When We Were Us (Keeping Score, #1) (3 page)

Somehow over the summer, all the girls who had played Barbies and doll house with me morphed into strangers who wore lip gloss and worried about their hair.  I missed that memo, I guess.  I still liked to play with dolls and I didn’t care what my hair looked like, as long as it was out of my way. 

Add to that the fact that my two best friends were boys, and I was practically an outcast.  But it didn’t matter to me at first.  I had Jesse and Nat.  If Jesse had grown away from us a little in fifth grade, he made his way back over the next few years.  That was mostly because Nat and I began playing kickball at recess.  Even though he couldn’t really run, Nat could kick the ball.  The other kids let me be his pinch-runner, and together we were a great team.  Jesse stopped being embarrassed by his two friends who sat on the monkey bars every day.  He always chose us first for his team.

When I got to school on the first day of eighth grade, Nat and Jesse were already standing in line against the building.  This was junior high, and there was no playground anymore.  Instead we waited outside the glass doors until the bell rang, and then we filed inside and hoped to find the lockers we’d been assigned.

I joined the boys, smiling my greeting.  Nat returned my smile and greeted me.  “Hey, Abby!  You look really pretty.”  This was high praise from Nat, who rarely paid anyone a spontaneous compliment.  I smoothed the denim skirt my mom had made me wear that morning and thanked him and then snuck a look at Jesse. 

Most of the boys in our class were still shorter than the girls and scrawny.  They could have easily passed for a year or two younger than thirteen.  But not Jesse.  He had sprouted up three inches over the summer, and the lawn mowing business he ran with his two older brothers had given him muscled arms and a light tan.  He grinned at me from his spot against the wall.

“Hey, Ab,” he said.  “Your mom make you wear that?” 

Irrationally his words irritated me.  It was true that I didn’t wear skirts or dresses very often, but couldn’t he have said something nice, like Nat had?  Instead he had to tease me.  I suddenly hated the skirt more than I had this morning when my mom had handed it to me.

“Of course,” I snapped.  “Didn’t
your
mother dress
you
today?”

Still grinning, he shrugged.  “Sure.  I don’t care about clothes.”  His eyes wandered along the lines of other students, and I saw them warm with appreciation.  I followed his gaze to a pretty girl in a short cotton sundress and heels.  She was definitely older than we were, but I didn’t like the expression of admiration on Jesse’s face.  I bet he wouldn’t tease
her
about wearing a dress.

“Bet she can’t play kick ball or anything in that dress,” I commented.  Jesse jerked his attention back to me and flushed a little when he realized I’d seen the girl.  I rolled my eyes at him.

“No more kick ball, Ab.  Least not at school.  We’re not in grade school anymore.”

I became aware that Nat was watching both of us very closely, and I turned slightly to include him. 

“How was your vacation, Nat?” I asked.  His family spent the last two weeks of every summer at a rented cabin in the Poconoes while my family stayed at the beach for a week.  Jesse usually stayed in town. 

“Good,” Nat answered me.  “We went fishing.  And canoeing.  My dad says if I keep working at it, maybe I could do something like that, rowing or whatever, in high school and college.  It would help build my upper body strength.”

“That would be cool,” I agreed.  “Does the high school have a crew team?”

“No,” Jesse answered for him.  “But I think there’s a local club.  Your dad’s right, Nat.  It would be good for you.”

Nat smiled, pleased that both of us had responded so positively.  He looked up at me.  “Did you have fun at the beach, Abby?”

I opened my mouth to tell them about the days I had spent building sand castles and playing in the waves, but before I could say a word, I heard a soft voice behind me. 

“Hey, Jesse.”

I recognized the girl in the dress, the one Jesse had been staring at earlier.  Her name was Sarah, I remembered, and she was very pretty, with black hair and huge brown eyes.  She was gazing up at Jesse as though he were a luscious chocolate ice cream cone.

“Hi, Sarah,” Jesse replied, and I realized to my amazement that he was flustered.  He pushed off from the wall and shoved his hands into his pockets.  “You ready to start school?”

Sarah giggled as though Jesse had made a witty comment.  I barely refrained from rolling my eyes again.  “I guess so.  Not going to be as much fun as summer, though, right?”

