The Distance to Home (12 page)

“I think your sister's hurting right now, and she has every right to. But it won't last forever.”

“I'm sorry, Daddy.”

“I know, Quinnbear. But there's someone else who needs to hear that more than me right now.”

I stared at all those little gritty bits of chocolate at the bottom of my mug while Mom and Haley walked past us and into the house.

As Dad and I sat out back, watching the stars and getting colder by the minute, I saw a shooting star. A real one. I wished for a time machine, for a do-over. And then I closed my eyes real hard and counted to ten.

But when I opened them, nothing had changed. It was still just me and Dad and my mistake.

Eventually Mom came out onto the porch and told me I was going to catch a cold from sitting out there in my wet bathing suit. I didn't tell her I deserved one. I think she knew.

When I went inside, Haley was lying on the couch with a cup of tea and a box of tissues and watching
When Harry Met Sally.

“Haley?”

I said it loud enough for her to hear, I was sure of it, but she didn't even turn her head. It was like I didn't exist.

Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Not now, Quinnen.”

I went upstairs and took a bath. When I came out, Mom was reading a book in the leather chair in my room. “We need to talk about this,” she said, closing her book.

I sat down on the bottom bunk, twisting strands of wet hair between my fingers. “Okay.”

“I'm so disappointed in you, Quinnen.”

I nodded.

“You know better than to do something like this.”

I nodded again.

“Did you read your sister's other messages with Zack?” She looked me right in the eye when she asked the question.

Looking right back at her, I told her, “No.” But my lip quivered and my stupid cow eyes gave it away, like they always do.

“Oh, Quinnen.”

I couldn't look at her. All I could do was picture the phone on Haley's bureau and that mean message she wrote about me to Zack. The one I was never supposed to see.

That feeling I had, that feeling that told me,
Do it now, Quinnen, do it now,
where did it go? It had worked. My plan had really worked. My sister and Zack had broken up. I had her back.

But I didn't.

Because now everything else was broken, too.

“What your sister and Zack wrote to each other was private,” Mom said. “You didn't have any right to go in there and read that.”

“I know, Mom,” I said. “I messed up.”

“Yes, you did.” She was quiet for a moment. I wondered if she and Dad had talked over my punishment while I was taking a bath.
The tournament.
My eyes filled with tears.

“Not you, too,” she said. “Stop that, Quinnen.”

I wiped at my eyes. “Are you and Dad…Are you…Do I still get to play in the tournament?”

“Of course you do,” she said. “I'm not going to punish your team. As far as we're concerned, you're going. You didn't break our trust today. You broke your sister's.”

I nodded.

“You're too young to understand what it's like to have your heart broken. It's a terrible feeling. I don't know what came over you to do that to your sister.”

I looked down at my lap. Mom was right. And now there was no way I could undo what I had done.

“Your father and I will discuss a punishment for you when we get home. It doesn't make sense to further spoil our family vacation.” Mom sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Quinnen. You're so impulsive. Sometimes, I don't know what we're going to do with you.”

She walked out of the room, leaving me all alone. I climbed into the top bunk to lie down.

It was so quiet without Haley.

Was that how it had been for her, back before I was born?

It was hard to wrap my mind around the idea of a time when I didn't exist. The thought made me shiver. But for the first six years of Haley's life, I wasn't around. There was no Quinnen. It was Mom and Dad and Haley. Just three. And then—
bam
—I was born, and suddenly it was four. Haley had to deal with me. Whether she wanted to or not. Maybe it was
not.

Haley had never said she hated me before. She'd gotten mad at me plenty of times, so many that I had lost track. But she had never said that word.
Hate.
Did she ever wish things could go back to the way they'd been before me, when it was just three?

I could hear Dad laughing downstairs. He made fun of that movie every time Mom and Haley watched it. I bet it was him and Mom and Haley on the couch. Just three again.

I closed my eyes, rubbed the sheet in between my fingers, and tried to fall asleep.

I
look back at Mom and Dad sitting in the stands, but they have no idea that Cheese Pizza is Zack. Banjo is lining up the pizzas in the foul territory over by third base. I'm standing to the side of home plate with Charlie, the old man, and Amanda, the teenager, waiting for Pizza Knockout instructions.

