The Window

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

December 25

The smell of coffee brewing wakes me from a sound slumber. I look sleepy-eyed at my cell phone on the nightstand for the time—7:45. I suffer a moment of panic, thinking I missed the school bus, before remembering it’s the middle of winter break and I can sleep in as long as I want. I sink back into my pillow with a smile on my face after realizing I’m facing a day of no homework, no tests, and no papers due on the Emancipation Proclamation or the Louisiana Purchase.

I wonder if teachers are lying back with the same smile?

The smell of coffee grows stronger as my mom pokes her head into my room. The pleasant scent mixes with the nasty odor of her first or second or even third cigarette of the morning. She’s smoking a lot more these days. My dad has been a two-pack-a-day guy since he was fifteen, but mom used to limit herself to five or ten cigarettes a day. She’s up to a pack or a pack and a half now.

“Are you thinking about staying in bed all day?” she asks with a smile. “Because I can return your presents if you’re not interested in opening them.”

“Ten more minutes, Mom. I need my beauty sleep.”

“C’mon, Brian.” My littler sister’s head appears in the doorway. “We need to see what Santa brought us!”

Becky is seven years younger than me. She’s at the age where she’s questioning the existence of Santa Claus but is willing to believe just in case.

I roll over and pretend to go back to sleep, loud snores and all.

“C’mon, Brian,” she pleads.

“Do you need help in here?” my dad’s booming voice calls from the hallway.

“Yeah, Brian won’t get out of bed,” Becky says.

“Well, we’ll have to see what we can do about that,” he says. “It might be time to turn on the old tickle machine.”

Becky giggles. The tickle machine is my dad’s specialty. It doesn’t matter how bad a day you are having. The tickle machine always makes things better.

I pull my blanket up over my head in a vain attempt to ward off the attack. My dad’s heavy footsteps come toward the bed and stop when he reaches the edge.

“Hmm, where did he go?” he asks in mock confusion.

“He’s under the covers, Daddy!”

I try to cover my sides, but my dad’s probing fingers manage to find all the tickle spots he knows are my biggest weakness. I squirm, but it’s no use. There is no known defense against the tickle machine.

“I give! I give!” I laugh. “I’m getting up!”

“The tickle machine always wins, doesn’t it, Becky?” My dad winks, eliciting more giggles from her.

“Five minutes,” my mom threatens, “or your presents get tossed out in the yard.”

“Can I have them, Mom?” Becky asks.

“No, but you can have your own visit from the tickle machine,” my dad replies.

Becky squeals and runs from the room and down the stairs.

“Don’t you dare peek at those presents,” my mom calls. “You can go into the kitchen and no farther!”

I grab a sweatshirt to throw on over my T-shirt and pajama pants. I pull a pair of socks from my dresser, and then I lift the pleated shades to look outside, squinting against the brightness. The socks drop from my hands when I see the snow.

It is exactly as I had pictured it from the attic window more than a week ago. Six inches of snow under a brilliant blue sky. The unplowed street with no signs of human activity. Without looking, I know there will be a tiny trail of squirrel prints leading to the elm tree, and there they are. I look to the Slow—Children sign at the edge of our yard, and there’s the wrapping paper. Santa Claus and his sleigh, with the strip of tape bobbing in the breeze.

“You coming down, Brian?” my mom calls from the base of the stairs.

The words hit me like a shock. Hadn’t she said those same words while I looked at this same snow in the attic?

“Yeah, I’m on my way,” I reply in a voice that is steady, even though my heart pounds in my chest.

Apart from the snow, Christmas day feels normal. After we open our presents, we have a big family breakfast with eggs, bacon, and French toast swimming in a sea of maple syrup. Mom gets her fill of Christmas carols. Becky giggles while she dresses and undresses her new dolls. Dad even appears relaxed for a change, settling back into his overstuffed chair in the family room to read the new book he received from my mom, a thick tome on Alexander Hamilton. The smell of the roasting turkey with all the fixings fills the house. Most important of all, the tenseness that usually permeates the house is put aside for the day.

In the afternoon, JK pounds on the front door. He is covered in clumps of snow and looks like the Michelin Man in his thick layers of winter wear.

“What the heck happened to you?” I ask as he stomps snow from his boots onto the front porch.

