I had made the junior varsity volleyball team, so practice was fairly intense. I welcomed the two-hour distraction, and clearly put every ounce of myself into conditioning and drills. My dad originally wanted to just drop me off at Reed’s straight from practice, but I was thankfully able to talk him into taking me home to shower and change first. There was no way I was showing up at his house with a sweat-soaked MicNic Burger shirt and fuzzed out ponytail.
I showered and changed in record time, threw on a pair of hip-hugging denim shorts, loose-fitting tank top and my trusty Converses and we were on our way. My dad was actually really excited to be dropping me off at the Johnson house. He said he always wanted to drive up the entire driveway. I remember him threatening to do it just for fun a few times last year, but my mom would always stop him. I didn’t think it was a big deal then, but I think I would just about die if he were to do it uninvited now.
As we rounded the tall trees at the corner of the property and made our way through the main gates, I took the entire thing in. I didn’t know how big an acre was, but I knew Reed’s dad owned several. His house came into view, classic-style, two stories and a balcony at the front just above the main entrance. The garage to the right was open, showing off a gleaming classic Buick—a 1954 Skylark, according to my dad. I could tell he wanted to stop the car to get out and look at it, but thankfully he just let it idle and told me he’d be back by 6:30 to pick me up. I told him to call if we needed to leave earlier; he was surprisingly good about getting me a phone. I didn’t have a fancy plan and it was refurbished, but it would work.
I waved my dad off as I stood in front of the door. For some reason I didn’t want the Oldsmobile behind me when Reed opened the door to let me in. But my dad wasn’t budging until he knew I was safely inside.
I heard a dog barking after I rang the bell and I could roughly make out the form of someone coming to open the door through the frosted glass. My dad started to pull away and in my mind I thought maybe it was fast enough to not draw any attention to the rust marks on the bumper.
Reed’s smile was greeting me instantly. “Welcome to Casa del Johnson!” he said, finding himself terribly clever. “Come on in. I made some space for us in the dining room so we can get started.”
I followed him into the house, still not saying a word. He was wearing a well-worn grey t-shirt and loose-fitting jeans that were starting to tear at the feet. He slid across the wood floors in his socks, truly comfortable and not at all bothered by my presence. He pulled out a chair for me at the table and headed into the nearby kitchen, pulling a knit beanie from his head and tossing it on the counter. His hair, still a little wet from his after-practice shower I was guessing, curled a bit at the ends, flopping in random directions.
He came back to the dining room with two Cokes and a bowl of chips. “Brain food,” he said.
Finally able to get my mouth to work, I thought I should start by giving him my new phone number. I was able to win the phone debate with my parents to some extent, though I had to settle for a low-use, pay-as-you-go plan. “Hey, I got my new phone, if you want to take down the number,” I said, trying to be as casual as possible. I was putting entirely too much thought into even the simplest of sentences. When we had to start seriously talking, I knew I was doomed.
“Awesome. Just send me a text with it later tonight,” he said.
“Can do,” I said, wincing at my squeaky clean, ‘you betcha’ response. Pull it together, Nolan. “So, I thought maybe we could just go through the project requirements and put together a plan that hit all of the requirements so we could sort of have a list of things to cross as we go. Sound good?”
“Works for me,” Reed said, flipping open a notebook to write our list on. I was pleasantly surprised that he was taking such an active role in our project. I was sort of used to carrying the team when it came to group projects.
“OK, first we need a model of our village. It has to include dwellings, food and water sources and be able to accommodate multiple families,” I read from the class worksheet. “We will also need a four-page paper describing our village and addressing our challenges and solutions to sustainability.”
“Got it,” Reed said, scribbling the last bit of our list. “Where do you want to start?”
“Well, I guess we should maybe draw a blueprint of our model and then next time we meet we can build it?”
“I have the perfect thing,” he hopped up from the table and ran upstairs in an instant. I heard his feet pound upstairs as they crossed above me. A few minutes later, I heard them cross back and he appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a huge foam cardboard piece in his hand. It was an old Buick credit check sign on one side, but he flipped it over on the table and the back was completely white.