Confectionately Yours #2: Taking the Cake! (13 page)

“H
ayley?”

“Hi, Dad.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Still itching?”

“The hives come back every couple hours. Then I just take another Benadryl. They’re supposed to stop after a few days.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, Hayley, I didn’t realize you were so sick. I just thought that — maybe — you didn’t want to come.”

“Yeah.”

“So — is that all you have to say? ‘Yeah’?”

“Look, Dad. It’s okay. I’m not sick anymore. There’s no point in feeling bad about it, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. But, Hayley, I just wanted —”

“Dad? Mom is calling me. Can I talk to you later?”

“Sure, Hayley. We can talk later.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

I
’m not saying that Meghan is perfect. She isn’t. As we know, she’s a bit bossy and kinda crazy.

But.

But at least she isn’t afraid of stuff. She tells people how she feels. She’s honest.

How many people can really say that they’re honest?

I’m not. I just told my dad that I had to go because my mom was calling me.

Lie.

I can’t even tell my own father how I’m really feeling.

Meghan would’ve told him.

Maybe I should ask
her
to tell him.

“J
eez, they’re loading the muskets again,” Meghan says as she covers her ears. A moment later, there’s a loud crack, like a cannon blast. “Why do they let those guys march in every single parade? My eardrums had barely recovered from Veterans Day.”

The Revolutionary War re-enactors keep marching in step to the fife and drum. I have to wonder how many real minutemen were overweight and wore glasses. About 90 percent of them, according to this sampling.

“I love those revolutionaries,” I say. “They’re dedicated.”

“Oh, look! There’s the Big Babies Portable Band.” Meghan points to a loony group of people in red and orange. They’re half-marching, half-dancing as they play an upbeat tune.

“Those guys are awesome.” The Big Babies sometimes just show up downtown, especially if there’s some kind of protest going on.

A dreary clown tosses some candy from the back of a vintage truck, and a group of young kids runs to grab it. Our town’s Thanksgiving Parade is tiny. It always happens the Saturday after Thanksgiving and only lasts about ten minutes. The good thing is that it makes a double loop around the block. “The parade so nice that it goes around twice,” my dad calls it.

Still, it’s really cute, and it’s close to my old house, so we used to come every year. It’s funny — sometimes it seems like half the town is in the parade, and the other half is lining the streets. And sometimes it seems like
most
of the town is in the parade, and the leftovers are lining the streets.

Today, the streets are pretty packed. I scan the crowd across the way. Groups of children are holding balloons from the local bank. Moms are sipping coffee; dads have kids on their shoulders. And there — right across from us — is Artie. She’s standing with Chang and Kelley, her new best friends.

“Where’s Devon?” I say, half to myself. “I didn’t realize Artie would let him out of her sight.” That’s mean, and I
know it. I feel like a jerk even as the words leave my lips. But it’s too late — Meghan has heard me.

“Didn’t you know?” she asks. “Devon told Artie that he wasn’t into her.”

“What?” My heart drops to my feet and flops onto the pavement. Now I feel totally awful. And yet …

There’s another part of me that’s actually happy.

Happy!

Because if Devon isn’t into Artie, could it mean that he’s into … somebody else?

Like, maybe somebody I know?

Like, somebody I know
well
?

Like, in case you’re not getting this —
me
?

All of these thoughts are racing through my mind, and Meghan is just standing there, watching a bunch of Shriners do figure eights in their teeny-tiny cars. And I want to tell her that my whole life might conceivably change because of this news, and I’m about to open my mouth when I hear someone say, “Where’s Santa?” and when I look over, I see Kyle standing not five feet from us.

“We want Santa!” he shouts.

“Hey, Kyle. It’s Hayley and Meghan.”

“Oh, hey! Santa hasn’t come by yet, has he?”

“They usually save him for the end,” Meghan says.

“As if I have any idea when that is,” Kyle tells her.

“Here comes the Community Band.” A flatbed truck drives slowly by, carrying a group of my former neighbors. They’re playing “Jingle Bells.”

“They’re pretty good,” Kyle says, and I nod. “But where’s all the candy? People usually give me candy at this parade. Not to complain.”

At that moment, a man in a suit walks over to Kyle, hands him a candy cane, then walks on.

“Perfect timing!” Kyle shouts after him. “Who was that, anyway?” he asks me.

“The mayor.”

Kyle laughs, then stops. “Wait — seriously?”

“Yeah, the new one,” Meghan agrees. “Who just got elected a couple of weeks ago.”

“Awesome!” Kyle unwraps the candy cane and takes a lick. “Glad my parents voted for him.”

“I’m glad my parents voted for him because of his stance on local issues,” Meghan says, almost huffily.

Kyle grins. “Meghan, you’re a trip,” he says, which makes her laugh.