“Had an accident over on Coachlight,” he replies. “I forgot about that big hole in the sidewalk and did a face plant. Luckily, the snow is soft. It would be a real shame to spoil this pretty face.”

“Come on in and get warmed up.” I stand to one side to allow him entry.

“No, you come out. The snow is perfect. Wait, are you in your freaking jammies? Dude, it’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“Hey, I’m chilling and enjoying the day off.”

“Well, if you want some chilling, get your butt out here. The guys next door are already working on a fort. I’ll get started on ours while you get dressed.”

We’ve built a three-foot-tall wall facing the Allen’s yard and are adding another foot to the top when the first snowball catches JK in the shoulder. I don’t know if it was Dustin or Justin who fired the first shot. I have trouble enough telling the Allen twins apart under normal conditions and didn’t even bother to try with their heads covered in ski masks.

JK and I scoop balls of snow and return fire. For the next hour we run and duck and throw, fighting off several attempts by the older boys to overrun our position. My cheeks are bright red from the cold and a couple of well-placed snowballs that found their mark. I can barely feel my fingers because I’ve traded the warmth of my gloves for the better accuracy of throwing bare-handed. The pristine white blanket of snow in the front yard looks like a war zone.

“Brian, it’s time for dinner!” my sister calls from inside the front door.

“Thanks, Becky,” I call back, raising my hands in a truce to the Allen twins. That gets a new barrage of snowballs thrown in our direction, so JK and I make a run for the safety of the porch.

“Cowards!” they yell after us.

JK raises the back of his hand in their direction. I’m pretty sure I can guess what gesture he’s making inside the mitten.

We knock as much snow off each other as we can before entering the house, but we trail quite a bit of it inside. My mom had put towels on the floor for us in the foyer, so we take off our boots and drop our coats and hats on them. I rub my hands together to try to generate feeling back into my fingers.

“Merry Christmas, JK,” my mom says as she pokes her head around the corner.

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. B.”

“Can you stay for dinner?”

“The Wilsons are eating at six,” he replies.

The Wilsons are JK’s foster family. I’ve lost track of how many families he’s gone through in the eight years I’ve known him. The Wilsons might be number seven. The Wilsons are a lot older than my parents, with three grown children of their own. They are nice enough, but there is a certain coolness to them. JK told me he didn’t think they would foster him for more than a year, so he’ll probably be uprooted again before we hit tenth grade. At eighteen, he will be on his own, and I worry about what that will mean for him.

“It’s four o’clock,” I counter. “You’ve got plenty of time to get in a good snack before dinner.”

JK smiles. He always says he loves my mom’s cooking, but it’s more that he feels like we are his real family. And you should always be with family at Christmas.

“Yeah, I guess a snack wouldn’t kill me.” He grins. “Thanks, Mrs. B.”

After dinner, we lounge in my room. I have a present for JK, but I hold off on giving it to him. It isn’t because I don’t want him to have it. Nothing can be further from the truth. I’m worried about how he might feel if he doesn’t have a present for me.

“Merry Christmas, man.” JK surprises me by pulling a crumpled present from the pocket of his hoodie. The small package is inexpertly wrapped, with too much paper on one side and not quite enough on the other, and there is enough tape to secure a package four times its size. It doesn’t matter, though.

“Hold on, I’ve got something for you, too.” I tug my sock drawer open and extract a wooden box. “I didn’t wrap it because…well, because I can’t wrap any better than you can.”

JK laughs, and we exchange presents. I let him open first because I want to see his face when he sees what’s inside the box. He opens the lid slowly, and the hinges emit a tiny creak. He lets out a yell as he reaches inside and grabs the wand.

“Kingsley Shacklebolt!”

My parents had taken me to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios over the summer. I’d saved my lawn mowing money to buy a wand and was deciding between Harry Potter (11" holly, phoenix feather core) or Remus Lupin (10 ¼” cypress, unicorn hair core) when I saw this wand. I knew immediately it was the one JK would have chosen if he were with me. Kingsley Shacklebolt was one of the few black characters in the Harry Potter movies and was, in the studied opinion of JK, “one bad ass dude.” I bought the wand on the spot and kept it hidden away in my sock drawer, waiting for the right moment to give it to him.

