Their Freefall At Last by Julie Olivia

2

Bennett

Twenty-One Years Before

Ruby & Bennett are Nine Years Old

“Bennett’s here?”

I can hear Mr. Sullivan through the door, but I don’t think he knows. He’s trying to talk over Moose’s wild barks.

“Richard, just open the door.”

“Is she going somewhere with him?”

“His mother is grilling out for their birthdays.”

“I thought Brittney worked nights?”

More barking.

“Richard, open the door for the child.”

The front door opens with a jerky crack. Ruby’s dad—a man with a thick black beard and even thicker eyebrows—stands in the doorway. I think he’s trying to smile down at me, but it looks difficult for him.

My fist clenches tighter over the roses in my hand.

“Can Ruby come out to play, sir?”

I know to use the word sir around him. It’s not that Mr. Sullivan makes me nervous—Mom said no adults should make me feel that way. But Ruby’s dad is the one person who can ground her, and if he does that, then we can’t eat cake and watch that bug movie that Ruby always likes to see on her birthday.

Moose shoves his head side to side to make room between Mr. Sullivan’s legs and the doorframe. His great, big tongue is lolling out, heaving musty breaths and drooling onto the hardwood.

Mr. Sullivan calls over his shoulder, “Amelia! Bennett is here!”

We stand there in uncomfortable silence, like we always do. I learned really quick that nobody in Ruby’s family talks much. I’ve only been inside the Sullivan house once, but I got goose bumps from its unusually pristine floor. I had to shush my sneakers from squeaking too loud.

The sound of flip-flops smack on clean hardwood and then my best friend appears.

Ruby’s ginger hair is normally long and straight but, today, it’s wrapped up into two cheesy-looking bread rolls on either side of her head.

She power-walks to the door—because you don’t run in the Sullivan household—and slings her pink backpack over her shoulder.

Mr. Sullivan pats her head. “Back by five, honey. We have that event tonight, and you’ve gotta get in your dress.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ruby’s parents always throw her a big birthday dinner party in some fancy building that isn’t their house. She’s told me she never knows anyone there, except for her cousins or her dad’s assistant, Miranda. I’m never invited.

“Good. Have fun, you two.”

He narrows his eyes at me. I don’t know why he does that, but it makes me feel weird. Sometimes, I wish I could sneer right back at him. See how he likes it.

We cross the street to walk through Miss Lisa’s yard, circling around her picket fence. Ruby’s neighborhood is different from mine. The yards don’t have cars in them, and the gates always look freshly painted. Plus, Miss Lisa has an in-ground pool, which is wild because I only know kids with above-ground ones.

We shimmy through the trees behind Miss Lisa’s house and empty into the small trail between our neighborhoods.

I shove my fistful of flowers toward her. “Uh, happy birthday, Parrot. Mom says girls like flowers.”

“They do?”

“You don’t?”

Ruby’s shoulders rise, and she giggles. “I don’t know.”

“Good. They’re boring anyway.” I draw my finger into a hook. “Let’s play pirates instead. Yarr! Status report, matey!”

Ruby gives her little parrot-like squawk before tucking the flowers into the backpack’s side pocket.

“What’s the news?” I ask.

“Map!” she caws.

“Map?” I drop my hook. “Wait, what map?”

Grinning, Ruby rips off her backpack and reaches in, pulling out a curled piece of paper, held by a pink scrunchie. She hands it to me, and when I uncurl it, I smile so wide that it almost hurts.

My best friend is the freaking coolest.

Ruby drew Cedar Cliff. There’s her neighborhood, mine, our school, the woods we’re in with the creek and the big tree, and Honeywood Fun Park in the corner of town. She even drew Moose in her backyard.

It looks awesome.

“Whoa, is that treasure?” I poke at the large X in my living room. MY living room!

“Yarr!” she says with a giggle.

“Yarr!” I echo. “Thar be booty!”

