Intentions by Deborah Heiligman

squeaks and I am a drowned rat. I take off my helmet.
    Helmet hair to end all helmet hair. I ring the bell anyway.
    Mrs. Schmidt opens the door. Not Jake. “Rachel, what are you doing riding your bike in the rain like this? Are you OK?”
    I nod vigorously. “I’m fine. Is Jake here?”
    “He’s still away—at the swim competition.” She looks at her watch. “I have to get him at the bus station in—oh, in about an hour. He’s going to call when he gets in.”
    “How did he do? At the meet, I mean?”
    She is standing with the door partway open. I am getting wetter by the second, if that’s even possible. I can see why she’s not asking me in. The wind is blowing the rain in on her. I move back to leave.
    “He did very well—mostly first places, a few second. He had fun.”
    I don’t say anything. What if he’s met another girl? There is a long, awkward pause.
    “Do you want to come in and dry off? You can come with me to pick up Jake.” I am embarrassed for Jake to see me like this, and I should say no, but I am shivering, and being dry seems like a very good idea.
    “Come around the back, if you don’t mind,” she says.
    “Of course!” I say.
    “I’ll open the garage door, and you can put your bike in there.”
    I have never been in Jake’s house before. She leads me to the laundry room. “I’ll bring you a robe. Why don’t you put your clothes in the dryer?”
    “Thank you!” She is so sweet. I stand in the laundry room shivering, until she hands me a white terry-cloth robe, the kind they have in fancy hotels.
    “Would you like a cup of tea?”
    “Yes, please.”
    “Irish Breakfast or Lemon Ginger?”
    I sure don’t need caffeine. I’m too jazzed up as it is. “Lemon Ginger. Thank you.”
    “Honey?”
    “Yes?”
    “Um, do you want honey for your tea?”
    Erg. “Yes, please,” I say.
    I strip off my soaking wet clothes, all of them, even my bra, and throw them in the dryer. I don’t want to shrink my bra, so I put the dryer on delicate.
    The robe is soft and cuddly; I wrap it tightly around me and go join Jake’s mom.
    While she makes the tea she chatters, tells me they have barely heard from Jake since he’s been gone, that he was so obsessed with the swimming, he hadn’t called them at all. Just a few texts. That’s how he gets, she says, and it makes me feel a little better.
    I am warm and cozy in this kitchen. It’s got a cherrywood island in the middle, a floor that matches, covered with a few braided rugs here and there, walls painted a light buttercream, with family pictures hung everywhere. I bet Jake’s parents aren’t fighting; I am sure Dr. Schmidt isn’t sleeping on the couch. I doubt Jake spends his days and nights worried that his parents are going to get divorced.
    The only thing is, there is something weird about the photos. In lots of the pictures there are four people: Jake, his parents, and a younger boy who looks a lot like Jake, but not. Something about the way he looks, kind of vague and never really looking atthe camera, makes me think twice and not ask Jake’s mom who he is. Jake has never mentioned a younger brother, and I have never seen one with them.
    Mrs. Schmidt asks me a million questions: about school, what subjects I like best (English and history); about where I think I might want to go to college (no idea, but I throw out some names that I have ready for when adults ask—the three Bs, I call them: Barnard, Brown, and Bard; they’re all totally different, that much I know, but she gives them each respectable nods). Then, of course, she asks what I want to do when I grow up (also no idea, but I throw out some possibilities: journalist, social worker, college professor). Finally I manage to ask, “What does Jake want to be? Do you know?”
    She shrugs. “He used to want to be a doctor, like his father, but lately he’s been very much into economics; he talks about figuring out a way to abolish third-world debt, that kind of thing. I—I