When I get to the firehouse parking lot after school, I see a big sign stretched above the door. Blood Drive Today.
Leo is hauling two big trash bags to the Dumpster in the lot. “No practice today?”
I shake my head and say, “B Team is Tuesday and Friday.”
“Well, that’s not enough, is it?” he asks. “I can train you on the other days. Touch-and-goes and bench presses, and you watch, Coach will want to move you up to the A Team before October.”
I nod my head and say, “Yeah, maybe.” But really, no. Then I open the door right where I was left as a screaming baby and right where Parker whimpered until we let him in.
This is the first time the firehouse is hosting a blood drive, and the whole first floor has big lounge chairs and nurses and stations for each volunteer. I try not to look too hard at anything because I don’t like needles or blood.
My dad is checking people in, handing them clipboards and pens so they can fill out paperwork. He nods to me and says he’ll be another hour or so, but I can do my homework upstairs or help out.
Sam’s in the kitchen pouring juice into little paper cups and handing sliced bagels to people with white gauze and Band-Aids stuck in the crooks of their arms. She introduces herself to everyone and says she’s the new firefighter here. I’m watching all their faces and waiting to see how they react to a woman in a firehouse T-shirt and suspenders. Most people smile and reach out a hand to shake. Mr. Watson, who plows our driveway after every snowstorm, hesitates a little, but says, “Well, welcome to Northfield!”
I watch them all as they walk away too, to see if anyone scoffs or rolls their eyes behind Sam’s back like Leo does. But they don’t. And I’m glad.
Dr. Davis, who’s been my doctor forever and taught Dad everything he needed to know about car seats and infant formula, says, “Let me go get my daughter! She’d love to meet you, Sam,” and hurries off to find her six-year-old.
I recognize most everyone. Professor Laird is here. He was my grandma’s neighbor up on College Street before she had her stroke and moved into her assisted- living development. And Eunice owns the coffee shop on Division Street where college kids sit all day, jotting little notes in textbooks like Eduardo did all over Oliver Button Is a Sissy.
A few people say, “Hey, Cyrus,” and ask how middle school is going. I smile and say it’s pretty good.
“I’ll see you Saturday,” Professor Laird says. “About time we got another Olson on the team!” He puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a good shake.
I tell him I’m just on the B Team and I won’t actually be playing in the Defeat of Jesse James Days game, and he says that doesn’t matter one bit.
Leo comes back in and puts new garbage bags in the bins.
Sam calls him over and hands him a tray. “Let’s offer some juice to the blood donors.”
Leo takes the tray, and I can tell his hands are shaking because the juice in the little cups is sloshing from side to side. “I . . . uh . . . Don’t you think we should keep the juice in the kitchen? I don’t want them spilling.” He sets the tray down and says he has to go to the bathroom, which sounds to me an awful lot like a fake.
Sam looks at me and shrugs like What was that? I shrug too.
Roger says that Leo’s being ridiculous and takes the tray to pass out the juice. Dad pokes his head in and tells me that all the firefighters are giving blood before they leave, and I’m so glad that I’m not 110 pounds or sixteen years old because I know giving blood is a good thing to do but I can hardly stomach a finger prick with Dr. Davis.
Roger passes out the last cup, returns the tray to the kitchen, and joins Dad and Sam at the back of the line and starts filling out paperwork to donate.
Leo slides back down the pole and starts heading toward the kitchen. My dad is trying to get his attention, but Leo isn’t looking in that direction at all.
“Leo!” my dad calls, and I can tell Leo is faking that he doesn’t hear and trying to busy himself in the kitchen with throwing out paper cups and plates and organizing the leftover bagels.
I tap him on the shoulder. “My dad wants to talk to you,” I say, pointing through all the volunteers with their arms out straight and blood slowly filling bags hanging from tall, silver poles.
“Get in line!” my dad hollers. “We’re last, then closing up.”
He points at himself like Me? and my dad says, “Yeah, you.” Leo sighs and walks slowly over and I’m kind of feeling bad for him, even though he’s been pretty rotten lately, because it stinks when your fake doesn’t work and you have to do something you don’t know how to do.
A nurse calls Dad to a chair, then another calls Sam. Roger is already done and getting his Band-Aid and walking back to the kitchen to get a bagel.
“Your turn, sir,” the nurse says and waves Leo over. He sits down, and the nurse wraps a wide blue rubber band around his big bicep and taps her gloved fingers on his veins. Then she pulls out a long needle. Leo starts talking really fast and telling her how much he can bench-press and how many pull-ups he can do with weighted ankles. And it’s like just talking about the exercises is making him sweat, because I can see it on his face from here and he’s breathing hard and wiping his forehead.
