Bea Is for Blended, page 2
Then she drops the ball on the lawn and starts striking it against the net and dead trapping its return every time before striking again. Hard. With her left foot.
I’m wondering if she’s in sixth grade too and if she can do a flip throw-in and if she was the Most Valuable Girl wherever she came from.
“Looks like there’s another soccer star moving to Evergreen Road,” Grandma says. “Should we say hi? Feels like a good day to make a new friend.”
“Nah,” I say. “We better go save Grandma Ethel.”
Mom always says it’s important to find friends who’ll walk with you through the cold night, even if you’re walking in circles. But I’m not made of whispery, walky, hot chocolate hugs. I think I’m more like the icicles that hang from the eaves, strong and sharp and fine on my own. I like Nelle and Fern from my rec team, but we’re not the hang-outside-of-school kind of buddies. Plus, I do have one friend. And I don’t need more than Maximilian.
The girl strikes the ball hard again and Grandma shrugs and we drive off, down Evergreen and onto Maple. The Valentine house is a five-minute drive from our condo and I don’t know why Mom and Wendell think that’s not close enough. When we get there, Cameron is taping boxes together in the driveway and Tucker is practicing his piano, which has been moved out to the garage already.
They wave and smile and walk toward us when we drive up. Grandma Bea pulls them into a hug. “We were just missing you and wanted to say hi.”
Cameron kind of screws up his face like really? and so do I because we saw them yesterday, but Tucker smiles and gets all misty and I swear he’s going to snort like Wendell. Then Grandma pulls me into the hug and I’m all squished in with them until she says, “OK, that feels better. Your brother inside?” They nod.
On the way to the house Grandma leans in for an Embers-girls whisper, “I do love those boys, but you can’t tell a couple of teenagers you’re coming to check on them.” I smile and Ethel creaks the door open like she really is a hundred years old.
“Oh, hello!” she says. “Come in, come in.”
I’m about to say we are just checking to make sure everyone is alive and we’ll be on our way back to the condo now, but Grandma says OK and before I know it Ethel is inching through all the moving boxes and making tea and offering me a rice cake. I shake my head because rice cakes are dry and tasteless and only one-hundred-year-olds, and Wendell, like them.
I see the little blue porcelain container on their kitchen windowsill and I wonder where Wendell will keep that in our new house and I’m hoping not on our kitchen windowsill because that would feel a little weird and sad. I want to stop thinking about those rings inside so I start looking for Bryce and I know right where I’ll find him because Wendell said, clearly, twice, “No video games. If you want to hang out with your friends, hang out with them in real life.”
I open the door to the basement and hear the sound of explosions. I’m right. I don’t even have to go down to check so I say, “Grandma Bea, Bryce is playing video games.”
“And we had M&M’s for breakfast,” she says, and gives me that same wink like this is our little secret.
And I’m thinking, of course. Bryce gets away with everything. Little things like extra screen time and big things too.
3
PRINCIPAL MEESLEY CALLED IT an innocent mistake. The truth is, Bryce deserved at least an in-school suspension on his record, but Meesley just thumped him on the shoulder and said, “Boys can be careless, but I think he learned his lesson. Am I right?” Bryce grinned and nodded.
I tried to tell Principal Meesley that Bryce wouldn’t learn any lesson, but he waved me off and said that when I’m forty-three and looking back on Bryce Valentine spilling soap solution from science class down the hallway, I’ll laugh. But I’ll tell you one thing. Bryce didn’t spill it. He poured it. And I won’t laugh when I’m forty-three or ninety-nine or any other age. And I don’t think Mr. Rinaldi and Ms. Long will either.
The soap that Bryce poured in the hallway was one of the solutions we were using to test tension, that thing that happens at the surface of liquids where all the little molecules hold on to each other so tightly that bugs can creep across without falling through. Little water bugs like Bryce Valentine who are held up by Meesley even when I’m trying to splash around and teach him what it feels like to fall in.