Banjo's voice is broadcast over the sound system. “The way the game works,” he says as he heads toward us, “is each player gets paired with a pizza. Players, your goal is to knock out your pizza with…wait for it…” He looks out at the crowd, expecting them to shout out guesses. Meanwhile, the batboy and batgirl come running toward us with buckets.

“Water balloons!” Banjo yells.

The crowd cheers as the buckets are placed at our feet. We each get one bucket full of water balloons. There must be at least twenty of them in there. Red, blue, green, and yellow.

“Whoever is the first to hit their pizza ten times will win free tickets for the rest of the season and a free post-game pizza today at Pizza Palace. How about that?”

The crowd cheers again. Charlie starts reaching down for a water balloon, but Banjo cuts him off. “Not just yet, my friend. You haven't chosen your pizza partners! What'll it be, Charlie?” Banjo holds out the mic for Charlie to answer into it.

“My favorite's always been pepperoni,” Charlie says.

“So pepperoni it is!” Banjo directs Charlie so he's lined up with the pepperoni pizza.

Banjo walks over to Amanda next. “Whatcha hankering for today, Amanda?”

Not cheese. Not cheese.

“I'm a vegetarian,” Amanda says. “So I'll go with cheese.”

“Man, my pizza craving is through the roof right now.” Banjo walks over to me. “Well, sweetie, looks like you don't get much of a choice now, do you?”

“I'll take sausage,” I say. But I keep looking at the cheese pizza.

“Okay, folks. We're ready to roll! On the count of three, our first-ever game of Pizza Knockout will begin!”

Banjo doesn't say that the pizzas are going to dance. He doesn't say that they're going to play the stupid “Hokey Pokey” song during Pizza Knockout. But they are. The pizzas are dancing. And they're probably happy that the day they have to wear pizza costumes is that one cool day you have all summer, where it's cloudy and it looks like it's going to rain, only it hasn't yet. And I know that underneath that costume, Zack is smiling. I can see it in the way his feet step from side to side, in the way his huge pizza body dips and twists.

Zack is happy and smiling and dancing, but my sister will never dance or smile again.

I lower my hand so it's just an inch away from touching the water balloon at the top.

“One.”

Maybe this is what I've really been practicing for with Hector.

“Two.”

I know I should throw at my assigned pizza.

“Three.”

I grab a red water balloon, keep my eye on Zack, and throw. The balloon gets him right where his stomach should be.
Nice shot, Quinnen.
I grab a yellow balloon and watch as it explodes right by his heart.

“Hey, that's my pizza!” Amanda says. But she hasn't hit him even once.

“Oops.”

I grab three more water balloons and throw them at him.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
I can't stop. He's getting soaked, but he hasn't fallen over. Not yet.

I haven't won. Not yet.

“She's going rogue,” Banjo says into the microphone with an uneasy chuckle. Putting the mic aside, he says to me, “You're supposed to be aiming for the sausage pizza.”

“I guess my aim's not that good,” I say.

The sausage pizza starts scooting over toward Zack, as if that will make me start hitting him, like I'm supposed to.

Pizzas are stupid.

I grab three more water balloons and chuck them even harder, this time right at Zack's head. They explode over his stupid sheer pizza eyes. I can't see Zack's real eyes, but I can feel him looking right at me, and I think he knows.

He knows that he ruined my last summer with my sister and he can never, never, never fix it.

I look down at my bucket. It's almost empty, and he's still standing. He's still standing, and the game is “knockout,” and I'm going to win. For Haley.

Amanda's bucket is still half-full because she's slow and has no aim. I grab her bucket from her.

“Hey!” she says, but I don't stop. I run full speed toward Zack, clasping the bucket against my chest.

Banjo tries to run after me, but he doesn't get there fast enough. I slam into Zack with my bucket. The hard plastic digs into my chest as Zack topples over backward, and I fall to the ground. I roll off him and stand up, both arms raised up into the air, like a champion.

“Knockout!” I say.

But now that I'm close, I can see through the mesh, and when I look down at Zack, he isn't smiling. He isn't angry, either.

He's crying.

My eyes glaze over as I take in what's right before me. A teenage boy lying on the grass, surrounded by busted water balloons.

Everything I just did—it doesn't bring Haley back. It doesn't bring her back at all. And nothing will.

