Iknew Quinn and Nate weren’t really excited to begin junior high, but I thought it was going to be great. We’d get to change classes, so I wouldn’t be bored sitting in the same classroom with the same teacher for seven hours a day. And we’d get to have real lockers, which sounded pretty cool. Best of all, I’d finally be able to play honest-to-goodness sports, not the baby kind where they never really kept score or told us who won. Our junior high had football, basketball, soccer, baseball and track teams. I wanted to play them all, but my dad said I had to make a choice, or my schoolwork might suffer.
My brothers played basketball, and everyone kind of expected me to do the same. It was the bad thing about being the youngest of three boys; everyone expected me to be just like my brothers. But I really didn’t like basketball, not the way I liked football. So I decided that was what I was going to play.
That summer before eighth grade, I spent most of my time mowing lawns. Simon and Danny, my brothers, had started the business when they were my age, and now I was part of it, too. It was pretty cool to be earning money, even though my mom made me put most of it away for college. She said someday I would thank her. I told her I was going to get a football scholarship and get a free ride to whatever college I chose, but she said it was good to have a back-up plan.
I liked mowing lawns. Pushing the mower or using the trimmer, I had a lot of time to think. I also met new people, and I liked that. Most of them were older, but that was okay. Some of the old ladies would invite me to the porch for lemonade and cookies. The men would inspect my work carefully and nod approvingly, and that was cool. They told my parents that I was really responsible and did a good job, and I know that made my parents happy, too.
Sometimes I met kids, but most of the families who had kids my age didn’t hire us to cut the grass; they would just have their own kid do it, which only makes sense. But this one family had all daughters, and I guess they didn’t want girls doing yard work. So I did the lawn, and I met their oldest daughter. Her name was Sarah, and she was in the same grade as me. I guess she’d been in school with us for a while, but I’d never noticed her.
When we met, she was wearing a bathing suit and heading out to the family’s pool. Now, I’d never noticed girls and what they wore before. I mean, yuck. Quinn never cared about what she had on as long as it didn’t get in her way. But seeing Sarah in this bathing suit kind of made me look twice. She was really pretty, in a different way, and she smiled and waved at me.
The next time I was at her house doing the lawn, she came out and brought me a drink. It was really hot, and I was grateful for both the break and the ice water. I stood there gulping it down, trying not to be impolite about it, and she started talking. She told me that she knew me from school.
“You hang out with the girl who has all that curly hair and that kid who—” She stopped, and I knew exactly how she was going to describe Nate. With most people, I’d get mad, but I could tell she didn’t mean it in a cruel way.
“Yeah. That’s Quinn and Nate. We’ve been friends as long as I can remember.”
“Wow, that’s cool. We’ve only lived here for about a year, so I haven’t known anyone that long.” Sarah smiled up at me, shading her eyes with her hand. I noticed that her fingers were long and her nails were painted bright pink.
“Where did you live before?”
“Chicago. And before that, California. And before that, Texas. My dad is a project manager, so we move all the time.”
“I’ve never lived anywhere but New Jersey,” I admitted. “But I like it here, so that’s okay.”
“So ...” Sarah drew out the syllable. She was rubbing her bare foot absently across the newly mown grass, and she kept her eyes on the ground. “Quinn, you said her name was—is she, like, your girlfriend?”
“Quinn?” I was so surprised by the question that I couldn’t answer for a minute. “No! No, she’s my friend. One of my best friends. I don’t have a girlfriend. And Quinn’s not like that, anyway. She’s not interested in that kind of thing.” Even as I said it, I wondered. I hadn’t ever asked Quinn anything like that, but she was the least girly-girl I knew. She never said she liked a boy or even paid attention to anyone but Nate and me. None of us was interested in dating or anything. At least, not until now.
“Well, I guess with all of us starting junior high in a few weeks, we’re going to get interested in it!” Sarah said brightly. “They have dances and everything ... I can’t wait. I think it’ll be fun.”
“I guess so.” My tone was doubtful. I couldn’t imagine what a dance would be like, and trying to picture the people I knew dancing with each other was really kind of funny. I decided it would be safer to change the subject.