I’m pretty sure the soap in the hallway was meant for Maximilian because it was smeared right outside of Ms. Miller’s science lab before lunch, and Maximilian is always the first one in and the first one out because he has to be two minutes early for everything. Plus, I saw Bryce and his two bonehead friends, Kenny and Morris, in the hallway, and they’re always poking fun behind Maximilian’s back. I was coming from the bathroom and they were taking long sips from the water fountain and watching Ms. Miller’s door. They scurried away fast when it wasn’t Maximilian’s sneaker that found the slippery solution.
I told Principal Meesley that Bryce, Kenny, and Morris were the only three to leave the science lab that period, but when Meesley pulled them into the hallway they all clung together like little molecules, shaking their heads and saying it must have been an accident. That Bryce was carrying a measuring cup but he didn’t mean to spill it.
I reminded Meesley that it’s a rule that all science materials stay in the lab.
But Bryce got off with an apology letter to both limping teachers, who slid and surfed down the hallway, hands circling, until they slammed into each other and fell in a heap.
When I went home that day I told Mom everything and she said things like I sure hope you’re wrong and Wendell will talk to Bryce. I told her I wasn’t wrong, and that Bryce laughs along with Kenny and Morris when they make fun of Maximilian, and that Bryce will never get in trouble because Meesley is no better than a creeping water bug.
When I told Grandma she said, “Ah, they’re still using the old boys will be boys hogwash.” Then she put her arm around my shoulders and said, “You’ll just have to show Bryce on the soccer field tomorrow.”
And that’s another reason why Grandma’s a good captain. She reminds you there’s more than one way to squash a water bug.
I’m a good captain too. Even if Wyatt Triggers was the actual captain of our rec team, everyone knows I ran that field. We won the rec soccer coed championship in fourth grade and we would have won again in fifth grade except we were playing against Bryce’s team, the day after the soap-in-the-hallway incident, when he should have been suspended and not playing at all in the first place. The referee must have lost his whistle because Bryce was offsides by two yards and it cost us the game. Bryce knew it too because when his teammates started cheering and lifting him up on their shoulders he shot a glance at me like I-probably-was-offsides-but-the-referee-didn’t-see-it so ha.
All the parents for our team were standing on the side where Bryce scored the game-winning goal and all the parents for their team were at the other end. Except for my mom and Wendell. They were standing together at the midline like they couldn’t pick sides and were wishing we’d just tie in overtime.
But when Bryce received the last pass my mom jumped up and said, “Offsides, ref! Come on!” And for a minute I thought maybe she and Wendell would get in a fight and break up so they could each go to their own kid’s side and we wouldn’t ever have to have a wedding.
After the game Kenny and Morris waited until the ref and coaches turned their backs, then they laughed at our goalie, spit on the eighteen-yard line, and linked arms with Bryce as they walked off the field. And I’ll tell you one thing. Kenny and Morris are the biggest, sneakiest bullies in the grade and Bryce is the biggest bully-follower-gets-away-with-everything-er there ever was.
After we huddled with our teams, and Kenny and Morris sauntered off, Bryce and I slung our bags over our shoulders and started walking to the sideline in the middle of the field where Mom and Wendell stood waiting.
“You were offsides,” I said. “By a mile.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“Was not.”
“Was too!” I say and shove my fingers in my ears so I can’t hear his lying little voice.
Mom pulled me into a hug and said, “You played great, Bea. You can’t win them all.”
I looked at Bryce and was about to say Actually I could win them all if everyone would play by the rules but he was looking at the ground. He didn’t even seem that happy that he won. He actually looked kind of sad. Like he didn’t win at all. And that got me thinking about more than just the offside goal and losing the championship. It got me thinking of the day Bryce and I turned six weeks old, the day Wendell met my mom, and the rings in the blue porcelain container.
Then Bryce shook his head and sucked his teeth and said, “I wasn’t offsides. Even the ref—”
Wendell cut him off and said, “It looked close from here. But it’s just a game.” Wendell hates conflict.
Mom and Wendell quick-kissed goodbye and Bryce got in Wendell’s car and they drove off like it was no big deal that he just stole the whole championship.
