They returned only a few months later, on the first day of summer before my freshman year. I would be turning fifteen that August, and the twins sixteen that September. Calliope looked exactly as she had before they left.
But, once again, Cricket had changed.
Lindsey and I were on my porch, licking Cherry Garcia in waffle cones, when a car pulled up next door and out stepped Cricket Bell as I’d never seen him before—one beautifully long pinstriped leg after another.
Something deep inside of me lurched.
The stirring was as startling and unpleasant as it was thrilling and revolutionary. I already knew that this image—his legs, those pants—would be imprinted in my mind for the rest of my life. The moment was that profound. Lindsey called out a sunny hello. Cricket looked up, disconcerted, and his eyes met mine.
That was it. I was gone.
We held our gaze longer than the acceptable, normal amount of time before he shifted to Lindsey and raised one hand in a quiet wave. His family materialized from the car, everyone talking at once, and his attention jerked back to them. But not without another glance toward me. And then another, even quicker, before disappearing into the lavender Victorian.
I took Lindsey’s hand and gripped it tightly. Our fingers were sticky with ice cream. She knew. Everything that needed to be said was spoken in the way I held on to her.
She smiled. “Uh-oh.”
Verbal contact happened that same night. The odd thing is that I no longer remember what I wore, but I know I chose it carefully, anticipating a meeting. When I finally pulled aside my curtains, I wasn’t surprised to discover him standing before his window, staring into mine. Of course he was.
But he was taken aback by my appearance. Even his hair seemed more startled than usual.
“I was . . . getting some fresh air,” I said.
“Me, too.” Cricket nodded and added a great, exaggerated inhalation.
I’m still not sure if it was a joke, but I laughed. He gave me a nervous smile in return, which quickly broke into his fullwattage grin. He’s never had
any control over it. Up close, I saw that his acne had disappeared, and his face had grown older. We stood there, smiling like fools. What do you say to someone who is not the same and yet completely the same? Had I changed, too, or had it just been him?
Cricket ducked away first. Some excuse about helping his mom unpack dishes. I vowed to initiate a real conversation the next day, but . . . his close proximity fizzled my brain, tied my tongue. He didn’t fare any better.
So we waved.
We’d never waved through our windows before, but it was unavoidably clear that we were aware of each other’s presence.
So we were forced to acknowledge each other all day and all night, still having nothing to say but wanting to say everything.
It took weeks before this torturous situation changed. Betsy and I were leaving the house as he was strolling home, those pinstriped pants and his hair looking like it was trying to touch the sky.
We stopped shyly.
“It’s nice to see you,” he said. “Outside. Instead of inside.You know.”
I smiled so that he’d know I knew. “I’m taking her for a walk.
You wouldn’t want to join—”
“Yes.”
“—us?” My heart thrummed.
Cricket looked away. “Yeah, we could catch up. Should catch up.”
I looked away, too, trying to control my blush. “Do you need to drop that off?”
He was carrying a paper bag from the hardware store. “OH.
Yeah. Hold on.” Cricket shot up his stairs but then stopped halfway. “Wait right there,” he added. He bounded inside and came back only seconds later. He held out two Blow Pops.
“It’s so lame,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I love these!” And then I did blush, for using the word love.
Our tongues turned green-apple green, but we talked for so long that by the time we returned home, they were pink again. The feeling inside of me grew. We began bumping into each other at the same time every afternoon. He’d pretend to be running an errand, I’d pretend to be surprised, and then he’d join Betsy and me on our walk.
One day, he didn’t appear. I paused before his house, disappointed, and looked up and down our street. Betsy strained forward on her leash.
The Bells’ door burst open, and Cricket flew down so quickly that he almost toppled into me.
I smiled. “You’re late.”
“You waited.” He wrung his hands.
We stopped pretending.
Cricket defined the hours of my day. The hour I opened my curtains—the same time he opened his—so that we could share a morning hello. The hour I ate my lunch so that I could watch him eat his. The hour I left my house for our walk. The hour I called Lindsey to dissect our walk. And the hour after dinner when Cricket and I chatted before closing our curtains again.
At night, I lay in bed and pictured him lying in his. Was he thinking about me, too? Did he imagine sneaking into my bedroom like I imagined sneaking into his? If we were alone in the dark instead of daylight, would he find the courage to kiss me? I wanted him to kiss me. He was the boy.
He was supposed to make the first move.
Why wasn’t he making the first move? How long would I have to wait?
These feverish thoughts kept me awake all summer. I’d rise in the morning, covered in sweat, with no recollection of when I’d finally fallen asleep and no recollection of my dreams, apart from three words echoing in my head, in his voice. I need you.
Need.
What a powerful, frightening word. It represented my feelings toward him, but every night, my dreams placed it inside his mouth.
