Jumping Off Swings (8 page)

T
HE LIGHT AT
ELLIE’S FRONT DOOR
has a motion sensor, so it doesn’t turn on until you get a few yards away. It always freaks me out. Like I’m suddenly onstage for the whole neighborhood to see, when a second before I felt like a prowler going up to their dark house.

The door opens before I knock, and there’s Ellie’s mom ready to welcome her daughter’s savior.

“Corinne!” she says. “Ellie’s on her way down. It’s so good to see you.” But I swear what she really means is,
Oh, thank God you’re here. Quick, take my troubled daughter and make her better. I know in normal circumstances I would hope for a more appropriate friend for her, but as things are a bit desperate, I’ll take you.

Ellie’s family is so messed up. It’s like they don’t even know how to talk to each other except to say robot family phrases.
How was your day? How was work? Pass the peas. Dinner was delicious.
I don’t know how Ellie can stand it. My parents are the total opposite, which can be kind of a pain, but at least it shows they care.

“Hi,” Ellie calls from the top of the stairs. She’s always coming from her bedroom. I wonder if she ever goes in any other rooms in the house. Once, when we were little, I convinced her to play in the living room while her mom was busy outside, and Ellie went nuts when she saw we’d left footprints in the carpet. She actually made me help her wipe them out with our hands as we crawled backward out of the room. The carpet in my house is so old and worn that until that day, I didn’t even know you
could
leave footprints on a rug.

Ellie puts on her coat and says good-bye to her mother, who tells me to drive carefully. Guess I’m Miss Ellie’s date again.

“Think we’ll get fresh bread tonight?” I ask as we pull out of the driveway.

“Hope so.”

I nod. This would be a good time to bring up Ellie’s problem. But I don’t know where to start. I looked some stuff up on the Web and found out that she needs to do something soon. Really soon.

“So,” I say. “We need to talk about stuff.”

She peeks through the crack in the open window and lets the cold air blow on her face.

“Ellie? I know it’s hard. But you need to talk about what you’re going to do.”

She closes her eyes against the breeze.

“I’ll go with you and everything. I’ll find out how to get there. Just say the word.”

She leans back into the seat and sighs.

“C’mon, Ellie. We’ve got to —”

“Not yet.”

“El, I really don’t think —”

“I said not yet.” She leans forward and puts her face to the window again.

“OK,” I say quietly. “Not yet.”

When we pull into Caleb’s driveway, Ellie doesn’t get out of the car. “I’m scared,” she says to the windshield. The colored lights from the porch cast a rainbowish glow on her face.

“Me, too,” I say.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll get through this. I’ll help you.”

She nods, turning her face toward the lights and the warm, glowing house.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go in.”

We make our way to the front porch and ring the doorbell. Liz opens the door, and a waft of warm, cinnamon-smelling air wraps around us and pulls us inside like an invisible blanket, protecting us from the truth for one more day.

C
ORINNE,
E
LLIE, AND
I
SIT
on the floor in the living room around the coffee table and do our homework while my mom reads.

“This is absolute crap!” she huffs from behind her paper. “Goddamn conservative.”

I hate it when she does her “I’m such a hip liberal” act. Ever since Ellie and Corinne started coming over, she seems to be trying way too hard to show them what a cool mom she is.

Ellie totally eats it up. She seems to get some sort of vitamin supply just from looking at my mom. And Corinne, who never seemed to care about anything but
People
and
Entertainment Weekly,
is suddenly snatching up my mom’s discarded
Nation
and
Mother Jones
magazines like they’re gold. I swear she has a spell over them. Since that night two weeks ago when they first came here, they’ve been over practically every other night. I’m not complaining about
that.
But I get the feeling that they’re here more for my mom than for me.

When the phone rings, my mom peers over her paper to let me know I should answer.

“Hello?”

“Dave and I are coming to get you, Bud,” Josh says. “Dave scored a bottle of vodka from his old man, and we’re going to the park.”

Ellie, Corinne, and my mom watch me with that
Who is it?
look.

I stand up and turn my back to them. “Um, this isn’t a good time.”

“What the hell? We’re, like, two streets away. Don’t be a wuss.”

“I don’t think so.” I take a few steps away from the three pairs of ears I know are listening.

“You don’t
think
so? Since when did you turn down a chance to get hammered?”

Their eyes burn into my back. I take the phone into the kitchen.

“My mom’s been on my case about going out on school nights,” I say quietly.

“Tell her you’re coming over to study.”

“Like she’d believe that one.” But it’s tempting. At least I know it’s me they want to hang out with.

“OK, well, your loss,” he says.

“Save some for me and we’ll go out Friday.”

“Yeah, right.” He hangs up.