“Here comes Santa,” I say.

“Where?” Meghan stands on her tiptoes.

“He’s in the fire truck,” I tell her. “You can barely see
him. That wasn’t the smartest move.” The sight of the fire truck sends a worm of anxiety through my stomach, and I find myself scanning the crowd. I’m still not feeling 100-percent well after VomitFest, and it doesn’t take much to make me queasy. A light sweat breaks out on my forehead. But I don’t see the face I’m looking for. I gnaw my thumbnail, which has only started to grow out.

“I can’t see him at all!” Meghan complains.

“Well, then — we’re even!” Kyle says.

“But you were the one who was so desperate to see Santa,” Meghan points out.

“I’m not desperate to
see
him,” Kyle corrects her. “I’m just desperate for him to get here, so that they’ll start handing out the free cookies and cider.”

This is another annual tradition — the parade ends at the Civic Center, where there’s a Santa meet and greet that involves tons of sweets and screaming kids. The whole idea of walking over there makes my nausea return. “So — are we going?” Kyle asks.

“Sure,” Meghan says. “Let’s head over there before they circle around again. Then we’ll be first in line.”

“Brilliant,” Kyle agrees. “You coming, Hayley?”

“You guys go on without me,” I say. “I’ve got to head home.”

“Are you sure?” Meghan asks.

I nod, though this isn’t — strictly speaking — true. It’s just that I’ve had a thought. An idea, really.

Kyle is sweet. And funny. And really smart.

And Meghan is cool. And funny. And really smart.

I know that, even though she isn’t showing it, Meghan is probably still disappointed over the whole Ben scene. But … maybe she might like Kyle, if she got to know him.

“I’ll see you guys on Monday, okay?” I say.

“Bye, Hayley!” Meghan calls cheerfully, and in a moment, she and Kyle have disappeared into the swirling eddies of people trailing the end of the parade.

I sigh and start to walk to the corner. Then I take a sudden left.

I’m not going home. Not yet.

There’s someone I missed at the parade, and I’m going to go find out where she is.

I
t’s hard to tell if anyone’s home just by looking at the quiet house. The leaves have been raked, but the grass is beginning to fade to a patchwork of brown and green. The blooms on the mums are starting to shrivel, but the fire bushes line the driveway with brilliant red.

This is Marco’s yard. It’s right next to my old yard, which is a disaster zone of plastic toys and dead leaves.

I pause, looking up at the front door, which is as white as a blank piece of paper. I won’t knock on it. I’ve
never
knocked on it. We always used the back door.

I walk up the driveway and past the back deck. I’m about to turn toward the rear entrance when I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye — the curtain in the tree house fluttered.
He’s up there
, I think, and for a moment, I’m back in third grade, when Marco and I would spend afternoons
eating Oreos and reading
Mad
magazine in our tree house. And it really was
our
tree house, in some ways, even though it was in Marco’s backyard. Our fathers built it together the summer before second grade, over Marco’s mother’s objections. She was worried about safety — what if we fell out? — but there was no talking our fathers out of it. “A kid should have a tree house,” Marco’s dad said, and my father agreed.

I’m climbing the ladder before I even have time to think.

When I poke my head through the floor, Marco is sitting there with wide eyes, as if he expected a monster or a murderer to appear. “Hi,” I say.

“Oh. Hi.” A little color returns to his cheeks, but not much.

“What’s up?” I haul myself onto the platform and sit down across from him.

Marco watches me, almost wary, as if I might spring. “Just thinking.”

“I was looking for you guys at the parade,” I say.

“We weren’t there.”

“Sarah’s not into fire trucks anymore?” Marco’s sister has always been obsessed with emergency-response vehicles. She knows all about fire trucks, and could probably even drive one, if someone would let her.

“Didn’t you know? She’s at a residential school now.” Marco stands up and pulls back the curtain to look out the window. This tree house used to seem huge, but now there’s barely room to move around.

“Boarding school?” I ask. “Does she like it?”

Marco’s shoulder lifts, then dips. “It’s hard to tell.”

“Maybe a special school is a good idea — she can get the help she needs.”

Marco looks pained. “That’s what
they
said.”

We sit in silence for a moment. I want to talk to Marco about the test — the fact that we cheated, and how it made me feel. But I can’t force the words out. He looks at me, his eyebrows slightly lifted, and I get the sense that there’s something that he wants to say, too. But neither one of us speaks. We just let the silence stretch between us.

I know I should just tell him what I’m thinking, but I can tell he’s sad already. I don’t want to make it worse. So I stay silent. And then the moment is broken by a voice calling Marco’s name. It’s his mother.

“I’ll see you,” Marco says.

And he leaves me sitting in his tree house, which used to be our tree house, all by myself.