When the chain reaction was over the cheerleader at the end yelled, “Go,” and the audience had to shout, “Astros.”
I did my part correctly every time, which wasn’t easy since I was trying to keep my elbows pinned close to my sides to minimize what the bra companies call “wobble and bounce.” The teacher did okay, too, and so did Dan in his inner tube. But the girl down the line kept fumbling the football, and when the crowd half-heartedly yelled, “Astros” the third time, I heard an “Assholes” mixed in.
I wondered where Casey was. Up in the bleachers, pity mixed with revelation. Seeing me clearly for the first time, as a victim. And there was nothing to be done.
We were all rattled, and while the football-tossing girl got it together, two kids at the end of the human contraption kept messing up. So by the fifth time there were almost as many voices yelling, “Assholes” as “Astros.”
It was not how I hoped the day would go.
But as I turned with the weightless coin one more time, praying it would be the last, someone snatched it from my hands.
There was a ripple of confused laughter from the bleachers.
I caught a flash of Irish setter red hair. Casey had stolen the quarter. Casey had mucked up the machine.
She was running around the gym and the crowd was loving it. As if she’d planned it for weeks, she ran to a cluster of basketball players and handed the quarter off to Mitch Weiland, a popular senior. The basketball team never got as much attention as the football team, so this was a stroke of brilliance. He sprinted to the basketball net and inserted the quarter in a gorgeous dunk shot right as the bell rang.
* * *
“What was that?” I said, as Casey and I walked to the cafeteria.
She shrugged. “It was pissing me off. You looked so miserable, it just came to me.”
“You’re crazy.” I smiled.
Later, after Pauline Knowland high-fived Casey on our way to the lunch line, pretending she’d found her improv as hilarious as everyone else, and four juniors asked to sit with us, I whispered, “Thank you.”
“You’d do it for me. We’re best friends, right?”
“Best friends.”
2016
Thursday evening
Casey and I sat on the dock and watched the sky until there was only a delicate tracing of red around the mountains. One by one, people flicked their lights on, ringing the dark lake in dots of glowing yellow.
“I forgot how beautiful it is,” I said.
“It’s changed, though. Not as quiet as it used to be.”
“I go to sleep to the sounds of the #1 California Muni bus,” I said. “It makes these horrible groaning noises as it struggles up the hill. I feel like one day they’re going to ask me to come out and help push.”
“Did you drive in through town or did you take I-5 and Southshore?”
“Southshore.”
“So you didn’t see how fancy we are now. We have two espresso places and a Chef’s Choice. You know, so you don’t have to haul all the way to Tahoe City for your triple-shot latte and your ten million kinds of chèvre.”
“And there’s a fantastic bookstore, I hear.”
“Who told you, your mother?”
“Yeah, she—”
“Right. Like she would use the word fantastic to describe anything remotely associated with me.”
“She doesn’t—”
“Stop. Don’t even try. So. Speaking of goat cheese. I think it’s time to move this wild party indoors. Unless you think we’ll be too crowded.”
* * *
Jett was still sleeping when I opened the car door. I clipped her leash on before she was alert enough to go nuts. “Wake up, sweet girl.”
She shook herself, jingling her tags, and perked up the second she got out, excited by new smells. I let her pee and sniff her way down the driveway while Casey switched lights on behind us.
My phone rang and Sam’s face flashed on my screen. Sam was the “goofy foot,” the famous surfing lefty, from his café’s name. The picture I’d programmed in, though, was Sam as I knew him, not the cocky young surf-punk from the past that I emblazoned on his T-shirts and magnets and mugs, but forty pounds heavier and forty years older. Big and weather-beaten, kind of like an aging Beach Boy. I liked that Sam best.
He knew I’d been considering visiting my hometown this weekend. He was the only person I’d told, and he’d urged me to go, to take a risk. His exact words were You need more friends besides that hyper mutt and some old has-been fatty ex-surfer.
“I shouldn’t have come,” I whispered into the phone. “It’s beyond awful. Are you happy?”
“I think the question is ‘are you happy?’” He spoke in his best Yoda imitation. Which was a pretty poor one. There was a fine line between Yoda and Fozzie Bear from the Muppets, and Sam always veered too Fozzie.
“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Sam. I’m not up to it right now.”
“Sorry, sorry. But keep me posted. And if you wimp out and come home early, you’re fired. Anyone can slap some doodles on a T-shirt. You’re totally replaceable.”
“Supportive as always, Sam.”
“Email me. I want to live vicariously.”
“This is all about you, then.”
“Naturally.”
“Bye.”
Jett was about as eager to go inside as I was but I tugged her leash. “Time to go in, JJ-girl.”
Time to trade one unfamiliar landscape for another.
Casey had told the truth; she and Alex hadn’t made many changes to The Shipwreck. Though there was evidence of a child—a fairy book, glittery purple sneakers on the floor, one of which I had to wrestle away from Jett as Casey walked over from the kitchen.
“Behave, Jett. Sorry.”
“She’s all right.” Casey scratched her under her collar. “Jett, you said? As in Joan? Right, the spiky black hair.”
I waited for Casey to give me just a little more. For her voice to warm a few degrees as she said, Remember the poster you gave me? That CD you used to hide at my house?
“She’s a troublemaker like her namesake,” I said.
“She’s a sweetheart. I love Labs.”
“Thanks. And how old is your little girl? Elle, you said? Not that I mean she’s the same as a pet...” I needed to stop talking. Or at least rehearse every sentence in my head a minimum of three times before letting it exit my mouth.
Casey waited for me to stop. No “no worries,” an expression it seemed the rest of the world used ten times a day. No “don’t be silly.”
“She just turned ten. She’s been with us since she was five.”
“Can I see her picture?”
Casey pointed to the photos hung on the stairwell. “You