When Friendship Followed Me Home by Paul Griffin Page A

into her lap. “Here I’m doing all this research about the Read to Rufus stuff. Me and Mom are on a video conference with this school where the kids have a hard time reading. Everybody’s completely psyched, and we’re telling them we’re ready as soon as you and Flip are, and you like vanish? What the freak? What did I do? Where were you? And what happened to your face?”
    I told her, and then I told her everything else. You know how you can tell when somebody’s really listening to you? Like you can almost see the words traveling through the air, into her eyes, and then they sink into her heart? Like she wants to take in the way you feel, even if you’re sad, because she wants to be there with you? For you? She hugged me and whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you can cry.”
    â€œI’m really okay,” I whispered back.
    â€œNo, really, you can. I want you to.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to.”
    She leaned back a little to look at me. She looked at me for a while, and then she tilted her head to the side. I swear it was like I went from hardly knowing her to knowing her better than I ever knew anybody, maybe even Mom. No, the other way around. She knew me. She could read my mind. “You feel like you can’t breathe, right?” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    That afternoon was crazy warm for September, and the boardwalk was busy. Somehow her hand was even colder today. “Cypress Hills, by the cemeteries?” she said. That’s where Jeanie and Leo lived. “Are you changing schools?”
    â€œNo, I’m not being the new kid again.” Everybody kept stopping to pet Flip, and he loved it.
    â€œHow long were you in there?” she said.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œFoster care.”
    â€œUntil like two years ago.”
    She stopped walking. “Why’d it take so long?”
    â€œI was a drop-off,” I said. “At the police station, you know? A few days old, my file says. They do blood tests on you, to see if you’re healthy. My blood had drugs in it.”
    â€œFrom your mom.”
    â€œThat scares people away.” I shrugged. “The only thing I’m addicted to is those chocolate chip cookies your mom leaves out on her desk.”
    â€œBen? I’m sorry.”
    â€œWhy? The caretakers were cool, most always.” I held back on the fact that everything was always changing. People coming and going. You’d make a friend one day and she’d be gone the next or maybe you would be. After a while you stopped trying to remember names. “One Christmas we had a grab bag. I ended up with this Chewbacca poster. I never hung it. I figured I’d only have to take it down again.” I was doing it again, saying what I was thinking. “Hey, did you tell your dad I hate magic?”
    â€œHe said he’d like to show you a trick or two.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” I said.
    â€œYou can tell me, you know? About your mom?”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œYou told me she died. You didn’t tell me about
her.
”
    â€œShe’s in a better place and all that, right?” I said. “Nothing to be sad about, Traveler.”
    â€œTraveler?”
    â€œLife’s a journey. The best part is going uphill. Things come all at once, bad brings good, one door closes, two open, go through both.”
    â€œShe used to say that to you, right?”
    â€œReally, Halley, I’m okay. Yeah. It’s windy.” I said that in case I started to cry, which I didn’t.
    â€œIt
is
windy.”
    â€œI wish we had sunglasses,” I said.
    â€œYeah.” She squeezed my hand really hard and didn’t let go and we kept walking fast and didn’t look at each other or say anything for a while.
    â€œLike, how are
you
feeling?” I said.
    â€œShut up, Ben.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œNo,