12
THE BOY IN THE BINOCULARS
Lily kneeled at the window behind her bed with a
copy of Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North
America draped across the pillow, frustrated to not catch
sight of the object of her search. Over the past few days, the only
birds she had managed to identify were a couple of cardinals and a
few greasy grackles hanging out on the telephone wires. None of the
birds seemed particularly binocular-worthy. But earlier in the week
she had spied something that was.
It was a boy. His brown hair was curly
but cropped short, giving him a Roman god appearance, and he had
light-colored—maybe green?—eyes. He seemed to be about fifteen or
sixteen. She’d first spotted him coming out of Wyatt Carter’s house
two days ago. She hadn’t known that Mr. Carter was married or had a
kid, but she had told Dominic, and Dominic had mentioned the
newcomer to Grace, and Grace said that Wyatt was divorced and had a
son named Crawford.
Lily liked Grace. Grace had baked her
an entire batch of oatmeal cookies after Lily had spotted the fire
at the Oliver house and called 911 before anyone else. The cookies
had disappeared within a day—Dominic and Jordan gobbled down most
of them—but Grace had also called Lily a hero, and that was
something that didn’t go away. Weeks later, that word still made
her sit up a little straighter.
Dominic had said that Grace was going
to leave at the beginning of August. But she never had left, and
Lily was glad. Even though Lily didn’t go over to the Oliver house
like Dominic did, Grace was always friendly to her when she saw her
in the driveway, and would call hello to her if she happened to be
sitting on the porch when Lily walked by.
School was about to start up. Lily
wondered if Crawford would go to her school, and if so, if he would
be in her class. Yesterday she’d heard the sound of a trumpet
coming from the Carter house, so he was bound to be in the band.
They’d have something in common.
Just when she was beginning to despair
of ever getting a sighting of him that day, Crawford appeared
around the side of his house pushing a lawn mower. Lily leapt into
high gear. She changed into her jean shorts and her newest summery
shirt—a halter shirt her mother had bought her last August, when
things were on sale. The yellow sleeveless top tied in the back and
wasn’t too tight, so it didn’t really emphasize the fact that she
had nothing going on chest-wise. The halter showed more skin than
she was used to, but it was nothing close to the skimpy stuff
Jordan wore sometimes.
If her mother had been there, she would
have counseled that the important thing was to feel good in her own
skin. Lily had heard her say that sometimes to Nina. Maybe to
Jordan, too. Lily could see the sense in it, but at the same time,
she didn’t feel comfortable. Her body failed her daily—with hair
that went nuts if she didn’t tie it back, and skin that either
broke out or looked blotchy, and feet that she sometimes imagined
she could actually see growing. Her bra size may have flatlined at
AAA, but the way things were going she was destined to be the only
sophomore girl wearing a size ten shoe.
Nevertheless, she summoned her mother’s
voice in her head and, shoulders back, casually strolled down the
sidewalk while Crawford Carter mowed his yard. She and Dominic had
hardly ever gone to the pool this summer, so the skin on her
shoulders looked bluey-white, like the underbelly of a fish. She
should have worn a T-shirt, but it was too late now. Crawford had
reached the front porch of his house and was turning the mower just
as she passed directly in front of him. He glanced up but quickly
looked back down at the ground directly in front of him without
acknowledging her.
Lily trudged on, disappointed. She
really didn’t have anywhere to go, so she walked to the convenience
store a few blocks away.
When she got there she grabbed a
six-pack of Cokes out of the refrigerator cabinet and took it to
the cash register. The clerk, the same teenage clerk who’d been
selling her soft drinks and ice cream bars all summer, rang her up
without glancing at her. Not that she cared what a convenience
store clerk thought, but the one time she’d come in with Jordan the
slumpy bored teenager had suddenly become alert as a bird dog. As
they’d paid, he was all curiosity about what “you girls” were up to
that afternoon, even though he was only looking at
Jordan.
