To all the Kings and Queens of Summer Birthdays, holders of hearts, and readers in search of a story full of love, friendship, and hope
Once upon a time, my birthday was fun.
Emphasis on once.
Judging by the sun, I’d guess it’s probably not that early. I can hear Isabel and Davy giggling outside my door, waiting for me to wake up. They’re more excited about my birthday than I am. I have dreaded my birthday for 364 days, and now it’s here.
Yippee.
I’m thirteen.
“Okay, okay,” I call out. “You can come in.”
It doesn’t take but half a second for my bedroom door to fling open and two little bodies to fly through the air and land on my bed.
“Happy birthday, Jolie,” Isabel sings. “Davy says happy birthday, too.”
My little brother doesn’t say much. He’s four and a half, and he should be talking by now. Mom worries. It’s not like I think he has a delay or anything; it’s more like he’s hiding something. I guess everyone has their secrets.
I know I do.
I still talk to you.
That’s my secret.
“I’m still sleeping, you guys,” I say. I pull the covers over my head, but I can hear the anticipation in their rapid breathing and the squeaky mouse sounds that Isabel makes when she’s happy-nervous. I swear I can even hear Davy tightening his belly muscles in preparation for some major tickling.
And for a moment I forget what day this is. I forget how hard this last year has been. This entire last year I dragged myself up and over whatever it was I had to do. The pain got smaller, but the grief did not.
From under my blankets I start counting, very slowly. It’s the slow counting that gets them every time. “One. Two. Three.” I can feel two trembling lumps, bony knees and skinny elbows, trying to hold me down.
“Four. Five…I hope you don’t say the magic word,” I call out.
Whatever word comes out of either of their mouths, that will be the magic word. All I have to do is wait. And count. They can’t help themselves. One of them will say something.
“Six. Seven,” I go on.
Isabel tries to clamp her hand over her mouth. I can hear her muffled giggles. We all know she’s going to be the one to blurt something out. It’s always Isabel.
“Eight. Nine.”
“Nooo!” she screams.
“That’s it!” I yank the covers off my head, and the static electricity makes my hair stick all over my face. I can’t see, but I manage to grab hold of my little sister and start tickling her mercilessly.
“That’s the magic word,” I roar. “The magic word is no. And you said it.”
Davy tries to slide away. He makes a half-hearted run for the door, but I reach out and capture him, too. Now I’ve got them both. We are all screams, shouts, and laughing, a tugging, twisting, twelve-limbed octopus creature. Eventually, all the covers slip off the bed like a waterfall, and we end up on the floor in a big pile of arms and legs, and blankets, sheets, and pillows.
And then, just before my mom walks in to see what all the commotion is, with a big smile on her face, and before my older sister, Natalia, steps up behind her and says, “Happy birthday,” for a split second, I completely forget what day it is.
I forget that a year ago today is the day after the last day I talked to my best friend, Lukas, for the last time.
And sometimes, in rare happy moments like this one, I can even forget that there, in my desk, in the bottom drawer, is the envelope you left for me, the first clue, on my birthday one year ago today.
“You’re not giving her that, are you?”
Justin stands at my door, nodding at the small red heart necklace I bought for Joy, which I’m about to slip in its box and wrap in red construction paper. The white envelope, full of six clues, harder this year than any year before, sits on my desk, waiting. Only the first clue will stay in there, get sealed up and slid under her front door. The other five I’ll hide in their places around town.
As for the necklace, I’m not sure where I’ll leave that. Somewhere near where the last clue leads her back to.
“Well, are you?” Justin moves into the room, stands behind me, mouth-breathing.
“I might,” I say, not turning to look at him. “What of it?”
“Nothing. Just wondering.”
No, he isn’t. “Well, leave me alone, then,” I say.
I want him to leave because there’s also a note I wrote to her, up on my desk. I’ll never hear the end of it if he reads that. But just because Justin thinks he has to act like a jerk to everyone now that he’s almost done with high school doesn’t mean I have to.
I can tell Joy how I feel, right?
Justin reaches his flip-flopped foot out and touches the pendant with the toe. He knows it’s a gift for Joy, even though he doesn’t pay too much attention to me or any of the stuff I do anymore, because anyone who knows us knows her birthday is two days before mine. And that we always celebrate them together.
And, yeah, we always do a scavenger hunt, too.
The hunts used to be simple. Just a few easy clues placed all in one area, and some homemade kid present we’d make for one another and stand clutching like a goofy game-show person at the end: a paper-clip bracelet, a rock painted like a polar bear, a Shrinky Dinks key chain, something like that.
But that was before middle school, before I got the dog-walking job and Joy turned eleven and could take that CPR course, which made it so she can babysit the Rogers twins boys for seven dollars an hour, but only on weekend afternoons. So now, for our twelfth birthdays, we agreed to get each other real gifts.
“Just trying to save you the humiliation, bro,” Justin says. He leans down to pick up the pendant and turns it by its chain, making me relieved I didn’t ask the lady to engrave it.
He tosses it into the air and catches it.
I’m not worried about him breaking it or anything. He can be a jerk, but he still takes care of me. It’s his job, without Dad around. He will give me plenty of crap, though, so I take care not to turn and let my eyes go to where the note is. If I do that, I’m done for.
He puts the pendant back down on the floor next to me. “It’s nice,” he says. “But you should trust me on this. Nothing ruins a friendship like declaring your undying love.”
“I’m not declaring my love, moron,” I say. But my ears burn red and my cheeks set on fire. So what if I am?