4
MOM AND WENDELL ARE home from their honeymoon, but now our condo is empty except for the two stools at the kitchen counter. Wendell has a set of four that he’s bringing for the kitchen in the new house, and when we all eat together we’ll sit at a new, long dining room table with space for a hundred seats and a high chair.
We’re leaving our stools behind for the couple moving in so they can have nice, quiet dinners, just the two of them.
Everything we’re taking is packed away under our carport and the stuff we’re not bringing, including my bed, is at the end of our driveway. Mom’s giving it to someone to sell at a yard sale and I’m getting Mom’s big bed because she’ll be sharing with Wendell now. That feels weird and I don’t like thinking about it so I shake it out of my brain because it also means no more early morning stories in her room. I guess maybe I’m getting too big for those anyway.
Our front door opens and Maximilian walks in. He lives in the end unit with his grandparents and we stopped knocking on each other’s doors as soon as we were big enough to reach the knob and turn.
“It looks weird in here,” he says, looking around.
“Yeah, it does.” I try not to think about all the important things that happened in this condo. I took my first step in the backyard, and decorated soccer ball birthday cupcakes with Mom at this counter, and ran the same route through the woods to the perfect climbing tree with Maximilian so many times that we stomped a path wide enough for us to run side by side. He taught me to read in that tree. And when we continued the path through to the other side of the woods, into the schoolyard playground, I taught him how to go across the monkey bars.
He shoves the glasses back up his nose. “I wanted to say bye, except it’s not really bye, because I’ll see you in school.”
“Oh, Maximilian, you’re welcome over anytime,” my mom says. “You know that. And you don’t have to knock on our new door either.”
Except Maximilian and I know that’s not true. It won’t be the same. Because Bryce doubles over and laughs when Kenny and Morris start breathing hard and pretend to spin out of control and yell Help! I’m having a Max attack! And who wants to walk through their own bully’s door? Even if their only friend lives there too.
It’s easy to not be nice to Maximilian. That’s why some kids pick on him. His glasses are thick and slide down his nose a hundred times a minute and he likes things particular ways and if they don’t go that way then he starts breathing hard and shaking his head no. And unless you really know him, you wouldn’t know that he just needed a desk that’s an even number away from the door but the teacher assigned him to the third one in, or that he needed to start walking with his left foot stepping first, but everyone got a little too close during lineup and he had to step with his right.
And not everyone knows that he has a spot between his thumb and pointer finger that you can squeeze and sometimes it helps him breathe normally again and stop shaking. And not everyone knows that when his mom comes to visit he runs away to our tree in the woods, and when she comes knocking at our door I never give up his hiding place, and I wait until she’s driven off before I follow our stomped-down path and join him there.
“I’m pretty sure our walkie-talkies won’t reach,” he says.
I didn’t even think of that, and now I’m feeling worse. “I’ll try you tonight,” I tell him. But I already know he’s right.
My mom and his grandparents have a no-cell-phones-until-high-school rule so we saved up our allowances and got these cheap walkie-talkies at a yard sale when we were in fourth grade so we could talk past curfew. The signal was weak, but our condos were only twenty-eight steps apart. Maximilian counted.
Wendell pulls up to the curb in a long moving truck and toots the horn twice. He puts the truck in park, and hops down. Mom smiles at Maximilian and says, “Remember, anytime.”
Then she walks out and Wendell hugs her in the front yard and I hear him say, “Happy day, Louise!”
I’m pretty sure he’s about to start snorting but Mom says, “Don’t you get all weepy on me right now, Mister. We have a truck to load.” I can tell Wendell wants to make this a big moment, like saying I do and walking down the aisle as husband and wife, but Mom is clapping her hands like chop chop.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you,” Maximilian says. He puts his hands on the sides of my shoulders, which is his version of a hug.
“OK,” I say.
