Page 17 of The Lookback

“But you’ll be all alone,” Dad says.

“Yes, the cows out here will pose quite the risk.” I roll my eyes.

Finally, they relent, and I hop on my bike for the six-mile ride. I pedal like I’ve never pedaled before, turning a thirty-minute ride into more like twenty, I think. The whole way, I keep thinking about how Tommy looked at me.

It can’t just be me who felt that, right?

He has to like me, too.

But when I reach the Brooks house, I still haven’t caught up to him. I must have taken so long to leave that he got there and left before I ever even saw him. I just don’t understand how I didn’t pass him on the way back. The muscles in my legs are burning, and my lungs are heaving when I force myself to start pedaling again, this time, up the final hill to my house.

But just as I’m straightening out, I hear it.

Voices coming from around the back of Jed’s house.

I drop my bike on the side of the road and jog across their dark, damp yard. A shiver runs up my spine at the thought that I can wait until Tommy has dropped off the pail, and then say I heard him, and I’m sure he’ll insist on biking the rest of the way to my house alongside me.

He always does.

I’m stepping around the corner into the back yard when I realize the voices I’m hearing aren’t happy ones.

“I already told you—I know you’re sick, but are you also deaf? Idon’t like Mandy,” Tommy says. “Most of the time I actually can’t stand her, because the two of you are the most aggravating pair I know. More than anything else, I’m just so disgusted by all your back and forth that I could scream.”

I want to drop down onto my bottom in the wet grass and cry.

Jed’s standing like a statue on the back porch of his house, a dark figure silhouetted by a soft golden light. “You’re lying. I saw how you looked at her. You just don’t want to make me mad.”

“If you think I’m afraid of making you mad, you’re even dumber than I thought. I just don’t like her—not the way you do,” Tommy says. “She sings like an angel, and that’s all I care about.”

When he turns and walks away, I crouch behind a bush, hoping that the light from Jed’s house will keep him from noticing me in the darkness.

For the first time since I set out on my bike, my luck holds. He walks right past me, and he doesn’t even notice my bike on his way back down the road.

I trudge back to the road, climb on my bike, and pedal the rest of the way home slowly, ponderously, letting out all my tears and all my angst before I reach my house, where I have to pretend for my parents’ sake that all is right with the world.

Even though everything feels so very, very wrong.

6

HELEN

My earliest memory is actually fairly clear. I’m not sure exactly how old I was, but somewhere around three years old, because of, well. What I heard.

My parents were arguing, and my mom, who was usually quite reasonable, was being so shrill that it woke me up. I dragged my blanket into the hall and was about to walk into the kitchen to ask them what was wrong, but something Mom said made me stop.

“I didn’t even want Helen, but you insisted that I would change my mind.”

She didn’t want me? Want me to what?

“Well, I never did. You were wrong. And now you’ve done itagain. You’re going to wreck my chances at getting tenure, all because you can’t seem to keep your hands off me.”

“We’re married,” my dad said softly. “And you may not be glad you had Helen, but I’m happy we have her. She’s a very smart little girl, just like her mother. And in a few years, when we’re older, we’ll be glad we had a child. It’s an investment in our future happiness.”

“Oh? And when’s the last time aninvestmentin our future made you throw up in the middle of a faculty meeting? When’s the last time you got passed over for a promotion because you were having a baby?” Mom stood. “Never. Which is so unfair. I hated being pregnant the first time, and this time, I’m doing something about it.”

“I’m not saying you can’t,” Dad said. “I’m just saying that we should wait and think about it for a week.”

Mom shoved Dad. “Youwait.”

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