Chapter 21 Now
Now
“What’s it about?” I asked.
We’d played Go Fish until we were tired of it, and then Speed, which didn’t work well with paper cards.
They ended up crumbled or ripped. Now Beau was back to reading and I was trying to think of another game we could make out of paper.
I settled on a cootie catcher—also a game from my childhood.
Well, not exactly a game, but it would be entertaining.
I folded the paper, not sure if I remembered exactly how to do it.
“The book?” he responded. He was leaning up against the wall next to me now, instead of on the counter.
“Yes,” I said.
“Haven’t you read a couple of chapters?”
“I didn’t absorb them. I was just reading the words and then falling asleep.”
He closed the book, his finger keeping his place.
“It’s about a girl who works as a messenger for the king.
Everyone in the land has special powers, but she hasn’t figured out what hers are.
She lied to get the job. I guess her dad was a messenger before her, so she didn’t have to go through the normal testing messengers have to go through, nepotism and all that. ”
“Stupid nepotism, always ruining things,” I said, folding down a corner of my paper.
He smirked. “Seriously. She thought it would be an easy job because it’s just delivering mail and packages. But the woods between neighboring towns and cities are a scary place.”
“Oh yeah, I think I read about a monster attack.”
“There have been several monster attacks. This last one was pretty cool.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded.
“Read it to me.”
“Read it to you?” he asked.
“Yes, my eyes are busy making a cootie catcher.”
He tilted his head. “What’s a cootie catcher?”
“You know, that thing that looks like a mouth that opens two ways. You ask it a question and then you pick a color and then numbers and then it reveals the answer.”
“Oh! We called that a fortune teller.”
He had moved to town seventh-grade year from Arizona.
His dad was tired of the heat and his mom loved the ocean, but I wondered if they were really trying to get out from under the shadow of her father.
She seemed to create her own shadow when she got here.
Or maybe it was his, taking up more landmass than she realized.
Beau and I had found a couple of other regional word variations over the years, but not many. “Huh, well, whatever the name, I’m making one.” I jerked my head toward the book. “Read.”
“I…uh…don’t usually read out loud to people.”
“Well, today we’re doing a lot of things we don’t usually do.”
He chuckled. “True.” He opened the book and flipped back a few pages. “Now, remember, she doesn’t have powers, or at least hasn’t discovered her powers yet, so this is seriously scary for her.”
“I will remember,” I said, completing my last fold.
He started reading. Beau was right. In all the years I’d known him, we had never read out loud to each other.
We’d read separate books in the same room before, to ourselves.
I’d heard him practice reading with kids in the tutoring center, drawing out his vowels or emphasizing the ending or beginning of words.
I’d never heard him read a novel, in his deep voice, with his excellent pronunciation and perfect pace.
A smile I couldn’t control crept onto my face as I wrote colors and numbers onto the paper device I’d made.
“ ‘The creature looked like it was made of forest—its limbs shaped like sticks and brush, its eyes red like berries—but its teeth were sharper than rocks and its claws stronger than twigs,’ ” he read.
“I hope her power is that she can turn into a slug,” I said in an even voice. “That creature with berry eyes wouldn’t be able to find her then.”
He grunted. “That’s not her power.”
“Do you know her power yet?”
“No, but it’s not that.”
“What do you hope her power is?”
“Fire or invisibility or something actually cool.”
“Slugs are cool,” I teased. “She wouldn’t be able to fight salt, though.”
“You’re such a dork,” he said.
“Sorry, sorry, keep reading.” I moved on to writing the fortunes beneath the flaps in the catcher.
He kept reading. The girl didn’t discover her powers while fighting the stick monster. She did defeat it, though, without powers. When Beau was done reading the monster-fighting scene, he closed the book. “That’s the end of the chapter.”
“It was a good one. I like that she beat it without powers.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I tossed the pen I’d been using into the front pocket of my backpack. “She probably won’t discover her powers at all in this book. That’s like a book two or three thing to keep us reading.”
