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“No problem,” I said.
“Awesome, thanks. Appreciate it.” He stood up and thinking he was about to leave, I grabbed my laptop. But he stopped at my bookcase and picked up one of my tennis trophies. I’d been meaning to pack them away, I didn’t want them here when Phoenix came back—insensitive, he wouldn’t want to be reminded of what he used to be.
“Junior boys doubles. You and Phoenix,” he said, reading the inscription.
“Yep.”
“How’s Phoenix doing?”
“Apparently he’s got a chest infection,” I said, relaying Mom’s information.
Clay tossed the trophy to me, my left hand quick to react. “No, I meanhow’s he doing?”
I knew what he meant, but I turned away, pretending I had things to do.
“Max? You have been talking to Phoenix?”
I shrugged. “Not this week. I’ve been kinda busy.”
“Don’t cut him out,” Clay said.
“I”m not!” I shouted, my frustration and anger manifesting. “I can’t help it if he doesn’t want to talk. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say to him?”
“Max, you’re his best friend,” Clay said, and now he was talking is a soothing, calm voice, like Mom. “You guys have been besties since—” he waved his hands in the air—“since second grade? Was it?” I nodded. Second grade, Miss Zampa’s class. “You know each other inside out.”
My stomach churned. Clay was right. Best friends since we were six, I remembered sitting on the floor waiting for Nature Show and Tell. Phoenix and I had both randomly taken snails. Mine was in a container with a bunch of leaves, his was in an empty box. I gave him some of my leaves and we held a snail race in the playground. He joined Tiny Tennis because I did. By sixth grade, he was better than me, but it never mattered. Getting beaten by Phoenix was a privilege because you knew he was going to go far. One day you’d be able to brag and say, “Hey, I played that guy once.”
And now, now I didn’t know how to talk to him. My best friend.
And though I hadn’t said it out loud, I was glad Phoenix had been sent to rehab in Alban Grove, five hours away, a specialized center for young people learning to walk again. I’d visited twice over the summer, but I was kind of glad that I couldn’t see him regularly. It was heart wrenchingly painful to see Phoenix like that, his broken pelvis pieced back together with plates and pins and screws.
Yeah, I hated seeing him like that, and I suspected he hated me seeing him like that.
But I should’ve done better.
That’s what I was thinking as Clay’s words regurgitated in my mind,“You know each other inside out.”
We had.
We did.
And I needed to do better.
