Sweet Thirteen

Jody gripped the basketball and eyed the basket. As always, the target seemed impossibly high and far away from where she stood, stiff-legged and sweating, at the foul line. The seventh-grader lined up the shot, willed the ball to go in, and pushed off. The ball missed the hoop entirely, arcing toward the back wall but not quite reaching it. As it rolled listlessly toward the bleachers, she heard mocking laughter.

“Nice try, Nerd Girl!”

It was Kevin, popular, eighth-grade, athlete-scholar, adored-by-many-and-feared-by-most Kevin.

“Shut up, Kev. Everybody’s got to start somewhere,” a voice replied.

Kevin flipped his middle finger upward and strolled out of the nearly deserted gym.

Jody whipped around, stunned that someone had come to her defense. A tall boy stacked his books on a bleacher seat next to hers and dropped his jacket down beside them before walking out onto the floor to stand next to Jody.

“Hi. I’m Sherm Gregor. I’m in your math class.”

“I know. You sit in the back.”

Jody instantly wished she hadn’t said that. Tall, lanky Sherm sat in the last row in Mr. Jackson’s Pre-Algebra class, long legs stretched out on either side of a desk that seemed ridiculously small for him. He was an eighth-grader, too. He never said a word unless Mr. Jackson called on him, and then he gave the right answer, all the while looking tense and worried, like he expected something dreadful to happen at any moment. Sherm had a dark complexion, with brown eyes and a big smile that he never seemed comfortable enough to use in math class.

“You want me to teach you how to sink foul shots?” Sherm offered.

“I wish you would,” Jody laughed. “I’m like the only person in my gym class who can’t. But, maybe I’m just no good at it.”

“Yeah, like I’m no good at math. But I work on it until I get it right. Some things you’re just good at. Some things you gotta work on.”

Sherm took the ball and stood beside Jody.

“Look, you stand like this. You’re real loose, right? Not stiff. Kind of loose and springy. Then you put one hand behind the ball, and steady it with the other hand. You’re right-handed? Shoot with your right, steady with your left. Look at the basket. Don’t think too hard. Let it come naturally. Just put it through.”

Sherm rose up on his toes and launched the ball into the air. It sailed toward the hoop like a bird in flight and swished through the basket. Sherm retrieved the ball and handed it to Jody.

“Okay, now you try it. Stay loose.”

She took the ball and tried to stand like Sherm, all loose and springy. She eyed the basket, took a deep breath, and pushed off. The ball flew forward and bounced off the rim.

“Better,” Sherm said, showing his wide smile. “Try again. You’ve got it.”

The next time, the ball bounced off the backboard, but the third time, it went in. Jody threw several more times, and with Sherm’s coaching, more went in than didn’t.

“See? Some things you just gotta work on,” he declared.

As they stood alone together in the gym, Sherm smiling down at her, sweat beading in the fine, dark hairs on his upper lip, Jody suddenly felt herself blushing. She bounced the basketball and let her hair fall over her face to cover her confusion.

“Thanks, Sherm. I have to go now. My grandpa is picking me up.”

“That’s cool. You and your grandpa doing something special?”

“Tomorrow’s my birthday. Grandpa’s taking me to the mall to go shopping and get ice cream.”

“Hey, that sounds great. Happy birthday. Are you going to be 13?”

“Yeah. My brother already sent me these jeans for my birthday. He’s away at college.”

“Those are nice jeans. Your brother has good taste.”

“His girlfriend, Gina, helped pick them out.”

Ben’s message in the birthday card had read,

Dear Jody,

I hope you like the skinny leg jeans. All the girls on campus wear them. Gina helped me pick them out. She said they would fit you. Happy Birthday! Love, Ben and Gina

Jody liked Gina a lot. She was the first one of Ben’s girlfriends who treated Jody like a friend, not like a little kid. She secretly hoped Gina and Ben would get married some day. It would be great to have Gina for a sister.

“I’ll walk you out to the parking lot.”

Sherm said it like they were friends who walked places together all the time. They went over to the bleachers where they had left their books and jackets. As always, Jody had a huge stack of books. Sherm picked up his books and hers.

“I can carry them all,” Jody protested.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to carry everything yourself when you’ve got a friend here to help you.” Sherm smiled and handed Jody three of her books.

“Feel better?”

Jody laughed and took the three books. They walked to the parking lot, where Grandpa was waiting in his blue SUV. Grandpa raised a white eyebrow as he looked at Sherm.

“Hello, young man.”

“Grandpa, this is my friend, Sherm. He’s in my math class, and he taught me to sink foul shots.”

Sherm stuck his hand out. “Hello sir. It’s Sherman Gregor.”

“You can call me Mr. Blankenship.”

“Hello, Mr. Blankenship.” The two shook hands. It seemed a little weird to Jody, the way they gripped each other’s hands really hard and stared right at each other. Then Grandpa smiled.

