Flying (2 page)

“Of course!” I bounce on my toes again and reach up to get a twig out of his thick, brown hair. A tuft of it bumps up in the back. I resist the urge to smooth it down and instead give him the twig. “Are you playing Grim Dawn out in the woods instead of on your laptop?”

“I wish!” He turns to Mom and greets her, and she presents him with a tin of cupcakes, which pretty much makes him explode with happiness. “Seriously? You are the best! Mana, your mom is the best!”

“I know.”

Lyle holds the tin delicately in his long-fingered hands. When we were little we used to call them wizard fingers, but his palms have caught up in size, so now I think they're just manly. I try to process this thought: Lyle is manly. Lyle is manly in a way that does not fit how a cheerleader is supposed to think of her best male friend. Lyle is manly in a way of defined quad muscles and big hands and—maybe more manly than Dakota Dunham—more than—

Lyle interrupts my thoughts. “I'm going to bring these back there.”

“Don't eat until after the race!” Mom calls after his retreating back. “We don't want any cramps impacting your performance, young man!”

“No worries!” he yells to her, and then he shifts his focus to me as he strides forward, not watching where he's going. Other runners skitter out of his way and he calls to me, “See you after, okay? Scream for me!”

“Always! Like I've just witnessed a disembowelment!” I yell, and he turns, and I'm stuck watching his retreating back as he returns to the rest of the team. A couple other people wave and I wave back, like a normal person does. People give Mom thumbs-up signs indicating their love of her cupcakes. “You should just be a baker.”

“I should! It would be much more fun. Not as many work trips.” She laughs and pats her belly. “But you would have two times the mother you have now.”

As the male runners disrobe and start trotting over to the starting line, I hip check my mother, who laughs and does it back. She waves to other parents if they wave first, but she stays with me, which is okay.

“I should make you those penguin cookies with the salted caramel,” she announces. “I haven't made you those in a long time.”

When we get near the starting line, Lyle gives me a little wave/salute thing and I arrange my features into an overexcited smiley face for him, just as his mom walks toward us. After she does the small talk with my mom, she offers me a sip of her Coke, but I don't even get a chance to decline.

“Mana is allergic,” Mom says, which Lyle's mom knows. She has known me forever.

“I always forget!” she titters just as the bell goes off. “All the children with all their quirks. Caffeine allergies. Latex allergies. Peanut allergies. It's funny how we've managed to survive so long as a species.”

Lyle instantly breaks away from the pack. I'm not sure how he does it, because I'm not much of a runner, but he makes running seem effortless—just all loping, quick legs and loose arms. He's not even trying.

“He's holding himself back,” Mrs. Stephenson says as the runners head into the woods. “He always does.”

“He's a good boy,” Mom answers as the crowd starts to move to a better vantage point.

“He should do his best. College recruiters want to see what he can do.”

He has already gotten in early to Dartmouth, so this is a ridiculous thing for her to say. I can't stand Lyle's mom sometimes, and I say, before I can help myself, “He PRs by seconds every race, and he will do his best at states. He always does.”

Mom touches my arm. Then she nudges me into motion, calling good-bye to Lyle's parental unit as we head toward the railroad tracks. You can see runners at the mile and 2.7-mile points from there. We get there just before Lyle strides past, still in the lead, still not sweating. He gives me a cheesy finger point. I give him one back.

“I'm glad he's your friend,” Mom says out of nowhere.

And it is such a silly thing to say, but such a
Mom
thing to say, that I can't help but smile even as I clap for some other students I know. “I'm glad you're my mom.”

“Oh! Sentimentality alert!” She blushes. “I should record this and play it back to you the next time you're mad at me for hassling you about your homework, or leaving socks on the couch, or eating all the cookies for the boosters table at the basketball game before the game even starts, or failing to put the cap on the toothpaste.”

I ignore this little litany.

“Mana is all lovey-dovey. Yes, I am.” I announce this to her, and it gets the appropriate Mom smiling response. Happiness settles into my chest as we wait for Lyle to appear again, running fast and strong toward us and the finish line.

