Helena Mary Cole

Sandy spent remarkably little time thinking about the fact that Jay Belden had held her hand, or at least she kept putting off thinking about it till Alex was well. To that end, she visited him in the hospital every day. Her initial fears for his life quickly became nothing and started to seem foolish. Maybe her embarrassment about how badly she’d freaked out got all mixed up with the hand-holding incident, and so she remembered both with mortification, and so she tried to block both out, throwing away the baby with the bathwater… She didn’t really know what happened.

In any case, watching Alex continue to get better and better was a much happier thing to dwell on. Sandy thought Alex enjoyed her visits, too. That was how she took it, anyway, when he smiled at her on entering his room, and then listened attentively to her talk about everything and anything: about baking applesauce cookies with Mrs. Beauchamp, about horseback riding with her father, and about how her mother was making her go to Portia Hatfield’s summer scrapbooking party, even though she hated scrapbooking and she didn’t know what Portia expected people to have pictures of when it was barely three weeks into the summer and nobody had had much of a chance to go anywhere and do anything.
One day, at the end of her long complaint, Alex said, “When I’m feeling better, d’you want to take a trip to the city with me and dad? I want to go to the art museum.” He wasn’t on oxygen anymore but he still looked tired and his feeble smile made Sandy’s heart swell. Either that, or it was the invitation.

“Really?” she said. The memory of Jay’s hand squeezing hers intruded at this point, but she only felt uncomfortable for a second. “Just you and me, without Jay?”

Alex snorted. “I don’t think we could drag Jay to a museum kicking and screaming. But my dad would want to come in with us,” he stumbled on his words for a moment, and went on, “He loves the art museum because he used to take my mom there sometimes before they got married, when they were going out, I mean.”
“Really?” she repeated, wondering wildly what this could mean. She waited for Alex to deny the implication that this potential trip fell under the category of “going out,” but it never came. True, he yawned and rubbed his eye in an absent-minded kind of way but she had to keep in mind that he was sick.

She cheerfully accepted the invitation.

Sandy told herself in later years that she tried, at this point in time, to sort out what she was feeling. She tried to take the incident where Jay held her hand and examine it honestly and fairly. But she also forgot how little time she’d had in which to do so. Alex was in the hospital for less than a week, and it was on the day he came home that something else happened, something that changed her interactions with the two boys at the Old Hall forever.

She always remembered that it happened on the day Alex was discharged from the hospital, because when she came in the door from her morning ride with Dad, there was a note by the phone for her. The note indicated that Parker Hale had called to tell her she was not to go back to Homewood that day, since Alex was going to be home by early afternoon.

Grinning widely, Sandy hung her riding jacket into the closet and plucked the note from the hall table, and since she recognized the handwriting on the note as belonging to Grace, the woman who came in every day to clean, Sandy bounded up the front stairs in search of her, to see if there were any more details to be had.
“Grace!” she called as she entered the upstairs hallway, note still in hand. “Grace, are you still here?”

The door to Sandy’s parents’ rooms opened and Mother stepped into the hallway. “Sandy, please don’t shout, Grace is on the other side of the house by now. What do you need her for?”

“She left me this note,” Sandy said, still elated, refusing to be deflated by Mother’s displeasure for once. “Alex is home from the hospital.”

“Yes, I saw that,” Mother said, but for some reason, the little wrinkle between her eyebrows didn’t go away and her mouth still looked taut. “Sit down for a minute, I have something to talk to you about.”

Now Sandy began to worry. Mother gently linked arms with her and led her over to the little settee that was pushed against the wall in the upstairs hallway. “What exactly is this about?” Sandy asked, confused, mood deflating fast.

“Well,” Mother began as they both sat down. A long pause followed, and Sandy could tell by the sheer length of it that she was going to say something she wasn’t going to like, and mentally braced herself against it. At last, Mother said, “It has to do with Alex Hale.”