Now this same clerk shoved her six-pack
of Cokes into a plastic bag and handed them to her as if she were
invisible.
“Thank you,” she made a point of
saying, refusing to sink to his inarticulate level.
He grunted and went back to reading
Sports Illustrated.
During the walk back, Lily practiced
things she would say to Crawford Carter. She considered introducing
herself formally, but she decided that would be uncool. Best to
make it seem spur-of-the-moment, as though she hadn’t ever noticed
him before, but now that she had, of course
she would say hello. No big deal.
She arrived at her street, turned at
the student rental house on the corner, and got smacked in the
chest with a Frisbee. Which actually hurt.
“Oh, hey, sorry about that!” one of the
three guys standing in the yard called out.
Hopping back awkwardly, she picked up
the green Frisbee and flicked it back to him, an easy distance.
Unfortunately, the disc went wild and landed on the overhang of the
front porch.
The guys watched their Frisbee
disappear and then unleashed a series of groans and
exclamations.
“Damn!”
“Nice one, kid!”
A hot flush leapt into her cheeks. “I’m
so sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”
The three guys ignored her now. They
were casing the front porch, pacing back and forth like cats,
trying to figure out the best way to get up there to retrieve the
Frisbee.
She scurried away as quickly as
possible. Worse luck still, at the pilot’s house Crawford was
nowhere in sight. The newly trimmed grass displayed the striped
pattern of the lawn mower’s tracks, but the buzz of the lawn mower
had stopped.
As she stood frozen in disappointment,
Crawford came around the corner with a push broom. He flicked a
nervous glance at her—no doubt wondering why a girl was standing
there staring at his grass—and began sweeping the clippings off the
sidewalk.
Taking a deep breath, she walked up to
him, stopped, and pulled a red can out of her sack. “Would you like
a drink?”
Those eyes—yes, they were very
green—registered confusion at first, but then his face relaxed and
he reached out and took the Coke from her. “Thanks.” He snapped the
can open and chugged down several swallows, his Adam’s apple
bounding in his throat. He had dust clinging to the fine hair on
his arms, and some of his curly hair was sweaty and sticking to his
temples.
He was even cuter right up close than
he was in the binoculars. The view through the spyglass had made
her curious, but now it felt as though the earth had shifted
beneath her feet. Was this how Marianne Dashwood felt when Mr.
Willoughby scooped her up on that hillside in Sense and Sensibility?
Not that Crawford looked like he was
about to scoop her up, or even touch her. Still. It was hard to
make her mouth form words.
“I live in the house two doors down,”
she finally blurted out, inclining her head in that direction. “My
name’s Lily.”
He shrugged to wipe his mouth with the
arm of his T-shirt. “I’ve seen you over there.”
He’d noticed her? Her? “Really?”
He laughed. “Really. My name’s
Crawford.”
It was all she could do to keep herself
from saying, “I know.” Trouble was, she hadn’t planned what else
she was going to say to him. Just walking up to him and introducing
herself had been as far as her imagination had
stretched.
“D-do you live here now?” she
stammered.
“Yeah, I used to live with my mom in
Dallas, but I don’t get along so well with her new
husband.”
“Oh.” She wondered if she should say
that’s too bad, or something like that,
even though it wasn’t bad at all from her perspective. “So you’re
going to go to school here?”
He nodded.
“Are you going to—”
“Hey, dude!” One of the college boys
jogged toward them. “You wouldn’t have a ladder, would
you?”
Crawford turned. “Yeah.”
“Our Frisbee’s stuck on the roof. Some
idiot girl—”
Seeing Lily, his words broke
off.
Lily looked away, heat creeping into
her cheeks again.
“Oh, sure,” Crawford said. “Just a
sec.” He started to trot off, but then he turned back to Lily. “See
you around, Lily.”
Just hearing his voice say her name
made her forget her embarrassment, her disappointment at their
having been interrupted, and her smarting left breast.