“Okay,” I say, but I don’t move either.

Then Mom comes in and says, “I can do this in the morning—I’m not teaching till third period.”

“I don’t mind,” Granma says.

“That was a nice meal you made. Tom said how much he enjoyed himself. . . . He hasn’t had much home cooking since his divorce.” Then she looks at me; her makeup has started to smudge around her eyes; she seems worn-out. “Ben, it’s late, and you’ve got an early start. If you get ready now, we won’t all be fighting for the bathroom.”

Even after I’m lying in bed, I can hear Mom and Granma talking in the kitchen. Just their voices, not the words. They must be doing the dishes—I can hear the clink of plates and pots, too, and fall asleep before Mom comes in.

Fourteen

ALL THE TEACHERS kind of give up teaching for the last two weeks of school before winter break. Even Mr. Tomski—I was worried he might try to talk to me in class, but he treats me just the same and leaves me alone.

There’s going to be a big Christmas band concert, and Mabley and some of her cafeteria friends spend every lunchtime rehearsing. Sometimes I see them in the halls, lugging their instruments around. It doesn’t really matter to me—I don’t eat lunch with Mabley anymore, but still I feel jealous watching them troop off together, talking about all the stuff you talk about when you’re doing the same thing together. She says hi whenever she sees me, but she’s friendly to everybody—she says hi to a lot of kids. It’s different for me. She’s one of the only people I talk to.

It’s getting cold now. There are these low December skies that seem to go on forever, but I still go out to the court to eat lunch. Shooting and chasing the ball down warms me up. All morning I look forward to these twenty minutes by myself, and afterward, when I’m sitting in class again, I look out the window and imagine I’m still there.

On the last day of school, Mom offers to drive me home after class. “We can go out for hamburgers,” she says. We’re walking to the bus stop in the morning. It’s still dark outside. You can see lights coming on behind curtains, people getting up for work. It’s cold but not New York cold; there’s a mist in the trees. Part of me wants to catch the bus home with everybody else. But I say, “That’d be great,” because I think that’s what she wants to hear.

“It’s a date,” she says. “We could use a little just-you-and-me time.”

The usual crowd of kids is waiting at the corner—I can see them at the end of the block. But Mom stops for a second, with her hand on my sleeve. “There’s something else I want to say,” she says. “Your dad called last night. He’s still hoping to come for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year’s. There are people he has to see in the Houston office. But he’s not sure.”