He crosses and smiles, entering the chute where they funnel the runners post–finish line. It keeps them all in order. The wife of the coach takes his number off Lyle's chest and people give him congratulatory back slaps, high fives, and fist bumps. He has a personal record. Again. He doesn't even seem winded. Again. He trots over to us and gives me a huge hug. I inhale. Not even smelly. My hands touch the muscles of his back. Not even sweaty.

“PR!” He swings me around and I laugh. My feet leave the ground. My mother rather conveniently disappears and starts picking up discarded water bottles. She's pretty environmental like that.

“You were amazing,” I tell him as he sets me back down.

His head bobs up and down. “I was, wasn't I?”

“Amazing and humble,” I tease.

We fist bump and make explosions.

“You know what I was thinking about when I was running?” he asks. “I was thinking about that time in sixth grade that you were in the
Les Mis
play for show choir.”

“I hated show choir,” I interrupt.

“I know. But do you remember, you played Whore Number 2, and we went to music class and Mr. B. could not remember your name, and he actually called you Whore Number 2?” Lyle starts laughing, remembering while I pretend to pout. “That was beautiful. And you? You just turned bright red and answered anyways. Brilliant!” He fist bumps me again. “I was remembering how awesome that was and I just forgot about running. I totally lost track of time. It was the best race ever.”

“Cool,” I say, but I kind of want to say, “Yay! You were thinking of me.”

The rest of the day I am so ridiculously happy that I actually doodle penguins and hearts on my mom's grocery lists and on the to-do list, and try really hard to not think it means some sort of amazing thing. When it comes to liking your best friend, life can be kind of disappointing. You think things mean more than they do. You search for signs in the way his lips move, in how quickly he smiles, in the way his hip bumps into your side when you walk. And usually? The signs don't mean anything at all.

Anyway, if it turns out to be nothing? Well, there will always be Dakota Dunham.

*   *   *

Two mornings later and nothing has changed in my best-friends-with-Lyle status. I wake up and Mom is gone before I get up for school. She has pushed a note underneath the kitchen timer shaped like a chicken. It doesn't work, but she won't throw it away. Lyle got it for her at the animal refuge zoo place he interns at during the summers. She wrote on the note in big, green magic marker letters:

DEVELOPMENTS AT WORK. HAD TO GO IN EARLY. I'M SO SORRY. THERE'S A BAGEL IN THE FRIDGE. I MADE CHOCOLATE-DIPPED PRETZELS FOR YOUR FUNDRAISER. LOVE YOU!!! SEE YOU AT THE GAME.

XOXO

LOVE,

MOM

She drew a big heart on the side, too. Sometimes, she is just too sweet. Sometimes, like when she's yelling at me about how I tend to put the wet towels on top of the rest of the laundry, she is just annoying.

I open the fridge to pull out the bagel. My report card falls off the door. Yes, it is up there, stuck with a magnet of a Scottish Highland cow thing. Yes, that is geeky. That is my mother. I take the magnet and the report card and anchor it again. There.

When everything is back just the way it's supposed to be, I thrust the bagel in my mouth and chew. After I shuffle out of the kitchen and up the stairs into my room, I pretty much just stand there for an extra second and gawk at the piles of clothes that are strewn all around my floor. I have to get ready for school and I don't want to because it's going to be just another boring stressful day in the otherwise boring stressful life of me. The getting-ready process goes quickly and before I know it I'm back in the kitchen where I seize the Hello Kitty pretzel container. There is a cute penguin sticker on there now, amid all the happy kitties, which Mom must have put there. Lyle says she spoils me. September, my other best friend, says Mom babies me. I can't say that most of the time I mind. Shoving my bag over my shoulder, I head out.

September has parked her truck in the driveway and is waiting.

“Hurry,” she yells. She is tall and long. She's one of my bases for cheering, and even though her arms are about as thick as those pretzel sticks, she is super strong, like a farm girl, which she is not. Her mom is a doctor. Her dad is a nurse. They own no mammals or poultry. They do have a fish, Mr. Awesome.

I pull in a big breath. The cold, gray winter sky bleaks me down despite Hello Kitty, chocolate-dipped pretzels, and the new penguin sticker. I'm tired again today. For a second I wonder if I could pretend to be sick, but it's game day, so I hike my bag higher on my shoulder and balance the pretzel container in my hand.

