When Noah made fun of her at lunch it had made me angry, but I didn't know if my irritation was because of how I would feel about her someday or how I felt about her now. I had this instinct to want to protect her. Noah would have bigger issues in his future than his own arrogance, however. Whatever “justice” I wanted to give him now was nothing compared to what lay in store for him.
I finished my sandwich and checked my phone for any new texts. I answered a few from my friends back home, but I couldn't concentrate. I wanted to know more about MacKenzie. My skateboard was propped by the front door. Maybe I'd go for a ride.
CHAPTER FOUR
MacKenzie
When I got home my mom was in the kitchen. The house was warm compared to the windy chill outside and the dishwasher hummed, filling the kitchen with the smell of lemony detergent.
“Hi honey,” my mom said, looking up from scrubbing at the counter.
Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore a faded green t-shirt and jeans—her mom uniform. Tiny little corkscrew curls had escaped from the ponytail into her eyes and she pushed them away with her hand. “How was school?”
“Schoolish. And I know who moved into the Victorian.”
“Me too. I suppose you’ve met the Tanaka’s oldest son.”
“You’ve met them already? How?”
“I went over to welcome them this morning. With banana bread.” She nodded in the direction of the counter by the fridge where a loaf sat under wrap on a plate.
“Did you find out anything else? What are they like?”
“Very nice. They have three kids. The older son and two twin girls who are younger. They are so adorable.”
James walked into the kitchen, his sandy blond hair flopping in his eyes and a disgruntled expression on his face. “They don’t have any boys. Just those girls.”
He went to the banana bread and pulled the wrapper off. He was wearing his long black soccer socks, carelessly rolled down to his ankles because he hadn’t put on his shin guards yet.
I was sympathetic. “Sorry, Big Guy.”
James lucked out on friends in the neighborhood—there just weren’t any boys his age around so he was always left out.
“I wish I weren’t nine. I want to be fourteen, like you and Derek.”
“I’m sixteen,” I corrected him. There was a world of difference between fourteen and sixteen, in my opinion. “Speaking of Derek, when does he get home?”
“He’s got football practice today,” my mom reminded me. “And we’re leaving in half an hour for James’ soccer practice.”
I took a piece of banana bread and went to check my email. It was the usual junk mail and a few Facebook notices. I clicked on them and wrote on Katie’s wall.
“We’re leaving!” my mom said as she passed me and James followed, tapping his soccer ball across the floor and out the door.
When the door closed the house became quiet, and I settled back to enjoy the solitude. After my second piece of banana bread the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, curious. I didn’t have any friends on this street. It must be someone for Derek.
I opened the door to find Ren, a skateboard hanging from his hand by the wheels. He stood there, casually filling my world, his dark eyes smiling down at me.
“Hi!” I said too loudly and threw the door open. I stood there in my mismatched socks, putting one foot behind my leg, hoping he wouldn't notice.
“Hey,” he said, smiling.
“So you found me.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t too hard. We’re only two houses away. I met your neighbor on the way here.”
I could imagine how that went. Hank has wild eyes behind thick glasses and he’s always smiling like a Cheshire cat in overalls and Birkenstocks--a deranged relic from several different decades.
I laughed. “That’s Hank. He’s kind of odd. You can come in if you want.”
He stepped in, taking my semi-gracious invitation, checking out our foyer and the white staircase. Our family picture hung over a decorative table facing the doorway. My dad was taller than all of us, but Derek was catching up.
“You have a nice house,” he said.
“Thanks. Actually, your house has always been one of my favorites. I used to peek inside when I went trick or treating.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve been stalking my house?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely,” I answered, laughing at myself.
“You can see what it’s like if you want. There are a lot of boxes everywhere, though.”
“Are you sure your parents won’t mind?”
“No.” He gave a sly smile that I wanted to keep, paste it somewhere in the back of my mind to replay over and over. “They want me to make friends and be social. It’s kind of hard. I left behind a lot of friends.”
Of course he would have left friends behind—maybe even a girlfriend. I pushed the jealousy away and smiled.
“Let me get my jacket, I’ll be right back.” I found my hoodie on the sofa where I had thrown it. I shoved my feet in my boots and we walked out the front door.
Just then a minivan pulled up to our driveway. The door slid open and Derek stepped out. He waved to his friends as the minivan backed out of the driveway. One of the guys yelled out the window, “Bye, MacKenzie!”
I wasn’t sure who it was but I waved anyway. Laughter spilled out of the windows and I saw a pair of feet fly up as they drove away. Ninth graders.
Derek loped up to us, his football helmet in his hand and his eyes going from me to Ren. Whatever hopes I had of keeping my infatuation with Ren to myself died at the sharpness in my brother’s eyes. He knew exactly how I felt.
“Hey, Derek, “ I said. “This is our new neighbor, Ren.”
My voice was as neutral as I could make it. I noticed he and Ren were the same height.
“Hey,” Derek said, his eyes on Ren’s skate board. “You skate?”
There was a slight pause. I turned to look at Ren. His face was dark and contemplative. The silence bordered on awkward until he finally broke it.
“A little.”
“I can ride down the street without falling off, but that’s all,” Derek confessed, apparently unaware of Ren’s strange pause. "Besides, our sidewalks are crap, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Yeah, I noticed. It's a challenge."
Derek cheerfully jumped up the brick stairs to our front door. “I'll see you around sometime.”
