Sway (6 page)

“Most people aren't thinking anything any more interesting than what they are saying,” I said. “In fact, that would probably be an awfully boring superpower. Besides, I can usually tell what people are thinking.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked with one eyebrow cocked at an impish angle. “What am I thinking?”

“That I'm full of shit. That was an easy one.”

She just shook her head, her hair a shimmering pool around her shoulders. “Haven't I seen you around school with that girl … uh … Josephine, right?” Bridget asked.

“Joey,” I corrected her. “Only call her Josephine if you want to make her angry.”

“Joey, then. She was in my art class last year. She's very … creative. Is she your girlfriend?”

“Definitely not,” I said, equal emphasis on “definitely” and “not.”

“Why definitely not?” she asked, seeming to get some amusement out of her line of questioning.

“Because she's a special kind of crazy,” I said. “You can't sleep with a girl who has issues like that. They go
Fatal Attraction
on you. Next thing you know, there's a small woodland creature boiling in a pot on your stove top.”

Her laugh startled me. I hadn't been making an attempt at humor but I felt a warm glow spreading under my skin all the same as she laughed appreciatively at my comment.

“What about you?” I asked, telling myself it was all part of the job. “Boyfriend?”

“Why do you want to know?” she asked smartly.

“I'm just making conversation.”

“No, I don't have a boyfriend.”

“Why not?” I asked. “What's wrong with you?”

“Why does something have to be wrong with me?” she asked. “Maybe I just don't want a boyfriend. Are you some kind of chauvinist?”

“Now I feel like you're trying to confuse me on purpose,” I said, turning my attention away from the road long enough to give her an admonishing look.

“I don't have a boyfriend, because I haven't found what I'm looking for in a guy. That's all.”

“And what is it you're looking for, Bridget Smalley?”

“Someone who's kind, smart, and funny,” she said. “Someone who appreciates art and music and likes to talk about interesting things.”

“You forgot the handsome part,” I said.

“Oh, I don't really care about the way someone looks,” she said with a dismissive flutter of her hand.

“Oh, really?” I said, letting my tone convey my disbelief as I rolled to a stop at an intersection and studied her for a minute before hanging a left.

“It's true,” she said insistently. “If I like a person, if they have a good heart, that's what makes them beautiful.”

“Did you read that in a fortune cookie?” I asked.

She swung an impatient look in my direction, one eye narrowed with unspoken criticism. A long pause followed while we played the silent game.

I lost.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I suppose if a person is … nice, it can make them seem better looking.”

She smirked in triumph to herself and sat up a little straighter as she returned her gaze to the window.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Siegel Center. Though I had driven by it a thousand times, I had no idea what it was or what went on inside. “What is this place?” I asked.

“They do programs here for people with special needs,” she said as she gathered her purse and jacket from her lap. “I volunteer at least one day a week—sometimes two—helping out with the kids. Do you want to come in? Check it out?”

“Why not?” I said, and pulled into a parking space. She was already halfway out of her seat when I got to her side of the car but I held her door until she was clear and shut it behind her.

“Such nice manners,” she said, and I got the sense she was teasing me again, but not in a way that was meant to poke fun at my expense, more like a flirtation.

“So, what, are you like Mother Teresa or something?” I asked.

She snorted and I marveled at the fact that even when she snorted, she made it cute and kind of sexy. “Hardly,” she said.

“You visit your grandmother, you volunteer at the Siegel Center. What do you do for fun on the weekends—rescue kittens or work in a soup kitchen?” I asked.

“Now you are making fun of me,” she said. I lengthened my stride so I could reach the door before her and hold it open. She thanked me as she walked through.

“I'm not making fun of you,” I said. “I'm truly interested. The concept of altruism fascinates me, though I don't really believe in it. You must have a selfish motive for all of your good deeds.”

She squinted one eye as she surveyed my expression, then smiled, as if to show that all was forgiven. “You're very perceptive, Jesse, if not a little annoying. I've decided I'm going to like you, even though you don't want me to.”

My stomach went hollow and my tongue suddenly dry as she said this and I felt heat in my face. It was a strange sensation and I wondered if I was coming down with something. A minute later, the hollowness of my gut subsided as I followed her silently down the hall. Bridget greeted every person we passed, most of them by name—the receptionist, other volunteers, even the janitor. People lit up when they saw her—their faces split into smiles and their voices were warm with genuine gladness as they greeted her. Walking with Bridget was like walking with Jesus on the road to Galilee.

Once through the building, we walked out onto a lawn with a raised garden and a playground. A group of kids, most of them elementary or middle school age, was outside playing with a few bored-looking adults. There was a sudden roar from the group and I jerked with alarm, but Bridget did not seem fazed by it. A lot of the kids came running, at least the ones who could run, to surround Bridget and began hugging and kissing her with indiscriminate affection.

I'll admit I was a little creeped out by it. These kids were all freak shows—a fat kid with a pie face and teeth that jutted in twenty directions, a girl with glasses as thick as ballistic-proof Plexiglas and an honest-to-God flipper instead of a right arm, a kid on crutches with a right leg that was bent at an impossible angle and drool all over his chin. My first instinct was to run, and I looked to Bridget to gauge how she was reacting to them.

Incredibly, she was all smiles, submitting to bone-crushing hugs and even a kiss on the face from the kid with the drool. I felt my gag reflex rise when I saw the wet patch he left glistening on her cheek and turned my head to look at something—anything—else.

“Hey, guys,” Bridget said merrily. “This is my new friend, Jesse. Can you say hi to Jesse?”