“What about him?” Sandy almost snapped, having already guessed that whatever this was about, it was about Alex. But all she got from Mother was more hesitating, and then Dad came up the stairs to change out of his riding clothes and interrupted them.

Mother looked at Dad with relief and said, “Oh, good, I’m glad you’re here, Rafe.” She stood up again.

“Glad to see me, are you, Anna?” Dad teased, coming up beside his wife to tickle her waist. “Missed me already?” He winked at his daughter. “Makes a fellow wonder what’s going on up here.”

“I was just going to talk with Sandy about what we discussed last night,” Mother said.

“Oh,” Dad looked unconcerned. In fact, he gave Sandy an impish look, “Right. From what I understand, my little girl has been spending too much time with a certain boy we all know.”

“I hadn’t gotten to that part yet, dear,” Mother said.

“What do you mean, too much time?” Sandy said.

“It’s just that your father and I have noticed that you’ve been either to the Old Hall or to the hospital every single day since school’s been out.”

“Alex is sick,” Sandy grew outright defensive.

“He’s only been sick for the last week or so.”

“Yeah, so?” She crossed her arms.

Her parents exchanged a look. Rafe now began to look uncomfortable but he put his arm firmly around Anna’s waist. Anna said, “We just want to remind you of what we talked about last year when you and Alex went to the school dance.”
“I remember what you said then,” Sandy said. Oh, how different things had been then! “But I don’t see what that has to do with what’s going on now.”

“Well, even though a year has passed since we talked about this, we want you to know that we still feel you are too young for romantic relationships,” Mother said, while Dad smiled at her in such a way as to say he was sorry for this fact, but a fact it remained.

Sandy looked at the floor. “But… I don’t even know for sure if Alex has asked me out or not.”

“What do you mean?” Mother said.

Sandy flushed. She was furious with herself for saying this, and she wasn’t about to tell them about their future trip to the art museum now, “I mean, he hasn’t really asked me out yet.”

“See, Anna, it’s perfectly harmless,” Dad said.
Mother sat back down on the settee and swung her eyes from her husband to her daughter. “Yet?” she repeated.

“For the love of Pete…” Dad threw his jacket onto the settee beside his wife.

“Rafe, listen to what your daughter is saying.”

Sandy had had enough. She got up and stalked past them toward her room. It wasn’t far. When she got there, she flung open the door, and tried to fling it shut behind her, only she discovered that her parents had followed her.

“Sandy, we’re not finished,” Mother said as she followed Sandy into her room.

“Yes, we are. I get it, okay? I’m still too young to go out with boys, what else is there to say?” Sandy looked pleadingly at her father, who was taking a seat in her desk chair and looked ridiculously too tall for it.

“Not too much,” Dad said, “We won’t take too much more of your time.”

“Yes, we’ll leave you to change in a minute, but I think this is the perfect time to talk about this,” Mother added, “You’re thirteen years old.”

“All right, then, how old will I be when I’m old enough to go out with boys?” Sandy’s humiliation had gone up in flames. She was livid.

“Eighteen seems reasonable to….”

“Eighteen!” Sandy’s eyes filled with tears.

“Aleksandra,” Mother never tolerated voices raised at her.

“Now listen, Sandy,” Dad said as Sandy took out her feelings on her shoe rack, kicking it noisily, sending shoes tumbling into a heap. “I might be willing to agree to younger, say sixteen, so long as it is Parker Hale’s boy you go out with.”

Mother looked at him, “Parker told me that another boy is also spending time with the two of them at the Old Hall nearly every day.”

Sandy had a moment’s secret satisfaction over the thought of how much time had passed before they figured this out.

“Is that right?” Dad looked at Sandy, “Who is this other boy, then?”

Mother answered for her, “A friend of Alex’s from Edenbridge.”

“Jay Belden,” Sandy supplied, biting her lip.

Dad’s face flickered with doubt. “But it’s young Hale she likes, isn’t it?”

“Dad, you are so embarrassing,” Sandy complained, as the question of who she liked swirled through her head and out again.