“It’s nice to meet Jody’s friends,” he said.

Sherm walked around to Jody’s side of the truck, waited for her to climb in, and handed her the rest of her books.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah, see you in math class.”

As they drove away, Jody could see the reflection in the rear view mirror of Sherm waving, then turning and loping away on those long legs of his.

“So, you and Sherm were playing basketball?” Grandpa asked.

“No, he was just teaching me how to shoot baskets the right way. I was really bad at it until Sherm showed me how to do it.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah, it was. He’s a nice guy.”

Jody was looking forward to the trip to the mall with Grandpa. Since Grandpa had retired, he picked Jody up from school every day. Sometimes they did fun stuff, like going to the park or the mall, and sometimes they just went back to Grandpa’s house and cooked dinner. Grandpa helped Jody with her homework if she needed him to. Then Jody’s parents would get off work and come to Grandpa’s house, and the four of them would eat dinner together before Jody and her mom and dad went home. Jody thought she had the best family ever.

They arrived at the mall, and Grandpa didn’t even have to ask Jody where she wanted to go first. They made a beeline to the bookstore. Grandpa went to browse in the Technology section, while Jody went to Fiction.

She loved looking through all the titles, knowing that each book lined up on the shelf contained an imaginary world waiting to be explored. Grandpa had said she could choose three books for her birthday.

Although deeply engrossed in the first page of the book in her hand, Jody suddenly realized the presence of someone nearby. She looked up to find a man standing right beside her. Instinctively, she stepped away. The man didn’t move. He looked into her eyes with a strange, bold, mocking stare, then let his gaze travel slowly down her body from the top of her head, over her pink T-shirt and new, skinny-legged jeans, right down to her feet. She was horribly conscious of his presence, of the stubble on his chin, the thick, brown hair on his forearms and the way his shoulders strained against a too-tight polo shirt. Jody dropped the book and ran. Panicked, she looked down aisle after aisle until she found Grandpa. She threw herself against him and pressed her face into his shirt, inhaling the soapy, clean scent of him. Grandpa put his arms around her.

“Jody, honey, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t feel good. My stomach hurts. Can we go home?”

“Of course. You’re probably tired and hungry. I should have brought you a snack. We’ll go home now, and come back tomorrow.”

Jody hardly said a word all the way home to Grandpa’s house. She sat in the car, hunched into her seat with her arms crossed in front of her. Grandpa glanced over from time to time with a worried look. He hoped Jody wasn’t coming down with a virus right before her birthday.

When they got to Grandpa’s house, Jody put her books on the dining room table and ran upstairs to the guest room, the one she stayed in when she spent the night at Grandpa’s house. She yanked open the dresser drawer where she kept extra clothes and pulled out a sweatshirt and some old, baggy jeans. She stripped off the pink T-shirt and the new jeans, threw them on the bed beside a stuffed, pink elephant, and put on her old play clothes, then went down the stairs and out the kitchen door into the garden. Jody hurried to her secret place, under the huge lilac bushes behind the little gazebo Grandpa had built. She loved that place. When she was younger, she had imagined that fairies lived there. When she told Grandpa about the fairies, he hadn’t laughed, but had agreed that it was just the kind of place that fairies would choose. Now, Jody lay down on the ground and wept. Her eyes burned as her hot tears mixed with the eye makeup she had just recently been allowed to start wearing. She shuddered as she remembered that look in the eyes of the man in the book store, and the way she had felt when she realized what that look meant. Did all men look at women like that? Did Ben look at Gina like that? Was that why Sherm was so nice to her? But, she loved Ben, and she liked Sherm. She cried until no more tears would come, and she lay, exhausted, on the grass. At last, Jody sat up and looked around.

Right in front of her, in the warm sunlight of late afternoon, was a butterfly. It had just emerged from a cocoon, and its wings were still damp and crumpled. It clung to a stick as it slowly, rhythmically opened and closed its wings. At first, the wings looked black, but as they began to dry, Jody saw colors and patterns appear.

Quietly, Grandpa arrived and sat down on the grass beside her. Together they watched as the bedraggled insect became more and more like a butterfly. Finally, the butterfly took flight. Jody turned to Grandpa.

“Grandpa, what if a bird found the butterfly before it could fly?”

“Then that bird would have a snack.” Grandpa saw the shadow flit across Jody’s face.

“Birds have to eat too, you know,” he explained gently.

“Do you think the birds stayed away because we were here?” she asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Grandpa said.

“I guess it didn’t have to turn into a butterfly with no one to watch out for it, did it?”

Grandpa smiled.

“No, Jody, it didn’t. It had time to get ready to fly.”

Grandpa looked down at Jody’s tear-and-mascara stained face. Jody looked up at Grandpa’s kind and loving one, a face she had known all her life.

“My stomach feels better now, Grandpa. Let’s go make dinner.”