“I don’t have anything, Scotty.”

  “What?” I say like I’m coming out of a dream.

  “I got no protection. No rubbers. Are you on the pill?”

  “The pill?” I swear I draw a blank.

  “Yeah—the pill.”

  I inhale and lean against Jason, who I realize is almost a foot taller than me. He’s been leaning against the tree on a slide all this time to try to be eye to eye with me. He kisses me again and his tongue is warm and slow in my mouth. I don’t taste the beer anymore.

  Then he kisses me between my breasts but stops when I inhale.

  “Are you, Scotty, on the pill?”

  “No.”

  He kisses me again, then slowly zips my pants up and pulls down my T-shirt and bra. He exhales and zips his own jeans back up, then pulls me to him, again.

  “Girl, you feel too damned good.”

  “So do you,” I say.

  Jason pulls his shirt down and reaches to get his jacket. He zips it up and holds me tight. I feel him all over and breathe him in. He smells like fall, spices and soap. Then he takes me by the arm and gently leads me back to the car. When he pulls into my driveway he gets out and opens my door for me (like my dad does for Laura) while I scoop up the bag of chips and chocolate sauce. Then he walks me to my front door, kisses me again, and stands there till I go in.

  When I wake up around two in the morning the only reason I know it wasn’t a dream is that I still smell like him.

  Then I think—oh hell.

  PART 5

  Folks

  YESTERDAY FALCONE GOT A PHONE CALL BACK FROM his sister Gina. She said, “It’s not a good time to come visit me. But I miss you. Tell me how you and Misha and Scotty are. Is there something that you need? Any of you? I miss you all and it sometimes seems you are all a dream as you get older and I see you less. If you don’t need anything, tell me everything . . .”

  They talked for an hour. He said they talked about everything and nothing at all.

  Yesterday I got on a bus, got dropped off in Kris’s neighborhood, and stood across the street until his mother came out to get the mail. She looked at me, then at the brace on my knee, squinted at me some more, then went quietly back into the house without getting her mail.

  Yesterday Misha finally read a letter from her parents that she’d had for over a month (her father thinks e-mail is destroying the whole world’s ability to write letters) that they were going to spend another semester in South Africa and might go to Ghana after that. They’d promised Misha that by her sophomore year they’d be stable and at home. Misha wouldn’t have to live with the Aunts. We are all juniors now.

  She holds on to the letters a while so she can defend herself from the hurt that usually comes.

  I went home and burned Misha a mix CD. Then I put it, three candy bars, and two postcards of Mexico with a picture I took of Nougat Boy on my phone when he wasn’t watching, wrapped that baby up with Misha’s address on it, and asked Laura to post it for me before she went to the hospital.

  WHEN LAURA LEFT I BEGAN to read some more Anna Karenina. I think when it was written it was just a dramatic love story that became more important to people with the passage of time. Who knows? I got the mail out of the slot and walked through the house listening to the quiet. Laura finally came back home and is in her office. She looked up at me. An hour later I am still curled up beside her on the couch. Just me, her, and her laptop.

  “I mailed your package to Misha.”

  “It’s not from me—it’s from Nougat Boy. They need to love each other and be together.”

  Laura sighs and says, “Oh.”

  Laura has never acted like she loves Keone any better than me because he’s her biological child. But sometimes other people say things. Like we’ll be in the mall and someone who is only just acquainted with the family will come up and say, “You look too good to have a child her age.” Then something like, “Oh yeah, I forgot; you aren’t her real mother.”

  That’s when Laura smiles real sweet and says—deadly—“If I’m not her real mother I don’t know who the hell is.” Then she takes me by the hand and walks off. I’d feel sorry for these people if they weren’t so stupid. They don’t know Laura.

  I do.

  You never know about folks.

  I REFRESH THE BAG OF GINGERSNAPS BESIDE KEONE’S bed. We tell all the nurses and aides to eat them if they want. I like the idea of Keone hearing cookies munching. That has to be his favorite sound in the world. Maybe it will wake him up.

