Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff

of his wet flips as he went.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Mom was clearly surprised to see me when she walked in the front door that evening.
    â€œTrent!” she cried, clutching her chest like she’d thought I was some sort of robber. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at your father’s.”
    I clicked off ESPN. “I sort of, um, missed him,” I said.
    She tossed her purse onto the couch and flopped down next to me. “Oh, Trent,” she said. She felt my forehead with the back of herhand like she thought I might have some sort of fever. “What’s going on with you two?”
    I shrugged. “I hate him.”
    Mom nodded at that, like it was a perfectly normal thing to hate your father. “Okay,” she said. “But he’s still your dad. Growing boys need their fathers. It’s, like, science.” She peeked into the kitchen. “Are your brothers here too?”
    â€œDoug’s spending quality time with Dad like a good little boy,” I said. “And Aaron’s out. He didn’t tell me where he was going. Probably with Clarisse.” I nodded back toward the TV. “Game’s on in ten,” I said. “Want me to heat up two potpies?”
    Mom bit her lip for a second. “Yeah,” she said at last. “Sounds good. Let me just make a phone call.” Then she dug her phone out of her purse and started dialing, walking toward her room to talk.
    I could only hear her a little while I pulled the potpies out of the freezer and started up the oven. She was canceling plans, probably with her friend Barbara, from her book club. Part of me felt bad for being such a terrible delinquent that my own mother had to cancel the one night to herself she’d probably planned in eons. Aaron would glare at me for sure, if he knew. But then I realized that if my mom was canceling plans, that meant she’d
made
plans. On a night the Dodgers were playing the
Giants,
second in a series after a losing game. As far as I knew, Mom hadn’t missed a single game against the Giants since the day she was born.
    I was going to ask about it when she came back into the living room. But she was smiling, really smiling, and she looked happy asshe flicked through the channels to the game and said, “Ready to pummel some Giants, Trent?” She pulled our two baseball caps from the coat rack and smooshed mine onto my head.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
she hollered.
    And I wasn’t about to mess up a good mood like that. So I didn’t say anything at all.

EIGHT
    Sunday morning Mom let me go with her to the store. I guess she figured I’d already missed out on going to Dad’s for the weekend anyway, plus I could tell she was feeling pretty happy after we pummeled the Giants the night before (there was nothing that made Mom happier than pummeling the Giants—not even coffee). So she decided I might as well make a couple bucks working.
    â€œTrent!” Ray greeted me when we walked into the store. “Good to see you.”
    â€œThere’s one for you in here,” I said, holding out the bag of doughnuts. I guess it was becoming a regular thing, Mom getting an extra doughnut for Ray on the weekends, because Calvin at the doughnut shop didn’t even blink this time when I asked for it.
    â€œChocolate glazed,” he said, peering into the bag, then back up at me. “My favorite person.”
    I laughed. “You sound just like Mom,” I told him.
    It was pretty slow at the store, so I spent most of the morning drawing in my Book of Thoughts.
    One of the pictures I drew was a good one, maybe my best yet. Me in my house, on that cold February day, right after Doug came inside with his friend Brad and told me that the guys at the lake needed another hockey player. It looked pretty close to how it had happened in real life. Only in the drawing, as soon as I