“Go, Bandits!” It's the only sound out of the whole crowd, and it comes from that weirdo who sits in the bleachers at every game, wearing the crazy hat with three pinwheels attached to the top and the rally monkey around his neck, the guy who yells “Go, Bandits!” at the opposing team half the time.

“I think we'll go with the regular old Pizza Race next time,” Banjo says into the microphone. Some people in the crowd try to laugh with him. He hands pizza gift cards to Amanda and Charlie, who both look like they can't wait to get off the field and back into the stands.

The Coal Miners run out from their dugout and take their places for the bottom of the inning. A lady from the medical staff runs over to check on Zack, but he shrugs her off, says he's fine.

She looks down at me, sitting on the grass. “Don't you think you owe somebody an apology?”

“He ruined my life,” I say. “All I did was knock him over.”

She shakes her head. “Honey, that boy did no such thing.”

As she walks away, I see someone running toward us from the Bandits dugout. It's Hector. But he jogs right past me. He doesn't even stop to look at me. He squats down next to Zack and talks to him. I can't hear what Zack is saying—it's muffled by the pizza costume. Hector gives him a pat on the back and stands up.

He comes over to me. “Why did you hurt my friend?”

“Your
friend
?” I look toward Zack. He's standing up and making his way back to the concession stands.

“Zack.”

I take a step back. “You're friends with Zack?”

“We play music together. He lets me use his keyboard. We're thinking of starting a band, with José.”

He says something else. I know he says something else, but I can't listen to it. I put my hands over my ears like I'm still a little kid and if I can't hear it, then it isn't true. With his strong hands, Hector pulls my hands off my ears. He looks confused.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

“How can you be friends with Zack?”

I look at him through blurred eyes. Now he's doing the fish thing. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. I rub at my eyes, wipe the tears away. He doesn't know. I have to tell him.

“He took Haley away from me. My sister. She'd still be here right now if it wasn't for him.”

I wait for that look to spread across his face. That moment of recognition when it all clicks into place, when he realizes his friend Zack isn't a good guy.

But I don't see it.

“No,” he says. Maybe he doesn't believe me. He shakes his head and says it again. “No, Quinnen.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, yes, yes. I thought you were my friend.”

“Quinnen.” This time he says my name louder. Almost like Mom and Dad when they're mad.

I can't look at him anymore, and turn away. So what if Hector has to go out and pitch? He wants someone out there who's rooting for him, who's his friend? He's got him. Zack. Zack knows Spanish. He can yell
mofongo
at him. He can probably pronounce it better than me, too.

Hector doesn't need me. He never needed me anyway.

“Quinnen.” Mom's sharp voice cuts through everything.

She and Dad are walking out onto the field.

Mom grabs my arm and pulls me up, like I'm a toddler. “I don't know what on earth has gotten into you, Quinnen. Attacking that young man in the pizza costume? You have a lot of explaining to do.” We start walking off the field.

“It was Zack,” I spit out.

Mom exchanges a look with Dad and then guides me through the gate.

We don't head back to our seats. Without another word, we pass by the booth that sells the Bandits sweatshirts and Mrs. Harrington at the ticket booth. The wind is picking up now, and the sky is dark blue all the way to the ground.

The storm is in the distance, but it feels like it's already here.

We head out into the parking lot. We walk past trucks with Bandits stickers and minivans with stickers that say “Baby on Board” and fancy cars with fancy college stickers for all the schools that Haley was supposed to visit this summer, where Haley was supposed to go next fall.

I wish she had never gotten that job at the camp. Never met Zack. Maybe then it would all be different.

Everything was fine when it was just me and Haley. But then she tried to add Zack to the equation, and it messed everything up. Zack ruined the numbers. He ruined everything.

We're in the parking lot when there's a big clap of thunder and the sky opens up. Fat raindrops splatter in the dirt. Mom holds her hands over her head as we race to the truck, but it's not enough. My T-shirt is soaked through by the time Dad is fumbling with the key.

Mom's lips are still squeezed shut like she's been holding in all the things she can't say to me in public and the second we're in the truck they're going to come flying out.

I hop into the cab through Dad's side.

“Let's talk about it when we get home, Laurie,” Dad says.

And then he ruffles my hair like he always used to. “Come on, kiddo. Let's go home.”