Jeri Smith-Ready - This Side of Salvation

Mara lets out a groan. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“You’re right.” Kane crosses his arms. “I can’t tell anyone what I don’t know.”

He’s willing to walk away right now without knowing our secret—and what’s more, pretend that there is no secret. He’s that good a friend. Which means he’s a good enough friend to keep an actual secret, even one this size.

Mara waves her knife toward the front door. “We’ll tell you, if you make us breakfast.”

TEN MONTHS TO EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE THE RUSH, GIVE OR TAKE A COUPLE WEEKS

Bailey came to fourteen out of our twenty-two league games that summer, giving her a .636 average. My parents never allowed us time afterward to say more than “Hey,” “good game,” and “thanks” before carting me off.

If they’d really wanted to protect me from her, they would’ve kept her from coming to the games in the first place. I regained my focus on the mound but never truly got used to the feel of her eyes on me. My earned run average for the games when she was present was 3.14; when she was absent, it was a stellar 0.78, with two no-hitters and one perfect game.

The season ended in early August, when Bailey went on a month-long vacation to Vermont with her parents. I didn’t see her until Math Cave started again the day after Labor Day. At that point, I was three weeks away from my sixteenth birthday on September 24. Three weeks until I’d be allowed to ask her out.Three weeks until my life began or ended.

Five days before my birthday, Kane and I were at the local park shooting hoops, getting him ready for next month’s basketball tryouts.

“You’ve got some moves,” he told me when we’d finished an intense game of one-on-one that left me gasping for breath. “You should try out for the team with me.”

“No way.” Knees weak, I fought to stay upright as I bent over to grab my water bottle. “Can’t risk hurting the arm.”

“The arm, the arm, the precious arm. Pitchers are such delicate flowers.” He wiped his forehead with a towel, still dribbling the ball with his other hand. “Spot me for free throws?”

I nodded and took my place off to the side of the basket. When I could speak in complete sentences again, I said, “It’s a whole other kind of conditioning for basketball. All that running’d slim me down, burn away muscle.”

“Suit yourself.” He set his feet on the foul line, shifting them to find the perfect stance. “You know, you could be skinny as a marathoner and Bailey’d still want to get with you.” He let out a deep breath, lifted his hands, and sank the first free throw.

“Nice shot.” I pushed the ball straight back to him. Kane grasped it but didn’t dribble.

“Um, there’s something you should know. Next year, I might go out for infield.”

“Are you kidding? You’ve always played catcher. You rule the plate, man.”

“I know, but—” He lowered his head and spun the basketball between the tips of his index fingers. “With the new school year, I’ve realized it’s time to come out for real, to everyone. Officially.”

“Good. But I don’t see what it has to do with—”

“You’re not worried people’ll talk about us? Pitcher-catcher jokes?”

“First of all, I don’t know what that means. Second, I don’t care what people say.”

“Your parents’ll care. They might not want us to hang out anymore.”

I couldn’t deny they’d object to his orientation, at least in principle. “They’ve known you almost our whole lives. They can’t stop me from hanging out with you.”

“Yes, they can. They put that tracker app on your phone. They know where you are at all times, and they ground you at the drop of a hat.” Kane rushed his next free-throw attempt, but after a bounce off the backboard, it still went in the basket. “If you had a girlfriend, they’d feel more secure about your straightness. Then maybe they wouldn’t be afraid of me.”

“Oh, that’s why you want me to ask Bailey out.” I passed him the ball, hard. “By the way, I don’t think Nate Powers plays for your team. I mean, literally he does, the Tigers, but—”

“I know he’s straight, and a born-again like you. And he has a new girlfriend, Aleesha. She’s a cheerleader, can you believe it?”

“I can believe it. But getting back to me—”

“Of course.”

“What am I supposed to do without you? You’re like my second brain. Sometimes my first brain.”

“Are you really switching to infield?”

“I haven’t decided.” He dribbled several times, sized up his target, then let the ball sail in a perfect arc. Swish, nothing but net. “The equipment makes me sweaty, the position hurts my knees, and your fastballs are giving me nerve damage.” He examined his left hand. “There was one day this summer when I swear my index finger was twice its normal size.”

“Catchers are such delicate flowers. My turn.” I took his place on the foul line. “Hey, Mom showed me the invitation to your confirmation next month.”

“Oh yeah. You guys coming?”

“Duh. It’ll be cool to be back at St. Mark’s.”

“You ever miss it?”

“I used to.” My first shot hit the basket’s front rim and bounced straight back to me. “Don’t get me wrong—I liked it there. But I love Stony Hill.”

“That’s good.” He sounded dubious.

“I also hate Stony Hill, but only ten percent of the time.”

“What’s so great about the ninety percent?”

I dribbled the ball slowly, trying to find a way to explain my experience, how that huge building could feel so intimate, like we were hanging out with Jesus at the local hole-in-the-wall coffee shop.

I couldn’t find the words. “It just makes me feel good.”

“Like a drug? That kind of good?”

I thought of the euphoria when the whole congregation, or even just our youth group, lifted our hands and voices in prayer. “Sort of. Come try it out.”

“So they can pray away the gay in me? No thanks.”

