five

Over the course of the week, Gideon and Roberto continued to pass the notebook back and forth, sharing new facts about themselves.

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and read while my parents are asleep (*Gideon wrote).

Just like Harriet! (*Roberto replied, then added:) In third grade, the kids liked to play weddings at recess and I didn’t want to marry anyone so I told them I would be the priest and lead the ceremony. If I hadn’t volunteered for that, I probably would have had to marry this girl named Megan. That wouldn’t have worked out.

The only wedding I’ve ever been to was Aunt Hannah’s. It was her third marriage and I had the most fun because I hadn’t been to the other two. I was the ring bearer. The guy she married smelled like Doritos. They aren’t married anymore. (*Gideon)

Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? I think I want to be a scientist or maybe someone who makes buildings. But I could also be a nurse. (*Roberto)

When I grow up I am going to be a turtle trainer. Because I love turtles and training them is not a lot of work at all, because there aren’t many things you can train them to do. I looked it up in the library. (*Gideon, of course)

Gideon asked his parents if he could invite his new friend to come over at some point during the weekend. When they said yes, Gideon was excited to tell Roberto the news. Roberto also seemed excited.

“Just remember to pretend like you’ve never been there before,” Gideon said.

“Why?” Roberto looked a mix of offended and confused.

“Oh!” Gideon exclaimed. He had forgotten to tell Roberto about the no-friends-over-during-the-week rule. Once Gideon explained, Roberto looked much less offended and much less confused.

“Wow,” Roberto said. “You broke the rules for me!”

“And once you start, it’s hard to stop. Guess we’ll just have to find new ones to break,” Gideon responded.

A mischievous gleam sparkled from Roberto’s eyes. “I guess so,” he said. Then Ms. June called the class to order, and the conversation had to stop there. For now.

Gideon spent most of Saturday reading Harriet the Spy, trying to figure out which character was Roberto’s favorite. He also debated how much he should clean up his room, compared to the way it had been when Roberto had seen it. He was worried that if he cleaned up too much, Roberto would notice. And he was worried that if he didn’t clean up at all, Roberto would also notice. As a result he tried to make his room as exactly like the last time Roberto had seen it as possible. (*Although he did also dust his turtles because Saturday was a day he usually dusted his turtles.)

By Saturday night, Gideon felt okay about Roberto coming over. By Sunday morning, he was worried again. The problem? His parents. He didn’t like what they were wearing. He didn’t like the questions they asked him about Roberto over breakfast. He didn’t like the little slurping noises they made when they ate their cereal or the even littler slurping noises they made when they sipped their coffee. He knew that it was highly unlikely that they would be eating cereal or sipping coffee in front of Roberto, but Gideon was worried there would be other strange noises they’d make, or strange questions they’d ask, or strange requests, like Roberto having to spend some time with the whole family before he and Gideon could go off together. On Sundays when Gideon just wanted to be alone to read or play games, his mom and dad would jokingly call him Mr. Antisocial. Gideon didn’t want them to call him that in front of Roberto. Or Giddy—which they hadn’t called him since he was in kindergarten, but it would probably be just his luck that they’d break it back out in front of Roberto.

Gideon almost called Roberto to cancel.

Then he thought, no, that would be even worse.

He wondered why he was making such a big deal about it. He’d had friends over before. Nothing that embarrassing had ever happened, outside of his mom taking way, way too many pictures at his birthday party and forcing everyone to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and fussing if they moved the furniture and exposed some dust. He didn’t worry when Tucker and Joelle came over, either alone or together. They were friends. Roberto was a new friend. Therefore, he should feel the same way about Roberto as he did about them.

Only, it felt different.

He wanted Roberto’s friendship in a way he didn’t feel he’d wanted any of the others’.

Maybe because it felt like those other friends had always been around.

Gideon told himself that was it.

To distract himself until noon, he read Harriet the Spy almost to the end. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Harriet. He understood her need to write things down. But he didn’t understand why the things she wrote down had to be so mean. It was like she went out of her way to see only the bad things about people. That felt exhausting to Gideon.

At 11:45, he checked his room one more time, then went downstairs to wait for Roberto to show up.

