The Six Rules of Maybe

a distant airplane. As we watched CliveWeaver wander back across his grass in his tired robe on that June night, I suddenly wasn’t so sure about what Hayden had said, about wanting things for yourself. Hayden didn’t look so sure either, anymore. Clive Weaver wanted things badly.
    “As you were saying … ,” I whispered.
    “Shit, man.” Hayden sighed.
    I looked up at our sky, stars twinkling, twinkling, twinkling their forever-ness. “If this were the movies, this would be the time a shooting star would streak across the sky,” I said. “To make us think something great was heading our way after all.”
    Hayden looked up too. The sky just kept looking the same as it had before, and both of us caught the moment of hilarity at the same time. We both laughed, oh God, we laughed so hard, trying to be quiet, holding our stomachs. There was no shooting star, of course, not a one, and Hayden was bent over laughing and saying, “Fuck. Fuck,” and I was gasping for air. Then he mimed looking up again, and so did I, and of course there was still no dramatic cinematic moment, only regular life, and it was hysterical all over again.
    I was bent over and my arms were crossed against my stomach, and I wasn’t even looking at him because I was laughing so hard and trying to be quiet at the same time. And that’s when I felt each of his hands behind me on my shoulders, giving them a shake, the way a father might shake the shoulders of a kid he was joking with. But then he turned me around and I turned to him and we hugged there. We hugged for a moment and then he released me and he was still grinning.
    I had felt his back under the flat of my hands, his soft shirt, my cheek ever so briefly against him, there where his heart was. He had held me, and I had held him, too. God, it felt good, it did. I had let want in, opened the door ever so slightly. But want without the belief you can get what you want is pointless. You have to have hope, so I let that in too. You have to. To want things and go for them and believe, even in impossible situations … Hope was what you had when you had nothing else. Hope was the perfect shiny top on the Christmas tree, the glowing halo of every wish, the endless beacon of a lighthouse bringing tormented ships home at last.

Chapter Seventeen
    A re you disappointed about tonight?” Juliet asked me. We were outside in the backyard, and Hayden was grilling hamburgers on our old barbecue that no one had used in a hundred years. Smoke billowed every now and then, as if in some occasional frightening emergency. There was that summer smell of briquettes and Hayden’s open beer and the coconut suntan lotion on Juliet’s arms. Mom had music playing, and it came outside through the screen door. Juliet wore one of Mom’s old aprons, and it showed off her bulge. Hayden rubbed it when she passed, like it would give him good luck.
    “Disappointed?”
    “ Prom .”
    “How’d you even know it was tonight?” Hayden asked.
    “Rebecca’s little sister?” Juliet said. “I do have friends here.”
    Hayden let this go. His eyes were watery from smoke, and he wiped them with the sleeve of his T-shirt.
    “I’m not disappointed,” I said. “I move on quickly. I’m not one of those people who really cares about stuff like that.” Actually, I was happy. Really happy. I had that excited feeling, the one you used to get when you were a kid and it was Halloween night. I’d even offered to mow the front lawn so I wouldn’t miss a thing. I couldn’t wait to see Goth Girl and Bomb Boy all dressed up and heading out to dinner. I’d seen Kevin Frink at school and offered him the money I’d promised for dinner. He’d refused it. He wanted to take Fiona to the Harbor Tower instead, the nicest restaurant on the island. He had a hickey on his neck, just above the collar of his T-shirt.
    “Well, you can hang out with us if you’re feeling depressed,” Juliet said.
    We all sat on Mom’s checkered tablecloth laid out on the grass and ate dinner on paper plates. I wolfed down my hamburger and the potato salad that Mom made and hurried out of there. I changed into my old ragged shorts that used to belong to Juliet and this T-shirt I’d had for a billion years, hauled the push mower out from the garage. I hooked up the grass catcher and looked for a second garden glove just to pass the time.
    When I heard Kevin Frink’s Volkswagen come down the street, I realized how anxious I was. Both my stomach and