Free In Search of the Rose Notes by Emily Arsenault Page B

eye and was always wearing the same crusty disposable eye patch on which his older brother, Joe, had drawn for him a hairy, oozing eyeball. I doubt that patch ever did much corrective work—it was usually loose, allowing Toby to peek out with his good eye.
    Toby became more familiar to Charlotte and me when he was left back in the fourth grade and we caught up with him in school. If you were left back, it was generally thought that you were seriously stupid or seriously badass. I wasn’t sure which he was, but I wasn’t thrilled to be seated next to him. There was a whiff of Frito in his breath and a hint of mothball in his clothes and a low, stupid quality to his laugh. He was much bigger than the other kids, and he was interested in dirt bikes and Axl Rose. And by the end of fourth grade, he would come in from recess with dark pit stains on his shirt and a mysterious, monkeylike odor that always distracted me from my long-division worksheets. I remember trying to pull my nostrils together using just my face muscles—rather than my hands—so as not to tip off the poor stinking Toby. He already had enough problems that he didn’t need the girl sitting next to him holding her nose on top of it all.
    Sometimes my mother used to stop by and check in on Toby’s dad, who occasionally needed help with the care of Toby’s grandmother, who lived with them until she died of cancer when we were around ten. I’d usually stay in the yard or the car. If it was really cold, I’d wait for my mother in the Astroturfed mud room of Toby’s house. I was afraid if I ever sat at his kitchen table or saw his bedroom, someone might end up calling us friends.
    In junior high, Toby started to seem much older than the rest of us—and not just physically. When kids would giggle and squirm in class, he’d check them with a growled, “Hey, guys, c’mon.” Or just an exasperated shake of his head as he folded his meaty arms. By then he’d discovered deodorant and even cologne, and kids at least respected him for his size and gruffness, if nothing else. He was never very smart in school, but teachers would promote him for his efforts, his kindness to them, his stoic good sense.
    I didn’t really think of Toby as a person until late in high school, when I worked down the street from his dad’s garage, bagging groceries at the Stop & Shop. The first time Toby offered me a ride home, I declined. I flattered myself that he liked me and I shouldn’t lead him on. It didn’t dawn on me until much later that he was probably doing it as a favor to my mother, in return for her kindness to his father and grandmother. Toby did stuff like that—extended favors to adults as if he were one of them. I refused those rides for months, until September of senior year, when it occurred to me that no association could damage my status any worse than I’d already done on my own. Whatever devastating social judgments I’d thought I’d been avoiding had already been made long before. I was a senior, I was tired, and there was no reason to walk when Toby would happily drive me.
    And it took only a few rides with him for me to realize that I actually liked him better than most of the kids in our class.
    I grabbed my coffee cup, left Dunkin’ Donuts, and headed for Deans’. I didn’t think to be self-conscious until I was already inside the door.
    “Can I help you?” said the beefy guy behind the counter.
    “Umm,” I said, stepping closer. His dark hair was cut closely to his head, almost a crew cut. His eyes were big and brown, the left eye just slightly crossed. Yes, this was Toby Dean.
    “Hi,” I said, giggling the end of the word like an idiot.
    “Hi,” he replied, cocking his head with a bewildered smile. “Can I help you?”
    “Toby?” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “You remember me?”
    He scowled for a moment, and then his eyebrows went up in surprise.
    “Nora,” he said.
    “How’ve you been?” I asked.
    “Okay.” He crossed his arms,