“Do you want me to make you lunch?” Gideon’s mom asked.

Thinking quickly, Gideon answered, “I’m going to show him Antonoff’s. He hasn’t been there yet.”

“Oh. Okay,” Mrs. White replied. “Let me get my purse. You’ll come back here after, won’t you? I made a fruit salad.”

A fruit salad. For some reason, these words filled Gideon with dread. But he kept a smile on as his mom gave him a ten-dollar bill and told him not to spend it all on arcade games.

At 11:58, Gideon spotted Roberto striding up the front walk. He felt the impulse to run out the door and steer him away, but knew his parents were likely to follow if he did. So he let Roberto walk up and ring the doorbell, and even waited a few seconds before answering, so it wouldn’t seem like he’d been standing there the whole time.

“Wow!” Roberto said as he stepped inside. “So this is your house! It’s amazing to finally see it. It’s exactly like I pictured!”

Roberto then gave him a look that was a wink without the wink. Gideon winked back without actually winking. His parents were watching, after all.

Introductions were made, and Gideon was relieved when his parents weren’t too embarrassing. When Mrs. White said, “I hope you have fun at Antonoff ’s!” Roberto didn’t say, “What are you talking about?” and instead played along like it was something he and Gideon had planned together.

Gideon got them out of there as quickly as possible.

“They’re nice,” Roberto said once the door was closed.

“Yeah,” Gideon said. (*They were, after all, nice, even if they could also be embarrassing and overly concerned about dust.) Then he asked, “Have you ever been to Antonoff’s?”

Roberto shook his head, so as Gideon led them there, he explained that Antonoff’s was this sandwich shop within walking distance—it was one of the only places besides school that his parents allowed him to walk to alone. It had good food, but the best part was that in the back there were two old video games (*Pac-Man and Asteroids) and an even older pinball machine.

“We’re going to have to buy something, because Mr. Antonoff gets really annoyed when you ask him for singles and quarters without buying something. Are you hungry?”

“I’m okay,” Roberto said. “But look … I didn’t bring any money with me. I thought we were going to be at your house.”

“I’ve got you,” Gideon said.

“Only if I can get you next time.”

“Deal.” Gideon liked that they were already planning a next time.

At the store, they each got some potato chips and two “freshly baked” chocolate chip cookies that made Gideon observe to Roberto that the words hard, fake, and bad were hidden in the phrase freshly baked.

When this caused Roberto to laugh in appreciation, Gideon felt emboldened to keep talking. He explained that Pac-Man and Asteroids were possibly his favorite video games because they didn’t involve anyone getting killed, not even aliens. In Pac-Man, you swallowed ghosts—and ghosts were already dead, right? And in Asteroids, you were just blasting rocks. No harm in that.

He also admitted that pinball stressed him out.

“Pinball’s more fun when it’s two-player,” Roberto said.

“What do you mean?” Gideon asked.

“Get some quarters and I’ll show you.”

Gideon fed some dollar bills into the change machine, then brought the resulting change to the pinball machine. Its theme was Star Trek, and the Starship Enterprise glowed on the headboard.

“Okay,” Roberto said, “so you take that flipper and I take this flipper and we try to play together.”

This meant Gideon and Roberto had to stand really close together in the middle, while Gideon used his left hand to control the left flipper and Roberto used his right hand to control the right flipper.

It was a disaster at first. Both boys were right-handed, so Gideon felt particularly awkward on the left. And it still stressed him out whenever the ball came speeding toward the bottom, the flippers the only defense preventing its escape. When the ball came down decidedly on one side or the other, they had a chance. But if it was toward the middle, they kept botching it. Gideon would tip it in or Roberto would launch his flipper a half second after Gideon’s when they both needed to hit it at the same time.

By the fifth quarter spent, Gideon was ready to give up.

Roberto, however, was undaunted.

“Look,” he said, putting his arm around Gideon’s waist, “we have to pretend we’re one body.”

Gideon didn’t know what he was supposed to do. If anything, having Roberto’s hand there made him feel more awkward. But before he could say anything, Roberto put another quarter in and sprang the ball into action. He pressed his hip into Gideon’s, and, to balance it out, Gideon found his arm moving behind Roberto’s back.

