“How’d it go?” I ask Alan as I bundle Hope into her car seat. She’s holding on to her spider stuffed animal, staring up at me, a little like Hey, I remember you.
She starts to get cranky the second that recognition kicks in. Of course.
“Great!” he says. “She’s amazing.”
I walk out to the car, and Alan follows. “Thanks, man,” I say. “I really appreciate it. So you’re cool for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, no prob. My mom’s in love with her too. She wants to make her Korean baby food. Is that okay?”
“Sounds good.” I get in the car. “See ya, Alan.”
“Ryden, wait.”
I roll down the window. “Yeah?”
“You didn’t call to check on her today.” He’s looking at me like he’s trying to figure something out.
Huh. Calling to check on Hope didn’t even cross my mind. I never do that when my mom has her while I’m at work. God, I’m so bad at this. Even when I try really freaking hard, I still screw up. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I, uh…practice was really busy. We didn’t really have any downtime.”
“Okay.” I can’t tell if he means it or if he’s saying it sarcastically, like “yeah, right.”
I make a show of looking at the clock on the dashboard. “Gotta get to work, man. See you tomorrow. Thanks again.”
And I speed off.
• • •
I’m making a mental list of all the stats and info I should include in my letter to UCLA while taking all the expired containers of precut fruit off the refrigerated shelves in produce when someone taps me on the shoulder. I don’t have to look to know who it is. But I turn around anyway.
“Before you say anything,” Joni says, holding up a hand, “let me say my thing first.” Her other hand’s behind her back, like she’s hiding something from me.
I wait. She’s got a nose ring today. It’s a really tiny green stone. I wonder if she just got it pierced or if she just wasn’t wearing anything in the hole the last few times I’ve seen her.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry for being a total douche on Saturday. Sometimes I say things without thinking about how it will sound to the other person. It’s a fault. I’m working on it.” She blows her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think you’re spoiled or angsty or anything else that I said. I actually think you’re pretty cool. So will you be my friend again, please?” She bats her eyelashes at me.
Maybe it’s the high I’m riding from conquering the hungry baby dilemma last night and having such a good day at soccer, but I can’t help but smile. “Yeah, okay.”
“Rad.” Joni brings her hand from around her back and hands me a package wrapped in aluminum foil.
“What is this?” I ask, taking it. It’s warm and about the size of my fist.
“It’s a vegetarian empanada.”
I stare at her. “Why are you giving me a vegetarian empanada?”
“It’s a peace offering. Duh. My dad made them this morning. He loves to cook, so even though there are about a thousand people in my house, we always have a ton of extra food around. I gave one to my bus driver this morning—he liked it so much, he gave me a pass for a free ride home.”
“You take the bus to work?”
She shrugs. “Don’t have a car yet.”
I open up the foil. A mouthwatering smell hits me. “This better be recycled aluminum foil,” I tease.
Joni holds up three fingers, in the shape of a W, and holds them over her heart. “Whole Foods honor.”
I take a bite of the empanada. “Holy shit.”
Joni grins. “Good, right?”
“Fucking amazing.” I devour the rest of it in two more bites. I guess with all the running around after practice, I didn’t realize how hungry I was.
“There’s more where that came from, friend.” She skips off just as some guy who looks like he came straight from the gym pulls an avocado from the middle of the display and about fifty avocados from the top of the pile, the ones that apparently weren’t good enough for him, fall to the floor. Joni stops to help him pick them up, and I watch from across the produce section as she checks him out as he bends over. I don’t mean checking him out in the “ringing up his groceries” kind of way. Her eyes are seriously glued to his ass.
Well, that was unexpected.
A couple of hours later, I take my break and open Meg’s journal. I stare at the checklist, waiting for some meaning to float up off the pages. But I got nothin’.
I flip back toward the beginning of the book. That entry I read yesterday about the baby-naming conversation is still bothering me.
I read it again.
Yeah, still feels off. There’s something about it that gives me an uneasy feeling—like I’m on my way to the beach and am about to realize I forgot to pack a bathing suit. But I still can’t figure out why it feels that way. Maybe it’s because I’m reliving that conversation about Hope’s name with the power of hindsight behind me, and knowing how the whole situation pans out taints the moment with bitterness. That could be it.
But then, wouldn’t all Meg’s journal entries make me feel this way? Why is this one in particular driving me nuts?
