The Six Rules of Maybe

mixed up to ‘Jimmy Cracked Corn’?”
    “‘Jimmy crapped corn, and I don’t care,’” they sang. How could I forget? I’d only heard the story a million times.
    Juliet and Mom laughed, but I didn’t feel like playing. I took a bite of my sandwich. Something was irritating me. And irritating me even more when Mom put her hands on the sides of Juliet’s cheeks and looked into her eyes. “You okay, baby?”
    Juliet groaned.
    “I know.”
    The doorbell rang then. “If it’s Mrs. Martinelli again, I’ve reached my end of computer knowledge,” Mom said.
    Juliet went to the door, opened it. “Silly, you don’t have to ring the doorbell,” she said. I heard the happy tick-tick-tick of Zeus’s toenails arriving on the wood floor, and Hayden’s voice in the hall.
    “We are now officially employed!” he said. He appeared in the kitchen. His sunburn from a few days before was turning brown. His hair was sweet-rumpled, and Zeus pushed past him and came toward the counter, his nose up in the air, sniffing for something that might be/maybe/is it? peanut butter.
    “You got a job?” Mom asked.
    “I’m calling myself a dock manager,” he said. “But I’m really just hired to fix stuff there at the marina, work on Will Quail’s boat. I was afraid to commit to anything more permanent since we haven’t decided”—he knew to be careful, paused to choose the right words—“things.”
    For a moment, Juliet said nothing and Hayden said nothing which meant they were saying a lot. The moment passed. You could feel a decision being made, hers, an instant mental pro-and-con list. She looped her arms around his waist then, and you could also feel something melt, fast as butter in a hot pan. Hayden put his hand around her bare back and sniffed her hair. He was someone who fell easily into forgiveness.
    “Old man Quail used to teach Driver’s Ed,” she said.
    “He’s deaf as a stone,” Hayden said.
    “He’s always been deaf as a stone,” Mom said. “Too many rock concerts during the Age of Aquarius.”
    Juliet released Hayden, turned to place herself against him,standing with her back against his chest. “He used to go, ‘Turn that radio off!’ when it wasn’t even on.” She grabbed Hayden’s arms, wrapped them tightly in front of her. She hadn’t been this affectionate with him since they’d gotten here. The whole aloof business was gone. Thank Alicia Worthen for that , I thought. It was the law of diminishing options.
    I felt the wave rise—the wave of vague pissed-off —a pissed-off without a name. An edge of anger that might really have been disgust. All of this easy forgiveness wherever you turned. I shoved my feet into my sandals. I suddenly just wanted to get out of there, away from all of them.
    “Tacos for dinner?” Mom said. “Can you eat that, you think?” She peered worriedly at Juliet.
    Juliet nodded. “Oh yeah. Let us help.” She lifted up one of Hayden’s arms, pretended to bite it.
    “I hold the record for cheese grating,” he said.
    I choked back the bite of my sandwich. “I’m actually heading out,” I said. I heard the edge in my own voice, the letting-them-know but not-letting them-know anger. It pushed up against me inside, made my face flush.
    “Oh?” Mom said.
    “Dinner plans with friends.”
    She didn’t even ask her usual twenty follow-up questions. Who would be there, what time I’d be back, if a parent would be present. She’d either given up on my doing anything different from babysitting or hanging out with Nicole and Jasmine, or she was too preoccupied to really care. “The car needs gas,” she said. “Take my card and get some.”
    Anger and irritation were fighting for first place inside of me, and I made some attempt at a rare dramatic gesture. I swiped her keys offthe counter and stormed toward the doorway, realizing too late that shit, shit, shit, one foot was suddenly bare and landing on the linoleum floor. My shoe, that traitor, had abandoned me, and it now sat alone over by the counter. I had to do the one-shoe limp back to retrieve it. It would be so much better if humiliation was private.
    I heard a little hnn sound from Juliet, a laugh trying not to be a laugh. Forget that shit. I got out of there. I left my half-eaten sandwich, left my backpack full of homework. Left cloudy motivations and strange workings of the heart. Left small humiliations and big disappointments.
    Neil Diamond was still crooning. Good times never seemed so