Cameron pulls up in Wendell’s car and parks in front of the moving truck. Tucker hops out of the passenger seat and a basketball rolls after him. He dribbles it in our driveway a couple of times but then stuffs it back in the car. Tucker loves watching sports but he isn’t very coordinated and he doesn’t want to do anything that could even possibly injure his hands, because somehow he can make his fingers fly over the piano keys like it’s nothing.
Bryce opens the back door and Dodger and Roscoe bound out and sniff around the mailbox. They both mark their territory, and it makes me mad because this is my territory. At least for another hour.
Maximilian leaves out the back and I go through the front door to the yard.
Wendell puts his hand on my mom’s belly and tells her to sit on the old lawn chair at the end of the driveway and relax. “We have enough hands. And paws.”
Too many, I’m thinking.
She starts to protest but Aunt Tam comes flying out the front door of her condo and says, “Don’t you dare lift a finger, Embers!”
Mom huffs and sits and Wendell says, “Glad she’ll listen to you.”
Wendell, Cameron, Tucker, and Aunt Tam start loading the truck with our things. I drag my soccer net down the driveway, but it’s not new, and the pieces are loose, so the crossbar keeps popping out from the posts. I prop it up in the truck between a couch and a dresser.
Bryce is sitting on the grass trying to soothe Fred, who is screeching in his cat cage. “It’s OK, Freddy Fred. We’re almost home.” Both dogs are circling Bryce and panting and rolling over for belly rubs. All the animals love Bryce the best and I have no idea why. I also have no idea how he called the new house home already. Home to me will always be this condo.
Mom points to me and then to Bryce and then to the bookshelf under the carport. I hesitate and she raises her eyebrows and mouths go. I sigh and shrug and try to move the bookshelf myself but it’ll take me forever to wiggle-inch it down the driveway like this. Mom’s watching me and pointing to Bryce like I should ask him for help but I’m not asking him for any help. I got this.
Then Wendell butts in and says, “Bryce, go give Bea a hand.”
“I’ll be right back, Freddy Fred,” Bryce says and pats the cage. Then he jogs down the driveway and grabs a side. “One, two, three,” he prompts, and we lift and hobble down the driveway sideways. But I don’t need his help so I lift my side higher and move my feet faster and he whines Quit it, Bea and I say Just keep up, Bryce and we shuffle up the ramp into the truck and Wendell helps us lay it down. Then Bryce runs back to Fred.
This feels weird already. Our lamps and throw pillows and bookshelves are all mixed up in the back of the truck with their couch and piano and kitchen stools and living room chairs.
When we’re done loading, Tucker climbs into the back of the truck and sticks his hands under the piano cover and without even looking at the keys he plays a song about goodbye, farewell and something in another language. “From The Sound of Music!” he hollers and I know he’s trying to be nice and funny, but I’m still just sad.
I hug Aunt Tam like we’re moving to Alaska instead of Evergreen Road. “I’m going to miss sharing a wall with you,” she tells me. “Even if the first year was all crying.”
That makes my eyes burn, thinking about how Aunt Tam knew me from the very beginning, but I bite my tongue in the back of my mouth and tell her I’ll visit a hundred times a week.
She hugs my mom too. “I’m happy for you,” she says. “Now go blend.”
Cameron gets in Wendell’s car and Bryce lifts Fred’s cage into the back with him. Dodger and Roscoe follow and curl up on the seat beside him. Tucker asks if he can drive but Cameron says no and Tucker says oh come on and Cameron says just get in and Tucker says you stink and Cameron says you’ve had your license for like five minutes.
Then finally Mom says, “Tucker, why don’t you drive my car? I’d like to go in the truck anyway,” and hands him her keys.
Tucker hollers, “Yes! Thanks, Louise!” and slams the door to our Toyota Camry and I’m thinking, Really? We’re sharing cars now too?
Wendell, Mom, and I climb into the front bench seat of the moving truck, Wendell by the window, me in the middle, and Mom and the curve of her belly in the driver’s seat. We pull away from the curb and away from the condo, and away from Aunt Tam and Maximilian and the stomped-down path to our climbing tree with Cameron and Tucker and Bryce and Dodger and Roscoe and Fred following behind us.
