I glanced over at him. It was true, but still the last thing I expected to hear. “Yeah, she is.”

Foster didn’t reply.





8


I woke up the next morning to the usual clattering in the kitchen. It was hard to tell if Foster was so loud because he was just inconsiderate or because trying to do everything soundlessly made him even clumsier than usual. I didn’t really think Foster would consciously be inconsiderate toward us—it was just that he had been used to doing what he wanted for so long. It was like eating the skin of the baked potato. There was never anyone there to tell him not to.

I turned over in bed a few times and stared out the window through the crack between the shade and the wall, listening to myself breathe. I was awake, but I wasn’t quite ready to admit it until I heard the front door shut. It’s a really distinctive sound—the opening and closing of your own front door. Ours was a kind of wooden click. That click drew me out of bed.

I had a blanket thrown over my shoulders and that fuzzy feeling in my mouth you get when you’ve just woken up and haven’t talked yet. I emerged through the front door into the early-morning light to see Foster, dressed in full TS gym uniform, running in big loopy circles around the front lawn.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t break stride. As he turned and jogged back across the yard, he said, “Ezra’s gonna run by here any minute. I want to warm up, but I don’t want to miss him.”

“How do you know he’ll run by?”

“He jogs past our house every day at six fifteen.”

“Does not.” It was immature. But I couldn’t believe that someone else our age voluntarily woke up as early as Foster.

“Does so. I see him every morning. And he said if I’m awake”—he pivoted and ran back—“I can run his route with him.”

“His route?” I sank down onto the step and wrapped the blanket around me a little tighter.

“Uh-huh. A four-mile route.”

“He runs four miles before school every day?”

Foster gave me a withering look. “You don’t get that good by doing nothing.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth (it still felt fuzzy) and watched Foster pivot and run another lopsided circle around the front lawn. It struck me suddenly that it had been exactly three months since he first came. Before this summer, I hadn’t laid eyes on Foster in five years. Now it was three months to the day that he had been living like … well, almost like my brother. The word made me feel funny, the way it had when the PT used it in gym class. That’s your brother, right? I was seventeen years an only child.