The Hard Count(12)

I swallow, because I’ve known my dad was on a thin line, but hearing him hint at it makes me worry for him…and us.

“Okay,” I nod.

“How well do you know this kid?”

I breathe in deeply through my nose because the truth won’t give my dad that sense of relief he desperately needs, but I also don’t want to lie and give him completely false expectations.

“Well enough,” I say, standing and clutching my keys in my hands.

My dad nods, and looks back down at his doodle. He adds a few features and turns it into a smiley face, then spins it around for me to see.

“Maybe if this coaching thing falls through, they’ll let me teach art,” he jokes.

“I think you have a better shot at music,” I laugh, “and I’ve heard you sing.”

I sling my bag over my shoulder and blow my dad a kiss. He does the same, letting his hand fall to a slap on the desk. I watch him and walk backward a few steps before turning and exiting through the big metal door, skipping to my car, and tossing my things inside. I slump into the seat and smile at the possibility of seeing Nico out there on that field. I don’t know why that thought makes me so happy, and I don’t know why I want to see it happen so badly, but I can’t deny that I do. It’s more than making my documentary good. It’s seeing something good happen for my dad and for Nico, and when the irony hits me, I laugh hard and start my car.

Damned Nico and Ayn Rand are right again.



I didn’t want my dad to know I had no idea where I was going, but I’ve been driving through West End for ten minutes, and I’ve regretted not getting Nico’s address for about nine and a half. The neighborhood is buzzing with activity, more than I thought it would. I’m not sure what I expected, really. Honestly, I’ve only driven through the area as a passenger during freeway closures and wrong turns when I was a kid. When I got my license, though, this was one of the places I was lectured about “not driving at night.”

I’m out of place. My blonde hair, my freckles, my barely four-month-old sporty two-door—a glance around the streets I’m passing through shows how much I don’t belong here.

I don’t belong here.

I feel guilty thinking it.

I slow to a stop sign and wait several extra seconds while a small dog passes into the intersection, but grows frightened and backtracks twice before committing and sprinting to the other side of the road. He stops around a front gate of a house, the yard dirt except for a large tin water bowl and a few dog toys lying on a yellowed patch of grass, and I comfort myself with the thought that he probably lives there. I don’t want him to get hit by a car.

With a heavy sigh, I turn down the last street. Just like the others, people are out on porches, and homes seem open, even as far as front doors propped wide open, welcoming strangers inside. The first thing we do in my neighborhood is lock the door when we step inside, yet here, in West End, where life is supposed to be scary, nobody seems to lock a thing, at least not during the middle of the day on Sunday.

I slow near the end of the street and take in the scene at one house where several kids are playing in the yard, splashing in one of those plastic baby pools. The lawn is immaculate—the edge of the grass trimmed perfectly, the color a deep green, the dirt freshly raked as if it’s a Disney landscape. Rose bushes are trimmed back for the fall, but their color remains green and they’re accented by seasonal flowers. I’m struck by the scene so much that I don’t realize I’m blocking a car behind me while I idle in the middle of the road. The abrasive blaring of the horn shakes me back to life, though.

“Sorry,” I mouth, waving in my mirror and pulling forward.

I’m about to double back to the beginning, not ready to give up, but a little less hopeful that I’ll find Nico by randomly circling his neighborhood, when a woman catches my attention. She’s stepping from an old, copper-colored Buick in the driveway of a house a few down from the one with the perfect yard, and she looks so familiar that I pull over and watch her in my mirror.

She’s wearing a bright red blouse and black pants, her hair piled high on her head in a bun. She flips open the back-seat door and bends down, a little girl climbing out soon and grabbing her hand. The young girl is wearing a fluffy pink dress, and her hair is split into two ponytails. It’s Sunday, and I’m sure they’ve just returned from church. My hunch is so strong that I wait for a few cars to pass and turn around, driving back into the neighborhood. I arrive at the house just in time for Nico to step from the passenger seat and walk toward the back of the car where he pulls open the trunk.

The woman eyes me as I slow my car, and she says something I can’t hear, but it gets Nico’s attention. He’s holding a paper bag to his chest, but he sets it back inside the trunk, brushing his hands on his gray dress pants and saying something over his shoulder.

I kill the engine, and instantly begin to sweat.

Say something. Something smart. Be nice. Please don’t be mad that I’m here.

“Hi,” I say, bright and cheery as if they’ve been waiting for me to arrive. The woman, who I am pretty sure I recognize as Nico’s mom from the few school activities I’ve seen her at, bunches her brow and smirks at me. She’s pitying me. Because I’m an idiot. And I just took that whole looking-out-of-place thing to an entirely new level.