Now my friend swishes the wand from side to side, with a broad smile on his face.

“I was already about as cool as cool can be, but you know what this makes me, don’t you?”

“Yeah, one bad ass dude.”

“You got that right.”

He stares at the wand reverently and then down at the floor. He’s fighting back tears.

Overall, he’s had a tough fourteen years. His foster parents are okay, but they will never be his real folks. His dad left before he was even born. His mom tried to raise him alone, but life hadn’t worked out for her; she cut and ran when JK was four. All he remembers about her is that she’d had a big belly laugh. He’s been in foster care ever since, never more than a year with a single family. No takers on adoption, so he’s given up on it ever happening.

“Your turn, man.” JK nods at my gift.

He watches as I tear into the wrapping paper, struggling to get through the layers of tape. Finally, I pull out a crumpled sheet of paper.

“I hope this is the answer key for the next history test.”

“Trust me. It’s better.”

I unfold the paper in anticipation of one of JK’s jokes. What I see instead is life changing for a fourteen-year-old boy. In JK’s neat script is a note sent to—and more importantly, returned from—Charlotte O’Mara.

Charlotte,

My somewhat dorky friend Brian Bingham is interested in your thoughts on him:

o He’s hot!

þ He’s a little dorky, but cute

o Who is Brian Bingham?

I am currently:

o Available but not interested in someone who looks like that

o Secretly married to a Russian agent

þ Available

I might be interested in:

o Seeing him thrown out of school

o Finding out who he is

þ Going out with him

A wave of emotions passes over me.

First, I am mortified. How could my best friend do this to me?

Second, I am pissed off. Seriously, how could my best friend do this to me?

Third, I am thrilled. Charlotte might be interested in going out with me?

The final emotion is pure terror. How could someone like me ask out someone like Charlotte? That leads me back to pissed off again. How could my best friend do this to me?

JK looks on anxiously, watching my face as I process all these emotions over the course of a few seconds. My face must have ended up on thrilled because he breaks out into a grin.

“Told you it was better than answers to a stupid test.”

“I cannot believe you gave this to her.”

“Well, believe it, buddy.”

“And those checkmarks are hers?”

“Every last one of them.”

“So, what do I do?” My voice shakes.

“Personally, I’d get her on the phone and let her know you have a much better option for her. A guy with the face of an angel and the body of a Greek statue. A taller, much better-looking version of you with an actual sense of humor.”

“And who would that be?”

“Me, dude! I’m talking about me,” JK says in a tone of righteous indignation.

I laugh, and then grow quiet.

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it, although this could have turned out so, so badly.”

“Knowing you, it still might.” He smiles.

“And what if it does?”

“Well, you know what they say, right?”

“You aren’t going to feed me crap about when life closes a door it opens a window, are you?”

“No way. When life closes a door, open it back up. You know that’s how a door works, right?”

I laugh. JK always has a line for everything.

“Seriously, man, this could have gone so wrong.”

“I had a plan in case she checked the wrong boxes.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, it involved you moving out of the state, leaving me to move in for myself.”

I scowl. “And what if she decided I was the one she wanted?”

“Then she would have been devastated you moved, and I would have been forced to swoop in to console her.” He grins. “Different path. Same result. The bad ass dude gets the girl.” He swishes his new wand in emphasis.

An hour later, JK has his winter clothes back on, apart from his mittens, which are stuffed into his coat pockets. His new wand is held securely in one hand so he can brandish it in case dementors cross his path on the way home.

He gives it another practice swish. “Thanks, Brian. This is my best present ever.”

“Glad you like it, JK. Your present is even better.”

“That goes without saying.”

“Too late. I already said it.”

JK raises an eyebrow at my lame joke. “But it’s totally wasted if you don’t grow a pair and ask her out.”

I start to laugh but stop when I notice the expression on his face.

“I mean it, man. You’ve got to give her a call. Don’t you dare think about wussing out on me.”

“I’ll call her.”

“You mean it?”

“Yeah, I’ll call her. Not tonight, of course. I mean, it’s Christmas and she’s probably doing family stuff.”

JK swishes his wand in the general vicinity of my crotch and chants, “Testicalis enlargus.”

I burst into laughter. I’m still laughing as he makes his way into the twilight, his wand at the ready.