Dad chuckled.

Sandy ignored him, now firing at her mother, “You wanted me to spend more time with Alex not that long ago. Remember?”

Mother opened her mouth but it was Dad who said, “Oh, dear, that’s true, isn’t it, Anna? Last year, he was ‘that poor motherless boy,’ wasn’t he?”

“And I just told you I’m not going out with him,” Sandy said.

Mother’s face had softened considerably, “Fine. We’d like you to keep it that way. To that end, we’ve decided we don’t want you spending your entire summer with Alex. You have to keep up with your responsibilities at home and your obligations to other friends this summer.” She paused. “Anita and I used to dream so fondly of you and Alex becoming friends someday, I wouldn’t want to keep you from seeing him at all. You may go to Edenbridge twice a week.”

“That’s not fair,” Sandy had more furious tears rolling down her face, “If I were best friends with Danica Dearborn, you wouldn’t care how much time I spent with her.”

“Danica Dearborn isn’t a boy.”

“I want twice a week plus one day on the weekend.”

“How about Sunday afternoons?”

“I’ll take it,” Sandy said miserably.

“I’ll go call Parker,” Mother said in a satisfied sort of way.

“Would you like me to call him?” Dad offered as he hauled himself up from the desk chair.

“Thank you, dear,” Anna said. “Actually, ask him if we can stop by this afternoon, to welcome Alex home from the hospital and we can all have a little chat then. We’ll leave right after lunch. Does that sound all right to you, Aleksandra?”

“Yes, fine,” Sandy said.

When they were gone, Sandy darted into her adjoining bedroom, flung herself down on the bed, and cried for a full seven minutes. Then she went quiet and stared up at the darkened ceiling, sniffling softly. What had her parents just done? They’d ruined her summer, that was for sure, but what about the rest of her life? Or at least all of her teenage years. Practically. No dating until she was eighteen unless she went out with Alex? What did that even mean? Jay’s face popped into her mind’s eye at this point and she started crying all over again.

But she had to stop. She had to. She couldn’t appear at the lunch table with red eyes – Mother would notice. Mother would not fail to comment on them. And slowly, Sandy pulled herself together.

She’d just have to go out with boys behind her parents’ backs, that’s all. And she liked Alex. Of course she did – she always had. Mother had not said a word about not talking on the phone to him. Mother had not forbidden the art museum trip. She didn’t know about it yet, true, but maybe that was to her advantage. Maybe there was some way they could drag Jay along so she could pass it off as a “just friends” thing. They were all still allowed to be friends.

Tears pricked her eyes again, so she stood up and quickly entered her little en-suite bathroom. She flicked on the light and started running the cold water. Then she splashed some on her face and examined it carefully in the mirror.

She liked Alex. She would go out with him if he asked. By the time she was sixteen, and allowed to officially date him, she’d be madly in love.

It was going to be great.
*
When the Summervilles got to the Old Hall, Parker Hale warmly received them in the west sitting room and apologized for Alex’s absence – he was upstairs in his room, asleep. “It’s still going to be a few weeks before he’s completely over his pneumonia and I’m afraid even the drive home tired him out quickly. You can go see if he’s awake at the moment, if you want,” he added kindly to Sandy, while Mrs. Newcastle brought in the coffee tray.

“I just peeked in on him. He’s still out like a light,” Mrs. Newcastle placed the tray on the bar. “I can peek again in half an hour, if you like.”

Sandy didn’t reply but shot her parents a reproachful look from the seat she’d taken halfway across the room.

Her father replied for her, “Yes, please do, thank you Fiona.” He stood up to help himself to the coffee.

“But don’t wake him,” Anna pleaded, politely, “Let him rest if that’s what he needs.”

Parker turned to Anna, clearly about to reply to this, but Sandy hit a sudden inspiration and stood up, cutting him off before he could start talking. “Can I take a walk while I wait?” she said.

Mother’s eyebrows shot up, “Take a walk where?”

