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Because I know it’s Mason’s favorite.
I also know it makes him sad, this song—makes him think of the day his dad left him without so much as a goodbye—and he hates that. He doesn’t want to lose this song to something bad. He told us so.
So if this makes the song happier for him, and makes him forget about his dad, then I can suck it up. The last thing I’d want is for him or anyone to be sad on my birthday, and have bad memories about this day too.
Afterward, Waylon goes back to his cake, and Izzy and Mason are over by the boombox, flipping through his binder, fighting over which to put on next. And by fighting, I mean Izzy’s just being a butthead on purpose. It’s not some twin superpower telling me this. She’s just really obvious. Mason has to know she’s doing this on purpose for his attention, right?
“Jeremy, you pick,” Mason calls over to where I’ve sat back down.
I bite my lip, trying to keep my smile in.
Izzy whirls around, grinning. “Yeah, you pick.”
I shrug, suddenly unsure. I don’t wanna pick something they hate.
Mason comes over with his binder, his pale blue eyes looking nearly silver in the sunlight peeking through the windows. I don’t know what time it is, but I assume Izzy’s classmates are gonna start showing up soon. Her party starts at 2.
He hands me the binder to go through. My fingers quake a bit taking it from him, but I do my exercises that Mary Ann taught me, talking myself down, reminding me it’s all in my head, this feeling like I’m going to die just because people are looking at me and expecting something from me.
These are my friends.
My sister.
My house.
My party.
“Um, this, I guess,” I say quietly, pointing to the disk with SWITCHFOOT written on it in big, bold, carefully written letters.
He grabs it, leaving the binder with me. Once it’s in the player, and “Dare You to Move” kicks on, Izzy races over to me. “I love this one!”
I know she does.
Mom and Dad took us all to see them and Creed at Hershey Park a few years ago. We stayed in a hotel for the night, and got to go to the amusement park and chocolate factory the next day.
We get halfway through the CD, when my party ends with the arrival of Izzy’s first guest.
At this point, I’m all peopled out anyway, as Mom would say. I just want to hang out in my room, read my new comics, and put on my new movies.
The doorbell rings, and Izzy makes a run for the foyer, yelling, “I’ll get it!”
I start grabbing all my stuff. Mason helps me. Waylon’s on the recliner, playing with my old Nintendo DS I gave him a couple months ago, after Mom bought me a new one.
Mason’s flipping through my new DVDs, even though he already saw what I got when I opened them. He stares for a long time down at X2. I have the VHS of it, which we’ve watched a bunch before. But for Christmas we finally got a DVD player, so I’m trying to replace everything I already have.
When the movie came out a year ago, Mason had had his first piano recital around that time. For weeks, I barely saw him, even though he was over our house just about every day, practicing in our studio, having Mom and Izzy help him. He’d eat dinner with us, but it was like we were in two separate worlds, just like how it feels when it’s just me and Izzy and my parents, and they’re all talking about music and stuff.
Dad had offered to take me to see the movie, just the two of us, but I said no, that I’d just wait for it to come out on VHS so Mason and I could watch it together. Which we did. Multiple times. The sequel was even better than the first one.
I was happy when things finally went back to normal and I had my friend back. I was worried I never would. That he was finally sick of the stuff I still liked, like superhero stuff…
Sick of me.
“We can go watch it in my room,” I tell him quietly before I can think better of it, my voice hopeful.
Mason lifts his head, grinning, shocking me all over again with those ice blue eyes.
I still haven’t found the perfect shade of blue for them, and I’ve tried every crayon and pencil and even paint that exists. Even mixing them all up and blending them together to create my own shade, one I’d call Mason blue, but then every time I look into his eyes, I realize I wasn’t close at all.
