Chapter 26
Instead of sitting on the banks of the Seine River in Paris, I’m taken back to six years ago, in Tyler’s backyard in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
It was summertime. Tyler and I had spent a whole day in his tree house, acting out scenes I came up with about Jar Jar Binks and Padmé Amidala having adventures together on Naboo.
Roseline called up to us.
“Boys! It’s time for lunch!”
Of course, it took several minutes of me blabbing Tyler’s ear off about some story I’d made up to help ease him down the rope ladder.
The Travers’s kitchen was vast and blindingly white. Tyler and I climbed onto the tall stools at the counter. Roseline took our lunch off the stove.
“It’s about time,” she said, clucking her tongue. “These are only good when they’re piping hot.”
She put two sandwiches in front of us.
“It’s my new favorite!” Tyler exclaimed. “Roseline’s special grilled-cheese-and-jelly sandwiches.”
“Grilled cheese and jelly?” I said, making a face. “That doesn’t go together.”
“But this isn’t just any grilled cheese,” said Roseline with a smile. “This is the special French-style bread I grew up with in Haiti, and special French-style cheese.”
“And the jelly?” I asked.
“That’s just my own little twist,” laughed Roseline. “I made these for my own kids all the time. It was their favorite.”
Doubtfully, I took a small bite, just to be polite. But the crrrrrk! crunch the bread made and the gooey, salty cheese and the rich butter baked in with just a hint of sweetness came together perfectly, like a symphony.
“Mmmm!” I said. “This is so good! I might like this more than Spam and eggs.”
“See? I told you it’s good!” said Tyler. “Roseline, can me and Ben have your special grilled cheese and jelly every day from now on?”
Roseline grinned a kind of sad little grin. “Maybe most days,” she said, “and just for the rest of the summer.”
Tyler and I looked at each other, frowning.
Mom and the other adults—Roseline, Mrs. Travers—had been telling us that the Travers family might be moving away if a big deal with Tyler’s dad’s company went through in New York. “You two might have to get ready to say goodbye,” Roseline kept warning us. And she warned us again on that day.
It was exactly what Mom kept warning me about with Dad, since he wasn’t getting any better from his stomach cancer.
Tyler looked at me with his giant gray eyes—they looked even bigger behind his thick glasses. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you,” he said, almost crying. Back then, Tyler cried a lot.
I wanted to cry, too. I didn’t want to keep saying goodbye—not to Roseline, not to Tyler, and most of all not to Dad. I didn’t want to think about any of it—it was too real—so I flashed the biggest smile I could. “Then let’s not say goodbye,” I said.
I took a piece of paper from a pad Mrs. Travers kept next to the kitchen phone.
“If one day, you have to move away,” I said to Tyler, “we don’t have to think about goodbye. We can just look forward to when we see each other again. And when we meet again, we can act out a whole scene.”
“A scene?” asked Tyler.
“Yeah,” I said, starting to write. “It would be like a secret handshake, only better. To prove that we never forgot each other.”
Roseline laughed and shook her head. “You always have to make everything a little something extra, don’t you, Ben?”
“Yep!” I said happily. “Dad says it’s my je ne sais quoi—that means my ‘X factor.’ ”
Roseline let out a deep belly laugh. “Yes, Ben, I know what that means. And I agree with your dad.”
After Tyler and I finished our special grilled cheese sandwiches, I wrote up the whole scene. It was something really simple that my fifth-grade brain could come up with. I wrote on that heart-shaped piece of notepaper:
When we see each other again, Tyler will be eating a special grilled-cheese-and-jelly sandwich.
Ben will say, “That’s some sandwich.” And Tyler will say, “Yep, grilled cheese and jelly. My favorite.” And then Ben will say, “That’s strange.
Because my best friend in the whole world loves grilled cheese sandwiches. Can I have a bite?”
I showed the scene to Tyler, and he laughed when he read it. “I love it!” he said. He loved every story I ever came up with, even the ones that kind of sucked. “Let’s write it out again so we’ll both have a copy and know our lines.”
“No,” I said confidently. “You keep it. I don’t forget things like this.”
And I didn’t, normally. But a little bit later, Roseline came out to the base of the tree house and called up to me, her voice tight. “Ben. Your mom called. I have to take you home—right now.”
I guess it’s how busy life gets when someone dies, but I didn’t get to see Tyler for the rest of the summer, or for the next six years. That whole summer has been scooped from my mind, as neatly as a ball of ice cream.
Until now.