Jesse laughed, too.  “Yeah, I don’t think so.  Not unless they let us run through the sprinklers here, too.”

“Oh, I know!  Can you believe how soaked we got?”  Sarah had moved closer, effectively edging out Nat and me.

“My mom asked me if I had stopped at the pool on the way home,” Jesse confided.  “I told her it was a sprinkler inspection that went bad.”

That sent Sarah off into more peals of laughter, the last of which was thankfully drowned out by the bell ringing, signally the beginning of the school day.  We all moved toward the doors and into the building.

I stayed near Nat, making sure he didn’t get jostled in the crowd of kids.  Our lockers were on the same hallway, and we found them easily enough.  I had to try the combination for my lock three times before it worked, but Nat must have had more luck, since he was standing next to me, waiting patiently when I looked up. 

“Where’s Jesse?” I asked him.

Nat shrugged.  “Not sure.  Maybe he went to homeroom already.” 

I sighed.  I had a bad feeling about this day and particularly about this Sarah person, who seemed to have spent time with Jesse this summer unbeknownst to Nat and me.  Once upon a time, Jesse would have made fun of a girl like that to Nat and me, but he seemed to like her well enough today.

We threaded our way toward the classrooms.  Nat and Jesse had the same homeroom, but I was on my own.  We caught up with Jesse just outside the door to their classroom.

“I wondered where you guys had gone,” he said.  “I turned around and I couldn’t find you.  Did you get your lockers to work?”

I arched my eyebrows.  “Yep.  You might not have lost us if you hadn’t been giggling with your girlfriend.”

I expected Jesse to laugh at the joke, but instead he frowned at me.  “She’s not my girlfriend.  I just got to know her over the summer.  I cut the grass at her house.”

“And inspected the sprinklers?”

“I was finishing up one day, and Sarah brought me out a drink.  While we were standing there talking, the sprinklers came on, and we both got soaked.  That’s all there was to it.”

I didn’t have time to answer.  Nat pulled at Jesse’s arm.  “We have to go in, Jesse.  She’s starting to take attendance.  See you at lunch, Abby.”

I gave Nat a half-hearted wave and glared at Jesse once more before I flounced off to my own homeroom.

Chapter 5:  Nathan

I was ten when I first overheard a doctor talking about life expectancy.  He and my parents had sent me out to get some water in the waiting room while they chatted in his office.  I came back quietly enough that none of them heard me, and I realized the doctor was talking about me in a very solemn tone of voice.

“There’s every reason to expect that Nathan will live well into his early adulthood.  We’re doing everything we can, and who knows what treatment might be discovered by the time he’s eighteen?  The important thing is to help him to enjoy every minute.  Quality of life, you know, and Nathan has that in spades.”

My mother sighed, and my father cleared his throat.  I stood frozen just outside the doorway.

My dad asked quietly, “Is there anything else we can do right now?  More therapies, other doctors at other hospitals?”

“We’re doing everything we can,” the doctor repeated, patience in his voice.  “I make it a point to keep up with all the articles and papers published on this condition.  If I think there’s anything that will help him, you know I’ll be the first to let you know.  Try not to let what might happen in the future rob you of what you have here in the present—a wonderful loving son.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I stepped loudly in the hallway before I pushed the door open.  My mother turned toward me, her eyes bright and a smile on her lips.  She grabbed her purse and patted my father’s arm. 

“Are we all set then? Ready to go home?”

On the drive home, my mom chattered about everything and nothing.  My father chimed in only when she specifically addressed him, and I was silent.  As soon as the car pulled into the driveway, my mother jumped out and said something about getting dinner in the oven.  My father climbed out of the driver’s seat more slowly and opened the back door for me.

“Dad?”  I said.  “Can I ask you something?” 

He smiled at me and tousled my hair.  “Sure, kiddo.  Anything.  What’s up?  Woman trouble?”  My father always did that, pretended that we were talking man to man and that I might really have some sort of adult problem that we could discuss.

I shook my head.  “No.  I just wanted to ask you.  Am I going to die?  I mean, like soon?  Like sooner than most people?”

