Opposite of Always(92)

“Kiss me, dollface,” Dad says.

“Oh, come on, guys. In the dairy section? This is a bit cheesy.” But I don’t really mean it. Because if there’s one thing I appreciate after all this time, it’s expressing your love while you can. Never take time, or love, for granted.

But Mom ignores me anyway, planting a sloppy wet kiss onto Dad’s face. “You haven’t lost a step, Abe.”

Dad grins. “You keep me young, baby. Jackie boy, we’re gonna need cleanup in aisle five.”

And I watch in semihorror as they press against the milk fridge in a blur of middle-aged body parts.





All the Things


I ask Franny if it’s okay to talk to his dad.

“About what?”

“Honestly, I need him to do me a favor.”

“A favor? From The Coupon?” Franny shrugs. “Knock yourself out, if you like disappointment.”

“You sure it’s okay?”

“What’s it for?”

“I’m betting.”

“Betting on what?”

“On love.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“How are you so corny?”

I put all my money on Mandrake—

“You sure about this, Jack?” Franny’s dad asks. “This is a lot of money to lose. I won’t be able to get it back. It’ll be out of my hands, kid.”

And Mandrake—

. . . Oh my goodness, are you kidding me? Mandrake has just taken their first lead of the game with twenty seconds left . . . This is the greatest comeback in the history of sports, people . . . You are witnessing history tonight . . . History, with a capital H!— Well, the Potbelly Pigs come through yet again.

I schedule the evaluation with Dr. Sowunmi—

“Jack, there are no promises. This treatment may not work for Kate. Do you understand that?”

“I believe in you, Doctor,” I assure him.

“Well, then, I hope to God I don’t let you down,” he says, reaching across the desk to shake my hand.

Kate gets the first injection.

She’s sick for a few days, mostly nauseous, but she starts to rebound by week’s end. “I don’t know if it’s working, or if it’s just in my head,” she says, beaming. “But I feel better, Jack. Better than I can remember feeling in a long, long time.”

Band practice is better than ever.

Kate and I go to prom together. We kiss. The kiss is as magical as our first first time. And we dance our ugly dances with unrelenting gusto, as if we’ve just discovered that ugly dancing saves lives, and we are determined to save every life that we can.

Leave no life behind, we say, doing our best-worst Runaway Rodeo Bull in a China Shop dance.

“Please, please, tell me you guys are high,” Franny pleads.

“Off life, my friend,” Kate yells, jumping higher still. “Off life!”

I lay the guilt trip on extra-thick, and then, just to make sure, I drive over to Franny’s house and pick his dad up.

“You’re sure about this, Jack,” he says. “Because I’m sure as hell not.”

“Franny knows you’re coming. He wants to see you. He’s been wanting to see you. All this time he’s just been waiting for you to finally show up.”

Franny pretends like he’s only mildly excited, but anyone who knows him knows he’s ecstatic. I’ve known him since sandbox days and I can’t remember him smiling so hard, so much.

“You came,” Franny says.

His dad nods. “I never want to miss another game. I just hope it’s not too late.”

I graduate high school, high-five all the on-stage faculty as I dance across the stage. Dad makes the family take lots of pictures, Kate included.

Jillian delivers The Mic-Drop Commencement Speech of All Time. “And so when all’s said and done, the time we’ve spent here at Elytown High is not about the number of hours we’ve spent in class, or not in class.”

The audience chuckles.

“It’s not how many touchdowns we’ve scored, or free throws we’ve missed,” Jillian continues. “It’s not even about this school, really. Not the building, anyway. These last four years, if we lived them right, are about growing up, about learning to battle, about trying our best and still failing, about picking ourselves up again and again. These years were picking each other up. About friendship. The type of friends that show up when you need them the most. That text you and call you when you don’t want to talk. That show up and keep showing up, day in and day out, every week, every semester, again and again. The type of friendship that doesn’t end with graduation. The type of friendship, like the very best type of love, that never ends.”

When she’s finished, we erupt in applause, Franny and I exploding out of our seats, several aisles apart, pumping our fists, whooping and hollering Jillian’s name. She blows kisses to us, then takes a bow.

Kate’s baby brother Reggie still gives me a hard time— Except this time around I don’t meet him at family dinner, where his parents can rein him in, if necessary. Nope. This time he goes with Kate and me to the movies and proceeds to 1) sit between us, 2) hog the popcorn that I bought, and 3) spoil virtually every scene, which initially I thought made him some sort of plot-guessing film savant, only to later learn, no, he’d already seen the movie and was just being a grade-A asshole.