The day after our playground chase, I found a piece of paper that had been slipped under the front door. You can run, but let’s see how you shoot hoops. Meet me out front at three.
His grandmother, Mrs. Mazza, had a basketball hoop in her driveway that used to belong to her son when he was young. At 2:45, I sat by the window waiting for Mitch to walk outside.
He emerged right on time, bouncing the ball on the pavement, and I ran across the street.
Mitch didn’t say anything, just kept dribbling the ball with a smirk on his face as I ran around him. The ball nearly knocked me down as he suddenly passed it to me. I shot, and it missed, much to his amusement. He took the ball, bounced it all the way to the farthest end of the driveway then turned and shot it into the basket.
“Impressive,” I said.
“Thank you.”
After about twenty minutes of Mitch bouncing the ball while I ran around him, I decided to shake things up a little. “Let’s play a game.”
He approached me with the ball tucked under his arm. His shaggy brown hair blew in the wind. “I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No. This is you showing off. I get it. You can play basketball better than me. Big whoop.”
He chuckled. “Okay. What do you want to do, then?”
I thought about it for several seconds and came up with the perfect way to find out more about him, specifically what was eating him yesterday. I was willing to bet it had something to do with why he was here for the summer. There was definitely a story there. Many summers had passed without so much as a visit to his grandmother. I would have noticed him.
“We’ll start here close to the hoop and each take turns shooting. If I miss, you can ask me anything you want, and I have to answer truthfully. If you miss, I get to do the same. Then we’ll step back further each time to make it harder.”
“But I’m gonna get it in every time,” he said.
“Well, then you should have no problem with this game, cocky.”
I was banking on him missing the shot at least once. I had nothing to hide, and it was a win-win situation for me, so long as he flubbed up a single time so that I could ask that one question.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Alright.”
I shot first, and the ball went right into the hoop.
Mitch followed suit.
We kept taking turns, successfully hitting the baskets until I became the first one to miss.
“Aha!” Mitch laughed. “Let’s see…what do I want to know?” He scratched his chin and scrunched his lips. “Oh! Yesterday at the park…did you know who I was?”
I nodded. “I knew you were Mrs. Mazza’s grandson from the pictures hanging in her house. That’s why I left like that. I knew I would see you again anyway.”
He nodded in understanding. “Cool.”
I passed the ball to him and backed up a step further away from the hoop, gesturing for him to do the same. “Go.”
Of course, he made it and passed the ball to me.
I missed again.
“Alright, Skylar…hmm. What was your most embarrassing moment?”
I looked up at the cloudless, blue sky. “I once started laughing at my friend Angie in class and accidentally passed gas out loud in front of everyone.”
Mitch’s mouth dropped. “I can’t believe you just admitted that!”
“We told each other we’d be honest! That was honestly the most embarrassing moment of my life.”
“That’s pretty bad.”
“No. What’s bad is that everyone thought it was Angie, and I let them believe it.”
We laughed at my admission until I passed the ball to Mitch who proceeded to shoot…and miss.
I giddily jumped up and down. “Yes!”
“That fart story threw me off track!” Mitch licked his lips and looked down at the ground shaking his head in defeat. “Okay, give it to me.”
I looked into his big, blue eyes and asked, “Why are you really here this summer, and why were you so angry yesterday?”
“That’s two questions.”
“But the answer is the same?”
Mitch didn’t say anything right away, just looked at me.
“Things aren’t going well back home right now. I’m pretty sure my parents are getting a divorce. They didn’t want me around anymore to witness all the fighting. So…yeah.”
“My parents are divorced, too.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah. For two years now.”
Mitch seemed to be thinking hard about something. Then, he turned to me. “Did you ever feel…” He hesitated. “Never mind.”
“What? Did I feel what?”
“When you found out about your parents, did you feel like your world was ending…like you couldn’t picture the future anymore?”
It seemed Mitch and I had a lot more in common than I originally thought. “Yeah. I did feel like that sometimes. It was hard. I’m an only child, and my parents are my only family, you know?”
“I’m an only child, too. I guess that’s why I feel like it’s my responsibility to keep them together. Or worse, I think sometimes maybe if I didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be having these problems.”
The game we had been playing was no longer significant. Now, we were just talking as we made our way to Mitch’s front steps. The basketball rolled away onto the grass.
“You didn’t ask to be born, Mitch. You know this isn’t your fault, right? I used to think like you in the beginning with my parents. But after a while, I figured out that it really had nothing to do with me. And honestly, they both seem happier now.”
“Why did they get divorced?”
I chuckled. “Well, I overheard my Mom telling my Aunt Diane that my dad couldn’t keep it in his pants. But I still haven’t figured out what ‘it’ is. Do you know, Mitch?”
His face turned red. “You’re kidding, right?”
I nudged him. “Yeah.”
We both started cracking up.
“I can’t tell with you.” He sighed, picking mindlessly at the shrubs at the side of the stairs before turning back toward me. “Did I really look that miserable yesterday? It was that obvious?”