“You too,” Ren said, watching my brother open the door and disappear inside. He stepped backwards, his smile dropping into a blank expression.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Ren didn’t answer right away, still watching the closed door. After a moment he asked, “He plays football?”
“Junior varsity. He made a touchdown at the last game.”
“That’s great.” His words didn’t match his eyes. What was wrong? He didn’t like football players? Or he was envious of them? Or all his friends from his old school were football players and he missed them? My brain raced but I couldn’t think of anything that made sense and I didn’t want to ask.
He threw his skateboard down on the sidewalk in front of my house and I walked beside him.
“We don’t have any skate parks around here,” I offered, hoping to find a topic of conversation that might interest him.
He looked down at me and grinned crookedly, his face brightening, to my relief. He turned the board around on its back wheels, circling once then kick-flipped it.
“I don’t need a park.”
I nodded at his skateboard. "I'd show you some moves but I don’t want to make you feel self-conscious."
He looked down at me, his mouth going solemn in mock respect. "You have
moves
?"
I giggled and then almost choked on it. A giggle? Ugh.
I covered by clearing my throat. "Oh, yeah. They're amazing."
He arched his eyebrow and kicked the board up to his hand. He held it out to me.
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” I said backing away.
“I insist.”
I took the board and let it drop to the sidewalk the way he had done, but it fell over on its side, the wheels spinning sadly in the air. I kicked at it. I missed and tried it again. It flopped over on the wheels the way it was supposed to and I stepped on it, my arms instinctively flailing out for balance.
“You’re incredible,” he said and stuck his foot between mine, steadying the board. He looked down at me and I stepped away, resisting the temptation to reach out and touch him.
“Yep. I’ll teach you everything I know.”
“I think you just did,” he grinned and kicked the board back up into his hand.
“You could show me how to do that.”
It was harder than it looked. Kicking it too lightly and it just bounced back on the wheels; too hard and it knocked me in the shins. Ren waited patiently while I attempted to make the board behave, his hands in his pockets. Finally I rubbed my shins and admitted defeat.
“It just takes practice,” he said.
I gave him what was probably a gooey smile. He picked up the board and we finished walking to his house. He opened the wooden screen door and then the front door, pausing to let me in first.
His house was beautiful. They had hardwood floors like we did, except they were wide-planked and a rich, dark brown. The furniture matched the house, formal and kind of antique. The ceilings were high and so were the windows. Even with boxes everywhere it was grand and inviting--everything I’d dreamed it would be.
“Mom!” he called. Hearing him call for his mother was disconcerting; it almost made him ordinary. When he first stepped into my Spanish class he was otherworldly, as if the universe had presented him out of thin air for my admiration. He was no such phenomenon, apparently.
His mom appeared from the hallway, a cleaning rag in her hand. She was petite and small-boned, and she wore pink lipstick. She didn’t seem old enough to have a teenage son. Her dark hair was cut to chin-length, a strand of it caught up in a barrette.
She smiled at me. “Hello! You must be MacKenzie.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, impressed that she remembered my name.
“I met your mother earlier this afternoon. Ren tells me you are in his Spanish class.”
“Yes—it’s a pretty hard class—our teacher is nice, though.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. Rambling on about Ren’s hotness didn’t seem appropriate.
I stared around at the boxes. “It seems like a lot of work.”
Ren and his mom looked at each other as she laughed, “Yes, it is.”
“Is it okay if I show her around?” Ren asked. “She’s been stalking this house since third grade as a trick-or-treater.”
She laughed and waved hand at us. “As long as you don’t mind boxes.”
We walked back into the kitchen, which still had the high ceilings and trim but it was obviously renovated. Two French doors opened out to a patio in the backyard and there were windows everywhere, letting in the light. There was a stainless steel refrigerator and a stove that could have been in a restaurant. The countertops were granite and there were a lot of cabinets.
I admitted out loud that I was impressed. He said the kitchen had pretty much won his mom over, but his favorite part of the house was his bedroom.
“It’s got this big circle window. Want to see?”
Did I want to see his bedroom? I ignored the vague thoughts about stuff that happens in bedrooms and focused on his enthusiasm for the window.
“Sure.”
“Let me just tell my mom we’re going upstairs.”
We went back to the living room but his mom wasn’t there, so he shouted out that we were going upstairs.
I suppose his parents had some rule about no girls in his bedroom or something. My parents probably had the same rule, but there wasn’t any reason to tell me about it yet. The idea that I would invite some guy to my room was faintly scandalous.
His room was bright and bare
,
with a circular window that looked out at
the field behind his backyard.
“That’s so cool,” I said, admiring the circle window.
“Yeah, I think I got the best room. It isn’t the biggest, but it’s nice.”
The setting sun threw a pink light over everything in his room. There was a bed and a dresser so far and a lot of boxes. He moved one out of the way.
“I have so much crap. I have no idea where I’m going to put it all. Maybe the closet. That’s where it all was when I packed it up.”
I heard little girls’ voices and looked over at him. “Are those your twin sisters?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He stepped around the boxes and led me down the hall. To my delight their room was in the tower. The walls were octagonal, just like I’d imagined. Two beds and two dressers were lined up around the room, the beds almost like spokes.
His two sisters were wrestling with a box, their small hands trying to pull the tape off. They turned their heads to us when we walked in the room, their dark lashed eyes staring up at Ren.