My body flooded with relief that he was okay but at the same time, jealousy reared its ugly head. The boys had obviously known about this place but had kept it a secret from me. I yanked my hand out of Jude’s.
“You never told me about this place.”
“Well, now you know,” he said, his eyes searching my face.
I remembered what he’d said about my poker face and averted my gaze so he couldn’t see the hurt. “Whatever. It’s not like you guys have to tell me every little thing.” Hurt and annoyed, I strode ahead.
“Hey.” He tugged my elbow and spun me around to face him.
“What?” I folded my arms over my chest and tapped my foot on the ground.
“It’s kind of Brody’s secret spot. He likes to come down here and just chill.”
“Oh. Well… I guess…” I chewed on my lip, mulling it over. “He has a lot to think about.”
Jude nodded. “Yeah. It’s been hard for him.”
I looked over my shoulder at Brody then back at Jude. “Do you think he wants us here?”
“I don’t know if he wants us to be here, but I think he needs us to be here.”
“What’s the difference?”
He gave it a moment’s thought before answering. “Sometimes we think we want one thing but what we need is something completely different.”
Sometimes Jude was smart. Smarter than you’d expect a just-turned-fourteen-year-old annoying boy to be. And sometimes he wasn’t annoying at all. Not even a little bit.
He jerked his chin. “Come on.”
We closed the distance between ourselves and Brody. He saw us but didn’t tell us to get lost. He didn’t say a single word.
Jude was standing behind me as I tried to figure out how to scale the side and get to the top where Brody was. Climbing still wasn’t my strong suit. Before I’d worked it out, Jude’s hands wrapped around my waist and I was lifted off the ground like I was featherlight.
“Grab the rail.”
I reached for the railing and grabbed hold with both hands as he gave me another boost. Gripping the corrugated metal with the toes of my sneakers, I pushed myself up and over while Jude scaled the wall of metal with no problem and sat on the edge, with his legs dangling over the side.
I took my place between the two boys and the three of us sat in silence. It wasn’t the bad kind of silence. It was comfortable. Like we didn’t even need words.
The sky grew dark and we lay on our backs under a blanket of stars. Jude knew all about the stars and constellations and on clear nights like this, he could trace them with his finger. Aurora Australis, he said, and I took his word for it because astronomy was one of his things.
One time I asked him why he was so obsessed with the stars. He said it was cool that they were thousands of light years away but we could see them with the naked eye. And that our planet was nothing more than a speck of dust to whoever was watching us from the stars. I told him that made me feel small and worthless. He said it was the opposite, that we were a part of something bigger.
And I guess that’s how Jude looked at life, like we were all here for a purpose and it was our responsibility to do our part. He truly believed that by fighting for our country, he’d be doing something for the greater good, and that he could protect the people he loved.
“Did you know the stars shine brighter here?” Jude said. “On account of not having light pollution. In the cities, they’re harder to see.”
“It’s true,” Brody agreed. “I could never see the stars where I used to live.”
I thought about a sky with no stars and couldn’t imagine anything sadder. Where we lived, the sky was bigger. The days were glaringly bright and the night sky was inky blue, so dark you could see millions of stars.
“Sucks to be you,” Jude teased, an attempt to lighten the mood.
“Yeah,” Brody said with a laugh, tucking his arms under his head. “Guess it’s not so shitty here after all.”
“Guess not. But sometimes it smells like shit. Did you know that cow manure is worse for air pollution than cars? And when they fart, they emit enough gas to fuel a rocket.”
We all laughed and everything was back to the way it was supposed to be. But when your two best friends were boys, there were times when it got complicated. I wanted to be one of them, but at the same time, I wanted them to see that I was a girl. I didn’t like it when they looked at other girls. I especially didn’t like it when Jude looked at other girls.
But as it turned out, that would be the least of my problems.
As Brody had said, there were all different kinds of wars, and there were some wars that no matter how hard you fought, you couldn’t win.
That was the year everything changed.
That was the year when one word put more fear into me than I ever thought a word was capable of doing.
Cancer.
“We’re going to beat it,” Derek said, his voice ringing with conviction.
My mom just smiled as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. She reached for me and pulled me into their circle so I wasn’t on the outside looking in.
I wish Derek had cancer instead of my mom. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips together, not giving a voice to my horrible thoughts.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking it and the years marched on and my mom was losing the battle, I wished it with all my heart.
But some wishes don’t come true.
Chapter Six
Jude
The garden was Lila’s idea, a surprise for her mom who had been talking about it since they’d moved into the house but had never gotten around to doing it. It was the first day of our spring break, and I’d gotten here early this morning, right after Derek took her mom to chemo. Ever since I’d arrived, Lila had been bossing me around, barking out orders like a drill sergeant. Now she flew out of the house and ran across the yard, flapping her arms like an angry bird. A laugh burst out of me. I couldn’t help it. She looked so funny when she was mad.
After she wrestled the shovel out of my hands, I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling the heat of her glare.
“This is all wrong,” she wailed.
She looked like she was on the verge of tears. I was on the verge of telling her to dig up her own damn flower beds. But I wouldn’t. This was for Caroline but mostly, it was for Lila. She needed this and I wanted to be the one to give it to her. Even if it meant sweating my balls off in the April sunshine and being shouted at by Minnie Mouse.
I took a few deep breaths so I didn’t lose my shit. “You said you wanted flower beds. I’m digging flower beds.” I looked down at all the soil I’d dug up. The flower bed was a long rectangle, exactly as she’d specified and as far as I could tell, it was damn near perfect. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I can’t see it from my parents’ bedroom window. That’s what’s wrong with it.” Her shoulders sagged, all the fight drained out of her. “My mom won’t be able to see the flowers.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that her mom would have a clear view from the kitchen window or that she’d be able to see them while she sat on the back deck and drank her coffee like she did every morning. I kept my mouth shut and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm as Lila paced across the yard and stopped about ten feet from where I’d been digging. “It needs to be here.”