just in case.”
I dug into the bag and held out a pear toward him. “I didn’t know you went to Brown.”
He took it but didn’t bite into it. “I’m a sophomore. I’m on the boxing team. That’s why they took off.”
“You just made a few enemies.”
“That’s all right — they wouldn’t be my friends anyway. I’m a townie, and I’m Italian,” he said, biting into the pear. “And they know who my father is. Billy Macaroni — they don’t even bother saying it behind my back. The way they look at me — or, I mean, the way they don’t look — it’s like their glances slide off. Like I’m a mirror, and if they don’t see themselves, they don’t see anything.”
“I thought I’d be invisible, too.”
“You? That could never happen.”
To cover my embarrassment, I bent down and picked up the forgotten football. I hefted it in one hand and then hurled it, hard and straight, toward the construction site — a clear, spinning pass into the darkness.
“How about that?” he murmured. “The girl’s got an arm.”
“I can climb trees, too.”
“I remember.” He took a bite. “I remember that day I met you. I liked you because you liked my pictures. You said, ‘If I could do that, I’d do it all the time.’ Before that”—he shrugged —“you were my enemy.”
“Little old me?” I said it flirtatiously, but there was a seriousness behind his eyes. “What do you mean?”
His gaze went blank for a minute. Then he grinned. “You were a girl. Believe me, I’ve changed.”
“That wasn’t the first time we met, you know,” I said. “The first time was on the Fourth of July. I was wearing red, white, and blue. And eating ice cream. I was with my aunt and my dad.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said.
“I was nine. Skinny as a beanpole. All knees and elbows.”
“I bet you were a knockout.”
We began to walk down the hill, eating our fragrant pears and talking. All the while I was wondering how to keep walking forever, circling around College Hill, never getting to the narrowing streets and bumpy sidewalks of Fox Point.
When he touched my elbow as we crossed the street, I felt a shimmy down through every nerve. I knew I’d found it, and I didn’t even know its name. I felt it in my body, the way my bones were suddenly held together by air, not muscle. What would happen next, I didn’t know, but I knew it would have to happen. I would make it happen. I was a motherless child, and I knew that the deepest of tragedies was simple: to love, and not to be loved in return.
I knew I needed an ally, and there was really only one candidate.
A couple of days later, when I needed him most, I tried to rope him in.
Jamie lay sprawled on the couch, legs up on the arm. I sat down next to him and peered over his shoulder. “I want to make a deal.”
“Not now, pup. I’m studying.”
“Since when?”
“Easier that way.”
“Easier how?”
“People leave you alone when you’re smart. You should try it.”
I nudged him. “Hey, you might know trigonometry, but can you keep an eighth note triple count with your feet?”
“The question is, why would I want to?”
“Look, are you working on Sunday?”
“No.”
“Well, I have a date, and I need you to come along. My friend has a car. You can bring a girl.”
“I don’t have a girl.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Jamie, help me out. So I can say a gang is going.”
“Why don’t you ask Muddie?”
“Because I don’t think I can stand her asking, ‘And how are you enjoying your studies?’ all afternoon long.”
He snorted. “And why,” he asked, “can’t you just tell Da that you have a date?”
“Because he’s in college, and Da won’t let me date a college man. And because… because he’s Billy Benedict.”
Jamie looked at me over his book. “The kid with the camera? Nate Benedict’s son?”
I nodded. “Oh, Jamie, come on — if you’d just come out with us, it won’t look like a date, it will look like we’re all friends.”
“And I’ll be a third wheel.”
“Not a third wheel! We’ll have fun. We’ll have a picnic or something. He said we’d go to Roger Williams Park. You need to get out anyway. You’re starting to study all the time, just like Muddie. He’s picking me up Sunday morning. Come on, you want to.” I smiled at him.
“Please note that smiles like that don’t work on brothers.
But all right.”
Jamie