I’m about to skip ahead to where I left off when Joni comes into the break room.
“There you are,” she says. She pulls out the chair next to me and sits down. “I saw on the schedule that you’re off on Friday.”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’m off too. I thought we could do something.”
“Do something?”
“You know, hang out. Chill. Socialize in a nonprofessional capacity.”
Hmm. Does she mean as friends? Or something else? Because I’m beginning to think she’s not quite as gay as I thought she was.
“I have soccer practice during the day,” I say.
“After that.”
“Uh, okay.” Okay? Okay? What the hell are you doing, Ryden?
Oh, who am I kidding? I know exactly what I’m doing. Joni’s the only person I know who doesn’t know about Meg or Hope or any of it. Being back at soccer today proved that I can be the old me again, the Ryden Brooks who everyone loved, who could do whatever he wanted with zero consequences. And it felt really, really good. I think if I play this right, I can have two lives—the shitty one and the good one. And they don’t have to mix.
“Awesome,” Joni says. “What do you want to do?”
I shrug. “Whatever.”
“Do you want to go with me to get a tattoo?”
I stare at her. She’s looking back at me, all “what?” like she just said the most boring thing in the world. “Uh…I don’t really want a tattoo,” I say.
Joni rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about me. It hurts like a bitch, and I could use a handholding buddy.”
I consciously ignore the hand-holding part of that statement. “How do you know it hurts so bad? Do you already have a tattoo?”
She rocks back on her heels, her hands in her pockets. “Yup.”
“Where?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She grins mischievously and then says, “Okay, cool, so we’ll figure out the details later. See ya.” And then she’s gone, the break room door swinging behind her.
• • •
That night, I write my letter to UCLA. If Meg were here, she’d watch over my shoulder for a few minutes as I struggled to get the words out on the screen. I used to read a lot, before I stopped having time, but writing has always been hard for me. How am I supposed to know what to say? Eventually Meg would gently put her hands on my shoulders and lean down and whisper in my ear, “Want some help?” She wouldn’t say it condescendingly—she’d just want to know if I needed her help. I’d say yes, and she would sit on my lap and start typing, and in twenty seconds flat, she’d have the perfect letter written, no typos or misspelled words, and she wouldn’t even have to use spell check. She never told me what she wanted to do after college, but I bet she’d have been an author. Or maybe a journalist. She did tell me she’d always dreamed of going to Dartmouth but that her plans changed after she got her diagnosis. That was why she’d gotten all sad that day outside the cafeteria when I told her about UCLA for the first time.
I read over the letter about a hundred times to make sure all the commas are in the right place and I don’t sound like a complete dolt.
Stats, athletic background, academic background, game film, YouTube link, Coach’s contact info, game schedule. Long-ass paragraph of desperate pleading.
I go outside to put it in the mailbox. It’s a really quiet night. There are no cars going by, and the people across the street are on vacation, so for once, their dog isn’t barking his head off. Even my own house is quiet. Mom’s hanging out on the couch with Hope, the two of them watching The Bachelor.
I sink down to the curb and sit next to the mailbox, leaning back on my hands, staring up at the stars. I still don’t quite get how each one of those stars is actually a sun, burning up its own part of the universe. It seems incomprehensible that something that big, that complex, that infinite, is out there, while we’re here on this stupid planet watching reality shows and waiting in line for the new iPhone and buying all the chia seeds in Whole Foods because some article told us it was trendy, thinking we’re tough shit, like any of it means anything. But we’re miniscule. We mean nothing. And even in our own world, we don’t stick around that long. Not long enough to matter. You’re born—more likely than not an unintended by-product of your parents wanting to get laid—you do some stuff, and then you die. You get sick, you get hit by a train, you get old and fall apart. It all ends the same way. And that’s it. Then your kids get horny, have a kid, and the cycle starts again.
What the hell is the point of any of it?
I brought Meg’s journal with me. The light from the streetlamp casts the book in a muted golden color. I read a few entries. Meg writes about her family dinners, how her father has been drinking a lot more wine lately, shopping online with Mabel since she’s not strong enough to go to the mall, watching the clock and counting the minutes until school gets out and I can visit her.
Her words break my heart into as many fragments as there are stars in the sky. But none of the entries have the same stomach-twisting effect as that baby-naming one.
I lie back on the narrow strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk and focus on one particularly bright star.
My voice is a whisper in the darkness. “I miss you.”