I run to the big tree—our pirate ship—and hold out my hand for her to climb on. But when her foot doesn’t land in my palm, I turn around. Ruby’s face is bright red.

“What?” I ask.

“Bennett, you can’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“That word,” she says, her voice getting quieter.

“Booty?”

She giggles in response. One time, her dad caught us saying the word ass and instantly grounded her. Not being able to play outside for a couple of days scared her into not saying related words. Even booty.

She walks over and lifts a foot into my palm. I boost her up to the branch in our pirate ship, then climb up after her.

To see her face turn red, I whisper, “Booty.”

“Bennett!”

“What?! It means, like, gold and treasure and stuff.” I scoot closer to her. “Nobody can hear us. You can say it too.”

Mom says, sometimes, you can see a hamster running on the wheel in someone’s head when they think, and Ruby’s hamster is flying. She always does this when she’s considering whether to break rules. They’re not actual rules, but she has a list in her head of what she can and can’t say. Sometimes, she says the can’t-say words when she’s around me. Especially when we’re in the magic tree ship.

“Say it,” I say. “Come on, Rubes. Booty.”

She squints, and I copy the look, making her giggle.

“Okay. Booty!” she caws.

“Aha! Yarr!” I yell, hooking my finger again.

She erupts into a fit of giggles, which has me laughing too, and then, because we’re both laughing, I laugh more. We can’t stop until both our cheeks and bellies hurt.

Finally, I curl open the map again. “So, what is it?”

“It’s a secret.”

“But we don’t keep secrets.”

“No, but … it’s a secret.”

“Wait. Is it my birthday gift?”

She nods, and instantly, I hop out of the tree.

“Well, I wanna go get it!”

“But the ship!” She waves her arms in the air. “We’ve just set sail!”

“But booty!”

Ruby lets out a, “Shush,” and I grin, wrapping my arms around her waist to help her off the branch.

Twigs snap under our sneakers as we run through the woods. Once we reach my backyard’s chain-link fence, I lift the lock and let her through first.

My yard isn’t as big as Ruby’s or as neat, and even though it’s summer, the ground is still covered in crunching leaves and old branches from last fall. But the smell of barbecue is rising from the grill, and Mom’s rock music is roaring from the house, which is definitely more awesome than Ruby’s quiet, echoey house that smells like cleaning supplies.

We run up the back porch steps and slide open the glass door to an irritated, “Just this once, Ben.”

Ruby and I halt at the sound.

It’s my mom talking on the phone. She exhales. I can hear her pacing in the kitchen with her bare feet sticking to the linoleum and the phone’s cord rattling against the wall as she moves.

“I know what I said. But, hey, maybe next time, don’t knock someone up at sixteen and then—” She stops mid-sentence. “What responsibility? You’re off, living your life on the back of a motorbike, and I’m here—” Another pause. “I’m only asking for one birthday. One. That’s it.”

Ruby’s hand takes mine and squeezes.

We both know who Mom is talking to.

She’s talking to my dad.

I’ve never met my dad. Not that I can remember anyway.

Sometimes, Mom shows me a Polaroid from her memory box, and she’ll tilt her head to the side and say, “Y’all look so similar,” but all I see is a tattooed stranger holding my mom’s hand.

She gets a weird smile on her face when she looks at that specific photo, like the faded colors of the picture pull into her, making her look faded too.

I don’t know my dad, but I never want to if that’s how people look when they’re around him for too long.

“Hey,” Ruby whispers.

“Yeah?”

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

I smile. “Why?”

“It was a fowl day.”

I let out another laugh. This is the best thing about Ruby. She knows the perfect time to tell the funniest jokes.

I don’t hear the rest of the conversation because Mom’s music is loud, but I do hear the phone clanging on the receiver. She comes around the corner.

“Oh! Hey there, kiddos!”

Mom is all smiles, holding grill tongs over her shoulder. She’s even got her “face on” with her thick eyelashes and maroon lips. Her favorite Journey shirt is tucked into her ripped denim shorts. She always says that outfit makes her feel like a rock star.