  Then I make sure his plane, train, and automobile books are always within arm’s reach in case he wakes up. Laura is straightening his room and just brought him another comforter, this one with cars on it. She fluffs the comforter, then pulls up a chair and starts reading a novel.

  I sit beside her and she puts down her book.

  “I’ve been thinking of you, Scotty.”

  She takes my hands gently and rubs them when she feels the cold.

  “I’m around.”

  “I see that, but I’m not seeing very much of you.”

  “I try to see the boy when you aren’t here so he won’t have so much alone time.”

  She says, “I know. How is your knee? Your leg? Your body?”

  “Better.”

  “And your heart?”

  I want to say broken, bruised, confused, guilty, and cold. But all I end up doing is faking a smile, then breaking down and crying—again like a baby. Laura lets me blubber on her until I look up and see the streetlights starting to shine through Keone’s hospital window. He hasn’t moved, and life is going on. I want to tell her about stupid stuff that used to be fun to talk about before her baby ended up in a coma.

  I forget it all and keep on crying.

  I HAVEN’T TOLD ANYBODY ABOUT me and Jason in the park, because I don’t know what that was about. It’s not like I cheated on a friend, ’cause Misha isn’t into him—she’s got Thelonious on the brain—so I guess I can tell her later. I don’t know what it is. I can’t sit down again. I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to do. Then I remember, so I dash into the girls’ bathroom and hide in a stall, pull out my phone, and make a call to a bakery.

  I think of Falcone—he won’t give anybody advice about stuff like this, ’cause it’s only been three months since he broke up with Nick. And that was ugly, since all of us—including Falcone’s papi—loved Nick. We couldn’t help ourselves. We’d invite him to things after the breakup. Falcone was almost ready to break up with us. I think it’s time for him to get over it and go back with Nick . . . with just a little help from a friend.

  That makes me think about Jason even more. And it makes me think everybody is wrong about love and sex and heartache. I don’t think there should be guilt. I never even looked at or thought about him that way before that day in the park. It just happened. So I think it was just about the loneliness and anguish of us both losing a boy I was just about to know.

  Nothing is making it go away.

  But in school Jason stares at me across the lunchroom. In the hallway he leans against his locker and watches me walk down the hall.

  “Scotts. Scotty?”

  His voice is like candy. Like caramel. I limp away as fast as I can and act like I haven’t heard him, which is easy to do when classes let out and everyone is talking like everybody else is deaf.

  “Scotty.”

  Again with the Scotty. Doesn’t he know he’s going to make me pull out all my hair . . . or run at him and kiss him till his lips hurt? Either one won’t look good during class break. I dart in front of Darryl Willis and Kyle Gallagher—who are probably twenty feet wide together. They are the line on the football team. I lose him.

  When we pass on the stairs later that day he walks just close enough to brush against my arm. And when he tries to talk to me I almost fall down the stairs ’cause a freshman with a giant papier-mâché clown gets between us. He catches me before I tumble down the stairs like my mom’s old Slinky.

  I gurgle—“Thanks”—and run. Ummmm, limp quickly.

  Is it wrong that I just want to kiss him all over the face in front of the bio lab, where it’s obvious someone has had an accident with sulfur?

  I feel embarrassed, and I probably made him feel stupid.

  No way can I be in a limo with him in a couple of days.

  How am I supposed to tell the difference between sex and love since I’ve technically only had something that wasn’t really sex and I don’t think I’ve ever been in love . . . maybe? Unless the stomachache and sweaty palms I have are Ebola.

  TODAY I FOUND MY DAD OUTSIDE THE SHED OILING everything in sight.

  He watched me climb over some lawn chairs, a ladder, and an old scarecrow we used to put in the front yard until Laura caught Keone hiding cookies in it. Crazy, but true.

