See You at Harry's(11)

Slowly, he looks up at me. I search his eyes and give him the tell-me stare. He breathes in and out a few times.

“Gay,” he says.

I put my hand on his knee. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him again. “It doesn’t change anything.”

He moves his leg away. “It’s one thing telling you, but I just don’t think I’m ready to officially come out yet, you know? I know Mom will be fine with it. But Dad . . .”

“They love you. They can help.”

“I don’t need anyone’s help,” he says, moving even farther away from me.

I lean back against the tree and breathe in Christmas again.

“Yes, you do,” I whisper.

My mom always thought I’d be a good friend. A hero, like the Charlotte’s Web Fern. I would like to be Holden’s hero. I really would. I would like to stay his Phoebe forever, so he always has someone to come back to. But when he moves away from me this way, I feel like he’s taking a step toward leaving us for good.





BACK AT HOME, Sara and my mom are in the kitchen, blasting Grateful Dead tunes and making homemade pasta while Charlie sits on the counter, playing with a ball of dough. There are bits of dough in his hair.

“Ferny!” he yells when he sees me.

“Hi, honey,” my mom says, easing a long sheet of dough out of the machine. “Could you set the table?”

“How was school?” Charlie asks, all serious.

My mom folds the pasta and starts to feed it back into the machine. “Oh, right! How was it, Fern? Did you like your classes?”

Sara eyes my outfit. “I take it Holden helped you get ready?”

I look down at my shirt, which I admit is a bit more dressy than what I’d normally wear. Holden forced me to buy it when we went clothes shopping for school.

“What?” I ask her.

“You’re twelve, not twenty.”

I give her a sneer.

“Snake!” Charlie yells. He holds up a dough snake and makes it wiggle through the air.

“Nice, Charlie!” my mom says, forgetting all about me. “What’s his name?”

I grab the stack of dishes and bring them to the table. Instead of going back to the kitchen, I go to my room and spread my homework out on my bed and get to it.

I’m almost done when I hear Charlie’s squeaky voice.

“Hi, Ferny,” he says, standing in the doorway.

“Hey, Char.”

“Wanna play?”

“I’m doing homework.”

“I can help.”

“I don’t think so.”

He steps into my room anyway. He’s holding Doll, who’s wearing one of his old worn-out onesies that is way too big for her. Charlie walks over to the foot of my bed and sets Doll down so she’s staring at me.

They wait.

I try to ignore them, but Charlie does this loud breathing thing that drives me crazy. Also, Doll kind of freaks me out with her permanent surprised smile and dirty face.

“Are your hands clean?” I ask.

He holds them up, his fingers spread wide. They’re still a little wet.

“OK.” I move some of my books out of the way, and he climbs up.

“I wanna go to school,” he says.

“School is overrated.”

“Huh?”

“Look. All little kids want to go to school. And kindergarten is pretty great. But it just goes downhill from there.”

“Oh.”

“Enjoy your freedom, bud.”

“OK.”

He helps me put all my books in a pile, then picks up Doll and follows me downstairs for dinner.

My dad is working late, so it’s just my mom and us. He tries to get home for dinner a few nights a week, but lately it happens less and less.

Charlie has separated out all the vegetables from the pasta dish my mom made. He stares at the colorful piles and tells them why he does or doesn’t like each one.

“You mushy,” he says to an overcooked slice of zucchini.

Holden keeps his head down, close to his plate. He’s managed to cover up the welts pretty well. Holden is a master of covering up zits and other imperfections with Sara’s old makeup. When Sara was fourteen, she went through this whole makeup stage. She and her friends would have makeup parties and teach each other how to use it. This drove my all-natural mom nuts. She even tried to get them to give each other temporary henna tattoos instead, but none of the other parents would allow it.

One day when Sara wasn’t home, Holden and I decided to play dress-up with her stuff. I was about eight and he was ten. We sat on the floor in the bathroom with the carrying case Sara kept all her makeup in spread open between us. I pointed to each color I wanted to try, then Holden decorated me. I loved the way the powder and lipstick smelled. When I was all done, Holden held out a tiny hand mirror we found in the case. I looked at my Barbie face and laughed. Then I grabbed a blush brush and put some on Holden’s cheeks. We were laughing so hard, we didn’t hear Sara come up the stairs and down the hall. She stood in the door with her mouth open, hands on hips.

“What are you guys doing!” she screamed. “That’s my stuff!” She stomped back down the hall. Holden and I looked at each other and laughed, but we started to put away the makeup.