Chapter 1
Back to School
Here are ten words I never thought I’d be saying . . .Well, okay, sure. I say these words all the time. It’s not like school and good and to are the kind of words you can avoid even if you wanted to. It’s just that I’ve never said them in this particular order. Not that I can remember, anyway. But what do you know, there they were inside my head, like a little thing you’d say just to get yourself psyched: It sure feels good to be going back to school.
Because you know what? It did. It felt really good, actually, even though school hasn’t exactly ever been the center of my happiness. Normally it’s kind of the opposite, a huge boring thing I have to put up with while I’m waiting for practice to start. Or a game, if it happens to be a game day, when the clocks go fifty times slower than they normally do and you can’t hear a word the teacher says, your head’s so on the court already. But today I was actually looking forward to it all, actually looking forward to the classes and the teachers and even those stupid crackly announcements. Because today, after five months of sheer absolute insanity, my life was finally getting back to normal.
No more football: that was one good thing. The season was over at last, so now I didn’t have to worry about everyone in the state of Wisconsin jawing about how weird it was for a girl to be playing, and then jawing about how terrible and awful and un-team-spirit-like it was for me to quit even though I wasn’t quitting, I was just saving my shoulder, which you’d think no one had ever heard of before, a player leaving because of an injury. But now hoops season was starting up, which is what I’d been saving my shoulder for, for basketball, and no one would jaw about me for even a second except to say stuff like “Nice shot” or “When’s your next game?” which is the kind of jawing I’ve been hearing forever and don’t mind at all. So that was one good thing.
Plus I was home at last. At the moment I was driving to school, duh, but officially I was at home instead of at a huge shiny hospital, trying to convince my oldest brother not to kill himself, and then once he got his spirit back trying to convince him not to kill me because he was so desperate to boss someone around. Now Mom got to be that victim, which she was actually happy about because she’s a mom, and instead I got to live in our beat-up old house, eating real home-cooked food if you call what Dad makes food, and drive our beat-up old Caravan, and that was totally A-okay with me. Even the cooking.
But most of all — and this is what I was looking forward to the very, very most — I was done with all that boyfriend crap. Finished with the 24/7 Brian Nelson cable station that had been running nonstop inside my skull since July. No more feeling like I was some fluttery girl who doesn’t have anything better to do all day long than think about her boyfriend. Because I did have better things to think about, thank you very much, because I am not the kind of girl who has boyfriends; I’m the kind who’s just friends with boys, which is totally different and which I’m actually kind of good at. I’d pulled the plug on that Brian Nelson cable station for good.
That’s why it felt so nice to be getting back to school. Because after five months I was back to being plain old background D.J. That’s how I thought about it, anyway. In photographs of course I’m always in the background — it’s a family joke that us Schwenk kids could go to school naked on picture day because we’re all so crazy tall. But I mean that I was returning to the background of life.Where no one would really notice me or talk about me or even talk to me much except to say “Nice shot,” and I could just hang out without too many worries at all.
Anyway, the words normal and background and basketball were kind of percolating through my brain — kind of the way water glugs in those big coffeepots they rev up after church, although without that coffee smell — as I drove along with Curtis. “So,” I said, feeling normal and happy enough to take a stab at a real normal conversation.
Curtis flinched, sitting there next to me. There are rabbits, wild rabbits, calmer than my little brother, the way he acts sometimes. Then he hunkered down in his seat. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“It’s okay. I was just wondering how Sarah’s doing.”
Again: making conversation. Not even using the word girlfriend. But Curtis’s ears turned red like I’d asked him to walk through town in his underwear.
“I mean, maybe you could have her over sometime. For supper or something.”
Which made Curtis go even redder. He hunkered down further and started picking at his jeans like they were so fascinating that no one could possibly be interested in anything else. “Yeah. Maybe.” He didn’t say anything else either, for the rest of the ride. Not one word.
So much for making conversation.
I pulled up to the middle school. Curtis heaved up his backpack, heavy even for him. “See you,” he said, because Mom taught him that one little bit of manners at least.
“Five-thirty, right?”
He nodded. Then, his legs already out of the Caravan, he turned back. “So, I was wondering how Brian was. Maybe you could have him over for supper.”
My jaw dropped. Literally. I could not believe he said that. Of all the mean, thoughtless . . . And then I saw his mouth twitch and I finally got it: he was teasing me.
I lunged at him but the seat belt caught me, and then he was out of the Caravan, grinning like a maniac and hustling into the building with a crowd of kids half his size.
What a total little — I mean, here’s a kid who talks less than a rock, and it turns out the whole ride he’d been planning how to bounce back what I’d said. If it was anyone else rubbing it in about Brian, that would be one thing. But Curtis — that’s like getting mad at your dog. Although if Curtis kept pulling stunts like that, maybe I’d have to stop thinking of him as some poor little house pet and start thinking of him as a smart-mouthed kid who maybe needed a lesson on respect.
At least I was prepared for all the questions about Win. In just the few days I’d been home, wandering around town after Thanksgiving, I’d learned that pretty much every single person in Red Bend considered it their personal duty to grill me on how he was doing every single time they saw me. Once on Saturday I let on that I was getting really tired of having to repeat this conversation, and old Mrs. Ingalls looked so upset that I felt twice as bad about hurting her feelings as she probably did about Win. That’s when I learned just to say, “He’s doing okay, thanks,” and leave it at that.
That’s how it went in school, too, practically every kid asking, “How’sWin?” Or “Is he walking yet?” because everyone has this huge hang-up about walking, like it’s the most important thing you can do after you break your neck. And every time I’d answer, “He’s getting there” or “HeR...