Running through Sprinklers Read online

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  I look all around and love the feeling of being so high. I look down, straight into Josh’s eyes. We stare at each other for a while.

  And then I jump.

  64

  “SARA IS AT the door,” Mrs. Ando calls up.

  She slips upstairs and I don’t move from the front entrance. I can’t. Maybe because the thought of Jen is something that has become foreign to me these past few weeks, or maybe I still feel bad for saying those mean things, or maybe because she doesn’t know that I, too, cried that day after our fight in the middle of the cul-de-sac, it’s just that she ran into her house first before she could see. But I’m here and I must go in.

  Behind are the sounds of cul-de-sac, loud and clear: boys playing street hockey, the roar of passing cars, the hiss of timed sprinklers setting off. I close the door, muffling the street noises.

  I stand still in the hallway because it’s not like before when I would just walk right in and join her in whatever she was doing (once I even came into the bathroom while she was on the toilet). Things are different now. I ring the doorbell.

  Jen is in the kitchen, standing at the counter. Her breaths are short, nervous.

  “Come in,” she says, without making eye contact. She is spreading peanut butter onto a piece of bread. I walk over.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She says, “Want a sandwich?”

  “Sure.”

  Her: “White bread or brown?”

  Me: “I’m not prejudiced.” She smiles slightly at this, still not looking at me. I could never spread the peanut butter without crumbling the bread under the knife. I think I press too hard. Jen spreads some perfectly for me. Must be in the Andos’ DNA. She uses a small spoon to scoop up blackberry jam and put it on top.

  “So how are you? What’s new?” I ask, forcing a casual tone. We both know what I’m really asking.

  “Not much,” she says. “Oh, Nadine plucked her eyebrows on Sunday again. Her left eyebrow, like, disappeared. She and Mom made a frantic late-night run to the drugstore to buy this black eyebrow pencil. So now she has a thin, drawn-in left eyebrow.”

  Laughing, I say, “Been there, done that.” There is a brief silence after this. I search for something new to say, but she beats me to it.

  Jen: “I heard Ricky is the one who left you the gifts and that he liked you. Doesn’t make up for the fact that he basically sexually harassed you. Boys are so messed up.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “How’s Josh?”

  “Good,” I say. “We’re going to the fair tomorrow.” Pause. “You want to come?”

  “No,” she says. “I’m busy, you know, our whole family is.”

  I say, “I saw the sign on the lawn.”

  Jen: “Yeah, it’s all happening so fast. There’s a lot of new stuff I haven’t told you about.”

  “But moving . . .” I trail off.

  “Mom’s pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” Jen says, pacing around. “They told us in the lamest way, too. Nadine and I were setting the table for dinner one night, then Dad was like, ‘Pretty soon you girls will have to set an extra place.’ It was really obvious and cheesy.” Jen shakes her head.

  We sit down together at the table and share a crunchy peanut butter and jelly feast.

  “But moving?” I ask again.

  “They say we need a bigger house, with the new baby and all. They already found a buyer.”

  “Yeah, I saw the ‘Sold’ sign.”

  “They said something about the market being really good, or maybe it’s really bad, I’m not sure. Anyway, we’re moving to Sunshine Hills. We’re going to a new school, too. We move at the end of the summer.”

  “That’s pretty soon,” I say. My eyes start to sting and fill with water. Jen sees this and hugs me.

  This is where I lose it. I start crying so hard that I can’t breathe, and when I realize that I can’t breathe, it makes it worse. I tell her that I’m sorry: sorry for calling her a revenge friend, sorry for pushing her aside when we were little to play with Nadine, sorry for all the things I’ve ever done to hurt her or to make her feel less than me.

  “It’s okay,” Jen whispers. “Nothing is going to change.”

  But we both know this is a lie, because things always change. Still, it sounds better and feels better to say this, to pretend to believe it. I let her hug me, smelling peanut butter on her breath. I think, We’ll just stay like this for a while, me crying and Jen hugging, until we feel like letting go. . . .

  It’s August and the Ando family has officially moved out of the cul-de-sac.

  The letter Jen Ando sent me, the one with no stamp on it, sits on the piano. The neighborhood sprinklers are shooting away like little water guns outside.

  I remember how, while driving me to school or when peeling apples for us, Mom would say, “Enjoy your life now. This is your golden time.”

  Now I kinda get what she was saying. There is no rush to grow up and skip grades and get boyfriends and shave legs, because being a kid is the best. I had the best childhood, and I have the Ando family to thank for that.

  I can hear an ice cream truck in the distance, getting louder and louder. The sun is starting to set and I can see the moon starting to rise.

  When I think about everything that’s happened this year, and everyone I said good-bye to, I understand that it wasn’t really about losing Cookie or Daniel or Nadine or Jen or the entire Ando family, it was about being okay with things changing and feeling true sadness for the first time.

  I stare at the letter and sort of wonder if it’ll be the last letter I receive from her. I doubt it. Though we don’t talk every day anymore, Jen and I do keep in touch. And although they have moved out of the cul-de-sac, the Ando family will never move out of my life, right? These people who were so important to me will always have a place in my heart, won’t they? I hope so. Even if I don’t see them as much, or hardly at all, in the future. Regardless, I’ll always be okay.

  Even today, in a crowd, like in the mall or downtown on Robson Street, walking down to English Bay to see the fireworks, I’ll see a blond boy ahead of me and I will still find myself running up behind him to casually pass him, and turn to look, hoping it’s Daniel.

  And sometimes, like when I’m practicing piano and there’s a knock at the door, there is this little part of me that hopes that it’ll be the Ando sisters, wanting to play, saying there’s a rainbow in the sky.

  About the Author

  Photo by Farrah Aviva

  Michelle Kim is a filmmaker and actor. She was born and raised in Surrey, Canada, and now lives in Vancouver, Canada. Running through Sprinklers is her first novel. Visit her at hapanessmedia.com.

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  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Michelle-Kim

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Michelle Kim Mossop

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Alexandra Huard

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  Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  Jacket design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  The text for this book was set in Adobe Jenson Pro.

  Jacket illustrations copyright © 2018 by Alexandra Huard

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kim, Michelle (Filmmaker), author.

  Title: Running through sprinklers / Michelle Kim.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2018].

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017005310

  ISBN 9781481495288 (hardback)

  ISBN 9781481495301 (eBook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction. | Family life—Canada—Fiction. | Canada—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Girls & Women. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Adolescence.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K583 Run 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005310