“Oh, just around. Maybe I’ll go to town for a bit,” Sandy said as lightly as she could.

“To town? Whatever for?” Mother said.

“Maybe I feel like having an ice cream from Dixie’s.”

“Oh,” Parker chimed in, recovering from his surprise at her abruptness, “Now that’s a very popular place with the young people around here.” Sandy looked at him gratefully, which made him a little uncomfortable because he didn’t know why she should be grateful.

Meanwhile, Anna frowned and seemed to be on the point of refusing, when Rafe, who still had his eyes on his coffee cup, said to Sandy, “All right then, honey, we’ll see you in an hour or so.”

Sandy made as if to run out of the room before they could change their minds.
Anna said, “Rafe,” rather sharply, so that Sandy stopped in her tracks, “Don’t you think Sandy should stay here?”

“I was thinking she doesn’t want to be here while we talk,” he murmured, leaning towards Anne with a significant look. Parker observed all this with some surprise—he didn’t think they’d come on purpose to talk about anything in particular. But the Summervilles were mainly there to express their concern about the amount of time the children were spending together and to gain Parker’s collaboration in the new restrictions they meant to impose. Rafe Summerville, while on Anna’s side of the question, also had no love for displeasing his daughter. It was bad enough they were having the discussion to begin with—he didn’t want to have it in front of Sandy and ignite her anger all over again.

Anna seemed to warm to this new idea. “Well, all right, but how is she going to get to town?”

“I was thinking of walking,” Sandy said testily.

“How long a walk is it?”

“Only about twenty minutes,” Parker said.

“Are your shoes fit for walking that distance, Aleksandra?” Mother asked.

Sandy turned red but before she could reply, Parker spoke up again, “Fiona said something about driving over to Hibbert’s grocery store on an errand.” He glanced at the bar but Mrs. Newcastle had left. He got to his feet and began to head for the intercom, “Would you like a ride with her, Sandy?”

And so, barely ten minutes later, Sandy found herself sitting in the front seat of Mrs. Newcastle’s car, getting a ride into Edenbridge, unable to believe her luck but also chewing the heck out of her upper lip. What was she doing?

When the car pulled up in front of Dixie’s, Mrs. Newcastle looked and her young companion, and said, “Well, here we are.”

Sandy looked at the handful of people sitting at the old wooden picnic tables, eating ice cream, and hesitated. She turned to Mrs. Newcastle with false cheerfulness and said, “All right, well, thanks for the ride, Mrs. N.” Then she bit her lip again and looked back at the people outside. She opened the door about an inch open and stopped.

Mrs. Newcastle smiled to herself. “You’ll want to take Elm.”

Sandy turned and stared at her. “I’m sorry?”

“Walk three blocks straight ahead and take a right on Elm. From there, it’s only a block till you get to Spruce. Cross to the other side of Spruce and turn right again. It’s not the corner house you want but the one next to it. Number fifty-seven.”

“Number fifty-seven?” she echoed, still playing dumb, heart hammering fast and loud.

Mrs. Newcastle shook her head. “My dear Aleksandra, we both know that if you went up to any one of those people at Dixie’s and asked where the Beldens live, they’d only want to know if you meant my sister Ruby or Jim and Benny before they’d tell you in the blink of an eye. But doesn’t it save you that wee bit of trouble if I just tell you now?”

Sandy now looked defiant, “I’m going to buy an ice cream, you know.”

“I know. I’ll tell them you ordered a banana split. I dare say Jay would eat it in thirty seconds flat if you brought it within ten feet of him.”

She opened the door all the way but didn’t get out just yet. “How did you know I wanted to go see Jay?”

“Oh, Sandy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re actually not hard to read.”
*
Jay was lounging in the living room, enjoying a rare moment with the TV to himself when Caroline came downstairs and said, “Wanna know something weird? There’s girl coming up our driveway carrying a banana split.”
Jay looked mildly interested. “Really? Who she is?”

