is nice, I decide I have enough to deal with. I don’t even really know Nick, and I’ve had enough drama with boys this week, thanks.
I don’t need a puppy.
So I turn my back on him. And I walk the other way.
19
The first major crush I ever had, a couple years before Leo came along in the art gallery that fateful day last year, was literally the boy next door. His name was Darius, some wise Bible name, which suited him because Darius was quiet. Like me, I thought. I’d see him bringing in groceries with his mother, her monologuing, him following behind her silently, back and forth to the car. I’d see him mowing the lawn. Putting up Christmas lights. Taking out the trash. I’d watch him walking to the bus stop (to a different school than mine, since mine was all girls), and while the other boys would be laughing and teasing each other and trying to act cool, Darius would just be cool by default. When he did speak, the other kids listened. I liked the sound of his voice, too, the low, gentle timbre of it, although I never caught what he said. I was never close enough to hear.
I started drawing him. His face. Ears. Hands. The way a long-sleeved tee draped across his shoulders. The shoes he wore. I’d always made quick sketches of people, but I did so many of Darius that year that Pop finally noticed. “Is that the boy next door?” he asked one morning at the breakfast table, leaning over my sketchbook, and I blushed so hard I could have passed out, and Pop said, “Oh. So that’s how it is.”
That’s so how it was.
Pop said, “That’s a good likeness,” which felt like a perfect summation of my feelings at that point. “You should ask him out.”
“You should probably stay out of my love life,” I said.
“Fair enough.” We dropped the subject until it came up again, naturally, a few weeks later when we were in SF at a Giants game. I was just sitting there watching the game, minding my own business, when suddenly Pop poked me in the shoulder.
“Look over there,” he said, and gestured very subtly with his head to two rows ahead of us, where Darius was sitting with his family. “Now’s your moment, Ada. You could go over and talk to him.”
But that was impossible. “What would I even say?”
“You’d say, ‘Hi, I’m Ada. I live next door.’”
I shook my head. “He knows I live next door.”
“You’d go from there,” Pop said.
But go from there to what?I think you’re cute? Nice weather we’re having?
“Now you have something in common to talk about,” Pop said.
I stared at him blankly.
“You both like baseball,” Pop explained.
Oh.
“So go talk to him,” Pop said. “Carpe diem. You go, girl.”
I shook my head again. “I . . . I can’t.”
Pop shrugged. “Your call. I guess everybody has to go through unrequited love at some point. I get that. If you don’t even try, that’s safer. And that way he doesn’t get messed up by, you know, reality—people can stay perfect if you never get to know who they are. But it’s not very satisfying. I’d want something better for you. Something real.”
“You’ve got to be the first dad in history who wants his teenage daughter to talk to boys,” I pointed out. Then, out of the blue, I pictured Darius and me standing in my room, Darius turning to look at my art on the walls.
“These are great,” he’d say in his deep voice.
And then he’d be startled, because he would have spotted a drawing of himself. And I’d be embarrassed, because I’d essentially been creeping on him, I guess, but then I could tell that he was flattered. He liked it.
“You’re really talented,” he would say, and I’d breathe, “Thanks,” and then who knows what would happen, in my room, with the door shut and Darius whispering that he liked my work.
“I’m not saying you should make out with the guy,” Pop said loudly. “I just don’t want you to miss out on the best parts of life because you’re afraid of getting hurt.”
Essentially Pop was calling me a coward. I knew that. And I also knew that my daydream would never happen if I didn’t start by actually talking to Darius. So I stood up.
“You got this,” Pop said.
“We both like baseball,” I whispered to myself as I awkwardly stepped sideways around a bunch of people to reach the