Jersey Tomatoes are the Best Read Online Free Page A

brow wrinkled as she processed this information.
    “Henry is a boy’s name,” she finally announced. A little accusingly.
    I’m also pretty good at stating the obvious, so “I’m not aboy” sprang to my lips. As if my waist-length blond hair and pink baseball cap weren’t enough evidence. Eva smiled widely, clearly pleased and amused by me. Meanwhile, our moms spoke over our heads. They recognized each other from around town, in that Jersey-mothers-who-shop-at-the-same-grocery-store sort of way.
    “Would you like to come over to play?” Eva asked. I shrugged. I had no interest in this odd kid and her food-chucking mother. But Eva had made up her mind, so before Rhonda hustled her out of the store, the mothers exchanged phone numbers and a playdate was planned.
    It was like hanging out with a pint-sized dictator. She bossed me around for hours as we played make-believe games of her invention. We weren’t just Henry and Eva: we were lost mermaids in a haunted lake; princesses who had been turned into white mice by a jealous queen; children who sprouted wings at night and flew over the rooftops of their parents’ homes. She staged a ballet, creating sets by draping gauzy material over the backs of kitchen chairs and playing tapes from Disney movies. She danced the lead, and for a while tried to get me to dance. It didn’t take her long, even at age six, to realize I was incapable of moving my feet to music, so she made me something stationary—a tree—while she cavorted around me.
    I laughed so much that day my cheeks hurt. As we played, I lost all track of real time and space, and when my mother arrived to pick me up, Eva and I both begged for another playdate. They couldn’t refuse us.
    Here’s what we never did: keep score. Eva doesn’t play competitive games. Nothing with points, nothing with balls, nothing with sticks, bats or rackets. That’s because she hates those games. Says losing makes her sad, and winning makes her feel sad for the other person. I’ve never minded. Playing Eva’s way was a nice break from … well, the dogs, for one thing.
    One hot summer day Dad wanted me to call dogs before lunch. It was, like, ninety degrees. I argued, but he turned the machine on anyway. Then he told me I didn’t have to just call the names: I had to call the numbers, too. Which is impossible because they’re too small.
    I was so pissed that I just started calling out any old number. “Wilson Three! Penn Two!” Smacking away and lying my head off. Finally, he turned off the damn thing. Said he’d filled the machine with Dunlops. Said he knew I cheated on our drills. Said I didn’t work hard enough, and it showed. He punished me for lying by taking away my TV privileges for a month and making me do dogs for an extra hour a day.
    I was nine years old.
    Around that same time, Eva traded in her rubbery ballet slippers for
pointe
shoes. Ballet started getting serious for her around then, and hours spent just hanging out … or playing pretend … became rare. By now I’ll bet she’s accumulated enough frequent driver miles crossing over or under the Hudson River into the city for ballet stuff to travel to the moon and back. She tells me I’m wrong.
    She says she’s earned enough miles to make it to Pluto.
    Today is a rare Sunday afternoon we
both
have off, and … predictably … Eva has dictated that we
must
spend it together drinking her famous Pink Decadence smoothies. Once upon a time this was a regular event. Now I can’t remember the last time we had smoothies.
    “For example,” Eva says, continuing to make her case for surviving New Jersey. “Take … cancer.”
    “Pass,” I groan. But Eva’s on a roll.
    “I once saw a map of the U.S. that had a tiny red dot wherever there was a cancer cluster. I don’t know how many cases per thousand the dots represented, but the state of New Jersey? Completely red. That’s how many dots we’ve got.”
    “And this is supposed to make us