“I have no idea; I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before. D’you think she could be Simon’s girlfriend?” This new idea made Caroline charge towards the front window in eager curiosity. Simon’s girlfriend went to the high school in Homewood with him and came from the somewhat distant village of St. Josephs, poor sucker. She was an unknown entity.

“Do you think?” Jay was just as curious as anyone in the family to know why his older brother was being so secretive about his girlfriend (the current theory being that she was especially unattractive, which Simon always vehemently denied with a beet red face), so he hurried and joined his sister, who was already peeking out the front window curtain as discreetly as she could. He was just in time to see Sandy slowly climbing the front porch steps, looking around as if she either didn’t want to be seen or was just plain scared. The second Jay saw her, he swore.

Caroline yelped at the sound of the swear. “Wha’d you say that for? I’m telling Mom later.”

“That’s not Simon’s girlfriend,” Jay told her, his heart pounding in his ears. His fingers were trembling as he fumbled to put on a shirt, the same one he’d taken off and flung over the back of the couch an hour ago.

“How do you know?” Caroline said.

“I know her. She’s a friend of Alex Hale’s.” Jay checked the condition of his shirt quickly and saw that it only had one small hole near the bottom hem.

“The one from Dovecote?” Caroline pressed her face up to the glass to get a better look at Sandy.

“Go away, Caroline,” Jay said. Right at that moment, they heard Sandy knock timidly on the door.

Caroline knew this to be a yes. “Erin!” she bellowed. Jay twisted her arm behind her back and forced her into the hall. Of course, Caroline shrieked the whole way, “Erin! You’ll never guess who’s here! Ow! Jay!”

From deep within the house, Erin shouted something indistinct in reply.
Jay released Caroline in the hallway but gave her a good kick in the behind, sending her in the direction of the kitchen. “You stay in the house. You don’t let Erin out, either, or I’ll tell Mom it was you who ate all the brownies she made for Robbie’s daycare class.”

Caroline had known in her heart of hearts that her brother wasn’t keeping quiet about that out of the goodness of his heart – she had, after all, denied him the last brownie when he’d caught her at the crime in question. Why had she not let him eat it? Now, she could do nothing but stick her tongue out at her brother before running to get Erin all the same.

Knowing he had the upper hand, Jay was pretty sure Caroline wouldn’t openly sit in on this visit from Sandy, but she wouldn’t give them any privacy, either. Oh, they would be spied on as closely as possible, by her as well as Erin. But there was nothing he could do about that.

Jay opened his front door, slowly, because it was the lesser-used door to their house and it was kind of stiff. Seeing him appear, Sandy smiled at him, widely and with relief. Jay’s heart continued to pound. She’d never looked so pretty. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” Jay pushed the storm door open and stepped through, pulling the inner door shut behind him with a loud creak.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” she said, as the sound of scuffling feet, along with whispering and giggling, broke out from behind the door.

Jay let the storm door bang shut behind him. “No, I wasn’t doing anything,” he told her. He looked at the melting banana split that she clearly hadn’t touched and seemed to have forgotten. “What are doing here carrying a banana split?”
Sandy looked taken aback. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Jay glanced over his shoulder. “Trust me, you don’t want to go in.”

“I was hoping we could sit down with this thing,” Sandy looked around as if hunting for a place to put the banana split.

“You came here to eat a banana split with me?” he asked in a small voice.

She turned pink. “I think I do want to go in.”

Jay decided to be patient with her, remembering she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. “Look, my parents are at work and the youngest two are at daycare, but Erin’s friend slept over last night, and she’s still here, and my other sister Caroline saw you coming up the walk. If you want to go in, especially with that,” he gestured toward the ice cream, “you’ll be totally surrounded in five seconds flat.”

Something in her face relaxed. “Okay, I get it now. Could we at least sit on your porch swing?”

“Sure.”

Jay took the banana split from her to make it easier for her to settle in it, and when they were both sitting on it together, a rigid three feet apart, not knowing what to say or where to look, Jay asked if she had a spoon.