His face fell into the less familiar lines of sadness.  He didn’t ask me why I wanted to know or pretend that I was posing a silly question.  Instead he answered me thoughtfully.

”No one knows the answer to that question, Nat.  We’re on this earth for a certain span of time, and truthfully, no one can tell us what the future holds.  My grandfather lived to be 102, and my dad is still going strong.  But I could walk out to get the paper in the morning and get hit by an out of control car.  We just don’t know.  We try our best to stay healthy and safe, but life is a fragile thing sometimes.”

“But what about me, about what’s wrong with me?  It makes me different from other kids, but is it going to make me die younger too?”

My father sank onto the bottom step of our front porch.  “I don’t know.  I guess, if everything stayed exactly the same as it is right now, the answer would be yes.  The same disease that makes your muscles weak and complicates your breathing sometimes would eventually end your life.  But we know that nothing stays the same.  There are scientists and doctors working to figure out how to cure you.  You are working hard to get better, too.  So you see, we could focus on the possibility that’s there right at this moment, or we can choose to believe that there’s a better future out there.”

I thought about what he said, and I nodded to show that I had listened.  And I really had.  I decided that I was going to do everything I could to live as long as possible, and I was also going to make sure that I lived as fully as I could.  I had a good reason to want to live, the best reason in the world, actually.

I was in love.

I don’t know when I realized that I was in love with Abby.  I had loved her all my life, that was for sure.  Along with Jesse, she was my best friend.  But Abby was always more patient with me than even Jesse.  She chose me more often than he did.  I knew that making choice didn’t help her social life, but she did it anyway. 

But the summer before we started junior high, something changed.  Not Abby, although she was growing up and getting prettier every day.  It was me.  That August, when my family was about to go to my grandparents’ house in the mountains and Abby’s family was heading to the shore, I was grumpy.  I couldn’t figure out why; I love our two weeks in the Poconoes.  We hike trails and play in the creek and sit around reading for hours.

Then the night before I left, Abby came over to say good-bye.  She gave me a typical Abby hug—fierce and tight and full of her particular brand of love—and she said, “I guess I’ll see you the first day of school!” 

And just like that, I knew.  I was in a perpetual bad mood because I was going to have to go two weeks without my best friend, who, as it turns out, was also the love of my life. 

I spent most of that night trying to figure out how I could get Abby to come to the Poconoes with us.  Or how I could go to the beach with her family.  Of course, it wasn’t possible.  My mom never would let me be away from her for that long; she always worried if I were out of her sight for longer than a typical school day.  And Abby was an only child, like me.  Her mom and dad planned this week at the beach especially for her.  They wouldn’t let her go with us, and even if they would, how could I explain this sudden need for her?

So the next morning I got into the car with my parents and we drove west.  I stared out the window as we crossed the Walt Whitman bridge into Pennsylvania.  My mother was talking about everything she wanted to do on vacation, all the food she’d brought to cook delicious meals.  My dad was in a good mood, too.  It was his parents we stayed with during these two weeks, and he enjoyed that family time.

We had been the car almost an hour before my mother noticed that I was quiet.  I shrugged and told her that I was tired, that I hadn’t slept well.  A few minutes later, so they wouldn’t guess that my sleeplessness was related to my question, I spoke up.

“Mom?  Will I be able to get married some day?”  I tried to make it a casual question, something that had just randomly gone through my mind.

I caught the quick glance my parents exchanged, and then my mother turned around in her seat.

“Why do you ask?  You planning to propose to someone soon?”

I stifled a sigh.  Just once I wished they would take me seriously and give me a straight answer.

“I just wondered, that’s all.  You know, with me being. . .different and all.”

My dad met my eyes in the rearview mirror.  “I think it’s one of those things we talked about a few years back, bud.  Your mom and I hope you can fall in love and get married.  But since I’m thinking you’re not going to be eloping any time soon, maybe we don’t have to worry about it today.”

“What made you ask that?” My mother tried to keep her voice light, but I could hear the curiosity and just a tinge of apprehension. 

“Oh. . .I don’t know.  Just wondering about it.”

We were all quiet for a while, and then my mother, still keeping her tone deceptively casual, remarked, “Abby has really grown up this summer, hasn’t she?”