After the Climb (River Rain 0.50)

Mrs. Swan?

What?

He looked to the alarm clock beside his bed.

Holy cow.

It was nearly eleven.

He not only was never up this late, he was supposed to be asleep two hours ago.

“Hurry,” Genny urged.

“Jeans, buddy,” Duncan said.

He had no idea what was going on, but today was what today was, and his friends were there (and so was Mrs. Swan).

So Corey nodded and rushed to get dressed as quietly as he could.

Then, with Duncan’s help, and Genny’s, he was out the window.

“Bucket,” Duncan said, pointing at the big plastic paint bucket that was upended under the window. “For when you have to climb back in.”

That was Duncan, always thinking of everything.

Corey grinned at him.

Then, like soldiers at war, they ran hunkered down through his side yard to the car at the curb.

Genny opened the front passenger door.

“Birthday boy gets front seat,” Mrs. Swan declared.

Genny turned and smiled at Corey.

While Duncan and Genny shifted to get in the back, Corey climbed in the coveted front seat and looked at Mrs. Swan.

She was so pretty. So pretty. She didn’t look like Genny at all, but man, she was pretty.

Especially as she was right now, all happy because they were being bad (Mrs. Swan was the best at being bad), smiling at him huge.

But her smile went funny as she caught his face under the car lights.

Dang.

She was a mom. You couldn’t hide anything from a mom.

He’d stopped forever ago.

But he knew she knew he’d been crying.

Suddenly, the smile came back in full force, nearly as bright at Genny’s, and she decreed, “We best get on, clock’s running out. We have barely an hour left of your birthday, buddy boy. We gotta get crackin’.”

And then, since the car was still running, she glided off, her headlights out, all covert and everything.

That was, until she turned the corner on the block and turned them on.

But her driving a whole half a block under cover of the night…

So cool.

He twisted in his seat to look back at his friends. “What do you have planned?”

“They better not tell you, or they won’t get an extra scoop of ice cream with their birthday cake,” Mrs. Swan warned, then, like she didn’t intend to spill the beans, she said, “Whoops.”

“Birthday cake…” Corey didn’t finish because, all of a sudden what was happening hit him, and his throat closed up.

He looked front, right at the road, and he did it hard.

He also did it not thinking about what his birthday was like with his folks.

Or his lack of birthday.

No one in that car said anything, but they all knew.

He knew they did.

Especially Dun.

He knew how Corey’s birthdays were.

He knew how Corey’s everydays were.

But now…they had Genny.

Genny and Mrs. Swan.

They were at Genny’s house in five minutes, and he’d gotten himself together by then.

Another couple minutes, he was at Mr. and Mrs. Swan’s kitchen table, one of those awesome store-bought sheet cakes in front of him with all the big swirls of frosting all over it and lit candles, the perfect amount, the works!

“I can’t even begin to imagine why this is your favorite cake, darlin’,” Mrs. Swan said to him. “I would have made you anything you wanted. From scratch.”

So that was why, ages ago, Genny had asked what his favorite cake was.

Mrs. Swan was good in the kitchen, her cookies were the best.

But—

“I can’t even begin to imagine the level of loon I married, kidnapping her daughter’s friend to give him a midnight birthday party,” Mr. Swan said before Corey could say a word.

Corey got tense, but Genny didn’t.

She grinned.

Because she did, Corey looked between Mr. and Mrs. Swan, and he saw straight out that Mr. Swan may have said those words, but he was all ready for cake.

And all ready to celebrate Corey’s birthday.

Corey knew that when he looked from his wife, and saw Corey studying him.

So he tapped his knuckles on the table, lifted his hand, pointed at Corey, and then nodded to him.

What he did when Gen did something he was proud of her for doing, like a perfect cartwheel into an equally perfect roundoff. Or Duncan did something he was proud of him for doing, like when they found that fox in a trap and rushed back to tell Mr. Swan. And then Mr. Swan came out to the woods to help them get it loose, and Duncan worked close at his side to trap the thing in a nicer way and get it to the vet so they could get its leg fixed and then get it back into the woods.

Or when Corey did something Mr. Swan was proud of him doing, like when he showed Genny the trick he used to learn his multiplication tables.

Corey then turned back to Mrs. Swan. “You make great cake. But it’s about the frosting, Mz. Swan,” he told her.