Sandy laughed and produced one from her pocket. “Mrs. N told me you’d gobble it up if I brought it close enough to you.”

Jay already had his mouth full of ice cream and strawberries. “Aunt Fiona knows you’re here?”

“She gave me a ride into town. My parents are at the Old Hall visiting Mr. Hale.”

“I thought Sash was coming home today.”

“He’s home but he’s resting upstairs.”

“I was thinking of going over later.”

“You might want to call first to make sure he’s awake.”

Jay had already finished the strawberry portion of the banana split. He took a big bite out of the chocolate section and said, “Okay.” His stomach was still fluttering away but he hoped eating would settle it. He finally remembered his manners and held the banana split out to her. “Aren’t you going to have any?”

“I haven’t got another spoon.”

“I’ll go get you one,” Jay started to stand up.

“That’s okay, Jay, I’m actually not that hungry.”

Jay hesitated before leaning back in the seat. He wasn’t sure what she meant by coming over to give him a banana split, as opposed to sharing it with him. But the chocolate section of the dessert was his favourite and it was still melting fast, so he kept eating, figuring he’d worry about everything else later. When he reached the first pineapple tidbit, he finally noticed that Sandy didn’t look very happy. She held her head tilted to one side in a dejected sort of way and she was gnawing on her lip more than usual.

“So, what’s up?” Jay decided he’d better ask.

She sighed. “I guess you might as well know that you won’t be seeing as much of me at the Old Hall this summer, compared to how much I’ve been there so far, I mean.”

“Oh.” Jay swallowed. The pineapple portion of the banana split was starting to look like a pool of throw-up. He didn’t stop to think about how once, not long ago, he would have been happy to hear her say she’d be spending less time at the Old Hall, whereas now he felt rotten about it. He only looked at his feet and said, “Why’s that?”

Her second sigh sounded angry. “My parents, that’s why. They think I spend too much time there and that I should spend more time with other people.”

“What other people?”

“Like with girls who were at my birthday. Girls like Danica Dearborn and all those snobs I don’t have anything in common with,” she complained.

Jay felt encouraged to join in her complaining, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, “Who cares about Danka Doodlehead?”

Sandy paused for two beats, looking at him. Then she suddenly laughed.
At the sound of her laughter, which was surprisingly loud and long, Jay heard feet scuffling inside the house again as well as a renewal of girlish whispering on the other side of the closest window. He even heard the “shhh” that cut the whispering off and shot a murderous look in that direction. Thankfully, Sandy seemed to be too busy enjoying his joke to notice anything else. “Danka Doodlehead?” she said, still laughing, “I don’t think I’ll be able to call her anything else now. Not to her face, obviously, but behind her back.”

Jay grinned. “Well, what did you say her name was again?”

“Danica. You don’t remember her, do you?”

“Should I? Wait – it rings a little bell.”

“She was at my birthday party, and she remembers you. Vividly. Right up until the last week of school, she still kept coming up to me and asking how you’re doing.”

A vague vision of a blue dress flashed in and out of his mind’s eye but he didn’t want to talk about Danica. “I still don’t get why they’re making you hang out with us less. What do they have against me and Sash?” Even as Jay said this, he guessed the answer.

Sandy blushed and looked down.

Jay definitely knew the answer. “It’s because we’re boys.”

She nodded. “They think there’s something going on between me and Alex.”

“Well, did you explain to them that there’s not?”

Jay didn’t like the way she was still refusing to look at him. She also ignored his question, saying, “They think I’m too young to go out with boys.”

“But you’re not going out with anybody, not Sash, not anybody,” he wanted to push her to relieve his worries on this point. “Sandy?”

She gave him a tentative glance. “Can I tell you something?”

Jay put down what was left of the banana split on the porch beside the swing, slopping ice cream and pineapple over the side of the plastic dish, “Hang on a minute. You can’t be going out with Sash. If he’d asked you out, he would have told me, I’m pretty sure,” he added, as if in sudden doubt, remembering the way he used to always complain about Sandy.