I needed him to touch me. I was obsessed with the way his hands never stopped moving. The way he rubbed them together when he was excited, the way he sometimes couldn’t help but clap. The way he had secret messages written on the back of his left. And his fingers. Long, enthusiastic, wild, but I knew from watching him build his machines that they were also delicate, careful, precise. I fantasized about those fingers.
And I was consumed by the way that whenever he spoke, his eyes twinkled as if it were the best day of his life. And the way his whole body leaned toward mine when I spoke, a gesture that showed he was interested, he was listening. No one had ever moved their body to face me like that.
The summer sprawled forward, each day more agonizing and wonderful than the last. He began hanging out with Lindsey and my parents, even with Norah, when she was around. He was entering my world. But every time I tried to enter his, Calliope was hostile. Cold. Sometimes she pretended that I wasn’t in the room, sometimes she’d even leave while I was speaking. This was the first time he’d chosen someone over her, and she resented me for it. I was stealing her best friend. I was a threat.
Rather than confront her, we retreated to the safety of my house.
But . . . he still wasn’t making any moves. Lindsey supposed he was waiting for the right moment, something significant. Maybe my birthday. His is exactly one month after mine, also on the twentieth, so he’d always remembered. That morning, I was heartened to see a sign taped to his glass:
HAPPY LOLA DAY! WE’RE THE SAME AGE AGAIN!
I leaned out my window. “For a month!”
He appeared with a smile, his hands rubbing together. “It’s a good month.”
“You’ll forget about me when you turn sixteen,” I teased.
“Impossible.” His voice cracked on the word, and it shook my heart.
Andy took over Betsy’s afternoon walk so that we could have complete freedom. Cricket greeted me at the usual time, raising two pizza boxes over his head. I was about to say I was still stuffed from lunch when . . . “Are those empty or full?” My question was sly. I had a feeling this wasn’t about pizza.
He opened up a box and smiled. “Empty.”
“I haven’t been there in years!”
“Same here. Calliope and I were probably with you the last time I went.”
We took off running down the hill, toward the park at the other end of our street—the one that barely counted because it was tiny and sandwiched between two houses—back up another hill, past the spray-painted sign warning NO ADULTS ALLOWED
UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY CHILDREN, and to the top of the Seward Street slides.
“Oh God.” I had a jolt of terror. “Were they always this steep?” Cricket unfolded the boxes and laid them long and greasy side down, one on each narrow concrete slide. “I claim left.” I sat down on my box. “Sucks to be you. The right side is faster.”
“No way! The left side always wins.”
“Says the guy who hasn’t been here since he was six. Keep your arms tucked in.”
He grinned. “There’s no way I’ve forgotten those scrapes and burns.”
On the count of three, we took off. The slides are short and fast, and we flew to the bottom, holding in our screams so as not to disturb the Seward Witch, the mean old lady who shouted obscenities at people enjoying themselves too loudly and just another reason why the slides were so much fun. Cricket’s feet flew off first, followed quickly by his bottom. He hit the ground with a smack that had us rolling with laughter.
“I think my ass is actually smoking,” he said.
I bit down the obvious comment, that his pants had made this fact abundantly clear in June.
We stayed for half an hour, sharing the slides with two guys in their twenties who were high and a playgroup of moms and preschoolers. We were waiting behind the moms, about to go down for the last time, when I heard snickering. I looked over my shoulder and discovered the arrival of three girls from school. My heart sank.
“Nice dress,” Marta Velazquez said. “Is it your mommy’s?” I was wearing a vintage polka-dot swing dress—two sizes too large that I’d tightened with safety pins—over a longsleeved striped shirt and jeans rolled greaser-style. I wanted to look pretty for my birthday.
I no longer felt pretty.
Cricket turned around, confused. And then . . . he did something that changed everything. He stepped deliberately in front of them and blocked my view. “Don’t listen to them. I like how you dress.”
He liked me just as I was.
I sat down quietly on my pizza box. “It’s our turn.” But what I ached to say was, I need you.
On the walk home, he had me joking and laughing about the people who’d tormented me for years. I finally realized how absurd it was that I’d worried so much about what my classmates thought about me. It’s not like I wanted to look like them.
“Cricket!” Andy said, when he saw us approaching. “You’re coming over for the birthday dinner, right?”
I looked at Cricket hopefully. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Sure.”
It was simple and perfect. My only guests were Nathan, Andy, Lindsey, and Cricket. We ate Margherita pizza, followed by an extravagant cake shaped like a crown. I ate the first piece, Cricket ate the biggest. Afterward, I walked my friends outside.
Lindsey gave me a nudge in the back and disappeared.
Cricket shuffled his feet. “I’m not great with gifts.” My heart leaped. But instead of a kiss, he removed a fistful of watch parts and candy wrappers from his pocket. Cricket sifted through the pile