Who Do You Love(36)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

“They’d better not make us wear hard hats,” said Marissa, giving her permed curls a pat. “Finding cute overalls was bad enough.”

“Safety first,” I said, feeling a pang of worry. When they’d signed the permission slip, my parents had included an entire page about my medical history, but what if whoever was in charge hadn’t read it and had me on a crew that was doing heavy lifting? I patted my own hair, thinking that I’d do what I always did in situations like this: say I had my period, then sit on the bleachers or in the shade. I’d packed my Walkman and my copy of Wuthering Heights, as well as the latest issue of People, which I’d swiped from our mailbox, with “Mariah Carey’s All-Star Wedding” on the cover. If I ended up on the sidelines, I’d be fine.

Marissa pitched the empty Gatorade bottle toward a trash can. It bounced off the rim and fell to the ground, but she was halfway up the path and didn’t notice. Sighing, I picked up the bottle and threw it away. When I turned around, a guy was looking at me, a guy with broad shoulders and very white teeth and brown hair cut short. He wasn’t doing that overt checking-me-out thing. Instead, he was staring like he recognized me, and the weird thing was, I felt like I recognized him, too.

Rabbi Silver called, “Rachel! Come on!” I hurried into the auditorium just as a middle-aged woman with shiny platinum hair pulled back like a ballerina stepped to the front of the crowd and held up a hand for silence. “My name’s Darcy Edelman. I’m the director of the local chapter of Home Free, and I want to thank you all for your service,” she said. “If you’ll head up here to find your nametags, please. The color of the tag is the color of your group.”

I found my tag, which had a blue border. The guy who’d been looking at me had a blue tag, too. He was tall but not too tall, thin but not too skinny, with the contours of muscles in his arms and chest visible underneath his plain blue T-shirt. He had a narrow face, a high forehead, brown eyes, straight, thick eyebrows, and a dimple in his chin. Even though it was cut very short, I could tell his hair was curly, and his lips were beautiful, full and almost pursed, like he was waiting to give someone a kiss. No braces, I noticed . . . then I saw that he was looking at my nametag.

“Rachel?” he said. He had a nice, deep voice.

“Don’t tell me that’s your name, too,” I said, smiling up at him, thinking of how proud Marissa would be that I’d already caught the eye of a cute guy.

“Rachel Blum,” he said. His eyes moved from the tag to my face. “Were you ever in the Miami Children’s Hospital?”

I studied him more closely. “Yes. Only half my life. Why?”

He smiled, just a brief flash of his teeth. “You told me a story.”

I stared up at him, feeling my heart give another hiccup, feeling like the lights had dimmed and the auditorium had gone silent. “You wrote me a note,” I said, trying to connect this handsome guy with the kid I’d met in the emergency room. “I sent you a letter, but it came back.” This was true. I’d written to Andy to ask if his arm had indeed been broken, and if he’d gotten to go back to the ocean before he and his mom had gone home, and if his friends had signed his cast, but the letter I’d worked on so carefully had come back a week after I’d mailed it, stamped UNDELIVERABLE and NO FORWARDING ADDRESS.

His eyebrows drew together, and he looked down at his sneakers, plain blue-and-white Nikes; running shoes, not the puffy white schooners that came with their own inflation system that the boys in my school favored, whether or not they’d ever held a basketball. “My mom and I moved right after we got back from that trip.”

“I can’t believe it!” I said, still looking for traces of the hurt eight-year-old in this cute boy, and noticing that he was taking as careful inventory of me as I was of him. “Isn’t this crazy?” I could feel my heart pound, and I felt breathless, the way I remembered feeling when I was six and had pleurisy, only this time it felt wonderful.

“Crazy,” he confirmed, looking me over like he couldn’t believe I was there, like I’d disappear at any moment, as the Home Free woman clapped her hands.

“In the morning after breakfast you’ll all find your team leaders and be directed to your work sites. For now, get a good night’s sleep.”

“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.

Andy smiled at me. “See you in the morning.”

“Okay. Great.” The back of his hand brushed my arm as he walked away, and I felt his touch echo inside me as I stared after him, his broad shoulders and narrow hips, tanned skin and close-cropped hair, feeling like a girl in a movie or a book, a girl who’d been through all kinds of adventures and trials, and had finally glimpsed her reward.