Seventeen Months Before

 

Haylee's family had a party every year on the fourth of July. Hazel invited all the neighbors, all Aaron's friends from work, and Haylee's entire extended family.

During the party, Haylee's backyard fizzed with soda, streamers, and sparklers. Hazel covered the roof in blankets so people could climb up and watch when the fireworks started. She cleaned the house, groomed the yard, and spread out so much food there wasn't room for it on the ten-foot table.

This year, Aaron tried to draft me into a night game of touch football with the neighborhood boys. They played with a glowing Nerf ball and hung glowstick bracelets from every ankle and wrist—from a distance, the game looked like a battle between awkward, oversized fireflies.

Playing football with boys in the dark sounded like a good way to get groped by twelve year olds. "I'm not really a football person," I told Aaron.

"Eh," he said. "You're in better shape than any of them. Faster, too."

I hesitated. "Is Nick playing?"

Aaron shrugged. "I tried to convince him, but he said the same thing you did."

I smiled. Nick wasn't one to play any sport, but I could still be happy we had this in common.

"See if you can convince him," Aaron said. "Bring Haylee, if you can find her."

I couldn't. She'd disappeared to refill the chip bowl, and never returned. Haylee was nowhere—not in the yard, not in the house, not even in her room, where Nick's younger sister and her friends had gathered to watch a movie on someone's laptop.

I returned to the yard and found Nick sitting on a lounge chair in one corner, watching as his brothers chased each other in circles, sparklers in hand. The football game might be a good excuse to touch him, but what I really wanted was to sit by him and talk. I wasn't brave enough to plop down next to him. Instead, I casually walked by four different times, waiting for Nick to invite me to sit.

He smiled at me twice, and my skin tingled. But each time he turned back to his brothers.

Four times was already bordering on stalking; five would be ludicrous. And if I sat down next to him now, it would be obvious I'd been pacing back and forth, trying to work up the nerve. So I went back to searching for Haylee.

I don't know what set her off. It might have been the sparklers. They're illegal in our county. No one was going to call the cops—one of the neighbors was a police officer, and he had one in his own hand. But I finally found her shut in the pantry, chewing on a fruit roll-up. She fidgeted against the shelves, like a cornered mouse.

"Can we get out of here?" she asked.

"Your dad wants us to play football," I said.

Haylee gave me a dark look. The football game was a trifecta of things Haylee avoided—sports, crowds, and her father. "Can't we just go for a walk?" she asked.

The sky had already settled into true darkness, so Hazel wouldn't appreciate that, and neither of us were old enough to drive. Nick had just gotten his learner's permit a few months ago, so he wasn't supposed to drive without a licensed adult.

But I remembered the cop with the sparkler. This was a night for breaking rules.

"Hang on," I said, and I shut Haylee back in the pantry.

Nick was still sitting alone on his chair. He wasn't much for parties either, but instead of hiding away like Haylee, he sat on the sidelines and watched.

Now that I had a real reason to talk to him, I marched right up and tugged on his sleeve. "Haylee needs to get out of here," I said. "Can we go for a ride?"

Nick shook his head. "Her mom would be ticked."

That was true. Nick's mom and Hazel were sisters, but Nick's mom was pretty relaxed, while Hazel was totally anal. "But she really needs this. Just for half an hour. Maybe Hazel won't notice."

Nick chewed his lip for a moment. "I'll think of an excuse," he said.

I grinned. "We'll meet you at your car."

Haylee and I slunk through the house, taking the side door through the garage and out to the street. One of the families down the road was setting off rockets in the street, but Nick had left his car unlocked, so I ushered Haylee inside and rolled up his windows. She curled up on the back seat, her forehead pressed to her knees.

Nick opened the driver's side door a few minutes later. He winked at me. "I can't believe Aunt Hazel ran out of paper plates," he said. "Guess we'll have to go get some more."

I'd seen the mountain of paper goods Hazel bought for the party. "Where'd you hide them?" I asked.

"In the trunk of her car."

I laughed. She'd find them later, and blame her scattered brain. I sat in the passenger seat as Nick drove to the convenience store down the street. Every patch of grass along the side of the road was papered with blankets and bodies, everyone lounging and waiting for the fireworks.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot of the store, Haylee was emerging, crawling out of her funk like a moth from a cocoon. We padded through the store in our flip flops, and Nick paid for a package of blue plastic plates with a twenty from his wallet.

Haylee hugged her arms around herself, but she followed as Nick led us back to the car.

We were three blocks from the party when she pointed out the window at the first fireworks blossoming against the sky. "Stop the car!" she said.

Nick pulled over, and she scrambled out of the car and up the trunk of a palm tree to get a better look.

Nick and I stood at the base of the tree. Nick watched the fireworks sparkling above. Haylee's knees hugged the tree above us as she stretched to get closer to the explosions.

Nick stood so close to me that our arms bumped. I looked down at our hands, hanging next to each other. My fingers stretched awkwardly—how did I hold them normally? Close together? Far apart? Did I look like I wanted him to hold my hand? Did I look like I didn't? The line between available and desperate slipped through my grasp.

A particularly loud rocket burst above our heads, and I looked up to see golden streaks soaring through the air, then fading to plumes of gray smoke, leaving a ghostly relief against the dark sky.

"I don't think we're ever going to get her out of this tree," Nick said. Lights blossomed in the sky above us, and I felt the reverberation in my chest, sounding in tandem with the beating of my heart.

Nick's sleeve brushed my arm twice more before the fireworks ended, but he never took my hand.