I stay in the kitchen to escape the eyes. I open the fridge and try to find something to drink besides soy milk and ginger iced tea.

“Don’t fall in,” Corinne whispers behind me.

I jump and hit my head.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

I touch my head with my hand. “S’OK.”

“So, who was that on the phone?”

I shrug.

“Does that mean you don’t know? ’Cause I’m pretty sure you seemed to know who you were talking to.”

“Can we talk about this later?” I whisper, nudging my head toward the living room.

“I can’t believe you. How can you still be friends with him?” She says it loudly, like she wants Ellie to hear.

“Will you be quiet?”
I whisper.

She glares at me and pulls her hair behind her ears.

“You don’t understand. You don’t know him.”

She squeezes her lips together and shakes her head. “Maybe I don’t know
you.
” She turns and walks back into the other room.

I stay there, wondering how that just happened.

“Caleb, would you mind putting the kettle back on?” my mom calls from the other room. “We need another round.”

Leave it to my mom to know I need some time to myself. She may be obnoxious sometimes, but she always seems to have my back.

I switch on the burner and watch it turn red.

There are footsteps behind me, and a clinking noise. I turn, expecting to see Corinne again. But it’s Ellie, trying to balance three teacups on their saucers.

“Uh, let me help you,” I say. I reach for the cups, and our fingers touch as I help her guide them to the counter. A few months ago, the thought of Ellie in the kitchen — with me — would have been a fantasy. But now it just makes me feel sad.

“Thanks,” she says. “Water almost ready?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

We watch the teapot as if it’s going to do something interesting. It has a little bird on the spout that whistles when the water boils. I always let the whistle go for a few seconds before I take the kettle off. But right when it really starts to sing, Ellie grabs a potholder and moves the kettle like she’s putting the bird out of its misery.

“Sorry,” she says. “I can’t stand when it screams.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

She shrugs.

Together, we make the new cups of tea and carry them to the living room. Corinne raises her eyebrows at me. I flash her a grin to see if she’s really mad. She smiles back, just a little.

After they leave, I take the cups back to the kitchen and see the bird on its side, staring blankly from the kitchen counter. I pick it up and put it back in the spout. It’s still warm and feels almost alive.

“Thanks for helping pick up,” my mom says from behind me. “They’re such nice girls, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” I say. But when I turn around, she has a worried look on her face. She opens her mouth to say something, but stops.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. See you in the morning,” she says. She ruffles my hair like she did when I was little, then heads off to bed.

I
’M AT MY LOCKER
when I open my backpack and see it there, on top of my books. A small envelope with my name written in blue capital letters. I turn it over in my hands and quickly look around before tucking it between two books and rushing to homeroom.

At my desk, I gently tear open the envelope. Slowly, carefully, I pull out the folded white paper inside. I check to see if anyone’s watching. They are all too busy doing their morning things. Studying last-minute and copying each other’s homework. Mr. Howard hides behind his newspaper instead of taking attendance.

I unfold the paper, excited and almost afraid. I hold it tight in both hands so it won’t shake. I don’t recognize the neat handwriting.

The blue letters slant neatly to the right, as if they are trying to lean off the page.

I forget to cover the paper the way I had planned. I don’t move at all. I just stare at the leaning words.

Liz knows my secret. She knows about my
situation.

I feel people near me. Watching me. Watching my hands hold this note. Trying to read it over my shoulder. Watching my tears mark wobbly lines down my cheeks, like tiny brooks that drip off my jaw and onto the paper, turning the blue words into water.

Check it out.

Is she OK?

Can you see what it says?

What’s wrong with her?

They lean into me to see the blurry words, as if I’m not sitting here. Maybe I’m not. Maybe this isn’t happening. Maybe I’m asleep, and I’m going to wake up any minute. And my mother is going to have breakfast waiting. And we’ll eat whole-wheat pancakes with Vermont maple syrup. And Luke won’t be stoned. And we’ll all just sit and talk about how good those pancakes are. About which schools Luke will get into and which ones I’ll apply to next year. About how bright our futures are.

Someone leans closer. Chocolate doughnut breath in my face. I should hide the note. But I don’t move. I don’t move. I don’t.

I just stare at the wet blue words running off the paper.

“I
THINK JOSH LIKES YOU.
I saw him checking you out when you walked by him at lunch,” Kayla says to Jessie.

“Oh, my God, really? Josh is so hot.”

I can’t stand having my locker next to the two of them. They’re obsessed with who’s into them. They’re always at the same parties Ellie and I go to — I mean,
used
to go to — whispering behind their hands every time someone walks by them. As far as I can tell,
no one
is into them. Without thinking, I make a
hmph
noise to indicate Josh is so totally
not
hot.