“Mana! Hurry!” September yells again. The sun glints off her skin. Kids use to call us Oreo when we were little because Seppie is so dark and I am so undark. I used to pray at night that I could resemble her instead of a ghost. That was before I understood about racism and how when some idiots gape at Seppie they don't see someone beautiful and funny and brilliant; they see “other.” Idiots. Sometimes people think about me that way, too.

I rush down the cobblestone path to our driveway and haul myself up into her truck. Yes, she has a huge, gas-guzzling, black pickup truck. Do not ask me why.

“We're not that late,” I say, slamming my bag down next to my feet. “You always get so stressed about being two minutes late. You don't always have to be the orderly and perfect student.”

“Yes, yes I do.” She shakes her head. Her pigtails flail about and then she reverses out of my driveway like Satan is after us.

She pulls into the Stephensons' driveway, which is barely worth driving over to since our houses are so close, and we wait. She honks. “Where is he?”

Lyle, all Gap clothes and smiles, comes barreling out of the house, slamming the door behind him. “Sorry! Sorry! I was engrossed in something.”

“I am so going to kill you if you make me get a tardy. Three tardies equal detention. Detention equals poor academic record. Poor academic record means bad college. My fine self is not going to a bad college because you were climbing a tree.” Seppie executes a perfect K-turn while Lyle buckles up. His face is all smooth, squeaky clean like he just scrubbed at it with a wet facecloth. He always appears that way, and he smells that way, too, like mint-scented soap, the same kind my dad uses.

When I was super little, my dad taught me to hunt and to wash my hands after hunting, after being in public places, after touching raw meat or going to the bathroom. He's that kind of guy—the kind that can kill a deer but still worry about germs. Lyle is not like that. I can't imagine him ever killing anything. And germs? He eats Skittles he finds on the sidewalk.

A gash from shaving mars Lyle's cheek just to the right of his nose. He has a new cut every morning, I swear. I want to put little Band-Aids on them.

“We aren't really going to be late, right?” His shaggy brown hair flops over his eyes. Lyle nods at Seppie, then lifts one eyebrow over his dark brown eyes and asks me, “She will kill me one day, won't she?”

“Probably.”

“What if we just left without you?” Seppie asks. “Did you even think about that?”

Lyle doesn't answer. Just for the record, Seppie and I are both cheerleaders, which Lyle helps with, too, actually. He's an overachiever. Running is his big thing, but he helps cheer at competitions and important games because we need him for the ridiculous stunts where a good amount of upper-body strength is involved. A lot of kids in my school do multiple sports. I do not, but I am an underachiever. Seppie and Lyle are all about getting into Ivy League colleges. It's one of our essential differences. They worry about college; I do not. They get amazing grades; I get by. They will have scholarships; I will have loans. Lyle has claimed the window side, so I'm smashed between the two of them in the truck cab.

“My feet are freezing,” I say as Seppie swerves around a pothole. Her elbow knocks into me, so I smoosh closer to Lyle.

“You should wear socks,” she says. Like she knows. “It's almost winter. It's getting cold.”

“Seppie, have you ever worn a sock in your life?” Lyle asks, stretching out his long legs, which he can do because he's not stuck sitting in the middle. “You are the Sockless Wonder. That would be your superhero name: the Sockless Wonder, whose excessive foot odor thwarts all foes.”

“Shut up. You'd be Geek Boy. Cheerleader by day;
Doctor Who
watcher by night. Unable to match a single outfit even if his mama picks them out for him the night before. Permanently attached to his little online game. What's the name of it?
Lounge Lizards Take on the
—”

“Unfair!”

They keep bickering. We drive through our subdivision and out onto Back River Road, with all its curves and supermarkets. I turn up the music. I close my eyes and try not to think about Lyle's leg pushing against mine, or the test I have today that I totally forgot about, or Lyle's minty smell, or why I am thinking about Lyle this way. Lyle of playing
Doctor Who
in the woods when we were seven, Lyle of the gaming fixation, Lyle of the newly developed chest muscles, Lyle of the—