“Sir?” The nurse looks at the paperwork on the clipboard. “Mr. Mason?” Leo doesn’t respond. She snaps her fingers in front of his face. “I’m going to help you put your head between your knees, sir.”
Then she swings his legs over the side of the chair and guides his head between his knees, holding on to his suspender straps. “Can you hear me?” After a minute, Leo shakes his head and says he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine. But the nurse makes him lie back on the chair and cranks his feet way up high.
Dad and Sam finish filling their bags and get gauze stuck in the crooks of their arms, then they go over to Leo’s chair and Roger brings him a cup of juice. The nurse checks Leo’s pulse and assures everyone that he’s OK. “Just a little woozy around needles is all,” she says. “Did you all not know that?” She looks up at my dad and Roger and Sam, who are surrounding his chair and looking down at him.
My dad shakes his head. “I didn’t.” Then his shoulders start to bump up and down, and I know that means he’s trying to hold in a laugh, but he just can’t. And I can’t either because I’m thinking about Leo’s big muscles bulging as he touch-and-goes across the gym mats upstairs and pulls himself up the firehouse pole with just his arms. And how his big muscles didn’t matter one little bit when the nurse pulled out the needle.
“I’m not scared,” Leo sputters. “I just didn’t eat lunch and I had a big workout this morning.”
“OK, Leo,” Roger says and pats his shoulder.
Leo’s hand shakes a little as he takes the juice from Sam and his face is turning from white as a sheet to fire-engine red. “I’m fine,” he says, and he starts to get up even though the nurse says to give it a minute.
Everyone else has left, and the nurses are starting to pack up their stations and transport everything out to the vans with the big red crosses on the side. Leo is finishing his juice and going through the bag of leftover bagels until he finds a cinnamon raisin.
Dad’s about to change his clothes and get ready to lock up so we can go home when there’s a quick, loud knock and a woman pushes through the big firehouse front door. “Are we too late?” she huffs. A girl follows her, and the wind blows in a few leaves behind them before they shut the door. “Shoot, we’re too late, aren’t we?”
Then I recognize the girl and in the same second she recognizes me and my heart freezes because she’s about to say something and I can’t let her.
“Hey, Cyrus!”
It’s Ruth. From the Humane Society 7.
“This is my mom.” She points to the woman and smiles. “Cyrus and I know each other from—”
“School!” I blurt. “From school. Ruth is in eighth grade, but she helped me find Mr. Hewett’s class on the first day.”
Ruth looks at me funny but then gives me a little half smile like she gets that something is up and she’s on my team. “I had Mr. Hewett when I was in sixth grade,” she says.
“Well, that was nice of you,” my dad says. “I’m Brooks Olson. Cy’s dad.” He shakes their hands. “And you’re a little late, but we can squeeze you in.”
“No pun intended!” a nurse calls out and holds up a blue squeezy ball and a long needle still in its package.
“Don’t look, Leo!” Sam says and gives him a friendly nudge with her elbow.
Leo pulls his arm away fast. “I told you—I just didn’t have lunch.”
The nurses get Ruth’s mom set up in a chair and Ruth looks at me and nods toward the kitchen. I follow her, and in between bites of bagel and apple slices and in soft whispers that hide beneath her mom chatting and laughing with my dad and Sam, I tell her that my dad doesn’t know about the humane society. That I’m surprising him by doing all this community service. The lie feels just as bad as all the others, because Ruth smiles and says, “I bet he’ll be so proud of you. He seems really cool.”
And that makes me think how lucky I am that I landed on the firehouse steps because the world is so big and I could have been left anywhere, but Brooks is my dad. And right where I belong.
“When are you going to tell him?” Ruth asks.
I look out at my dad, a Band-Aid pressed into the crook of his arm, thanking the nurses for coming today.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Her mom calls for her, and Ruth whispers that she’ll see me later, like my secret is good with her.
Dad and I wait for the nurses to pack up the last station before we head to the car. I scan the radio past all the commercials and talking until I hear a song with a horn blasting and I turn it up.
Dad crumples a piece of paper and sticks it in the console, but it starts to unfold and I can read part of it. Understanding Your Blood Type, it says, and beneath, Type O Negative is circled. Dad is type O, just like Great-Grandpa Olson. I rub my fingers over the grooves of the dog tags beneath my sweatshirt and wonder, if it’s not fighting fires or running passes into the end zone, what’s in my blood?