“Sort of…yeah.”
“How old are you anyway?” he asked.
“Ten. How old are you?”
“Eleven. You seem way older than ten.”
“My mom says I’m an old soul. I also kind of have this thing. It’s like an ESP. With certain people, it’s as if I can feel their emotions. It’s hard sometimes because I don’t always want to. But when I saw you, I just sensed something was wrong, and I felt your sadness, too.”
“Wow. What am I feeling right now?”
“Right now, you’re not sad.”
He stared at me for a while before his mouth spread into a wide smile. “You’re right. I’m not anymore.”
***
That night, Mrs. Mazza invited me over for a spaghetti dinner. She let me play in Mitch’s room for a while afterward, and he showed me these comic books he made. He did all of the illustrations and captions himself.
We hung out every day that summer.
Each afternoon at exactly three, we would meet at the hoop and play our game. After hundreds of missed shots, we ended up knowing practically everything about each other: our likes, dislikes, embarrassing truths and fears.
It turned out my biggest fear came true earlier than expected when one day in mid-August, two weeks before Mitch was scheduled to go back to Long Island, there was a knock at the door.
Mitch looked morose when I opened it, his hair stuffed under a Yankees cap.
“Skylar, my Dad’s here. He’s taking me home. He made me pack all my stuff just now. My parents didn’t agree on how long I should be here, and I guess he got his way, so now I have to leave with him.”
It felt like a sucker punch. “Now? We were gonna do that goodbye party thing, and I still haven’t made you your gift and—”
?
??I know. I’m really sorry. I don’t want to leave. I didn’t want to come here in the beginning. But since I met you, now I wish I could stay…like forever.”
“Can you come in?”
“He’s waiting out in the car.”
The car horn beeped, and Mitch turned around. “Give me a second, Dad. Jeez.”
I was frantic. “I don’t want you to leave, Mitch.”
The tone in his voice broke my heart. “I don’t know how I’m gonna handle everything back home. I wish I had you there with me. You always make me feel better about everything.”
“Will you keep in touch? Let me know what happens with your parents?”
“I will.”
I felt tears forming in my eyes. “What do we do now?”
His voice was low. “I guess we say goodbye.”
“I don’t want to,” I said as the first teardrop fell.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a large envelope he had tucked under his arm. “Here, I made you something. I was going to give it to you at the end of the summer. Open it later, okay?”
I nodded through tears, “Okay.”
The horn beeped again. “Mitch! I don’t want to hit rush hour.”
Mitch leaned in and pulled me into a hug. Hot tears streamed down my cheek and onto his shoulder.
He sniffled, but I couldn’t tell if he was about to cry. “Thank you, Skylar.”
“For what?”
“For giving me something happy to think about when I need it.”
That was the last thing he said before walking away and getting into the car. His face was barely visible under the cap as he waved goodbye one last time before the car disappeared from sight into the glare of the sun.
My mother’s wind chimes blew in the breeze as I stared out into the empty street and across to our desolate basketball court. I was crushed.
I took the envelope straight to my room. Inside was one of the comic books he made. But this one was different. The characters were…us. It was titled The Adventures of S&M. (The alternate meaning of which would not occur to me until several years later.) S had two long braids, could fly and had other special powers. M was an ordinary boy in a Yankees cap. M kept getting into trouble and S would rescue him from harm in various situations. He had ended the book with To Be Continued.
I never heard from him again after that day.
In the five years that followed, the boy with the Yankees cap and the big, blue eyes became nothing more than a mere fond memory tucked inside my heart.
During that time, Mrs. Mazza moved to Florida, and her house was rented out to new tenants. I assumed that meant I would never see Mitch Nichols again.
But life is full of surprises, and as promised at the end of the comic, our story was far from over.
CHAPTER 3
SKYLAR
“Angie, can’t you go anywhere without that thing?”
Click. Flash.
My best friend Angie wouldn’t leave the house without her SLR camera strapped around her neck. Sometimes, people thought we were with the press.
“Are you kidding? This place is a mecca for photo ops,” she said.
Angie was odd, but she was a good friend. Because I could pick up on a person’s energy, it was hard for me to connect with someone unless they were truly genuine. I could always see through people, and there were very few you could trust with your heart.
Angie didn’t have a bad bone in her body and as annoying as the constant clicking of the camera was, she took photos because she truly appreciated everything life had to offer, never wanting to miss an opportunity to capture the unexpected. As embarrassing as it was being the other half of “camera girl” as she became known, I admired the fact that she didn’t give a crap what people thought.
Tonight, we were at the high school equivalent of a frat party. Angie and I were freshman at St. Clare’s, an all-girls Catholic school. So, we had to depend on parties run by the public school kids for any co-ed mingling.
There were always really cute, older boys at Marcus West’s parties, which was why it would have really been helpful if my friend weren’t geeking out with her massive camera.
Click. Flash.
“Did you see that? That drunk kid just wiped out on the stairs. I snapped it.”