“They’re not all like that. People come to Stony Hill for different reasons. A lot of them are lost, I think, and it’s the first place they feel found.”

“Well, if you get confirmed there or whatever, let me know, and I’ll show up. For you, not for them.”

“We don’t do confirmation. We just get saved. We go up to the pastor in front of everyone, accept Christ, and boom—born again.”

“You don’t have to take a class or anything?”

“Nope.” I took another shot and almost sank it.

Kane caught the rebound on his fingertips before it bounced away. “Have you done this?”

“The first day we went, when I was thirteen. I didn’t know what I was doing, honestly. It was totally spontaneous.”

“Wait.” Kane held the basketball against his hip. “You’re saying you got accidentally saved? Does that even count?”

I shrugged. “I’ve made it count, every day since then. Well, maybe not every day. I’m not perfect yet.”

He passed the ball to me finally. “I gotta admit, you have been nicer since you started at Stony Hill. You stopped hanging out with that jerkwad Stephen Rice and his gang of new-money delinquents.”

I wanted to laugh. Only someone from old money ever used the term “new money.”

“I’m telling my parents tonight,” he said. “Then I guess I’ll mention it to a couple people in school tomorrow and let the gossips do the rest.”

“Cool.” I let out a full breath, like before a pitch, and let the ball sail. Score. “You think anyone’ll care?”

“I don’t care if anyone cares. This isn’t some noble I-gotta-be-me crusade. I’m just sick of getting hit on by the wrong segment of the population. I just want a date.”

“You and me both.” I held my hand out for a fist bump. “Good luck to us.”

Two hours later, Kane texted me with: It’s done.

Me: How’d they take it?

Kane: They already knew. They were relieved I’m not bisexual. What’s up with that?

Me: So everything’s cool?

Kane: It will be. Go make Bailey your gf so we can still be friends.

Me: Why do I need a girlfriend when I already have a nagging wife?

Kane’s reply was a picture of a gorilla with its middle finger extended.

I called Bailey, figuring there was no point in confronting my parents if she was going to turn me down.

I paced my bedroom rug as we talked about Math Cave assignments, but each pause in the conversation got longer and more awkward. Finally I stopped in front of my vintage Steve Carlton poster, gathering courage from his determined stare. “Do you want to go to the movies?”

“You mean Saturday?”

Whoa, that was easy. “Saturday, great.”

“Francis already invited me.”

I stepped back and sat down hard on the edge of my bed, almost slipping off. “Francis?”

“He said a group from Math Cave was going, Austin and Tori and I think Brooke. He didn’t mention you, though.”

That’s because he didn’t invite me. “Did you say yes?”

“I said I would check with my parents, but really I just needed time to decide whether to go or not. I don’t want to give Francis the wrong idea. He’s nice but too young for me. Don’t you think?”

“I’ll be sixteen next week.” I said, then winced. She wasn’t asking about me.

“I know when your birthday is, David.” Her words sounded curvy, like she was smiling around them.

“So are you going on Saturday?”

She paused. “Only if you are.”

“Can I go to the movies Saturday night?” I asked my parents that evening while I helped Mom make dinner. “It’s just with some people from Math Cave.”

Mom stopped her off-key humming of “I’ll Fly Away.” Dad paused in his perusal of the Wall Street Journal, spread out in front of him at the table.

“Which Math Cave people, what are you seeing, and what time would you be done?” Mom liked to rattle off all her questions at once. I was used to this from her homeschooling, though it drove me nuts.

“Francis, Bailey, Brooke, Tori, and Austin.” I wedged Bailey’s name among the others to camouflage it. “We haven’t decided which movie. We’ll be done by eleven at the latest.”“Bailey Brynn?” she asked, as if I knew an assortment of Baileys.

“Yeah, you’ve met her. She’s been over here for study group a bunch of times.”

My father looked at me. I lowered my eyes to the zucchini I was slicing so I wouldn’t cut off my finger or give away my anxiousness. The silence was broken only by the crunch of my knife through the vegetable.

Then he grunted and turned the page of his newspaper.

“We’re not comfortable with this situation.” Mom dragged the chicken breasts through a shallow pile of bread crumbs. “That girl is a year older than you.”

“Eleven months. Besides, you’ve let me go to the movies with my Math Cave friends plenty of times. I’ve never been late, and I’ve never seen an R-rated movie.”

“This isn’t the same and you know it.” Mom spoke quietly but firmly. “We have rules, David. No one-on-one dates until you’re a senior, and no group dates until you’re sixteen.”

“I’ll be sixteen next week.” I tried not to whine.

“Which means you’ll be fifteen this Saturday.”

“What if you tweaked the rule just a little, as my birthday present? Then you wouldn’t have to buy me anything. You could save money.”

“We already have your birthday present,” she said. “We can’t return it.”

The kitchen phone rang. I set down the knife and wiped my hands on a towel. My father wasn’t going to answer, since the word “Hello?” never appears in the Bible (though one time he did reply to a telemarketer saying, “For many are called but few are chosen”).

It was Mrs. Martinez calling for Mom. They’d been in Junior Women’s League together before Mom’s life got sucked up by her job and the church. Mrs. Martinez was also Kane’s next door neighbor.