Dream Me(49)

“UCLA is one of my schools,” Mai said. “Any school in a big city far away from here is fine with me. And I’ve always thought I wanted to be a commercial artist, or something along those lines. You next.” She looked at me.

“I don’t know. Maybe a writer, maybe a tennis pro. I’ll definitely be applying to some schools in California too but I still need to do a lot of research.”

“Maybe you can get a tennis scholarship,” LeGrand said. “You should’ve seen her kick my dad’s ass on the court.”

That topic still made me nervous. Mai knew the real truth about Clyde, but LeGrand didn’t and I wasn’t about to let him find out. But the closer we got as friends, the guiltier I felt about keeping the secret. He was always inviting us to The Lucky Lady and we were always declining. Even that day he’d offered to have one of his crew members drop us off at the island but Mai said she just loved the water taxi. He had to be wondering why.

“How about you, Alonso? Any ideas yet?”

Alonso lay stomach down on the towel, his head turned to one side. The sun had already dried us, and a thin white residue of salt was visible on his skin.

He stared at the large pink scalloped shell he was turning over and over in his hand. “I have an idea,” he said to the shell.

“And that is?” LeGrand gently prodded.

“Materials science,” he spoke so quietly we had to strain to hear him above the sound of the lapping waves. “I want to go to MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, or Northwestern.”

“Holy shit!” Mai said. “What’s material science?”

“Materials science,” he corrected her, putting an emphasis on the plural of the first word. “It’s the study of the structure of materials.”

“What would you do?” LeGrand asked.

“Work on a hydrogen battery for cars. Design cheap, high efficiency solar cells. Create a better artificial heart valve. There are a million different things you can do with that degree.”

He said it as if it was something as simple as reciting what he ate for breakfast. Are you listening, Zat? I wished he could have heard Alonso just then, but maybe they’d meet in one of my dreams.

“Wow, Alonso. I’m impressed. Really.”

Mai was beaming at him. A sweet smile spread across Alonso’s face.

“Yeah, really, man. That’s cool. Very cool. A lot more cool than being an actor,” LeGrand added.

“Hey, no putting yourself down on Secret Island,” Mai said. “Next question . . . what’s your biggest fear?”

“Becoming my dad,” LeGrand didn’t hesitate. “That one was easy.”

“For me,” Mai said, “it’s getting stuck in this town for the rest of my life.”

They both looked at me.

“My biggest fear . . . I don’t know. I guess it’s finding out I’m crazy. That things I think are true, really aren’t.” I knew Mai got my meaning by the look she gave me.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” LeGrand asked.

“I don’t know. It sounds stupid, but that’s it.”

“No fair. You’re being evasive.”

Mai came to my rescue, “Your turn, Alonso, what are you most scared of?”

“Nah,” he said. “Nothin’.”

“You’re scared of nothing?” her voice rose about three octaves. “Not even zombies?”

Alonso’s back shook a little like he was laughing but he kept playing with the seashell in his hand and didn’t say anything after that.

__________

The four hours flew by and before we knew it, Alonso spotted the water taxi on the horizon. It was a day I knew I’d remember for the rest of my life, and I was reluctant to leave it behind. The security of close friends, the beauty of the natural world. I wanted everyone to have what I had at that moment. I couldn’t wait to share it with Zat and hoped I could share in a tangible way. We packed up our stuff and sat on the beach to wait, all of us with our gazes fixed on the tiny boat that slowly got bigger with each passing minute.

“Hurricanes,” Alonso said quietly. It came out of nowhere.

We turned to look at him. It was unusual for Alonso to volunteer a conversation starter.

“What about hurricanes?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m afraid of . . . hurricanes.”

“Why you scared of hurricanes?” Mai asked. “Ever been through one?”

“Katrina,” Alonso said without turning his gaze from the boat that had almost reached us by then. “Lost my granny then. After that, we left New Orleans and moved here.” The surface of his soft, brown eyes turned shiny with just a hint of dampness clinging to the lower lashes.

LeGrand scooted a few inches closer to him and put his arm around Alonso’s shoulder, giving it a few pats. “Sorry, man,” he said. “That’s tough.”

__________

Mattie Lynn made a big deal out of graduation day for the Friends Across the Bay program.

She ordered a huge cake from the clubhouse, which I picked up on my way to work. It was rectangular with green icing, white lines, and a miniature net that split the cake in half. Four tiny plastic players, with rackets held in various poses of play, were eternally frozen on the delicious tennis court. She thought of everything—both male and female players, both white and brown-skinned. At the feet of one of the players, a small round gob of yellow frosting was the ball that would never bounce up to be struck by a racket.