“That’s not what I was going to tell you,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something now that you can’t even tell Alex.”

Jay wanted to get up and start pacing only he decided it would be too weird. He was also sure he didn’t want hear what she was going to say. He felt like something was constricting his chest. He leaned forward and took a huge breath.

Sandy couldn’t watch. How was it possible he was reacting this way? She suddenly became very interested in Benny Belden’s rosebush, the upper half of which she could see the other side of the balustrade, creeping over it just a little. A bee was hovering over one of the bright red blossoms uncertainly. It touched down. Still not looking at Jay, she blurted out desperately, “You have to understand something, Jay.”

But Jay had very quickly pulled himself together, and was able to say, “Oh, yeah? What’s that?” with apparent nonchalance, with just a hint of bewilderment at her desperation.

Now they looked at each other in silence, and if Sandy caught a glimpse of something in Jay’s eyes shrinking quickly away, disappearing behind a quizzical smile and a raised eyebrow, she could easily tell herself she’d imagined it. Should she be embarrassed? No, the best thing was to act like she hadn’t blurted anything just now. She followed his lead with some relief and adopted a cool tone. “Okay, I’ll tell you now.”

Jay looked at the ground and listened.
*
Erin Belden stuck her head out the side door of the house and looked out over the driveway, where Jay had been out shooting hoops for over half an hour. “You can come in now, Jay.”

Jay ignored her—he didn’t say anything, he didn’t look at her, he didn’t even pause before doing his next lay-up. But Erin noticed that the ball didn’t go into the hoop.

“Hello?” Erin said, “I told you; you can come in now. Melly’s gone.” Erin’s overnight guest had been Melly Geist. After Sandy had left, Erin had grown progressively more annoyed at Melly’s fixation on the scene they had witnessed between the two on the front porch. She wouldn’t stop repeating the same questions they all had about it. The conversation between Jay and Sandy had been impossible to follow from behind the window, with only the odd word here and there coherently reaching them. But the body language had been maddeningly mysterious. Melly had been half wild to go out and start ferreting the meaning of it out of Jay himself. Erin, of course, also had every intention of doing the same, but something about the rhythm of Jay’s basketball hitting the pavement made her hesitate to turn Melly loose on the project. She found herself going to an awful lot of trouble to force Melly to bypass the basketball hoop on her way out. There were some things that even her dumb brother didn’t deserve. The sound of Jay’s rapid breathing, which she could now hear, told her she’d been right to protect him from Melly. He was obviously upset about something.

When Jay continued to ignore her, Erin exited the house, taking care to close the inner door behind her. “All right, what’s going on, Jay?”

“Leave me alone,” he finally said.

Erin ran in front of him, stole the ball, and did a quick lay-up, but only half-heartedly. He was too good a player for that to have happened naturally. After retrieving the ball, she looked around and saw him standing right where she’d left him, taking a good breather. Erin leaned the basketball against her hip and approached him. “I thought Alex was coming home from the hospital today—why aren’t you over there?”

Jay was still catching his breath. “He’s resting right now.”

“And Sandy came here because…” she raised her eyebrows at him, inviting him to fill in the blank.

“Go away, Erin.”

“I’m not here to tease you.”

“Yes, you are.”

Erin lost her patience, “Look, I just spent the last half an hour trying to get Melly-freakin-Geist out of my hair, so that she wouldn’t get in yours. I practically had to kick her butt every step of the way, all the way to the corner, and this is the thanks I get? Or did you even notice her leaving?”

Jay looked at her. “Yeah, I guess I did notice,” he muttered. “Well, thanks.”

“When are you going to wake up and realize that half the girls in our class alone like you?”

He waved at this information as if shooing away a fly.

Erin went on, “It’s not even surprising that Sandy likes you, too.”

