I was too ashamed to speak. They chatted away to each other, as if they weren’t angry with me, as if they weren’t embarrassed for me and humiliated by me. As if I were not, as my mother used to say as she whisked me up to my room, a little beast who needed to change back to a boy.
“Your family belong to a club like that?”
Grant laughed. “No.”
“Look at that guy burrowing into those bushes. What do you think he’s doing?”
“Look at the dog on the porch.”
“He’s waiting for him to fetch the ball!” Ed joked.
And when the man backed out of the bushes with the dog’s filthy ball, they burst into hysterics. They thought everything in our neighborhood was funny.
“Layton with the sheep,” Grant said.
Ed cracked up. “Sometimes I’m lying in bed and I think of that story and I can’t stop laughing.”
“I know. It might be the funniest thing I ever heard.”
“What do you think he’s up to right now? Do you think he made it to Alaska?”
“Yeah. Knowing him.”
“With the girl?”
“That I don’t know. I was never sure about that part of the story.”
“Me neither.”
After a pause, Ed said, “I hope he didn’t take that girl. God, they only fuck you up so bad.” Ed’s face was red and he was staring hard at a stoplight ahead of us while Grant was staring at him just as intently. “Still fucking kills,” Ed said.
I saw Grant’s arm lift slightly then fall back down at his side.
Then Ed nudged me. I thought they’d forgotten all about me. “Ground Round for dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” I said lightly, all the anger gone somehow.
We reached Elm Street, the main street of our town, with all its green canvas awnings and the store names written in white on their scalloped hems.
“Let’s get a Snickers at Healey’s,” Ed said, and we turned down Elm instead of going straight on Winthrop to the house.
Becca Salinero and her little brother were choosing sodas from the cooler, their backs to us. I spun around and tried to leave but Ed grabbed me and whispered, “It’s her, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer but it didn’t matter. He went directly to the cooler. I meant to leave the store but my legs were stuck in place.
“Don’t worry,” Grant said. “He’s good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“Good at making friends.”
He waited for them to choose their drinks. Becca’s little brother had taken off his shirt and stuffed the collar and sleeves down the back of his shorts so the rest of it flapped behind him. He was so skinny you could see every rib in 3D.
Ed pointed to the soda her brother had chosen and said, “What, no diet drink for you, Fatty?” And Becca laughed her deep laugh.
I hid in the back aisle while they talked. Becca and her brother paid and left.
Ed had found out that she was a counselor at the summer camp at the community center. When we got home, he said, we’d call up the center for the camp’s hours. And then, he explained as we stepped back into the sun and the heat pouring up from the sidewalk cement, we’d make our plan of attack.
If I hadn’t glimpsed her in the store, hadn’t been physically reminded of her, I might have protested. But I was putty and he knew it.
“Interesting choice,” Grant said, and they both cracked up.
It was true that Becca was going through an awkward stage. She had recently shot up, but only in the legs, so that, especially in shorts, her squat torso looked like it was supported by stilts. She had gotten her braces off in the spring, though now she wore some sort of thick retainer whose fake kitten-tongue pink made her real gums look gray and sickly.
“A diamond in the rough, perhaps,” Ed said, forcing a straight face. “Seriously, it shows good taste. She’s not hiding anything. She’s like a clear stream. That’s exactly what you want. I went for the other kind and it’s ruined my life.”
“Ruined your spring,” Grant said.
“Ruined my spring, summer, winter. What did I miss? Fall. God, I can’t even think about fall. Anyway, not quite as adorable as Celia Washburn maybe, a little Animal Kingdom.” Ed stretched his neck and pretended to rip leaves off a tree. Grant snorted and Ed’s voice quavered then righted itself as he finished: “But very sweet.”
On the way home we passed the park. There was a pickup game out on the basketball court. Ed made a bee-line for it. I cringed. When the ball went through the net, he stepped onto the court and talked to the tallest guy, pointing to me and Grant who had trailed behind.