“Concentrate,” Roberto said.

So Gideon did. He focused on the ball. He tried not to think of what Roberto would do. Instead he just hit the flipper when the ball was coming closer. Sure enough, they fell in sync. They kept the ball in play, blasting against bumpers and doing laps across sensors that made the machine beep with pleasure.

Gideon didn’t think he’d ever been this close to another person before. He didn’t understand how Roberto didn’t seem to notice it when all Gideon could do was notice it.

After the game was done (*with them achieving the machine’s high score for the day), Roberto put his arm down so he could step away for some chips. When he came back, they went back to being side by side, hip against hip, shoulder to shoulder … but Roberto kept his left hand in front of him, so Gideon did the same with his right. They remained in sync even if they weren’t holding each other, howling at the injustice when the ball got past them.

Eventually, Roberto proposed they move on to Asteroids, then Pac-Man. They played two-player rounds until they ran out of quarters. Gideon cursed himself for not thinking to bring more money.

“Next time,” Roberto reminded him.

The promise of next time wasn’t enough for Gideon. He wanted to stay here, like this, for as long as humanly possible.

But as soon as he thought that, three teenagers came along to play Pac-Man, and the bubble that had surrounded Gideon and Roberto popped.

“Guess we’ll go back to your house?” Roberto said.

In response, Gideon asked, “Have you been to the brook?”

Once again, Roberto shook his head, and Gideon took the lead. The brook was something less than a river and more than a stream. It ran behind Antonoff’s and some of the houses in the neighborhood. To get to it, you had to scramble down a steep bank. It was almost impossible to do without getting your pants dirty. Gideon decided it was worth it, and slid down with Roberto at his side.

There wasn’t much to see at the brook. Just water and rocks and a few trees, with the houses looming above. There was barely a bank to walk along.

Still, Roberto said, “This is cool.” And Gideon told him about how he and Tucker, when they were very little, used to think it led to a magical land. They’d even tried to send a message in a bottle once, to see if the people (*or creatures) in the magical land would write back.

“Did they?” Roberto asked, not serious.

“Nope,” Gideon said.

“Or maybe they did—except that they put it in an invisible bottle, not realizing human eyes wouldn’t be able to see it.”

“Yeah,” Gideon said. “That has to be it.”

As they walked along the brook, Roberto picked up a few sticks and sent them sailing. Every now and then he’d look into the backyards above them. If you looked across the brook, you could usually see into the houses.

“Harriet would love this,” Roberto observed. “A perfect place to spy. No dumbwaiters needed.”

“I’m almost done with the book,” Gideon said. “Tell me who your favorite character is.”

“Guess.”

“Sport?”

“I like Sport, especially because of all he does for his dad. But no.”

“Ole Golly?”

“Too many quotes.”

“Um … Janie?”

Roberto stopped walking. “No—I think she’s a little too into blowing things up.”

“So who is it?”

Roberto smiled. “The Boy with the Purple Socks. I think I’m in love with him.”

So many things about this statement surprised Gideon that he genuinely couldn’t come up with a response.

Roberto, though, responded as if Gideon had said something.

“I know it’s silly, because we don’t know that much about him. But I love that he wears purple socks. And I also love that he’s the new kid in school but he’s still the one leading the parade. Harriet says he’s boring but that’s just because she hasn’t bothered to talk to him. I think he’s pretty funny.”

The Boy with the Purple Socks hadn’t made this kind of an impression on Gideon.

The way Roberto said I think I’m in love with him, though—that made quite an impression.

Gideon felt the question inside him, but couldn’t find the words to make the question.

So instead, he slid a little back into his shell. He looked at his watch and said it was getting late, and that they should probably make an appearance at his house before his parents started to wonder if he was ever coming home. Roberto seemed excited to go there, and remained excited even when Mr. and Mrs. White were asking him all about where he’d lived before and what street he lived on now and if he was interested in having some fruit salad. Roughly twenty berries and seven chunks of melon later, Gideon and Roberto sat in the rec room, playing some Nintendo. Gideon enjoyed it, but it wasn’t like pinball.

They were playing Super Mario, but all Gideon could think about was the Boy with the Purple Socks.