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Then he grinned and tugged lightly on my long ponytail in a way that gave me butterflies and I’ve been thinking about it every day this week.
The funny thing is, I was supposed to be somewhere else the day we met. If I hadn’t started skipping Saturday morning dance class then I probably still wouldn’t know him.
Lita always rolled her eyes when I cut ballet but she would never tell on me either. It was the teacher who complained to my mother when I quit showing up. Even though my mother yelled and screamed for hours, she can’t make me stand in a studio with a bunch of other silly girls, wearing tutus and glitter and learning how to pirouette.
Lately my mother keeps carrying on that she can’t do anything with me at all and my father won’t help so she’s finished. She’s giving up on me.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
She still won’t sign me up for any local sports leagues but at least she’s stopped chasing after me with dance leotards and satin ballet slippers, trying to get me to be more like Lita. Graceful. Polite. Funny. Everyone’s absolute favorite.
Everyone except for Conner.
Conner hasn’t even met Lita and he doesn’t need to meet her. He’s the one thing I get to keep to myself.
The first time I escaped from ballet class at the West Emerald Athletic Club I went straight to the outdoor fields. They were empty and I was excited to find an abandoned basketball in the grass. I was having a good time sinking baskets on the concrete court but I wasn’t shocked when a pack of boys arrived and decided to take over. Boys tend to do that.
West Emerald isn’t a big place, nothing like the endless maze of ugly streets in Emerald City. Most of those boys who crowded the court were ones I recognized but I knew that didn’t mean they’d be friendly.
Conner Wiseman caught my eye because he was a head taller than the other boys. Even though he’s a year ahead of me in school I already knew exactly who he was because everyone in school knows his name. He’s always the number one pick for any team because he’s so good at every sport he plays.
When the other boys crowded around and tried to grab the ball out of my hands I decided to go down fighting, maybe kick one or two of them in the process. But Conner pushed them away, telling them to back off and leave me alone. He even stood in front of me like he was daring any of them to charge.
Those boys shrank back like turtles and if that wasn’t a big enough shock, an even bigger shock came when Conner Wiseman smiled at me and asked if I wanted to hang out and play ball. His friends huffed and grumbled but he just ignored them.
Up until I met Conner, the only boys I’d ever dealt with had two moods when it came to girls. They were shy or they were mean.
Conner was neither. He was just…nice.
That day he talked to me like I was one of his buddies and shared tips on shooting from the free-throw line. He showed me how to protect the ball and keep my feet moving.
We started meeting at the basketball court every single Saturday afternoon. He always walks me home afterwards even though my house is nowhere near his.
Conner is also smart. Really smart. A walking encyclopedia of sports trivia, reciting batting averages and weird football rules off the top of his head. But his favorite sport is basketball. It’s my favorite sport too. And I’m good, but not nearly as good as him. I bet someday he’ll play for the Emerald City Wizards. Then I can play for the Lady Rubies. And we’ll both win national championship titles and laugh about how we used to practice at the stupid West Emerald Athletic Club.
Maybe a long time from now we’ll even fall in love and get married. I’ve never thought about marrying anyone. My parents are married and they suck. But if I were going to marry someone then I’d definitely choose to marry Conner.
The way I figure it, you ought to marry the person you can say things to that you can’t say to anyone else. I can say those things to Conner.
I’ve told him about how I wear my noise cancelling headphones to bed every night to drown out the noise of my parents screaming at each other because my dad is always cheating and my mom is always mad.
I can even tell him my biggest secret, that I’m jealous of Lita because she’s the better twin, the twin everyone likes. All of her friends are coming over for a birthday sleepover tonight and I’ll probably just go up to my room and pretend they aren’t there.
Lita was teasing me this morning because she saw me walking with Conner last Saturday. She says I have a crush on him and that I want to kiss him on the mouth. I got mad and slammed my bedroom door in her face but she used a butter knife to force it open. When I threatened to throw a lamp at her head she said she was sorry. She didn’t mean to make fun of me and she knows what it’s like to have a crush. She had a big crush on Emily Gruber last year and even gave her a Valentine’s Day card. But Emily tossed the card in the trash and said that liking girls is disgusting. Lita cried that night. She didn’t tell me she cried. I just know she did, like how she knew when I broke my wrist in a fall from a skateboard even though she wasn’t there. Anyway, the next day Emily Gruber tripped over my hockey stick in gym class and she belly flopped on the floor. Emily screamed with bloody snot coming out of her nose and said that I tripped her on purpose, which I did. So I had detention for a week but I wasn’t sorry. She can’t make my sister cry and then just skip away.
When Lita decided I was no longer mad about being teased about Conner she asked if I wanted to help decorate for the sleepover party. No, I definitely did NOT want to hang glittery streamers and blow up balloons. The girls coming to the house tonight are all her friends, not mine. Anyway, I had plans to meet Conner. The minute she wasn’t looking I snuck out with my basketball tucked under my arm and didn’t tell her where I was going.
Sometimes I wonder why I can’t get along with my sister the way I used to. Whatever the reason, I’m sure it’s my fault. It always is.
Conner is nowhere in sight when I reach the basketball courts. A handful of boys are already playing on one of the courts but they all look like they are in high school and they don’t even glance at me when I take a seat in the nearby grass with my ball in my lap.
We’ve been meeting here every Saturday for two months and Conner is never late. Most of the time he’s already here when I show up.
Maybe he’s late because he’s planning something special for my birthday. That would make sense. Conner likes to do nice things for people. He said he saved his allowance for a month to buy his mother a bracelet made of rose quartz for Mother’s Day.
He doesn’t really need to do anything for my birthday. I’m happy just to shoot hoops and then go for ice cream, like he said.
The high school boys curse constantly. That doesn’t bother me. My father slapped me across the face once when he heard me say ‘shit’. Then he yelled at my mother, saying she didn’t teach me how to behave like a lady.
