Thirteen

Saturday, 5-13
         I’ve decided that shoving someone’s head in a cake is one of the cruelest customs in the history of civilization. Jeremy disagrees.
         I immediately regretted asking for chocolate—chocolate frosting on vanilla cake. Vanilla on chocolate would have tasted the same.
         I came up gasping, my face covered in brown, and he said, “Guess what, Trevor? You’re thirteen now!” as if I didn’t know. There was a small red mark on my forehead from hitting the three, and the bright blue number candle hovered there, half in and half out of the cake, as though it wasn’t sure I really was thirteen.
         Even now I’m plotting my revenge.

5-13, Later
         “You’re an adult now, Little Bro!” Jeremy announced when I indignantly asked what it was all about. “You can never embarrass me with your childish ways again.” I gave him my bit about how I always act grown up and would never-ever-embarrass-him—really, but I managed to fit in a few polysyllabic words I hope he didn’t know.
         But I have some idea of what he was getting at. It was what happened a year ago with Vera.
         Vera was a year older than he, a member of the speech team, and the founder of the book club—which was really quite prodigal given that she was just fifteen and a freshman. And, boy, was she beautiful. Well, to be veracious, I didn’t notice, given that I’d only just turned twelve and besides she’d been like an older sister to me forever.
         But Jeremy noticed. Well, I can’t see why he chose then. This is all hindsight, of course.
         So she and Jeremy were sprawled on the floor of our capacious family room with a book of New York Times crosswords between them, and I was in the LA-Z-BOY doing my math—pre-algebra, for the second time, which I abhorred—and I was finding the pervasive murmurs of “7-down” and “26-across” increasingly distracting. I longed to swap my abominably easy fractions for the refreshing challenge of Will Shortz.
         And, more and more, it seemed I was missing out on time with Vera.
         So, isn’t it exculpatory that, when Vera called out in that clear, carefree voice of hers, “Hey, Trevor! What’s a fabulist?” I said jovially, “It’s someone who writes fables, didn’t you know?”
         “Like Aesop!” Vera smiled triumphantly. “Ooh, that fits!”
         “Oh, of course.” Jeremy’s voice was would-be-casual. “I was just coming to that myself.”
         “Who is playing Stratego?” Vera cut in gracefully.
         Jeremy sputtered.
         “Jeremy and I!” I piped up. “It’s a two-person game, but we could play partners!” And, as if I hadn’t already bungled things enough, I just had to say, “You and me against Jeremy. Jeremy always wins!”
         Hindsight, huh? 50-50.
         Or—something.

Sunday, 5-14
(Veraciously, Friday 5-5)
         If I’m to be an adult now, I must start telling the truth. I wrote nothing about this because—well, because it didn’t happen.
         Really.
         Just my imagination. Just glad it was Friday, is all. Not thinking clearly.
         But, to be veracious, it had a whole lot more to do with Helena Brandon than with the day of the week. She has this smile: It’s this true, ringing thing, and when she smiles at you her eyes light up, and you just have to smile back. Her eyes—
         So there’s this chess board in the algebra room, and sometimes when my homework’s done I like to go over to the corner and play a game against myself—nobody else to play with, anyway. But one day, as I was sitting at my desk, bored, my eyes scanning the room, I spotted something truly anomalous: Helena, sitting at that board, maneuvering those pieces, carefully playing both sides of a king-and-pawn endgame.
         Well, I’d been helping Helena with her graphing all year. (Okay, and she’d been helping me with my factoring.) So I ambled over to the board and stood across from her, watching her push a pawn. When she looked up and said brightly, “Hello, Trevor! Would you like to play?” I expected to reply gallantly, “Why, yes, Helena!”
         But I didn’t.
         She looked up and her eyes met mine, and she smiled; all the air left me, something jumped about twelve feet inside my stomach, and all I could muster was a feeble “No, thanks,” as I stumbled back to my seat.
         That’s the true veracity of it.

5-14, Later
         Three things just happened in quick succession: Firstly, I looked up “veracious,” discovered it means “habitually telling the truth,” and figured it doesn’t suit me perfectly after all. Secondly, I determined against revenge. Thirdly, I decided I’m off to talk to Jeremy.
5-14, Much Later
         “I’m busy, Little Bro,” Jeremy grumbled when I opened the door without knocking. “What.” He wasn’t looking for an answer.
         “Can we talk?
         “No.” Jeremy appeared carrying a math textbook, which he shoved into the door so that it closed in my face.
         “I’ve got something on my mind.”
         “I’ve already got conic sections to worry about.”
         “Please.”
         Silence.
         “Okay, it’s about a girl.”
         The door opened. “What?” When I got to the part about the jumping thing in my stomach, Jeremy whistled.
         “But what do I do?”
         “Do?”
         “Yeah.” My voice quivered slightly.
         “It’s not a disease.”
         “Oh.” We laughed.
         “Look, I know it’s tough, Trevor,” began Jeremy in big-brotherly tones, “but think about it: What’s the worst that might happen if you embarrass yourself?”
         I could hear about a million ticks of Jeremy’s clock. Then, I finally asked him. “Jeremy, why do you never see Vera anymore?”
         “I see her all the time!” Jeremy said defensively. “She’s in my biology class.”
         “You know what I mean.” My voice held steady.
         “I don’t know why. It just—got to be too much.”
         “Oh.” Remembering the things I had said a year ago, I felt like I had broken something.
         We were both silent, and several times our eyes met and we both looked away hastily. Then:
         “Little Bro, you weren’t supposed to hit the candle.”
         “Now you tell me!”
         “You had nothing to do with it, okay?”

Saturday, 5-20
         Why does just one day a year get to be your birthday? Why, for one day, does everybody suddenly say, “Okay, you can be profound now,” and then the next morning it’s over? What if you just don’t feel it? Like, last week, I didn’t feel thirteen; but today I do.
         Jeremy, Vera, Helena, and I sat around the kitchen table where Jeremy’s surprise one-day-too-old cake stood, gleaming in the light of the two number candles, which today held steadily, and as I extinguished the shimmering “13” I made a wish.
         I wished that I would always be surrounded by this much love.
         I’m not sure love is the right word for it, and I certainly won’t admit to Jeremy that it’s the one I chose. I looked it up in the thesaurus I always keep by my bed, and all the words I found were about romance. Yuck.
         But it’s not camaraderie or rapport, any more than it’s the leaping I still feel in my stomach when I look at Helena or the whispers between Jeremy and Vera that I tried not to listen to. It’s the little things, like how we all played Stratego—and it just wouldn’t have been right if Jeremy hadn’t won—and how, when Jeremy said, “Happy birthday, Trevor!” he meant it.