Jesus, she was actually encouraging them to interact with me, and for a second I was afraid I was going to have to fight them off like wild animals. But they just smiled and waved at me and said hi. I gave them a halfhearted wave and was rehearsing my excuse to leave in my head when Bridget tugged at my sleeve and said, “Come meet my brother.”

I was relieved to see her brother was not some kind of mutant but a normal-looking kid with a lanky frame, glasses, and a sour expression, who was leaning against the wall of the courtyard with earbuds in his ears.

“Pete, come here,” Bridget said, waving to him. Pete reluctantly left his position along the wall and walked over to us. He had a limp, which gave him a weird, rolling gait, and when he got closer, I could see he had not been graced with the same good looks of his sister. The resemblance was there, but his face was not as perfectly even and chiseled as a Greek statue. “This is Jesse,” Bridget said, gesturing to me. “He goes to Wakefield too.”

“I know you,” Pete said, almost like an accusation. “We had the same study hall last year.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked with some feigned interest.

“Yeah, I mean, of course I don't expect you to remember. You always sat in the back and I was always down front with the—” He broke off without finishing his thought.

I caught the look of sympathy that clouded Bridget's eyes as she studied her brother and I wondered how much of a social pariah he really was.

“Didn't you used to date Heather Black?” Pete asked.

“We went out,” I said noncommittally.

“Heather Black is like the most beautiful girl in school,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “she makes up for it by having a really shitty personality.”

“Jesse is fashionably indifferent,” Bridget said without a hint of irony in her voice. “I've got to go spend some time with the kids. If either of you want to join us in a game of kickball, you're welcome. Pete will protect you,” Bridget said with a wink as she walked away.

Pete and I took up a post against the wall and stood silently watching Bridget with her brood. I decided I could use the opportunity to gather some more critical information about Bridget for Ken. “You a martyr too?” I asked Pete, breaking the silence between us so suddenly that he jerked in surprise. “Spend all your time helping those less fortunate than yourself?”

“No,” he said forlornly. “There's just one angel in our family.”

I nodded in understanding. As an only child, I didn't really get the animosity that existed between siblings. It was hard to comprehend a relationship that could make two people alternately love and hate each other with such passion, sometimes expressing both within the span of only a few minutes' time.

“She volunteers here because the Siegel Center helped my family so much when I was younger,” Pete said, as if that were explanation enough for why a beautiful, popular teenage girl would give up her time to play kickball with a bunch of dopey kids.

“Helped your family with what?” I asked.

“I don't know. Adjust to having a kid with special needs, I guess.” His voice was bitter as he said this, which got me interested enough to turn and look at him.

“Why?” I asked. “What's wrong with you?”

“I have cerebral palsy,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Cerebral palsy is a brain disorder.”

“And what?” I pressed. “Are you retarded or something?”

“No, I'm not retarded,” he shot back as if
I
were the one who was retarded. “Having CP doesn't mean you're necessarily learning disabled, though some people with CP are.”

“That's why you walk funny?” I asked. “Because of this CP?”

He stared at me for a long minute, his expression incredulous though not angry—at least not that I could tell.

“Yes,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “I walk funny, I wear glasses, and I have a weird face because I have CP.”

“I didn't really notice the weird-face thing,” I said, studying his, “but now that you mention it—”

“I don't have full control of the muscles in the left side of my face. That's why it looks different.”

“Oh. So, Bridget volunteers here every week?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Tuesday after school, and I always have to come.”

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, if you don't want to, why do you come?”

“She's only volunteering because of me. If I didn't show up, it would be weird.”

“Weird for who?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said, exasperated now. “Me. Her.”

“Why don't you just tell her you want to do something else?”

“Like what?” he asked, like suddenly I was the guy with all the answers.

“Well, if you don't have anything else to do, why do you mind coming here so much?”

“What do you do after school?” he asked.

“Work, mostly.”

“You have a job?”

“I'm self-employed.”

He chortled, which seemed to be all he had to say on the subject, then asked, “So, are you in love with my sister?”

“Why would you think that?” I asked.

“All guys are in love with my sister,” he said, sounding a little pissed about it but not, I guessed, out of some sense of being protective. More like he was tired of being the sibling who wasn't so very.

“And why's that?” I asked, as if I didn't know.

“Because she's beautiful,” he said, again with a tone that implied I was a half-wit.

“So? It doesn't matter how beautiful a girl is—chances are there's some guy, somewhere, who's sick of her bullshit.”

“Not Bridget.”

“Oh, yeah? What makes her so special?” I asked.

“It's not an act,” he said. “She's genuinely a good person.”

“I just met her today,” I said, “so no, I'm not in love with her.”

“Give it time,” he said gloomily, which I was starting to see was his outlook on just about everything.

“Does she date much?” I asked, since we were on the subject.

He just shook his head. “Oh, man, and you said you just met her today? God help you, buddy.”

We both fell silent as we watched Bridget coordinate the most ludicrous game of kickball I'd ever witnessed. When she caught me watching her, she just smiled brightly and lifted her hand in a discreet wave. I caught myself returning her smile and shot a glance in Pete's direction to see if he was watching, but he was studying his iPod and not paying attention.

After a while, Bridget got the kids to help her clean up the equipment and it was another round of hugs and kisses before they all waved good-bye and she came to retrieve her brother. The three of us walked to the parking lot, where I offered them a ride home.

Bridget directed me to their neighborhood, which was just outside the center of town—an older neighborhood but not part of the historic downtown.

“So, you do this every Tuesday, huh?” I asked Bridget nonchalantly. “Volunteer with retarded kids at the Siegel Center?”

“The kids that I work with all have some form of physical disability, but only a few of them actually have any kind of learning disability. I do the sports with them because it either helps them to build confidence in their bodies, even if they're differently abled, or helps them to develop coordination.”