“Annie Liebovitz would be proud, Ang.”
Marcus was a junior and a friend of Angie’s older brother, so we always got invited to the parties he’d throw when his parents went away. We told our mothers that we were going to the mall, so we’d have to leave by nine.
We never drank. As much as we liked being around the wild stuff, we both had pretty good heads on our shoulders and never put ourselves in situations where we could be taken advantage of.
This party was the same as all the rest. Some cold food from the sub shop that no one touched sat out on an island in the kitchen. In one room, a group of kids would be smoking pot. In another, there would be some dumb drinking game going on. In the main living area, Marcus had his iPod connected to a speaker, and people were either dancing or making out on the couches. And of course, some of those people would head upstairs to do God knows what.
Angie and I mostly just stood in the living room and people-watched. None of the good-looking, older boys ever approached us, but if we hung out in one spot long enough, inevitably some drunk kid with beer breath would come over, put his arm around me and give me some dumb pick-up line.
Tonight it was, “Where have you been all my life?”
“Running from you,” I said as I slipped from under his arm.
At one point, Angie left me alone, and I went to find the bathroom. There was one right off the kitchen. When I opened the door, a guy and a girl were making out inside, so I quickly shut it.
Once upstairs to find a different one, I passed another couple kissing in the hallway before rolling my eyes and entering the bathroom.
I splashed some water on my face and decided I was ready to leave. I wasn’t feeling it here tonight and wanted to go home to my bed.
On my way out, I approached the same guy and girl who hadn’t moved from the spot where he had her pinned against the wall as his mouth hovered over hers.
Right after I passed them, it occurred to me that the guy was wearing a Yankees cap. I thought nothing of it until on my way down the stairs, I heard the girl say, “Mitch, we can’t stay here. Let’s go to one of the bedrooms.”
Mitch? He was wearing a Yankees cap, and his name was Mitch? What were the chances?
I continued down the stairs despite an uneasy feeling. It couldn’t have been my Mitch because he didn’t live around here. But at the same time, I hadn’t really gotten a look at his face. It had to be a coincidence, though. Right?
The smell of booze and weed saturated the air in the hot, crowded living area.
Angie was now in the corner of the room happily talking to a guy who looked about seven-feet tall. Normally, I would have been thrilled for her, but I wanted to leave.
As I sat alone, I couldn’t get the guy named Mitch out of my mind. With each passing minute, my curiosity grew. Butterflies set in as I impulsively made my way back up the stairs.
A door at the end of the hall was cracked open. My heart pounded as I walked over to it, peeked in and saw the guy in the baseball cap lying with the girl on the bed, still fully clothed. I didn’t know what to do but felt like I needed to confirm that it wasn’t him. There was no way I would sleep tonight if I couldn’t.
The room was dark except for a night-light, so it was impossible to see facial features. Who knew how long I would have to wait before they came out? And then, how would I explain my standing outside the room like a creeper?
I went back downstairs where Angie was still in the same corner talking to that really tall guy.
“Angie, I need your help with something.”
She gestured to her new friend. “Skylar, this is Cody.”
I looked up to meet his face. “Hi, Cody. Can I steal her for a minu
te?”
“Sure. I’ll wait right here,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high and undeveloped for a guy who had clearly hit puberty. In fact, if I closed my eyes, it could have been mistaken for a girl’s.
I pulled Angie away and led her toward the stairs.
She sighed. “This better be good. I was getting ready to wrap myself around that beanstalk like a vine.”
“He is really tall.” I laughed. “Okay, listen. I’ll let you get back to him, but I just need you to do one thing for me.”
“Okay…what?”
“I’m a little freaked out right now. Remember my friend Mitch from when I was ten?”
“The one who basically disappeared?”
“Yeah. Well, there’s a guy upstairs making out with a girl in one of the rooms. He’s wearing a Yankees cap. Mitch used to always wear one. Anyway, I thought nothing of it until I heard her call him Mitch.”
“You think it’s the same Mitch?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out. I couldn’t see his face. I need you to just knock on the door and ask, ‘Is there a Mitch Nichols in here?’”
Angie had no problem making a fool out of herself, so I knew she’d do it.
“What do I do if he says yes?”
“Chances are, it’s not him. So, don’t worry about that. I just need to rule it out 100-percent.”
She shrugged her shoulders like it was nothing. “Okay.”
I let out a deep breath as Angie approached the room. I stayed several feet back closer to the stairs. She looked back at me, and I nodded, giving her the go ahead.
She cleared her throat. “Is there a Mitch Nichols in here?”
I was standing too far away to hear his reply. But when Angie turned to look back at me, the troubled expression on her face made my heart drop.
I lost my breath when he appeared at the doorway.
“I said I’m Mitch Nichols. Who wants to know?”
Angie was speechless. “Ugh…”
“What’s with the camera?” he asked.
I was too frozen in shock to help my poor friend out. I just stood there unable to believe my eyes. It was Mitch. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t move. He hadn’t noticed me yet. I turned my head away.