“Sandy doesn’t like me,” he practically yelled at her, grabbing the basketball. He dribbled up to the hoop but missed the lay-up again. The ball hit the underside of the rim and smacked against the ground. Jay let it bounce away toward the Albrights’ yard as Erin stared at him in stunned silence.

“You mean, she came over here with a banana split and she doesn’t even like you?” she said, as if she’d never heard of anything so bizarre in all her life.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How do you feel about her?” Erin asked, even though she knew by now.

“Like I’m going to tell you that.”

They looked at each other, Jay with his hands on his hips, Erin hugging her elbows tight.

At last, Jay became nervous about the level of understanding written in his sister’s face. “Don’t you dare tell anyone. If you spread any of this around to all the other girls, even Caroline, I swear, I will disown you.”

But Erin, for once, was positively meek. “Of course not. Jay,” she added, her face tensed up in empathy.

Jay gave her a shove, mostly in hopes of getting that look off her face. “Sandy and I are just friends. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

“Yeah, who needs her anyway?” she said with vehemence.

Jay appreciated her loyalty, even if he couldn’t share in the sentiment. He decided to tell her, “She came to tell me she likes Sash.”

“Oh, Jay, that’s brutal.” Erin could appreciate how that must feel. “Are they going out?”

“She isn’t sure. He asked her to the art museum with his dad but he didn’t say anything about it being a date. She wants me to come with them,” he added with distaste.

“Why?”

“So it won’t look like they’re going out.”

“Jay,” Erin said as if talking to a five-year-old, “That sounds like nothing.”

“I know,” he growled at her, “But she hopes they’ll be going out soon, behind her parents’ backs.”

Erin was familiar with the hiding-a-boyfriend-from-your-parents thing in middle school. It could be done, even if it meant your siblings had something on you and could control you very effectively for as long as it went on. But, Erin reflected, Sandy didn’t have any siblings, and these things were known to only last a day or two sometimes. She asked, “How do you know Alex even likes her?”

“I don’t. He told me once he didn’t, but that was a long time ago.”

“Well, maybe he still doesn’t. Maybe he’s not planning on asking her out.”

“She thinks he will, sometime soon.”

“She thinks,” Erin pointed out.

Jay shrugged. “I guess. It doesn’t matter though, does it? She’s not allowed to go out with anybody unless it’s with Sash. She told me that, too.”

“Really?” Erin was shocked. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Their mothers set them up when they were babies or something like that.”

“I didn’t think parents did that kind of thing anymore. Does Alex know about it?”

“If he does, he never told me. Yesterday, I would have told you he’d hate it but now I’m not sure anymore.”

“And his mother is dead – that does sort of make you wonder.” Boys were sometimes weird about their mothers, and Mrs. Hale wasn’t around anymore so everyone would assume she hadn’t changed her mind about all this, Erin thought. The whole thing was sort of romantic, in a way, but not for Jay right now. Goodness, Jay should never have gotten himself mixed up with those two. Erin might have known these rich kids had lives like romance novels. Imagine not being allowed to go out with whoever you wanted because of something your mother decided when you were in diapers! Erin asked now, “But doesn’t the girl always rebel against the set-up?”

“Not when your parents turn around and forbid the set-up they made in the first place. It’s pretty messed up.”

“Oh, gosh, that gives me a headache,” Erin said. Then, as if suddenly bored with this train of thought, something else occurred to her. “What was the banana split for?” she said.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Was it good at least?”

“It was from Dixie’s.”

Erin smiled and folded her arms loosely across her body. Jay began kicking at a weed that had grown up through a crack in the driveway. Erin went and retrieved the basketball, which had rolled onto the strip of grass between their driveway and the Albrights’.

“Anyways, Jay,” she said, as she passed him the ball. “There’s lots of other girls out there who would go out with you in a heartbeat. I mean, seriously, you can have your pick—only if I were you, I wouldn’t pick Melly,” she added. She touched her brother’s shoulder, even though he was kind of sweaty. “You’ll be fine.”

Jay didn’t reply but he tried to believe her.