  “What up, parent?”

  “Just doing what I should have done a few weeks ago.”

  I say, “Want some help?”

  He looks at me, laughs, and shakes his head. He knows all I’ll do is get in the way and eventually start whining.

  “How about you just be some company, Scotts—no help?”

  Fine by me.

  I know it’s going to be enough just to sit next to him.

  “Did you know that when I went into Keone’s room to take some more train books to him I found a photo album?”

  “Nope,” I say.

  Dad shakes the last oil out of a can and opens a new one.

  “I thought Laura might have told you about it.”

  “She’s been busy, Dad. With the hospital and all. Work. You know.”

  He smiles.

  I start to scoop up leaves that have fallen from our backyard maple tree and begin to cover my legs, then my thighs, and finally my torso with them. It’s always what I love best about fall. I can only get Keone to let me cover him in leaves if I bribe him with something sweet, round, and crunchy.

  So for the next hour, I become leaf girl and my dad oils anything that’s metal and glances at me when he doesn’t think I’m looking. I feel like a little kid again and it feels just fine.

  Dad pulls up one of the plastic lawn chairs and watches some leaves tumble to the ground and says, “Keone keeps a photo album.”

  I sit up and stare at my dad after having covered my whole body with the sweetish-smelling leaves.

  “There are pages and pages of trains he’s cut out from the train magazines I buy him. And on each train there is a photo he has glued of someone he knows in front of the engine. Their faces are completely round, and he always makes sure they are attached to the same train, over and over. You know—just like my head belongs to my body.”

  I stare at my dad.

  I like him a lot. Always have, especially when he seems puzzled—like now.

  “Are you saying Keone sees us all as certain trains?”

  Dad nods and his eyes look sad.

  He leaves his chair and goes back to oiling and cleaning tools that will be put away for the winter.

  I guess I never really thought how hard having an autistic son was on my father. He never seemed upset about it and has the patience of ten people. I mean, sometimes I do wonder what a world with a “normal” Keone would look like.

  But Dad blows me away by saying—“I wonder what he was thinking when his beloved train crashed as he was riding it to get home?”

  I lie on my side and watch more leaves fall to the ground. I am too tired to cover myself up anymore.

  THERE’S TOO MUCH FOOD AT MISHA’S HOUSE JUST to be feeding Thelonious. You’d think they had about twenty people living there instead of just Misha and her five skinny aunts.

  Thelonious sits beside Misha eating tons of spaghetti and meatballs, baskets of garlic bread, and about a bushel of salad. The Aunts love him. They love anyone who can throw down on some food. Misha told me they loved Jason too—the one time he came over.

  The Aunts will feed anybody. They also think anybody going to a dance with their niece—who is costing them serious coin on a dress, shoes, hair, and nails, plus her part in the limo—should at least show up and let them check him out and maybe run a background check (Jacks’s thing).

  With Jason they got all-American scholar, athlete, hot dude.

  With Thelonious they get artistic, geek, X-Men-loving musician.

  They seem to love Thelonious and so does Misha.

  Falcone sits next to me stuffing his face (we decided to come for dessert) and isn’t adding to the conversation. Which is why he was invited in the first place. No worries, though, ’cause Thelonious can hold his own.

  The Aunts—Lynn, Adrienne, Caroline, Costella, and Jacks—laugh and talk about everything at dinner. Lynn says to Thelonious, “Misha says you lived in Mexico for a long time.”

  Thelonious nods, swallows, and says, “Yeah, I lived in Mexico City with my dad. He traveled a lot. After that I came back to the States to live with my mom up in the mountains.”

  “What mountains?” I ask.

  “Blue Ridge. I lived in North Carolina for a few years with her. She’s a weaver,” he says.

  “It must have been beautiful in the mountains,” I say.

  Thelonious gives Misha a crooked grin. He grabs her hand, looks into her eyes, and says, “It’s pretty beautiful around here, too.”