She playfully snaps the tongs at Ruby before pulling her in for a hug. “Happy birthday, my precious gemstone. Get anything good this year?”

“Books.”

“Books? Good. Books are good.” Mom slides open the back door and opens the grill. Smoke wafts out, filling the air with a charred smell. “Gotta stay smart. It’ll keep you out of trouble.”

Mom mentions trouble a lot, especially to Ruby. Her three cardinal rules are: never have too much fun at parties, never laugh at jokes that aren’t funny, and all boys with motorcycles are automatically bad news.

Before she can go off on her typical trouble speech, I hold up my map. “Is there something in the living room for me?”

Mom curls her lips in and winks at Ruby. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

I scramble inside. I look everywhere for my hidden booty, and I finally find it in a yellow folder behind the bookshelves. My name is scrawled on the front in Ruby’s handwriting below a giant X. I open it, and inside is a packet of Pokémon cards and a drawing. I skip past the cards and take the drawing out. It’s a roller coaster. I love Ruby’s roller coasters. I love them even more when she designs them for me.

“Awesome,” I breathe. “Thank you.”

I hear the sliding door open again, and Mom comes into the living room.

“Oh, wow,” she says, putting a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “This one turned out so good.”

“Ruby’s smart,” I say.

Ruby’s face gets all pink, and she winds her hands together. “I named it The Bennett.”

I gasp. “Hell yeah!”

My mom snaps her fingers. “Bennett Shaw, no foul language in my household, mister.”

“Fowl,” I whisper to myself with a giggle.

“It has three loops,” Ruby says. “And the drop is, like, three hundred feet. And after that, it goes underground. For thirty minutes.”

Mom nods slowly. “Wow,” she says, dragging out the word. “I might vomit, but I’d at least give it a whirl once. Oh! Have your parents taken you to see The Grizzly yet, Rubes?”

She shakes her head. “The Grizzly?”

“Honeywood added a new roller coaster, kiddo. It’s got their tallest drop so far.”

Ruby gasps. I gasp too. Mom gasps, but I think she does it just to be funny.

“They did? Mom, can we go? Can we go?”

“Maybe. I’ll see if I can get time off, all right?”

“Can I come too?” Ruby asks. “Mama’s been away a lot, and Dad’s been really busy with work.”

“You can come with us whenever we go,” Mom says, bumping her hip against Ruby’s shoulder. “I’ll even buy your ticket.”

Her lips pull into a secret smile in my direction. Mom was just talking about how expensive our electric bill was the other day, so I know that’s a huge deal.

“Cool. Dad says he spends a lot of money on his assistant and that we can’t buy much right now.”

Mom pauses in place, grill tongs snapping closed. “His assistant?”

“Miranda.”

“Right,” Mom says, dragging out the word. “Uh-huh. Miranda. Okay. Is … your mom friends with Miranda?”

Ruby shrugs. “I guess?”

I don’t know why Mom looks confused, but she walks away and slides open the back door.

“What’s wrong with Miranda?” Ruby asks me.

I shrug. Ruby’s dad’s assistant is always at their house when Ruby’s mom travels for work. It’s not that weird.

We play pirates until lunch when Mom brings out two cakes—one for each of us. She tells us to make a wish before we blow out our candles. I never know what to wish for, so I just hope for Ruby’s wish to come true instead.

We eat our cake while we watch A Bug’s Life because it’s Ruby’s favorite movie to see, and I hold her hand because it’s my favorite thing to do.

“Hey, what did you wish for?” I ask.

“To find real buried treasure.”

So smart.

“I would have never thought of that,” I say. “I like that.”

“Thanks.” Her voice is so quiet that I almost don’t hear it. Ruby doesn’t like compliments.

“I liked my booty today.”

“Shh. Your mom will hear you.”

“Booty.”

She giggles. “Bennett!”

I squeeze her hand with a laugh, and she instantly squeezes back.