“I’m going to play football this fall,” I announced. “It’s going to be awesome.”
“Football? Really?” Sarah’s smile widened. “I’m going out for cheerleading. So I guess I’ll see you at the games!”
“Yeah, I guess so—” Whatever I might have said next was lost in a torrent of water as the sprinklers under our feet suddenly turned on. Within seconds I was drenched, and Sarah was shrieking and trying to get away from the spray.
“Oh, my gosh!” She was wringing her black hair and giggling. “I thought they only went on at night and in the morning! Something must have messed up the timer.” She looked at me, standing there dripping, and her giggles turned to full-blown laughter. “Well, you were pretty hot, weren’t you?”
I managed a smile. “Yeah, I guess I’m cooled off now.”
Sarah cocked an eyebrow at me. “Want a towel? We’ve got them around back by the pool.”
“Nah. I’ll just run home and change.” And I would be literally running home; my brother usually picked me up from this job and took me to the next one. Since he could drive and I couldn’t, I had to depend on him for the houses where we used our own equipment. But if he saw me soaking wet, I’d never hear the end of it.
“Listen, Sarah, can I push the mower over by your house? I’ll just go get changed and come back to finish up. My brother is supposed to take me to the next client in about forty-five minutes. I think I can make it.”
Sarah helped me move the mower and then I booked it for home. My mother just shook her head as I grabbed a dry set of clothes and ran back to Sarah’s house. I had just finished the last strip of grass when Simon pulled up.
“That one took you long enough,” he grumbled after we loaded the equipment. “What happen?”
“Sprinklers turned on,” I told him. “Had to wait until they could turn them off until I could finish.” I knew my mom wouldn’t say anything; she was cool that way. I made it to the next client and got back to work. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and how she had looked when the water had soaked her shorts and T-shirt.
I didn’t see her again until the first day of school, when she came over to me in line. Nate and I had been there for a little bit before Quinn got to school. The whole thing was weird. First when Nate got there, he asked right away if I’d seen Quinn. Well, that wasn’t weird—Nate always wants to know where she was, but there was something different about it that day. He tried to brush it off and said he hadn’t seen her since he got home from vacation and wondered if she’d had a good time at the shore, but I swore he turned red when he said her name.
And then to make things even more bizarre, when Quinn did show up, she was wearing, like, a dress. I hadn’t seen Quinn in anything but jeans or shorts since we were in kindergarten, except when her mom made her wear a dress on picture day. I was shocked.
But when I said something to tease her, to make her feel better about having to wear a dress—just so she understood that I knew her mom must’ve made her wear it—she got mad. She shot me a snappy comeback, but I could tell she was really annoyed. Who knew why? Nate told her looked pretty, and that seemed to make her feel a little better.
And then before I could really check out what was happening, why Nate was acting so off, I saw Sarah. She was wearing some kind of dress, too, but it just kind of floated around her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her for a minute, and then Quinn made some kind of snarky comment about Sarah and how she was dressed. I realized as I stood there, too, that Sarah seemed a lot older than Quinn did. I wondered if she thought I looked younger than the boys in our class.
Quinn changed the subject, and she and Nate started talking about their vacations. I kept quiet. My family didn’t take the kind of regular vacations Quinn and Nate’s family did. My mother said that with three boys who were heading to college, we needed to save everything we could. We mostly took day trips and what my mom called backyard vacations.
And then I heard my name, and when I turned around, Sarah was standing next to me, smiling. I tried to play it cool, be nice without doing anything to make Quinn and Nate suspicious. We were just rehashing the whole sprinkler episode when the bell rang, and the crowd of kids around us surged into the school.
I lost Quinn and Nate, but Sarah stuck with me. I felt bad, because I had promised to help Nate at his locker. But by the time I found them, we were at my homeroom, and Nate was going in the room with me. Quinn made another comment about Sarah and about her being my girlfriend. I didn’t like how that made me feel. On one hand, she wasn’t my girlfriend. But part of me wouldn’t have minded if she was. On the other hand, I didn’t want to hurt Quinn’s feelings, and I had the sense that inviting any girl into our little circle was going to do just that.
