Saturday at Venice Beach

You picked up Alex first. He looked about as happy as he would be if he were going to an all-day math fair.

He complained about how early it was.

He complained that it was too cold for the beach.

He complained that he was tired.

You were surprised he even got into the car.

But he did, and you drove off, singing along with the radio, and when the station played an oldie that you and Alex used to love, you shouted out, “Remember this?”

But he was slumped in the backseat, eyes closed. As you pulled up to the Winslows, Sunny BOUNCED out the front door. In such a good mood.

Then she saw the corpse in the backseat.

“Oh, uh, hi, is he…?”

You nudged Alex awake. You introduced him to Sunny.

He just grunted.

Sunny climbed into the front seat, and you covered for Alex. You said he was probably up late studying, or something stupid like that.

Sunny is so cool. She just took over the talking:

S: “I am JEALOUS. I could use some sleep too.”

A: “Mmmph.”

S: “I was up all night. My mom’s home from the hospital. She has lung cancer.”

A [Finally sits up.]: “Oh. Wow. Too bad.”

S: “Thanks. It’s hard. She’s really bony now, and she has these bedsores from the hospital bed, which is made out of, like, marble or something. So she gets these pains, and then she wakes up, and I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so if I hear her, I am up!”

A: “I know what you mean. ANYTHING can wake me up.”

For that moment, you thought you were a genius.

They were talking. CONNECTING. Sunny was going on and on about cancer and chemotherapy and radiation treatments. You could see Alex’s face in the rearview mirror. He was actually interested. Concerned.

A: “My Aunt Wendy? She had lung cancer too. And she’d given up smoking when she was young.”

S: “My mom too!”

A: “And Wendy had chemo and stuff. She lost her hair.”

S: “How’s she doing now?”

A: “She died.”

No.

No.

The air in the car froze.

S: “Oh. Well, you know, they’ve had a lot of success with combining the chemo and the radiation.”

A: “That’s what they told us too.”

S: “But nowadays they do it better. It’s not like it used to be.”

A: “My aunt died only a year ago. I mean, not that your mom’s going to die, I just meant it didn’t happen, like, way in the past.”

S: “Uh-huh.”

Finally, FINALLY, you had the brains to turn on the radio.

You listened to the top 40. And no one said another word until you got to the beach.

You kept trying. You treated everyone to lunch. You joked around.

But the chemistry was dead.

After we ate, we put on our blades. Sunny went in one direction, Alex the other.

You bladed around in circles.

The story of your life.

Department of

Second Chances

It’s Saturday night and your brother is having a huge party, which means drunken guys taking over the house, and girls with big hair and makeup, and lousy music and snide comments, and usually at least two broken appliances, so YOU ARE OUT OF HERE.

But first, a word or two in your trusty journal.

You didn’t expect to be in one piece right now, considering what happened this afternoon, namely that you tried to bring two friends together and found out that they truly did have one thing in common—the ability to depress each other.

So when Sunny called afterward, you must have said, “I’m sorry” a hundred times. You fell all over yourself explaining why you did it.

Sunny listened. She did not hang up on you or scream bloody murder. Instead, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was calling to say thanks.”

A joke, you assumed.

But no. She was moved. By the GESTURE. She said that friends don’t always think of perfect solutions, but they try, and that’s what counts. She said her mom has a support group—and what were YOU doing but trying to find her a supportive friend?

For a 13-year-old, Sunny is pretty amazing.

So you felt good about yourself after that, and you bravely called Alex. He wasn’t home. His mom said he’d gone off on his bike to Las Palmas.

Time to go. Ted’s outside. He has about a hundred of his friends in the car with him. In a moment, he will start blowing his horn, because he’ll want my car out of the driveway, so he can pull up and avoid the extra ten feet he’d have to walk to the kitchen door.

There it goes.

ʼBye.