you open the others,” Katie protested.
I didn’t listen. I tore off the silver wrapping paper and laughed out loud. “Meat Loaf!”
Katie was grinning.
“I want you,” I sang.
“I want you,” Katie echoed back, the way we did on the bus.
“I need you.”
“I need you.”
“But there ain’t no way,” we both chimed in, “I’m ever gonna boink you!”
“Danny!” Mom shouted. “Stop that!”
“Danny off the pickle boat!” Nana called over, laughing.
Across the room Aunt Patsy and the two Theresas were blushing. Desmond seemed oblivious. And Dad was on the phone, talking with the balloon store.
Becky, he was told, had never shown up.
And so the party went on without balloons. And without Mom, who was on the phone, calling every one of Becky’s friends.
Aunt Patsy and Nana took over, pouring Kool-Aid and cutting cake. Without Mom to direct the proceedings, I was able to veto any singing, but Aunt Patsy still lit the candles, and I leaned over the cake to blow them out. Scrunching up my face and closing my eyes, I wished that tomorrow morning the headline of the newspaper would report that St. Francis Xavier High School had burned to the ground—but, in case the birthday gods found that just a little too extreme, I offered an alternate wish: that tomorrow would simply go by really, really fast.
“Not at Pam’s, either,” Mom reported to Dad.
The kids around the birthday table sensed the party wasn’t destined to last long. They made little conversation, eating their cake in silence, listening to the adults in the other room, dialing phone numbers. Aunt Patsy, looking even more gray than she had earlier, suggested I open my gifts right there in my seat. I agreed, and my self-conscious friends all quickly pushed their offerings across the table. From the first Theresa, I got a St. Francis Xavier sweatshirt (which I knew I’d never wear); from the second Theresa, I got a mug with my name printed on it (which I knew I’d never use); from Desmond, I got a Silver Surfer Versus Captain Marvel board game (which I knew I’d give back to Desmond someday).
The table settled into an awkward silence, broken only by the sound of the rotary dial from the living room and my mother’s monotonous questioning of Becky’s friends, asking if they had seen her.
Finally, Katie turned to Theresa Kyrwinski and asked her what classes she was in at St. Clare’s.
“Do you have Sister Eileen?” Katie wondered. “She’s supposed to be really mean.”
“No,” Theresa said. “I heard that Sister Agnes is even worse.”
“I have her for social studies,” the other Theresa piped in.
“Agnes or Eileen?”
“Agnes.”
“Then we must be in the same class!”
“Cool!”
Katie was suddenly grinning. “Do you want to meet, all three of us, outside the front doors tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah, let’s do that!”
“Excellent!”
I looked at them with envy. How apart I felt. How alone, after nine years together, nine years of shared classes, shared teachers, shared experiences: The time in second grade when Katie and Theresa D. and I got locked in the janitor’s room and had to crawl out through the window. The time in fifth grade when we put on a variety show, when Katie forgot the lyrics to “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and I had to whisper them to her offstage. The time last year when all of us—me, Katie, both Theresas, Joanne and Desmond—held a séance among the crumbling gravestones of the cemetery behind the school and were scared shitless by the sudden appearance of a squawking crow. For nine years together, we’d endured Fun with Phonics, Reading is Fundamental, and Davey and Goliath. We’d survived clumsy slide shows about good nutrition, the dry twang of Miss Waterhouse, the nasal incantations of Father Drummond from the pulpit, and the ruler-wielding of Sister Mary Kathleen.
Now, after all that, I was being ripped out like a flower from its bed, torn from the rest and planted elsewhere, while the others could continue to bloom together and grow ever closer. I had been forcibly separated from my little community because of one fundamental, absurd reason: I had a penis, and the girls didn’t. Arm in arm would Katie and the Theresas waltz through the front doors of their new school, while I was forced to trudge on alone. I looked across the table at Desmond, staring mindlessly down at the crumbs on his plate. No hope there. Desmond wasn’t going to St. Francis Xavier. His parents couldn’t afford it, he’d told us, so off he was heading to the public school, the dreaded East Hartford High.
“Mother of God, where the hell could she be?”
Mom’s voice cut through the room as she slammed down the phone.
“Maybe I ought to drive you kids home,” Aunt Patsy whispered, looking around the table. My friends all nodded gratefully, frightened by Mom’s outbursts. Standing dutifully, they dropped their crumpled American flag napkins onto their plates. Only Desmond stuffed the Hershey’s Kisses into his pocket; the rest left the little chocolate candies unopened in their tulle.
“Happy birthday, Danny,” Theresa Dudek said from across the table. “Have fun at school tomorrow.”
I said nothing. I watched as my friends filed out through the door, behind Aunt Patsy.
“Happy birthday, Danny,” Katie said, coming up to me.
I looked into her round blue eyes. This was it. The last time I’d see her. Any of them. I just knew it.
I started to cry.
“Danny,” Katie said.
“I’m okay. I’m just…”
“Worried about Becky?” Katie smiled. “I’m sure she’ll be home soon. She’s probably just lost track of the time.”
“Yeah.” I stopped crying.
“Good luck tomorrow.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Katie hesitated a moment, then turned to follow the rest.
“Where is she?” Mom was screeching from the living room. “I’ll throttle her neck for making me so worried! I’ll throttle her!”
I headed out the back door and sat on the steps. I wiped my eyes, embarrassed that I’d cried in front of Katie. The sun was dropping low in the sky, turning the afternoon red. The backyard was filled with long shadows across the grass. Near the rusted old swing set, unused for years, stood Becky’s easel. Becky wanted to be an artist; as a kid, she’d finger paint for hours, and Mom would cover the refrigerator with her creations. I thought finger painting was messy, and wanted nothing to do with it. But Becky lost herself in it, as she did with her crayons and pastels and, finally, oil paints. A little more than a year ago, with money Mom had given her, Becky had gone out and bought the easel and some paints and a whole shitload of brushes. Now, when she wasn’t with Chipper, Becky could usually be found at her easel, facing the cornfield behind the house, painting the long rows of corn or the houses up on the hill. After high school, she announced, she would attend the Pratt Institute in New York. Mom asked her how she thought we’d be able to pay for that, and Becky replied she’d get a scholarship. She was pretty serious about her painting. A few nights ago, it had started to rain, and Becky had jumped out of bed, rushing outside to save her precious work of art. She’d replaced it on the easel a few days later, adding a few touches here and there. Her painting of the white house on the hill remained unfinished.
The sun was turning the cornstalks pink. The field stretched on for a mile, all the way to the dark green woods. I could barely make out the trees from where