  Falcone coughs.

  The Aunts sigh and/or giggle.

  Then the conversation veers off about cars and soup. I don’t know what thread they used to link the two. I just look at Misha grinning like an idiot. She’s so happy. Falcone is happy because his mouth has food in it. Thelonious is happy because of Misha and the food. The Aunts are happy ’cause everybody is eating their food.

  I just sit here chewing on garlic bread and thinking about love and the look on Nick’s face the other day when that clown delivered his basket of cookies to the school. He looked freaked when the clown walked towards him near the gym while everybody laughed. Then he looked damned relieved when the clown left the cookies and walked away. I pretended not to notice when Nick read the card attached to the basket of peanut butter cookies and slowly started to smile.

  PART 6

  Autumn

  FALCONE STANDS BEHIND ME AS I PUT EACH individual flower on the grave. He’s whispering something, or maybe he’s singing. Whatever he’s doing I don’t mind it. This is the second time in two weeks that Falcone has brought me here. After all the flowers are gone I sit down on the ground next to Kris’s grave.

  He keeps whispering.

  I missed Kris’s funeral. Laura lay beside me on my bed that afternoon while I cried until my eyes shut from swelling. Kris’s mom didn’t want me there. She couldn’t help herself. She knew the truth that nobody else would talk about. She knew the way it all happened but wasn’t supposed to. Kris’s mom knew it was all my fault that he wouldn’t ever come home, graduate, go to college, get a job, get married, and have babies and grandbabies.

  I stole it all from him and her.

  And I think about him every day, after years of only thinking about him as the boy who put gum in my hair and forced me to be bald. I went years not even talking to him. I should have kept doing that. I should have kept being pissed and snarky whenever he was around.

  Now I can’t go five minutes anymore not thinking about Kris. I’ll be laughing or reading—then slam, his face, his eyes, his voice will come out of nowhere. I remember his laugh just as the train started braking. I remember his hand pulling me back and the other one reaching out for Keone as he flew through the air.

  Falcone takes my hand and we start to walk back to the car.

  I read tombstones as we walk.

  I say, “They always say the nicest things about you when you’re gone.”

  Falcone squeezes my hand and says, “Yeah, it’s all about what everybody should have said. I think I’ll have them put ‘never mind’ on my headstone.”

  “I like that,” I say.

  We let go of hands as we split to go past a tree—then grab hands again when we clear it. As we walk past the headstones and monuments I think how cemeteries end up being about the living, and how they want to remember the dead. I think if the dead had their say there’d be a whole lot more parties going on in here. And I don’t know why, but that makes me cry.

  Falcone puts his arm around me and doesn’t say anything. What can he say? What can I tell him? It’s hard to talk about a dead boy that you only held a single conversation longer than thirty seconds with since you were nine. Then you sit beside him, he laughs, you think he’s more than okay, and you can even see through to forgiving him for making you bald. Then he’s gone and everybody around you knows more about him than you.

  Falcone starts whispering again.

  I lean closer to him and brush the hair away from his face.

  “What are you saying?”

  Falcone looks at me, surprised.

  “I’m praying.”

  “Praying?”

  “Yeah, praying. Weren’t you praying by the grave?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever prayed. My mom used to take me to Sunday school, but I only remember that she gave me peppermint gum and I always fell asleep.”

  Falcone nods and holds me tighter when a cold breeze makes us both shiver.

  “Gina used to take me to church. My dad—not so much.”

  “I never went after my mom died. I don’t think my dad believes.”

  We get to the car and instead of getting in sit on the hood.

  “You don’t think he believes in what? Praying or God?

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “What do you believe in, Scotty?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I lean closer to Falcone and try not to start crying again, but the tears roll down my face. Falcone offer his sleeve as we sit and watch the rest of the leaves find their way down.

  Falcone wipes away some more of my tears.

  “Never mind,” he says.

 

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