Someone to Hold On To #4
“Thank you.” He sighs again and runs his hands over his short curls.
The headlights of a car driving by in the parking lot cast across his face, a spotlight on his sad smile.
“I think the worst part is… that I did nothing wrong? I feel like it would be easier to accept my life getting blown up if I’d fucked up somehow, you know?
But, like, I followed the path I was supposed to, got my degree and my credential, did student teaching.
I spent all this time preparing for one specific job—so much so that I don’t even know how those skills apply, like, anywhere else or what other jobs are out there.
And still… I couldn’t stop this. I have no control.
” He looks like he’s just lifted and tossed away something heavy, and now he’s tired from the effort.
“I don’t know… it’s like a tsunami just came and washed over the whole life I planned for myself.
And if I don’t find some way to float along with the waves, I’ll sink. Does that… make any sense?”
“That makes perfect sense.” It’s like he plucked the thought, and that overwhelming feeling of out-of-controlness, right out of my own head.
“Sorry, I know I’m rambling.”
“No, you’re not. I get it. Like, I really, really get it.”
We’re both being tossed around by forces outside of our control, and it can make me feel so tiny and insignificant and powerless. But what if instead of treading water and thrashing against the current… we reach for someone else in that same ocean? What if we could help each other through?
“Anyway, thanks for listening, Simone. I need to go talk to the pharmacist again—the insurance guy insisted it would work this time. But maybe… we could hang out sometime? I know you’re busy, so, like, no pressure. Maybe after Christmas—”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Meet you behind the mailboxes?” His whole face lights up with a smile when I nod. “Okay, good, because I’ve got a plan with a brick. Home Alone 2. Only it’s my nana’s brick phone—”
“Yeah, I don’t think we’ll need to do all that.”
“I still don’t understand why you have your stand open until eight,” Henry whispers. We’re sitting in our spot, hidden in the bushes. “Like, who is even coming out of their houses that late? I feel like the average bedtime around here is six.”
“Because D&D gets out at seven thirty, and they’re usually my biggest customers.”
“They got D&D here? I need to see about joining. And yeah, that makes sense. They’re probably hitting the…
” He presses his thumb and forefinger together and raises them up to his lips.
His lips that are full and look especially soft from where I’m sitting, much closer than we were the past two stakeouts…
I shake that thought away and laugh softly. “Honestly, you’re probably right. Mr. Joseph, their dungeon master, does look like the type.”
“Is he on your suspect list? The munchies could be his motive.”
“No, it’s not him. He hates chocolate.”
“Ah, got it.” Is it just my imagination, or is he leaning in closer? “What about Ms. Earlene? I feel like she’s the only one in this complex who would have all those clothing pieces we saw.”
“Ms. Earlene? No way could she run that fast. Plus, I just can’t see her planning a heist like this.”
“A heist, huh? Well, maybe someone else in the theater society pulled a heist on her costumes first. Oh, oh—maybe they’re trying to frame her.” Yeah, he’s definitely closer. His spicy, sweet smell feels like it’s encircling me, warming me up.
I swallow and try to will all of my nerve endings to calm down, to stop reaching toward him like a plant to the sun.
He swallows, too, and I study the bobbing of his Adam’s apple closely, if only to stop looking at his lips.
“Hey, after tonight?” he whispers, and it feels softer, like he wants me to lean in.
“After we catch this person, because I know we’re going to catch this person, maybe we could…
find some other mission? So we could keep, uh… spending time together.”
“I’d like that.” I let my body move the way it wants to.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because I like—”
My hushed words are drowned out by the clattering of footsteps, racing toward us. Henry nods at me, I nod back, and we both leap out of the bushes toward the thief wearing green velvet pants, a leopard-print coat, and a Grinch mask. We grab them around the waist, trapping them in between us.
That’s it. That was the plan.
And it worked. I pull off the Grinch mask to reveal who’s been taking the Neapolitan cookies from my stand, trying to ruin one of the few things I control in my life, and find… Ms. Earlene’s grandson?
I’m speechless, and when I look over at Henry, he seems to be the same. But the boy starts hollering enough for all three of us.
“I’m so sorry! Please, please don’t tell my grandma! I was getting them for her, I swear!” He sniffles and fat tears begin to fall down his face. Henry and I let go of him.
“You were stealing Neapolitan cookies for Ms. Earlene?” I ask. “If it’s a money thing, I would have given them to her… She just had to say.”
“My grandma, she doesn’t know I’ve been stealing them.
It’s just, she doesn’t know a lot of things lately.
She keeps forgetting that my grandpa died, or even who I am sometimes.
” He drags a sleeve of the leopard-print coat across his wet face.
“But the cookies, they make her happy, at least for a little while. And when she’s happy, she remembers more.
I didn’t have money for them because my mom doesn’t even give me an allowance for my chores, even though I told her that everyone gets an allowance for their chores.
” He gulps for air, his confession spilling out faster.
“And I couldn’t ask her for the money because then she might not let me come to Grandma’s house after school anymore on the days she has night shift and make me stay with Gracie the babysitter instead.
And Gracie is the worst. So, so—I had to take the cookies!
And I’m really sorry! I can pay you back when I get my birthday money next month, I promise! ”
“Wow.” I let out a long exhale. Over the boy’s head, I can see that Henry is just as surprised as I am.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Ms. Earlene’s grandson continues. “I knew it was wrong. But I just felt like—”
“Like you had no control over your life,” Henry finishes for him.
“So you had to snatch it any way you could,” I add.
I smile at Henry, feeling even more sure than I did last night that I’ve found someone I want to hold on to in this unpredictable ocean.
“Yeah! Yeah, that,” the boy says.
“Well, we understand, little man,” Henry says.
The boy looks between us with pleading, hopeful eyes. “Does that mean you won’t tell my grandma?”
“No, I’m going to tell your grandma. And your mom too,” I say, making his shoulders slump in defeat. “But I’m also going to help you out.”
As I put the freeze-dried strawberries in the food processor, I’m struck again by how much my life has changed in the past few weeks.
At the beginning of December, Mom and I planned to spend Christmas Eve alone—eating my gluten-free cookies and watching another Hallmark movie (the one with the stressed-out woman from the big city and the small-town bookstore owner).
That movie is still on the TV, and those cookies are still being made, but we’re not alone.
Ms. Earlene and Ms. Lily Anne are on the couch next to Mom, laughing along with her and resting after the big meal they all made together.
Sherry, Ms. Earlene’s daughter and August’s mom, is sitting at the kitchen table with Henry, going over a part-time after-school enrichment program he wants to start for August and some of the other visiting grandchildren at Jacaranda, until he can find a teaching position next school year.
And August is here with me in the kitchen, learning how to make the Neapolitan cookies his grandma loves.
Because now that his mom, and his community, know what he’s been holding, he doesn’t have to hold it alone.
“Does that look right to you?” he asks, holding up a small ball of dough mixed with cocoa powder. “Silent Night” by the Temptations plays softly in the background, harmonizing with the sounds of this community that’s here to hold me too.
“That’s perfect.”
Sometimes life can feel like you’re being tossed around by cold, unrelenting waves, that what happens to you and the ones you love is completely outside of your control. And that ocean may never calm.
But you can choose who you reach a hand out to in those times, to lift them out of the water or be pulled up yourself.
You can choose to look for small glimmers of excitement in the ordinary everyday—like cookie stakeouts or cheesy movie marathons or making out in the pool room (I took that key after all).
That may not be what I wanted or expected for my life of adventure. But still, for now, it feels pretty limitless to me.