Page 21 of The Summer of ’98

“Cass was great too,” she added, talking to Noah. “She’s a lot of fun. Have you guys been together long?”

He wrinkled his nose. “We aren’t together.”

“Oh . . . I—”

“She’s a nightmare. An actual demon derived from the pits of the underworld whose specific purpose is to drive me so insane that I want to put my own dick in a paper shredder.”

“Noah, what the hell?” I said.

“Okay, so this morning before I got home,” he sat up straight, “we’re in bed and she goes, ‘I feel like a breakfast burrito from Rocky Ryan’s and I’m sitting there with no clothes on thinking, ‘Cool, do that then.’ And then she said, ‘There’s a two-for-one on Sunday mornings.’ And I’m like, ‘Hungry much?’ It’s quiet for a while and then she starts getting all pissed off and throws the blankets off and I asked what the hell her problem was and she said that I should have offered to go with her and get breakfast together because we just spent the night boning and that’s the nice thing to do. Like I’m meant to be a mind reader. Same shit with her all the damn time.”

Neither Ellie nor I responded. I heard this sort of thing from him all the time, stupid complaints about stupid arguments that he could avoid if he’d paid attention occasionally. Noah acted as if Cass was difficult to read but all she wanted was for my brother to get his head out of his ass and open the car door once in a while. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

When Noah realized that Ellie and I weren’t going to empathize with his complaints, he shrugged. “Good night, though. It’s all good when she’s not talking. You know?”

Ellie tensed on my lap.

“Don’t be a dick, Noah. Stop talking so much smack about her.”

He flinched, reddening across the nose. “Whatever,” he stood up and left the room.

I didn’t care if he felt embarrassed for being called out. His stupid attitude was the embarrassment.

It was around midnight, and Ellie and I were at the park at the end of the hill. We’d decided to go for a walk so that we could make the night last longer, neither of us wanting to retire to our separate bedrooms. Our curfew was ten, but Mom and Dad were crashed out. They wouldn’t know that we’d left. Streetlights cast a luminous yellow haze on the vast space, hitting the treetops and creating leaf-shaped shadows on the grass. It was warm and we sat on the ground beside the playground, throwing a handball back and forth.

“Football practice tomorrow,” I said, throwing over arm—she caught it.

“Can I come?”

“Yeah, of course. You wanna help again?”

She threw the ball. “I don’t think so.”

We both laughed.

“Practice is Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, right?” she asked, recalling what I’d told her on the phone.

“Yep. It’s technically not my practice, but Coach asked me and a couple of the guys to assistant coach the new team. Gives us a chance to keep playing together before we all head off to college.”

“That’s really sweet to spend so much of your time helping.”

“Have to fit the gym in there too.”

She tipped her head back and groaned. It echoed in the quiet night air. “I could never. You’re so busy. It makes me feel like a lump.”

“Sure,” I teased, looking at her toned legs stretched out in front of her.

“These are staircase legs,” she gestured at them with the ball in her hand. “School and home. I suppose I walk into town a lot too. Question: would you rather exercise every day for the rest of your life or be able to play football for the NFL? You can’t do both, though. One or the other.”

“Ooh.” I caught her throw with one hand. “That’s a tough one. They go hand in hand. Have to be fit to play football. But I think I could stay fit enough if I was playing all the time. Can I go to football practice, or does that count as exercise?”

“You can go to practice.”

“All right, football for the NFL then,” I said. “What about you? You can use skincare for the rest of your life, or you can run a skincare line. But not both.”

She gasped. “Oh, wow. Would it be guaranteed that my skincare line would be successful?”

“Yep. The best one in the world.”

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