“True.” He set the book aside and turned toward me, his eyes on the cootie catcher.
“Oh, are you ready for this?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Ask a question.”
He closed one eye and scrunched his nose in thought. He looked adorable. “Okay.”
“No, out loud.”
“I’m not asking my question out loud,” he said, as if this was common sense. “It’s private.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Pick a color.” I held it up and a memory of sitting on the couch with my dad popped into my brain. I’d made one at home and then made him play. He’d picked red.
“Because it’s lucky,” he said.
“Lucky?” I asked. “How?”
“It was the color your mom was wearing when I first met her. And when she told me she was pregnant with you. It must be lucky.”
I didn’t remember anything else after that, but I remembered throwing my arms around his neck and hugging him tight. I remembered us both laughing. I swallowed. I had forgotten I ever played this with him.
Beau tapped on a square, bringing me back to the present. “Green.”
I took a deep breath. “G-R-E-E-N,” I said, while opening and shutting the mouth of the catcher both ways. “Number.”
He tilted his head so he could see better. “Seven.”
I counted to seven, doing the same motion and then shifted the catcher toward him.
“Um…four.”
“Four.” I opened the flap over four and read, “Probably, but only if you really want it.”
He nodded.
“Was that a good answer?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you really want it?” I teased.
“Yes,” he said in a serious voice, meeting my eyes.
I swallowed and handed him the catcher. “My turn.”
“Question,” he said.
What was my question? I concentrated, like this was the most important thing I’d ever asked a piece of paper, like whatever it said was law.
I should’ve asked something about my dad and his case, but I was too scared about what the answer might be.
So instead I thought: Can Beau and I be friends again? Like before?
That was a scary question too, but the worst-case scenario had already happened.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. “Red.”
“Red?” he asked. “I thought your favorite color was purple.”
“You remember my favorite color?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Can’t undo memories.”
It felt like he could. Like he had. Like we had both forgotten how to be friends and were attempting to relearn everything. “Well, today I want red.”
“Okay. R-E-D.” He did the motion while spelling it out.
“Uh, three,” I said when he showed me my options.
Three was an odd number, so there was a new set of options when I looked this time. “Eight,” I picked, not remembering which number held which words I had written.
He opened the flap. “Absolutely not.”
I let out the breath I was holding.
“Good answer?”
I shook my head. “No, but I think I already knew that.”
“What did you ask?” he said.
“I can’t tell you. It’s private, remember?”
“Right.” He paused, like he wanted to renegotiate the terms. He must’ve decided he still wasn’t willing to tell me his question, because he said, “We have to play at least two more times so the effort of making this is worth it.” He handed it back to me.
“True,” I said. “We better hurry, though; we only have so much time in here.”
He smiled at my joke, and as I looked at him and that familiar smile and those soft, open eyes, a sadness washed over me. I tried to keep it down, keep it from spilling out, but it was getting harder.
“Okay,” he said. “I have my question.”
We went through the motions: he picked, I spelled or counted. And then I opened the flap. I stared at the word Yes! for a long time, then said, “I’m sorry.”
“That’s what it says?” he asked. “That really doesn’t answer my question.”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“What? Why?”
“For cheating. I don’t think I ever told you sorry for that, but I was. I am.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Was it everything with your dad? Or something else?”
“The stuff with my dad, mostly. My life changed drastically overnight and I couldn’t tell anyone. I was tired and scared…I’m still tired and scared.”
He chewed on his lip for a moment, his shoulders rising and falling several times.
Then he opened his arms and leaned forward.
I hesitated for several long seconds, but then I pushed myself into his arms. They wrapped around me and I sat there, with my cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his heart beating.
I wasn’t sure what this changed between us, if anything, but it felt good, at least for a moment, to not be in a standoff with Beau. It reminded me of what I could’ve had all these months instead of loneliness, if I had just handled everything differently. If he had handled things differently.
“What was my real fortune?” he asked. “The word under the two.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was yes.”
He pressed me tighter against him. “That’s what I thought.”